The Family : Hazen, Iisha, Jamie, Grayer and Farren Parsons.
-by Rankin MacDonald
Grayer Parsons, 17, of Deepdale will begin his quest for his life-long dream of making our world a better place to be.
On August 16th, he and his parents will travel to New Haven, Connecticut, to register Grayer at Yale University.
Grayer is the son of Jamie and Tisha Parsons and brother to Haven and Farren.
It all began for Grayer when he attainted Shad Canada last year where he met a fellow Shad participant, Kevin Giang.
With the help of Cape Breton Highlands Academy teacher John MacKinnon and his parents he was shown how he was well suited to be accepted by Shad Canada.
He told The Oran, “I have always had a love of learning. I have a natural curiosity and I think that that’s helped me a lot, but my parents are also very encouraging and supportive. I am always looking for new opportunities to grow as an individual.
“I think it is important to give back to the community because when I look at the world, I see a lot of hate, and I want to be part of positive change. I’ve been volunteering at the Manor for a few years now and I really enjoy my time there. I love chatting with residents and bringing some happiness to their day. That sometimes looks like me calling bingo, doing laps in the halfway, dropping off a book, or listening to jokes. We planted a tulip garden last year after a fundraiser I helped with at CBHECA. When the tulips bloom in the spring, I hope they bring a sense of happiness and life to the people who see them. I also hope they inspire others to volunteer in our community,” he added.
Shad Canada (formerly known as Shad Valley) is an annual Canadian summer enrichment program for high-achieving high school students in July. The program is open to both Canadian and international students. The program is offered at 21 participating universities across Canada.
Shad focusses on both academic learning through lectures, workshops, labs, and group projects as well as the development of an individual and community. These experiences are usually focussed on the areas of science, technology, engineering, arts, and/or mathematics (STEAM).
There is a rigorous application process, which goes in-depth into both the students' academics and extra-curriculars. Shad normally runs for four weeks in July.
During the month, Shads participate in various activities including lectures, workshops, labs, group projects, recreational activities, and more. Shads also participate in a Real-World Design Project. In the project, Shads are presented with the current year’s them and propose a solution.
Grayer was accepted at universities in Canada and the U.S., but at Shad Canada, Kevin Giang, who came to Ontario as a child from China, saw the special nature and intellect of Grayer and encouraged him to apply to the big three schools in the United States: Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
His roommate encouraged him to aim high to achieve his goals in life and to shoot for the stars was nothing new for Grayer. He returned the advice with academic assistance.
Grayer is the consummate community volunteer, bringing smiles to the elderly, working for school and community, and always looking for ways to better himself, school, and community.
“I had the privilege of being accepted to the Minister of Education’s Student Advisory Council for the province. It’s a committee of students who come together a few times a year to discuss various educational topics on behalf of students throughout the province. Being from a rural area, I am happy to provide representation, because our issues are often very different from the more urban areas. I find the opportunity incredibly insightful, and it is teaching me a lot about how decisions are made in government. Currently, we are working on a project to accompany the Student Success Survey, a province-wide survey administered each spring to all student sin grades four to 12 with a focus on students’ experiences within the public school system in Nova Scotia.”
So applying to Ivy League achools was the outcome of dicussions with teachers, parents, and academics in the county.
He was accepted with scholarships at the University of Toronto ($100,000) as well as from Mount Allison and Carlton.
The education he wanted in Global Affairs was the strength of schools like Yale, University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth.
He applied to the three and was accepted by Yale, which would match any other school’s scholarships.
Grayer, his mom, and dad talked it out, a bit apprehensive of going to the U.S. in this climate but they decided on Yale with a $75,000 (U.S.) a year scholarship.
First to Shad and first to Yale from CBHA.
It was the school he wanted where he could concentrate on Global Affairs with a second major in Economics and Cognitive Science.
The family will attend a teacher’s convention and tour the eastern U.S. states before geting the “lay of the land” in New Haven.
He will be in residence for two years.
Grayer is a young man who believes in a moral life and this will hopefully help him make a difference in our world.
Good parenting, a place with values, and learning the importance of giving back to the community helped him on his way, Along with Giang, who he believes his Yale days would only be a dream without him.
Grayer considers it an honour to be attending Yale to pursue his life goals and encourages parents to push their sons and daughters to succeed.
“I encourage other students my age to take the risk, step out of their comfort zone, and do the things that interest them, even if they are a little scary.
Grayer brings an educational pride to our county, something that we can only hope all young people will strive to achieve in whatever capacity they are gifted.
Change the world is one heck of a goal.
But Yale was in his stars. His sister is Haven.
Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. It is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.
In the 19th century, the college expanded to include graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. It is one of the founding members of the Association of American Universities. Yale’s faculty and student populations grew rapidly after 1890 due to the expansion of the physical campus and its scientific research programs.
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Eli LeBlanc pitched four strong innings for the U15 Inverness Ravens on Saturday, giving up just two hits and striking out seven in a 12-2 win over the Pictou County Cubs.
-by Bill Dunphy
In a match-up between two teams who will play each other in game two of the Nova Scotia U15 provincial baseball tournament, it was all Inverness Ravens on Saturday in a doubleheader at the Ned MacDonald Memorial ball field in Inverness.
The Ravens defeated the Pictou County Cubs 12-2 in five innings in the opener and closed out the sweep 15-10 in the denouement.
In the first game, Eli LeBlanc was stellar on the mound for Inverness, pitching four innings, allowing just two runs on two hits while striking out seven.
Drew MacDonnell closed out the win, throwing a strikeout and giving up a walk that turned into a double play.
The Ravens’ offence kicked into gear early, starting with a one-out double by Alex Dan MacDonnell and scoring on a base hit by Alistair MacLeod.
Ryder MacLean then reached on an error scored on a two-run double by LeBlanc.
Danny MacDonald made it 4-0 on a single to bring home LeBlanc.
The bottom of the second saw the Ravens extend their lead to 9-0.
Both Colton MacIsaac and A.D. MacDonnell scored from third on throwing errors by the Pictou catcher.
MacLean, LeBlanc and Jack MacNeil followed that up with RBI singles to scored the maximum five runs.
It was 10-0 after three on a double by Mac MacLellan and an RBI single by MacIsaac.
Pictou capitalized on a couple of errors in the fourth to score two runs, but the Ravens restored the 10-run lead in their half of the inning on hits by LeBlanc and MacDonald for the 12-2 win.
The hits kept coming in game two with the top five of the Ravens lineup coming into score after Pictou took a 2-0 lead in the top half of the first.
Alex Dan MacDonnell tripled, Ryder MacLean doubled, and Colton MacIsaac, Alistair MacLeod, and Eli LeBlanc each had base hits.
MacIsaac hit a solo home run to deep centre field in the sixth inning, capping off a four-run game for the Ravens.
The Ravens, who were up 10-4 in the fourth, saw that lead dwindle to 10-9 in the fifth following a rally by Pictou.
MacIsaac’s home run made it 11-9 and sparked a five-run rally by the Ravens.
A.D. MacDonnell and MacLean both singled and scored, and with LeBlanc on base with a walk, MacDonald hit a two-run double up the right field line after hitting just foul up the left field line on the pitch before. MacDonald then scored the Ravens’ fifth run from third base on a throwing error by the catcher.
MacIsaac closed out the 15-10 win, pitching the final two innings, striking out three and giving up just two hits and a walk.
The last scheduled game for Inverness was yesterday (Tuesday) with a game against the Port Hood Blue Jays.
The Jays are hosting the five-team Nova Scotia U15 A provincial tournament on Aug. 21-23 at the Leo A. MacDonell ball field in Judique.
Ashley Aucoin
-by Autumn Cox
Maybe we are all just fools who get lucky. We take chances, meet people who change the direction of our lives, lose people and carry pieces of them forward. For Ashley AuCoin and Colin Ingraham, that idea became more than the title of their first album. It also came to describe the way the record itself took form.
“We’re all fools that got lucky,” Ingraham said. “We’re here. We get to be here and create this.”
When the project began in October 2019, AuCoin and Ingraham had no plans to become songwriters.
“At first, it was only going to be like a cover song album,” AuCoin said. “Because we hadn’t really started writing ourselves.”
They recorded three songs with J.P. Cormier before COVID interrupted the process. Life got busy, their children grew, and the album was put on hold. When they returned to the studio in 2025, their vision was still taking shape.
The turning point came with Fools Get Lucky, an original song by Ingraham’s great-uncle, the late John “Johnny” Gillis.
As a child, seeing his great-uncle play guitar at a family gathering marked a turning point for his musical career. Music was always playing at home, but seeing someone from his own family perform, and put their songs out into the world made it feel possible. With no one in his immediate family playing, Ingraham taught himself.
Years later, Gillis’s album Dowser would help push Ingraham and AuCoin toward writing themselves. Cormier also held Gillis in unusually high regard, once placing him alongside Bob Dylan and John Prine among the best songwriters he knew.
“The biggest inspiration was Johnny’s album,” AuCoin said. “That was the kicker for the whole process, really.”
What stayed with them was the way Gillis could take a place, a person, or an ordinary moment and make someone else see it too. Gillis was able to hear their version of Fools Get Lucky, along with about half of the album, before he passed away.
The couple was nervous if they had done his song justice, but to Johnny it was a true gift at the end of his life. “My God, it’s amazing,” they remembered him saying. “It’s so awesome. Don’t have any regrets.”
“Johnny’s song is what kind of opened it all for us,” AuCoin said. On the drive home from the studio, she remembers thinking, “This is what I want to do. I want to write. I want to be a musician.”
AuCoin had already spent years singing and performing, and she and Ingraham, partners in life and music, met through the music scene 18 years ago. Writing their own material together was new, and the album has grown with them over the years.
Their first original, Where The River Meets The Sea, was also the first song AuCoin had ever written. She and Ingraham wrote it together, drawing from a time when they were living away with a new baby and she badly wanted to return to Chéticamp.
Their other originals, The Way It Goes, Whispers On The Wind, and If You Could See Me Now, carry similar reflective threads of family, home, love, and loss.
Rooted in folk, country, bluegrass, and traditional music, Fools Get Lucky starts bright and open before slowly turning inward. It’s like looking back on a summer you did not know you would miss, where the sweet and the bitter sit side by side. The songs move through growing older, losing people, coming home and learning to hold the people you love a little closer.
AuCoin leads on all 10 tracks, with a resonant voice that is full of warmth and heart. Cormier leads the instrumentation and Ingraham joins her on backing vocals. The further the record goes, the closer the stories seem to move toward home.
“We’re trying to write things that people can relate to,” Ingraham said. “And that’s Johnny’s way of writing too.”
The Way It Goes, written about a week after Gillis died, opens the album with the idea of taking chances and rolling the dice. It ties naturally into Fools Get Lucky and the way the record came together over seven years without either of them knowing exactly where it would lead.
The covers were chosen with the same care.
“When we were choosing cover songs, I didn’t want to choose just random cover songs either or random artists,” AuCoin said. “I wanted to choose artists that had either affected us personally or musically.”
Cormier is one of those people. A longtime friend of AuCoin’s, he recorded, mixed, and mastered the album and plays the instrumentation throughout. The album is released under Ashley AuCoin’s name, with AuCoin singing lead on all 10 tracks and Ingraham joining her on backing vocals.
When AuCoin first brought Cormier Where The River Meets The Sea, she was more nervous than she was getting on stage.
“I was shaking so bad because I was just thinking, ‘What if he doesn’t like the song?’” she said.
Cormier listened and told them they were recording it that day.
The album brought other firsts too. It is AuCoin’s first release featuring her own songwriting, Ingraham’s first time singing on recorded tracks, and If You Could See Me Now was recorded live off the floor.
Their children have grown up around the process, learning instruments, singing harmonies, and beginning to perform themselves. One of their daughters is eight, only a year older than the album.
What began with three cover songs now holds four songs written by AuCoin and Ingraham together. The people who influenced them are still there, but for the first time, their own stories are there too.
Fools Get Lucky will be released on streaming platforms August 21st. Physical copies are available at www.ashleyaucoinmusic.com.
The Inverness Oran is a locally owned and operated newspaper publication with offices located in the county of Inverness, Nova Scotia, Canada. Printed 52 times per year, The Inverness Oran caters to residents of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia as well as national and international readers.
Readers can take advantage of a flexible subscription package available for 3-months, 6-months or 12-months periods, available in a Print Version, a Digital Version, or both. First published in 1976, The Inverness Oran continues to serve and reflect residents and communities of Inverness County.