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How a N.S. physician turned artist put down new roots on family land

Jonah Samson grew up on a wild stretch of seaside in southern Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. For many generations, his family lived in Louisdale, a tiny, working-class fishing village. His great-grandfather was a lighthouse keeper, and his grandfather, an electrician, kept a sprawling garden that Samson would help tend in the summer, watching in wonder as seeds sprouted into plants.

This memory tugged at Samson 30-odd years later. He’d bounced around Europe and lived in Halifax and Toronto before settling down in 2004 as a successful family physician and artist in Vancouver. By then, Samson’s father had divided the Cape Breton land between his four children. “My brother had already built a house right next to my parents, and then my sister built a house right next to him,” says Samson. “We essentially have a family commune all the way down the road.” He’d been living in a 600-square-foot condo and dreaming of more space to garden. In 2013, he moved to Nova Scotia, becoming the fourth Samson to build a house on the family land, and worked at a community health centre in L’Ardoise, a village about a 30-minute drive away.

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