So, they sold it in December. I’m not sure what will happen to the place.

As a boy, I used to pass by the house with my family, on our way to my uncles’ cottages in Economy. No one gave that house even a first thought, really.

A few years ago, Bishop scholar Sandra Barry arranged for my wife and I to visit the house. You’re right: it’s nothing special, as exceptional for being one of the few late 19th-century houses left in good shape up there as it is for anything else.

One reason why Bishop’s Nova Scotia story is so interesting to me is that it harkens back to a time when Nova Scotia was as tied to the northeastern United States as it was to the rest of Canada, a time when we were Red Sox and Bruins fans, not Blue Jays and Canadiens fans; when young men dreamed of making their fortunes in Beantown and the Big Apple, not Hogtown and Stampede City.

Canadians don’t like to be reminded how linked we are to the US historically — unless talking about how we “won” the War of 1812 — but I find it fascinating.