A Pan and a Pedal

July 5, 2010

Halifax and St. Margaret's Bay

The Pan

It had to happen eventually—today we visited the first museum of the trip that we truly didn't like. It was Pier 21—Canada's Immigration Museum. Some of the things we didn't like about it included: it lacked an apparent system of organization or chronology, there were very few artifacts, and its main event-–billed as a "4D multi-media presentation"—was fictional.

Pier 21 is Canada's Ellis Island. Over 1.5 million immigrants passed through its doors between 1928 and 1971. The most interesting story the museum told was about the Canadian War Brides of World War II. Nearly a tenth of the 500,000 Canadian servicemen who went to Europe during the war married there. The Canadian government shipped 48,000 war brides and 22,000 children from Europe--primarily England--to Canada, and they all arrived at Pier 21.

We were astounded that a tenth of Canada's soldiers somehow found the time to make love, not war, while they were stationed overseas. We couldn't wait to do a little internet research to see how the United States measured up in the war bride tally. There were a lot more United States servicemen—somewhere around sixteen million. To equal Canada's per capita war brides, the US soldiers would have had to marry over a million women. Our research was a little rushed, and our internet sources did not all agree, but estimates ranged from 150,000 to 200,000 European brides and 50,000-100,000 Far East brides. The number of war brides that the US Government and Red Cross officially brought back in the fashion of the Canadian bridal boat lift was just 65,000. Any way you look at it, the Canadians outdid the United States in overseas speed dating.

A touring exhibit from the Montreal Science Center also captivated us. Entitled "Hungry Planet—What the World Eats," it simply featured very large photographs of about two dozen families from around the world, each posed with all the food they ate in a week arranged around them. A small label beside each picture told the country and the value in US dollars of the food. The values ranged from a couple dollars for the meager grain rations of a family living in a refugee camp in Darfur to somewhere around four hundred dollars for a very obese Australian family's mostly meat diet and over five hundred dollars for the German family's meals. (Could it be just a coincidence that the Canadian team putting together the exhibit chose to feature a Canadian family that followed a very healthy vegetarian diet, so unlike the typical food we have found in restaurants on our travels through this fair country?)

We were struck by how little it takes to survive, and how much more than the minimum we eat; by how many more prepared foods people in developed nations eat; by how little meat most people in the world eat in a week; by how much grain many people the world over consume. After being pretty critical of the diets of some of the folks pictured, I was somewhat appalled to imagine how many prepared and packaged foods would be in our weekly arrangement, and how few fresh fruits and vegetables. What would your family portrait would look like with a week's worth of your food?

While walking to the museum we read interpretive signs along the waterfront promenade that told us more of the Acadian story. As we have learned previously, in 1755 during the Great Upheaval, England deported nearly ten thousand Acadians from Canada, fearing that their French heritage would undermine their loyalty. From today's signs we learned that over the next ten years about half of the Acadians were lost at sea or died or disease or famine. In 1765, there were just 1,600 Acadians left in Nova Scotia. Georges Island in Halifax Bay was used as a prison for Acadians, and its first prisoners were the deputies that pleaded their case before the Council that decided to enact the Great Upheavel. The policy ended in 1764, but the government made sure that the resettling Acadians were in scattered communities to minimize the threat of upheaval. We had been wondering why we keep seeing tiny Acadian communities all across the island, and this policy explains it.

The Pedal

Our afternoon delight was a twenty mile pedal on the St. Margaret's Bay Area Rail Trail, built on an abandoned rail line that served the logging and mill towns and the waterfront resorts along St. Margaret's Bay, just half an hour's drive from Halifax.

The trail starts at the French Village rail station, so named because of the area's French history. In this case, the French were not Acadians, but rather Protestant French recruited by the British in 1750-52 to serve as a sort of antidote to the Catholic Acadians.

The trail was well groomed and packed small gravel, wide enough for us to ride side-by-side and enjoy the great scenery together. It took us through evergreen woods and summer home enclaves. Signs along the way tell the history of logging activity and saw mills that are long gone (although a huge pile of sawdust that is over eighty years old is still visible on one island). A long section of the trail is high above the bay, with panoramic views in a few spots, and tantalizing peeks of the water through the trees in others. Where the trees are thinner the trailside wildflowers are thicker.

After our ride, we rewarded ourselves with a lobster feast, and considered the day well saved from its disappointing start.

We Do a Tattoo

July 4, 2010

Halifax

Before you start scrolling down to see a picture of our body art, perhaps we should familiarize you with another definition of the word tattoo—"a display of military exercises offered as evening entertainment." No needles involved, and quite the opposite of a painful experience, our three and a half hours at The Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo was a perfect way to celebrate July Fourth away from home.

The Nova Scotia Tattoo is the world's largest annual indoor show, featuring over 2,000 international performers. In addition to Mounties and military drill teams and bands, there are gymnasts, acrobats, singers, clowns, and dancers. This year, the Tattoo celebrates the Canadian Navy's hundred year anniversary, so there are lots of numbers with a nautical theme.

It is hard to pick a favorite act, but we particularly enjoyed a team of precision bicyclists—they piled more people on a bicycle than we believed was humanly possible. Here is a photo of their dramatic unicycle parade. Just when we thought the largest possible unicycle had joined the group, they added another. . . and another.

There were bagpipers, fife and drum bands, marching bands, and a navy demonstration team that did precision maneuvers with ladders. A German military team did some amazing gun juggling. We watched an Army and a Navy team compete on an obstacle course. Civilians did traditional jigs and step dances, and later tap danced dressed like sailors. In the finale, all the performers took the floor, all the musicians played and the choirs sang—over 500 voices and instruments strong. They played both the United States and Canadian national anthems, and some music that was unfamiliar to us that felt like a dose of pure grandeur. .Dick said the hair stood up on his neck; I had tears in my eyes. The next day we came upon the Belgian Navy Band performing a concert in a small downtown park, and the choir from the Tattoo was waiting to perform. I asked one of the singers what it felt like to be singing in that tremendous musical finale, and she said, "My biggest problem is that I always feel like moving and dancing, and that's just not allowed."

The show began at 2:30 and ended at 6 p.m., with just one intermission. We wouldn't have believed that we could sit through a program that long without being bored, until we actually did it. We wouldn't cut a thing.

Another title for today's blog could be "Pageantry and Tragedy."

That is because in the morning we visited the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which seems dedicated to documenting marine disasters. With over 10,000 shipwrecks off the shore of Nova Scotia (and some think it is closer to 25,000), a focus on trouble at sea is probably appropriate.

The museum's claim to fame is "the world's largest collection of wooden artifacts from the Titanic." The reason it has this large collection is that when the Titanic sank, the Carpathia famously picked up her survivors, but the sad task of collecting the dead was left to the transatlantic cable repair ships of Halifax, Nova Scotia. When the cable ship crews found floating debris, they picked it up along with the bodies. The museum has acquired many of the souvenirs the crews collected. In addition to recovered artifacts, the Titanic exhibit illustrates life on the Titanic, contrasting the vast differences between conditions for the first, second and third class passengers, and the crew of 1,000. The class differences continued through to the end—first class passengers were removed from the recovery boats in caskets, second and third class in canvas bags, and crew on stretchers.

Another tragic disaster the museum documents is the Halifax Explosion of 1917. On December 6, 1917, the French ship Mont Blanc was in Halifax Harbor loaded with TNT, other explosives and benzene waiting to convoy to Europe in support of the War effort when the Imo collided with her. A fire began, quickly spread, and when it got to the cargo it generated the biggest man-made explosion in world history at the time, an explosion only surpassed since then by the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during the Second World War. The strength of the explosion emptied the harbor of water, which then generated a huge tidal wave. A fifth of the city was destroyed, and hardly an intact pane of glass survived for many miles around. Adding to the tragedy, a massive snowstorm with plummeting temperatures arrived that evening, freezing many of the people who were left homeless by the explosion. There were 2,000 fatalities, and 9,000 injured, many with terrible burns.

We were touched most by a disaster caused by intentional acts, rather than an accident, which makes it all the more tragic. We learned that half of Germany's Jews fled the country before war broke out in 1939. The liner St. Louis set sail from Germany to Havana just before war was declared, carrying 900 Jews escaping Nazi persecution. When they arrived in Cuba, the political situation had changed, and they were turned away. The United States and Canada also refused them asylum, so the ship returned to Europe, and its passengers disembarked in Antwerp. Belgium, France, Holland and Britain each accepted a portion of the passengers, but, sadly, all but England were soon occupied by Germany. A quarter of the ship's passengers died in German death camps.

I wish I could close this little summary of the museum on a bright spot, but there are precious few of them, because this museum understands that we are captivated by catastrophe at sea, and it feeds us an all you can eat feast of it. At least we are living on land now—if we had visited the museum during our years living afloat, I would be feeling plenty of trepidation about getting around the coast of Nova Scotia without joining the many wrecks resting on the rocks below.

We Can’t Get Enough of the Great Outdoors

July 3, 2010

A day in Canada can't get much better than this:

We woke to sunshine and a bright blue sky at Old Riverside Lodge, our favorite Bed and Breakfast of the trip. Connie Ellis worked here as a teenager when it was a fish camp. When it came up for sale, she and her husband Alf bought it, and spent five years renovating it into a very comfortable country estate B&B with exceptionally generous sized guest rooms and luxurious amenities. We were the only guests, and enjoyed our breakfast in front of the dining room picture window overlooking terraced lawn and garden spaces, and what appeared to be a great fishing pool in the river beyond.

After breakfast we were off to the Mosquodoboit Rail Trail, where we spent a couple sunny shirtsleeve weather hours riding 18 miles, with frequent stops to admire river, lake, pond, and bog views, and to read interpretive signs about the plants and animals we might see on the trail.

We stopped at one sign about snapping turtles, got back on our bicycles, and almost ran over one that was no more than ten feet from the sign, laying her eggs in soft sand at the edge of the trail. She opened here shocking pink mouth extremely wide in a very threatening manner. Dick wanted to get a picture of her with her mouth open again, and urged me to get close to her while he snapped a picture. I was afraid she would snap before he did, so, for the first time that I can remember, I refused to comply with his wishes.

We also saw a beaver dam and a very tame deer that refused to heed the trail to us until we were a mere six feet or so away.

After our ride we visited the Musquodoboit Trailway Museum in an old train station at the start of the rail trail. The station was built in 1916, and also served as the home of the station master and his family. The museum was small, but full of interesting artifacts documenting the golden age of rail travel in Nova Scotia, and it even had a little operating model train layout made by local train loving volunteers inside, and some train cars and an old track snowplow out front.

We didn't have too long to linger, because we had to get checked into our hotel in Halifax, get showered, and pull together appropriate clothing for our afternoon outdoor activity, kayaking. When we drove to Peggy's Cove a week ago, we passed a kayak rental place on a beautiful rocky cove with lots of islands, and we stopped in for information. One week later, we are joining their Saturday evening paddle and BBQ in a two person kayak.

Dick is in the stern, responsible for steering. He has three steering mechanisms: a foot operated rudder, his own paddle, and commands to me concerning how to paddle (left, right, forward, back). I am responsible for following his commands, which I think I do pretty well, except when I am sure that I know a better way to accomplish his directional objective. Eventually I figure out that my way won't work if he controls two of the three steering mechanisms. Things go a lot more smoothly after that—I'm back to being my normal compliant self, following Dick's every command.

The day is still sunny and warm, but the north wind has picked up, and we can see white caps on the water. There are a dozen of us in the group, and two guides. The first half of the paddle is pretty easy, heading mostly downwind along the picturesque shore of the bay. When we turn around, we have to work hard to make headway against the wind and waves.

The guide leads us from cove to cove, and island to island, giving us time to rest in sheltered spots before taking us back out to battle the wind and white caps. Even though we are skirted into our kayak, as we hit the waves, water leaks through. Dick and I are wearing our rain jackets, overdressed by the standards of others on the trip in just tee shirts, and we are glad for the protection from the very cold water splashing upon us in liberal measure.

When we finally get back to the East Coast Outfitters Boathouse after two hours of paddling, we agree that we are a good team, and we are glad to have done this strenuous little adventure together, rather than in separate kayaks. After our hamburgers and potato salad at the BBQ, we also agree that we have earned ice cream, and I know it is a perfect Canadian day when the ice cream shop has vanilla with a licorice swirl.

Louisbourg P.S.

July 1

I can't leave Louisbourg behind without a few extra words about bobbin lace.

I was quite astounded that this interpreter could converse with us about her life as a wealthy sea captain's wife while juggling her bobbins and the straight pins holding her lace in place. "It's not hard," she said. "There's a pattern to follow." She showed me the pattern--just a piece of paper under the lace with the shapes of the holes in the lace drawn on it—no instructions like, "twist the thread on Bobbin B twice around the thread on Bobbin A . . ." In fact, all the bobbins look alike, and how she keeps them straight and their threads untangled is a mystery to me.

Her "simple lace" uses fifty bobbins. A more advanced lace maker at the fortress uses up to 150 and can spend three or four hours to make an inch of lace. With servants to do the household chores, the wealthy ladies hereabouts appear to have a lot of time on their hands, judging from the amount of lace decorating their dresses.

Canada Day with a French Twist

July 1

Louisbourg

Louisbourg is just a half hour away from Sydney, our Canada Day headquarters, and Fortress of Louisbourg is North America's largest reconstructed 18^th century town (that's right, bigger than Williamsburg). What better place to start our celebration of Canada Day? Even better—the Fortress is celebrating by offering free admission today, saving us $35!

We stop for breakfast in the only restaurant open in Louisbourg (pop. 1,265), and everyone there is talking about the free day at the fort. The restaurant owners are closing up shop at 1 to go there, the husband of the woman at the table behind us is working the gate at the fort and told her he is really busy when she tried to call him on the phone. She isn't sure her other friends who usually meet her for breakfast will show up, because they are planning to go to the fort. They do show up, but only for a quick coffee, because they plan to eat at the fort.

The fortress is a big deal here. In the 1960s it was in ruins, and the town was going in the same direction, as local coal mines closed down and unemployment rose. A legislator had the idea of rebuilding the fort "to help revitalize a Cape Breton society suffering from massive unemployment and social malaise." The project took 20 years, involved retraining miners to do all sorts of building trades as practiced in 1744, and employed a huge number of archaeologists, researchers, architects, and others in the process. It is an ongoing project—only about a quarter of the original town has been reconstructed, and there are active archaeological sites at its periphery. The exhibit about the reconstruction is almost as interesting as the experience of stepping back in time and enjoying the results of the massive reconstruction effort.

As we cross the drawbridge over the moat and are interrogated by a military guard at the town gate, we are immediately immersed in life in the walled Fortress of Louisbourg in the year 1744, when 2,000 French people lived here. Civilians stroll the city and go about their business, while soldiers drill within secure areas that are off limits to commoners. We join a walking tour led by a Parks Canada guide, then are on our own to explore the town which is full of costumed interpreters who are happy to talk about their life and work.

We are particularly impressed by the many costumed children, who stroll about with their families, observe the military pageantry, and play games and dance. They encourage visiting children to join in their activities, and never tire of posing for pictures.

We have lunch at one of the local dining halls, where the costumed server issues us our cloth diaper-size napkins and spoons, and tells us to tie the napkins around our necks, like the soldiers do so we won't mess up our clothes. She advises us that our spoon will be our only utensil. We have already learned that the water here is not particularly sanitary in 1744, so I order the hot mulled rum, which is what the soldiers would drink, the waitress assures me. It comes in a pewter cup, which is a welcome hand warmer on this 57 degree day with a cold wind blowing in off the water. I should note that the natives are wearing tee shirts and flip flops today, while we are dressed in layers.

After lunch, we stop in the bakery and learn about how the bakers make fires to heat their brick ovens white hot, then remove the fire and cool the hearth to 475 degrees, the perfect temperature to bake hundreds of loaves of dense heavy (six pounds per loaf!) bread each day (we had some at lunch, and pass on a purchase). We watch a bobbin lace maker manipulate fifty bobbins to make what she calls a simple beginner's lace. It takes her 1 ½ to 2 hours to make one inch of lace. All the lace on costumes worn here is made here.

We watch military maneuvers and tour the spartan military barracks. We tour the governor's elegantly appointed mansion, and the two room sod roofed cottage of a fisherman. A shepherd runs a herd of sheep down the street to their pen.

Time flies by, and our little visit turns out to be an all-day affair.

After all that wandering around, we are ready for another Louisbourg Canada Day activity—the Strawberry Festival at the Senior Center. We buy our tickets and are each handed a big bowl of Nova Scotia grown strawberries. We sit down at a long table that has plates of home made biscuits, cream and sugar that we can use to embellish our strawberries any way we like. There are also plates full of home made cookies, brownies, bars and cupcakes, as if the strawberries are not enough. We sample lavishly.

As we are leaving, one of the ladies organizing the event says to us, "Did you get a bellyful?" Of course, that is the objective of the event, and if we had said no, I am sure she would have sat us down and given us another bowl of berries. As it turns out, the berry feast is our dinner—we need nothing more to eat tonight.

By the time we get back to Sydney, it is raining once again. We get out of the car just long enough to take a photo of Sydney's Big Fiddle—17 meters and 8 tons big. We can hear the music from the Canada Day celebrations taking place just a few blocks down the waterfront promenade, but we have celebrated enough for one day, and prefer to be dry and warm.

Marconi in Canada—Who Knew?

Glace Bay, Nova Scotia (near Sydney)

June 30, 2010

We vaguely remember learning that Guglielmo Marconi sent the first wireless message across the Atlantic Ocean, and you probably do, too. Somehow, we thought the seat of the action was Italy. But, today we stood in the spot where history was made—a windswept rocky point in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. It was here on December 15, 1902 that Marconi sent the first successful radio transmission across the Atlantic (not to Italy, but to Poldhu, England).

Shortly thereafter, he disassembled the huge web of copper wire supported by four giant wooden towers that served as his broadcast aerial to move them to another site. Wildflowers are rapidly encroaching on the foundations that held the towers, so not much is left to mark the historic spot, except Canada's Marconi Museum honoring his work.

Here are a couple interesting twists to the Marconi story. When the cable company that had a monopoly on transatlantic communication at the time figured out the potential of Marconi's work, they tried to put him out of business through litigation (some things never change). Canada came to the rescue, offering him $80,000 for expenses, while Cape Breton communities vied to be the site of his station. Alexander Graham Bell even offered him the use of his estate in Baddeck. The Museum exhibits a copy of the telegram Bell sent, offering use of the estate, including lodging for Marconi and his assistants, and promising that his household staff would make them comfortable. This was a particularly gracious offer, we thought, which said a lot about the character of Bell. He could have seen Marconi as a competitor, been envious of his success, or just been indifferent to his plight. Instead, he offered a hand to a fellow communication pioneer.

What a great story, and who knew?

Scenes Seen and Unseen

Cabot Trail

June 29-30, 2010

The Cabot Trail on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia is reputed to be one of the most scenic drives in the country, the continent, or the world, depending on who you ask. Just don't ask us, since we spent the past two days exploring the trail in a mix of rain, mist, fog, and overcast skies, with just a few brief hopeful hours of sunshine to give us a taste of what we might be missing.

The trail begins in Baddeck, where we stayed overnight in a luxurious beach vacation resort. It had nice looking, though flooded, tennis courts, and it rained the whole time we were there, so our tennis racquets remained in the car.

The rain was often a fine mist that seemed to float in the air, reminiscent of the ubiquitous precipitation we have experienced in our rain forest adventures, but colder. Fog rolled in from Bras d'Or Lake, and as we ascended the mountainous roads of the Cabot Trail, we often found ourselves, and/or our scenic views, in the clouds.

We refused to be defeated by weather, and got out of the car to hike to two different waterfalls—Mary Ann Falls and Beulach Bann Falls. This is Mary Ann—although she is not large or dramatic, her tannin-tinged water flowing over reddish rocks has a chromatic quality that makes her memorable. Beulach Bann is a classic tall fall, with water that falls crystal clear.

The Trail gave us an appreciation for the many ethnic groups that proudly maintain their heritage on Cape Breton. We began in an area with strong Scottish heritage, and noted that road signs were in both English and Gaelic. North America's only Gaelic College lies along the trail in St. Anns. Then, further up the Atlantic coast we passed into areas settled by Acadians, and signs were in English and French. Inland, Scottish immigrants from the Isle of Skye settled in the largest virgin hardwood forest in the Maritimes early in the 1800s, and the Lone Sheiling, a replica of a Highland sheep herder's hut, lies along the route to honor their heritage. Shortly after we explored the hut and hardwoods trail, we were once again in Acadian country.

At Green Cove, the views of waves crashing against the craggy shoreline were soft focus misty, and although interpretive signs encouraged us to look for whales, our opportunities were limited by the lingering fog. As Jim said, "I told Jan this morning that our views would be Monet today, not Ansel Adams."

The lack of long views focused our attention on wonders close by. The rocks of the point we stood on were a marbled mixture of dark gneiss and pink and white granite, shot through with strikingly straight veins of white quartz and light granite. An amazing array of flowers grew in their cracks and hollows. My favorites looked like dwarf irises.

At White Point, we looked down on a dozen colorful fishing boats moored in a sheltered cove, and we found our way down to the wharf to get a closer look. We took pictures of them, and of their colorful wooden tenders tied up to the docks (some badly in need of bailing, we might add).

We saw several cars stopped beside the road, and of course we stopped to find out why. A moose was grazing on ferns in a boggy area very close to the road, and Dick and Jim were able to get great pictures, while Jan and I stayed a safer distance away and gazed at the moose through our binoculars.

Even though several activities we planned were rained out, we still couldn't finish the 186 mile drive in one day. We stayed overnight in the small Acadian village of Cheticamp, in the Acadian Motel. The town has a monument honoring Governor McCormick for granting the Acadians 7,000 acres of land in Cheticamp to 14 Acadians who settled here in 1790, "ending their long years of exile." This cheery decorative lighthouse painted in Acadian colors stands on waterfront as a patriotic landmark, while its church steeple is visible from every point in town.

Our final highlight of the trail was a roadside attraction—Joe's Scarecrows. Back in 1984, Joe Delaney decided to plant a garden on a plot of land next to the Cabot Trail. He put up three colorful scarecrows to drive away animals, but instead they attracted tourists, who stopped to photograph him and his scarecrows. They suggested he drop the garden and just make more scarecrows, which is what he did. His scarecrows now number 100. Some wear uniforms—miner, security guard, EMT; others wear celebrity masks—including several American Presidents. Lots of them are just plain wacky and colorful. Each one wears a tag telling its name and a comment or philosophical insight from that scarecrow's unique perspective. My favorites:

"Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open."

"What a great place to work. Nobody talks."

As we neared the end of the Trail, Jan and Jim headed west to Prince Edward Island, and we headed east to Sydney. We have been convivial traveling companions, sharing good food, good times and great adventures over the past six days. What grand serendipity that our paths could cross so far from home!

We end with a picture from one of those moments when the skies cleared to reveal the glorious vistas of the Cabot Trail, and we recall the words from a particularly apt Gaelic blessing:

May the road rise to meet you,

May the wind be always at your back,

May the warm rays of the sun fall upon you,

And may the hand of a friend always be near.