Large Fierce Mammal

Lunenburg Academy near sunset in Autumn 2012 (Mrs. LFM photo)

“I attended elementary school at Lunenburg Academy, a massive, brooding, castlesque pile completed in 1895 on a windswept hilltop in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The school grounds are bordered on two sides by the Hillcrest Cemetery, and my walk to and from school passed first in front of the local funeral home before following another two blocks along the border of the oldest portion of the town’s largest burial ground. Once at school, for a child with a powerful imagination, a simple trip to the bathroom was an adventure rivaling anything Tolkien wrote about taking place in the Mines of Moria, the washrooms lying as they did deep in the lonely creaking bowels of the Academy’s basement so far from any hope of salvation.” ~ Musings as Hallowe’en Approaches

Lunenburg Academy retired from being an active school in 2012 to pursue other ambitions and generally spend more time with her family.

Lunenburg Academy

By LFM

The Lunenburg Academy
Stands tall on Gallows Hill,
And at its feet lie all the graves
The town has come to fill.

A solemn place as graveyards are,
But not a silent one,
For graves that watch the schoolyard field
Where children play and run.

A lovely balance, I believe,
To start and end a story,
Where children take their lessons by
Their own memento mori.