September 5, 2011, my friend Glenn and I were travelling through the Maritime provinces on a road-trip. Our next stop was Prince Edward Island, via the Confederation Bridge. Driving towards the bridge, we had a laugh as we passed several signs advertising Andy's Dummy Farm. "What's a dummy farm?!" we started wondering... and our curiosity had us back-up and enter the heavily-signed driveway to Andy's House.
We pulled into the yard, which had a mini-home parked in front of an old house, as well as an old barn, bus and van on the opposite end of the property. As we parked, we were greeted by Andy, who was dressed in quite sharply and eager to show us his... bus?
We had no idea what we were getting into, but he was very friendly and immediately gestured for us to follow him. Andy opened the door to his bus and we climbed inside to check-out some of his dummies. Andy's Dummies are hand-made doll-like figures... often a combination of random items such as buttons, masks and even old doll parts. Both charming and slightly creepy, the dolls each had a different look, accompanied by a placard with a joke that was hand-written by Andy himself.
For over an hour, we were ushered through the various parts of the cram-packed broken-down bus, and shown nearly every doll inside. Andy would point to a doll, read the associated joke and wait for our reaction. I'll admit that most of them I did not completely understand. Perhaps written for a different generation, in a Cape-Breton dialect I am not familiar with. Time passed rather slowly as we faked several smiles and laughs, pretending to understand the jokes and trying our best to be polite. While it was extremely awkward at times, I knew that this experience would definitely be one to remember.
Andy had a rich past, full of successful books, captive audiences and a lot of laughs. I imagine he was somewhere around 90 years old when we visited him, but he had no trouble moving about and cracking jokes as he spoke with us.
At the present, the experience could be interpreted as extremely surreal, uncomfortably awkward, downright creepy and at times quite racist (some of the written jokes, at least)... but looking through the filter of the past, I can only imagine the life this man had lived. This was a man from a completely different generation than me, who grew up in an entirely different Canada than myself. His world view was different than mine.
Andy spoke to us about his past books, and we noticed news clippings from news reports about him and the stories he shared with the world. We reached Andy at the end of his tour - his finale consisted of a collection of jokes in which acquaintances, memories and faces were captured and shared through his creation of dolls and written signs.
After we toured the bus, Andy very sternly looked at us. "That'll be $4." he demanded. We were completely confused for a moment, and then realized we just completed the tour that we sort of forgot we were on. I was really thankful I actually had $4 cash on me to pay him.
After paying Andy, we asked if we could take his photograph, which he was absolutely fine with, and even posed with some of his dolls and stood in different places for us. To this day, Andy has been one of my favourite portrait subjects.
(Taken in 2011)
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We were then invited to walk through the paths around his trees to read more jokes on a sort-of self-guided tour. The trees were very thick, and there was a lot of brush, but we made our way through. The trees had jokes nailed to them, and some had random items growing through them that must have been there for decades. It was quite incredible... and totally terrifying to stumble upon out of context.
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As we left, we met Andy's daughter, who was helping him around the home. I forget her name, but she was a wonderful lady. We said goodbye to Andy, and made our way to Charlottetown.
Driving away, Glenn and I just stared off in awe of what we just experienced. "Wow... Andy's Dummies... now we know." Glenn said after a moment of silence. We both started laughing in disbelief. "Can you imagine if I didn't have $4? - you see how he looked at us?!" I replied.
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That was 7 years ago.
Andy MacDonald passed away in 2014.
In 2015, my friend Kyle and I were driving towards Prince Edward Island on another road-trip when I suddenly remembered Andy's Dummy Farm. We looked for the signs, but they were all gone. Finally, I noticed the driveway to his place, which was difficult to find, with all the signage now gone.
The mini-home was gone and the property was completely abandoned. The barn, bus, van and Andy's original home remained. We had stepped carefully through the bus. We took our time, reading through the signs and paying special attention to the news clippings posted all over the bus. Andy was a special person who once had a very fond following in the Maritimes. His ability to find humour in the hard times resonated with his audience.
I spent some extra time carefully photographing around the property. I edited the photographs in 2015, but have waited almost 3 years to post them. I don't really know why, but I felt like I needed to wait on them.
Andy is probably the most interesting person that I've never really gotten to know.
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If you want to see more, here's a CBC article from 2014 about his death with a video of him giving a tour in the bus:
http://www.cbc.ca/...ad-at-96-1.2638576
