Thursday, July 15, 2010- Nova Scotia

We left our cottage after Julie packed us up this morning. We won’t miss the cottage itself so much, but we had a great time at Prince Edward Island. We crossed the island in order to get to the ferry to Nova Scotia. We arrived just moments too late for the ferry, and got to watch it disappear into the fog bank, so we had to wait for about an hour and a half for the next one. It gave us a chance to post to the blog and check e-mails quickly. Julie was a bit nervous about driving onto the ferry, but she got much worse when she realized we were going to be the first on AND that we’d have to drive down to the lower deck. In the end, it wasn’t so bad, though.

We ate lunch onboard the ferry and had Cows ice-cream for dessert. The delay meant that when we did get on the ferry, it was much clearer out, and at one point we could see P.E.I. behind us and the shores of Nova Scotia in front of us, even though the Northumberland Strait is 14 miles across at that point. Anna liked spotting jellyfish in the water as they floated by us. The whole trip took a little more than an hour.

We got to Nova Scotia at about 12:30. Julie had spotted an interesting ad in the Nova Scotia visitors guide that we got on-board the ship, and so we found our way to the nearby town of Pictou. Nova Scotia’s name means “New Scotland,” and the town of Pictou is supposed to be the original Scottish settlement on Nova Scotia. (The woman in the tartan shop said the locals pronounce the name of the town as “Pick-tow.”) In Pictou, there is a replica of the Hector, the ship that brought those original Scottish settlers here in 1773. The ship looks great, but apparently the company that runs it had financial trouble, and the visitors centre for it was closed.

We stopped at the provincial visitors’ centre nearby to stock up with information and drove across the peninsula to Halifax. While driving across the peninsula we passed a sign that said we were exactly half way between the North Pole and the Equator, putting us at the latitude of exactly 45 degrees North.

We got to our hotel in Dartmouth at about 3:00 and settled in. It was still early enough to do something, so we drove across Halifax Harbour to Halifax proper. We went down the piers where there is lots to see for tourists ready to stroll. After getting our bearings, we signed up for the Harbour Hoppers tour. Like the Duck tours in other cities, Habour Hoppers uses a repainted military amphibious vehicle to first drive you around the city and then take you out into the water. We saw many of the city sites, from the Citadel at the highest point in the city to the navy yards. We heard how when Winston Churchill visited Halifax in 1943, he said, "Now, sir, we know your city is something more than a shed on a wharf". We can see that too. Emma, however, didn’t believe that the bus was going to go into the water. She fell asleep before we reached the water and missed that whole part. When she woke up at the end of the tour, she didn’t seem to believe that we had been out in it.

We continued to look at the interesting ships and shops in the wharf area. We saw where the Bluenose II is usually docked, but it is being refurbished this summer. The Bluenose is the ship on the back of the Canadian dime, and is featured in the song by Stan Rogers. Scott was knew it wasn’t going to be there, but couldn’t help being a little sad about missing it. We got a picture of him at the dock, and are calling it, “A broken man on a Halifax pier.” As a consolation, we ate supper at the restaurant called the Bluenose II, but it was hardly a substitute.

Wednesday, July 14- Charlottetown, P.E.I.

After a breakfast of cereal at our cottage, we stopped at the Cavandish visitors’ centre to post yesterday’s blog. While Dad was fighting to stay on-line, Anna spotted a red fox outside of the building’s big windows. We all had a chance to see him disappear into the nearby trees. Foxes are supposed to be the biggest wild animal on the island (though one could argue that yesterday’s bald eagle was bigger than a fox). There seem to be very few wild places on the island. The whole place seems to be covered with well kept farms and their fields of potatoes and other crops. There are many cows and horses. Scott said that the island doesn’t smell like the sea-- it smells like the country.

Somehow we managed to miss the crowds of people that were supposed to be choking Charlottetown to see Regis and Kelly broadcasting from there the last few days. It was only a few weeks ago that Julie first saw that they were going to be here at the same time as us, and she actually did try to get us tickets. We weren’t chosen though. That’s probably just as well because Emma wouldn’t have been allowed to the taping. We have been keeping an eye on the local papers, and hopefully, we’ll be able to watch the shows on tape when we get home. Apparently, P.E.I. spent $800,000 to get them here. There are only 130,000 some residents of the province.

The largest “city” of the island is Charlottetown, with 32,000 people. We arrived there right after lunch to tour Founders’ Hall. Uncle Brian and Aunt Jenny had recommended this stop to us. The exhibit takes you through the Charlottetown Conference, the negotiations for the founding of the Canadian confederation back in 1864. The exhibit is quite elaborate. You get headphones that you can set to English or French. Then, as you go through, you can hear the narrations at each of the different spots. One room shows the arrival of John A. MacDonald and the other convention delegates by showing a life size diorama of them in the bow of the ship, being greeted by the P.E.I. delegation in a rowboat. Like the exhibit in Quebec, this exhibit is not afraid to use humor to help explain the reasons for and against confederation. We got a picture taken with John A. MacDonald’s statue like Uncle Brian did last year.

There was a light but persistent drizzle of rain all day long today. Other than the brief heavy downpour we saw in Quebec, this rain is the first that we’ve seen on our trip. We were determined to see Charlottetown, though. We began our search for a small mouse named Eckhart. The mouse is the work of a local author, and nine little mouse statues are hidden throughout the city. The first is at the visitor’s centre, and a brochure helps you find the next ones. It was an interesting game for to play as we looked around, and we eventually did find them all nine.

Eckhart took us to Province House, the legislative hall for Prince Edward Island, and the place where the confederation talks happened. We happened to arrive just as a reenactment was beginning. “John A. MacDonald”, “George-Étienne Cartier” and other people from 1864 talked to us about the Charlottetown Conference. One actor was a goofy American from the visiting circus, but two were a husband and wife from Prince Edward Island. They made it clear that many Islanders were not in favor of Confederation and saw little good that would come from uniting. They cherished the independence of their own legislature and dreaded higher taxes. Apparently, the conference was only held in Charlottetown because it was the only way to get the P.E.I. delegation to attend.

We continued to visit city landmarks as we followed Eckhart’s trail. At the end, we visited Cows for ice-cream and walked through the downtown mall. Scott found a comic book store and since it is Wednesday, he visited it to pick up this week’s new stories. He missed the real opportunity last week, though. American comic stores didn’t get their new comics until Thursday because of the observance of Independence Day on Monday, but Canadian stores got theirs a day “early” on Wednesday. As it happened, we didn’t look for the comic store in Quebec, so Scott didn’t get his until this week.

Partly to kill time, we decided to take a ride on the Hippopoto-bus. The tour company takes you around Charlottetown on a double-decker bus. We ended up being the only four people in the late afternoon tour. The guide was a nice young man who seemed perfectly happy to talk just to us for the whole trip. He was very enthusiastic and talked extensively about Charlottetown, where he grew up. It seemed like he had a friend or a family member at each of the places he told us about. He showed us the town’s new “round-about” and basically confirmed our opinions about the size of the town and the island. It’s quite nice, but at 32,000, it’s smaller than Staunton.

Friends of Scott’s from down at Ulrich’s Tavern had said that if we were going to P.E.I., we had to see a husband and wife duo called “Guinness.” We did some searching before we came and found out that they would be performing on Wednesday night from 6-8 and from 9-11 at the Olde Dublin Pub in Charlottetown. We made reservations yesterday in order to get a good seat. The show ended up being enjoyable, but only half of the duo was there. The husband played the penny whistle and sang Irish standards with his guitar, but his wife wasn’t going to be there until 9:00. She was supposed to be the real reason the group was recommended. Not only is she supposed to be a great singer and a talented musician on several instruments, including banjo and fiddle, but she’s also supposed to be pretty. We didn‘t get to see her this time, but we did stay for all of the husband’s show. When he found it we were from Buffalo, he mentioned that they had played at the Shannon Pub and remembered at least one of our friends. Naturally, Scott bought a CD of the band, but with her on it, they sound very different than the performance we heard. Scott was at least pleased that it has the song “An Island Fair” on it, about Prince Edward Island. We had the maritime pub treat of fried pepperoni with honey mustard as an appetizer. It tasted much better and far less greasy than the one had tried in Toronto.

We didn’t stick around for the light show on Province House because the rain had made us all cold and tired of being wet, but we did see a rainbow on our way back to the cottage.


(Note: We're posting Wednesday's blog while waiting for the ferry to Nova Scotia on Thursday morning.)