Category Archives: Travel

High Arctic Sailors in Digby Nova Scotia

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada

 

 

Ocean Hillside B & B Digby Nova Scotia

Today we had one of the strangest experiences ever at a B & B.  We met a young couple from Rimouski, Quebec, where stayed for the night on the way here. They are Samuel and Naomi.  They explained that they were sailors.  What did that mean, we asked?  Does it mean they sail around the world in sail boats? Not at all. They sail on cargo ships mainly in and around Hudson Bay, but also the Great Lakes. They deliver supplies to people in the High Arctic. In fact, a CBC Gem film was made about such people, called High Arctic Crawlers. Each year they spend about 5 months at sea and the rest of the time back home. They work on separate ships by choice to ensure it is not difficult for others having a married couple on a ship.

 

We had a fascinating talk with them.  Life on the sea is incredibly interesting and challenging. They are both well versed in the arcane maritime laws that officers are expected to know. Even though they are much younger than us, we had great discussions on a variety of topics.  We spent hours sitting around the breakfast table talking rather than exploring. We have never done that before. We have always like staying at B & B’s on account of the interesting people to talk to, but this was special. It was a most congenial morning that stretched into lunch. At the end of the trip, someone asked me what was the best part of the trip, and I said without hesitation, meeting this interesting couple.  We hope to see them again.

Monsieur Robert served us crepes Suzette. We dined in style with a French chef. We have landed on our feet in Digby Nova Scotia.

As if this visit was not enough, we had another one the next day.

After that strange experience, the next day was even stranger. We continued our conversation with our new young Quebec friends who like us were here for a few days and were joined by 2 interesting American women. We have a long and lovely chat with all 4 of them. It lasted even longer than the first day. We stayed and talked right through the morning until Monsieur Robert came to let the American women gently know that they had to leave as they had to clean the room before the new guests arrived.

We talked about everything under the sun, but particularly the fascinating laws of the sea. We even got into some politics, which is often difficult with Americans. Of course, these women were New Englanders, not Trumpsters.

We had never talked with anyone that long at a B & B before. And we have stayed at many B & B’s.  The American women wanted to stay longer but the rooms were all booked. That was a pity. For us all.

 

Neo-Liberal Heaven at Bear River with Crabby Granny

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Neo-liberalism

 

 

After visiting the lighthouse at Prim Point,  we traveled to the town of Bear River which is a deeply fascinating little community. Christiane and I had learned a little of that history when we watched a CBC television show called Still Standing that we frequently watch about small towns in Canada. By watching that show we have learned a lot about some of the small towns such as St. Laurent Manitoba, where we honeymooned in 1971. That was definitely not its claim to fame.

 

What really fascinated me about Bear River Nova Scotia was the fact that it is built straddling the dividing line between two different municipalities. As a result, the people could not decide which municipality to belong to, so the residents decided, they would not belong to either and in fact would have no local government at all! They decided to govern themselves by consensus, rather than bylaws.  When they need something they chip in to build it.  Co-operative governance. Like a local road or library. No taxes pay for it. Voluntary payments only. All municipal work is done by volunteers.  There are no property taxes either. How is that even possible?  A neo-liberal heaven! Perhaps it works because so many of the residents are artists. It has the highest per capita artist in Canada.

 

When the place was occupied by Mi’kmaq it was called Eelsetkook which means “flowing along high rocks.” In 1612 the French called the area Imbert, after Simon Imbert a French apothecary who accompanied Champlain. Over time, the name was shortened to “bert” in French, or Bear in English.

The climate and soil conditions in the area are suitable for growing grapes so wineries have developed, and of course, Christiane and I had to visit one of them.  We drove up a hill  to the Casanova Winery and Cidery and had a lovely chat with the owner and ended up buying a Riesling wine and a Crabby Granny Cider in honour of Chris—a well-known Crabby Granny.

 

Point Prim Nova Scotia

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Geology, Loneliness

 

In the afternoon at Digby Nova Scotia  we took a very short drive to Point Prim lighthouse at the tip of a small peninsula facing the Bay of Fundy. In my view the standard place for a photograph, from the trail leading to it, did not offer a good place for photographs. So I walked out to a rock shelf overlooking the beach and in the opposite direction offering the lighthouse. It was a bit of a perilous viewpoint however. At least to a big chicken like me. I was too scared to walk to the edge like some local kids were doing. We met a man here who was running for the municipal election, but sadly, I forgot his name so later could not determine if he had won or not. He seemed like a good man on a family walk in the park.

 

Point Prim is a special place for local. At one time the foghorn was a constant reminder of the lighthouse nearby and helped to attract many of them out to the park. A plaque referred to it as “a wondrous trumpet echoing across the bay.”

 

It is also a great place to see the channel between the Annapolis Basin and the Bay of Fundy. The locals call this the Digby Gut. In Mi’Kmaq it is called Tuitnuk, meaning simply, the outflow. The Bay of Fundy gets its name from a French word fendu meaning “split”.

 

Chris enjoying the sun along the coast

In 1605 Samuel Champlain and Pierre Dugua de Mons ventured through this area which they estimated could hold 200 boats. Later that year he returned to establish the first European settlement north of Florida and called it Port Royal in honour of the King. It is still there but the name has changed to Annapolis Royal.

 

The first lighthouse here was built in 1804 long before Confederation. It only lasted for 2 years before it burned to the ground.  A replacement was built in 1817 by the regional coast guard.

 

This is called Krumholz.  In German that means “crooked wood.”  That is trees created by winds off icy coast that makes it difficult for branches to grow on the windy side of the tree.

 

 

The exposed bedrock on which I was clambering was created 201 million years ago. The volcanic rock was the result of eruptions that occurred when Pangea, the massive continent that was at the time the only continent in the world, started to break up into separate continents. The octagonal (sort of ) shapes of volcanic columns that are now just stumps as a result of thousands of years of erosion.  When we travelled to Ireland in 2009 we saw large columns  of such rocks as part of the Giant’s Causeway, that were protruding out of the ground, because they had somehow escaped the glaciers. Here the ice has pummelled them down to bedrock.

The Digby Gut was a channel  that was formed by thousands of years of erosion mainly from continental glaciers, along a fault line that is now the Bear River. That is where we travelled next.

 

 

Walton Lighthouse

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Lighthouses

 

 

 

Our next stop in Nova Scotia was the little town of Walton, a place Christiane and I stopped at last time we were in the area.  Acadians lived in this village before they were expelled by the British who feared they might be traitorous because they refused to swear allegiance to the British crown. The Acadians called the place Petite Riviere after a small river in the area. The British changed the name to Walton, after a local large land owner called James Walton.

 

There was a lot of ship building done in the region but it had no lighthouse, despite much begging for one by the locals, until after Confederation, when the new Canadian government went on a spree of lighthouse building to accommodate the shipping industry. After the shipping industry declined in the area it was no longer worthy of the maintenance of a lighthouse, but it has earned a heritage landmark by Nova Scotia.

 

 

When we were there, an “R.V. Adventure Club” was having a photo op. From our perspective there were too many adventurers because their RVs blocked our view until a female RCMP officer arrived. Interestingly, all she wanted was her photo taken in uniform in front of her official car and the lighthouse. What kind of adventures do old RV’ers have? Actually, travelling is always and adventure and your are never sure what the next one will be.

Everybody likes lighthouses and who can blame them?

 

World’s Biggest Tides: Burntcoat Head Nova Scotia

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada

 

 

Burntcoat Head Park. Burntcoat Head Park is on the coast of the Bay of Fundy in Mi’Kmaq territory and the District of Sipekne’katik, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people. It is always important to recognize such facts and the park did exactly that.

 

It also claims to be the exact site of the highest tides in the world. The Bay of Fundy of which it is a part claims to have the highest tides and it is because of this area. And it was also home to a lovely islet just a short walk away down to the beach.

The Guinness Book of World Records (1975) declared that Burntcoat had the highest tides in the world: “The greatest tides in the world occur in the Bay of Fundy…. Burntcoat Head in the Minas Basin, Nova Scotia, has the greatest mean spring range with 14.5 metres (47.5 feet) and an extreme range of 16.3 metres (53.5 feet).” That is good enough for me, though I admit there is some controversy about which tides are actually the biggest. The National Geographic made a similar claim in its August 1957 magazine: “The famous tides of the Bay of Fundy move with deceptive quiet. Sheltered from the open sea, they ebb and flood to a recorded range unequal in the rest of the world.”

Twice each day the tides rise and fall in the Bay of Fundy and cause  60 billion tonnes of water to flow in and out of the Bay of Fundy each day!  That is incredible when you stop to think about it. The average tide in the bay is 47.5 ft high and the highest is 53.6 ft.

Like most coastal tides, Burntcoat Head experiences two high tides and two low tides each day. The Bay of Fundy fills and empties with approximately 160 billion tonnes of water twice a day. On average it takes 6 hours and 13 minutes between high and low tide. As soon as the tide has reached its lowest or highest point, it will change directions, and either begin to come to shore or flow back out. The timing of the tides changes by approximately by one hour daily. Spring tides happen twice per month when the Sun, Moon, and Earth are aligned. During this alignment, the tides raise higher than average. Neap tides occur during the first and third quarter moon. During this time the high tide heights are lower than average.

 

There was also a lighthouse here but it was a bit of a dud though it had an interesting history. The first lighthouse was built in 1858, before Confederation on land that later was transformed into an island. The lighthouse had 5 oil lamps with reflectors that the keepers had to clean every day!  The narrow “neck” of land on which it was built connected it to the mainland until that neck was eroded into oblivion.  The power of the sea, unlike the power of men and women, is relentless.  After that the people who worked on the lighthouse had to climb up bank of the beach by means of a ladder.

 

In 1979 a man and his son, George and Sandy Hyrnewich, searching the beach found a fossil of a creature that had never been discovered or identified before. It was the skull of a reptile that was 20 cm long and came from the late Triassic period more than 220 million years ago. That was before there were any dinosaurs on the planet. It is now called, appropriately, Teraterpeton Hyrnewich. The first part of the name means “wonderful creeping thing” in Latin and the second part is of course their name. As erosion in the Bay of Fundy continues, other strange fossils may be found.

 

The Bay of Fundy originated when the world’s continents were all joined as one in what scientists now called the supercontinent Pangaea, which means one earth,  230 million years ago, about the time the wonderful creeping thing was creeping. Pangaea started to break apart. At that time a very large rift valley started to form, where the Bay of Fundy is now found. Braided rivers probably blown through the region and hot dry winds blew sand into dunes that today form the red sandstone that is so visible today in Burntcoat and other places in Nova Scotia.

 

Mi’kmaq Religion and Spirituality

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

 

 

Mi’kmaq spirituality, like so much of various First Nations’ spirituality,  is deeply  influenced by and closely connected to the natural world. In fact, that connection to the natural world is the fundamental basis of their spirituality. The Mi’kmaq believe that living a good, balanced life means respecting and protecting the environment and living in harmony with the people and creatures that live on the earth.

 

Mi’kmaq culture and traditional religion is based on legendary figures like Glooscap who is said to have created the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia where we travelled by sleeping on the land and using the island of what we now call Prince Edward Island as a pillow. The Great Spirit is the creator of the world and all its creatures and they never lost that spirituality when Eastern Canada, as we now call it was not lost when Catholic priests and settlers arrived and often did their level best to destroy everything in their spirituality. Of course, the ideas of Creator and God are very similar.  Christians though often resist the similarities. They want to be different, because they expect to be superior. Sometimes the new adherents to the new religion managed to nearly wipe out the ancient spirituality of the so-called new world. Often it kept bubbling up again, sometimes in hybridized ways.

 

The spirituality of the Mi’kmaq people is often communicated by stories. Not really unlike the Christian stories told in the Bible. One of the Mi’kmaq origin stories told about how the world was created in 7 stage including the sky, the sun, Mother Earth and humans. I’m not sure who or what fell into the remaining stages. There are many other origin stories that describe how things came to be and how to live a good life.

As Olive Patricia Dickason and William Newbigging, explained in their book A Concise History of Canada First Nation, among the Mi’kmaq, a chief could attract followers, but the people were not subordinated to their leader’s will, except perhaps in time of war or emergencies. Even in warfare however, among many groups each individual was essentially his or her own leader. Perhaps most important of all, chiefs were expected to set an example for their people, in particular by being generous. Instead of gaining wealth through their positions, they could end up the poorest of the group because of the continual demands made upon their resources. This also happened among First Nations on the west coast as well, particularly during a Potlach.

Clearly a leader like Donald Trump would have had no interest in being a leader under such circumstances. He would not have been viewed as leadership material. I keep asking this question: who is civilized again?  Tell me again why I should think Europeans were less savage, more civilized, or more superior! It makes no sense to me.

Spiritual Colonialism

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

 

As we were driving through eastern Canada on this trip, I kept thinking about the original human inhabitants of this wonderful country. The Indigenous people of what we now call Eastern Canada. I kept thinking about a television series I saw on CBC Gem, called Telling Our Story. 

For over 500 years the lives of the people who occupied Eastern Canada, particularly in what we now call Quebec, were disrupted, but they survived. As the narrator of The CBC series Telling Our Story said, “History with a capital “H” was told from a single point of view, but those days are over.” Thank goodness for that. The European/Canadian point of view has been dominant too long. It’s time for a fresh look.

I know some of my friends are tired of hearing indigenous stories. They’ve heard enough they say. But those stories from an indigenous perspective are only very recently been available to us. The story of white settlers have been around for hundreds of years while the indigenous stories were not listened to. I think it is time for a change and we can hear these stories for a few years more.

Spiritual colonialism of Indigenous people was as disruptive as the political kind. Until deep into the 20th century and even beyond, Canada has tried to impose its religion on the Indigenous People of North America.  The indigenous people of Eastern Canada want to speak out and tell their story. This time, we really should listen to it. We could learn something.

As one of the Indigenous artists said on the show, “People don’t even know us.”  That is true. What a pity.

So, I am trying to tell their story to my friends. I am not appropriating their story. But as Niigaan Sinclair once told me what I could do to assist reconciliation, was to talk to my friends. So that is what I do. Many of them, no doubt, are sick of hearing me. But as Sinclair said, “they won’t listen to me, but maybe a few will listen to you.” Probably not very many but I think he has a point.

As one of the young Indigenous girls on the series said, “spirituality for me is a sense of connection to the land which makes me feel whole.”  I think I could stop right there. She summed it up. And amazingly, these words echoed ancient words of a culture from the other side of the world, India. The word “religion” is derived from an ancient Indo-European word religio, which means connection or linkage.  And that is what she was saying. It is a powerful message. It doesn’t need any supernatural beings either. Though it does not deny the possibility of the supernatural. Religion is about connection. The connection of people to each other and to the land.

Another man on the show, much older, said, “spirituality is totally different from religion.” I think he meant religion of the western colonial kind. There is another way and we can learn from it. This is not a call for anyone to abandon their own spirituality or religion. It is merely a call to open eyes.

As Alexandre Bacon, an Innu from Mashteuiatsh, said,

 “If you read the Book of Genesis it says that God created man to rule over everything that flies, that crawls, that swims. Man stands above all other animals. He is meant to dominate nature, to control it. Whereas from an Indigenous point of standpoint, we are an integral part of nature. There is no hierarchy. The bear is our brother, the moose is our brother. And when an animal  gives its life it deserves our gratitude.”

 

 

No part of the land rules any other part.  Humans are not put on this earth to rule it. They are put on earth to be a part of it. That is the indigenous perspective.  Not the indigenous perspective. One of perspectives.

A Weird Day

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Lighthouses

 

 

Today was weird. Really weird.  We were heading on from our stay in Prince Edward Island. As we drove across Confederation Bridge on the way back to New Brunswick, just across the bridge I noticed a lighthouse in the distance. A lovely bridge and a lighthouse, those are 2 things I could not resist. Christiane  was not so keen, so she stayed in the car. Imagine that!  She left me to go on a frolic of my own.

 

As soon as I got through the entrance building to the Jourimain Nature Centre in New Brunswick right beside Confederation Bridge,  I noticed the beautiful view of the bridge. We had seen the bridge before, but this view of it was special. I quickly phoned her in the hopes of rousting her from her doldrum. I told her I would proceed because it was about a 15-minute walk to the lighthouse. I would meet her on the way back I said.

 

After that, I continued up a wide trail through the woods to the lighthouse where, of course I took a number of photographs.

The Cape Jourimain Lighthouse is a tapered, octagonal wood-frame tower that was built in 1869 and it measures 15.5 metres (51 feet) and is located at the narrowest section of the Northumberland Strait. That’s why the bridge was built there. The lighthouse sits within the Cape Jourimain Nature Centre on the New Brunswick side of the Northumberland Strait.

Shortly after Confederation, the new Canadian government decided, wisely no doubt, that it should build a line of lighthouses and light stations along the coasts of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island to assist those mariners to navigate the coasts. Shipwrecks had been rising in the area, which was not good for shipping in the area. As a result, they built a lighthouse at Cape Jourimain. One was built here because the surrounding water are shallow and contain rocky shoals.

None of this was weird. Weird came when I returned to the viewpoint for the bridge.  I went off the trail to see if I could find Chris.  As I was looking for her, she spotting me chatting with 2 women who were most enamoured of me.  Hardly surprising.  Actually, they liked my cap made by my daughter-in-law.  She always gives me chick magnets. After a couple of minutes of chatting we returned to the main path to go back to the car parked in the parking lot, when we heard the cry: “Auntie Chris! Auntie Chris!” It turned out that Chris’ niece Margot, who lives in Gatineau Quebec, across the river from Ottawa, was also walking through the small park and recognized her. She was walking with her parents, Chris’s sister Monique and her partner Norm.  Needless to say, we were all surprised to meet each other thousands of miles from our homes. It was truly a weird coincidence. So we stopped there and had a nice short visit far from our homes.

Confederation Bridge

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada

 

 

When Prince Edward Island joined the Dominion of Canada in 1873, they secured promises in that agreement which required the Canadian government to provide passenger service between the island and New Brunswick year-round. At first, they used a steamship that was unable to break the winter the ice. That did not really comply with the contract Canada had signed with the new province.

 

During much of the 19th century winter crossings were made by ice boats. These are boats that look like dorys but have runners on the bottom.  The boats carried from 6-10 people but often the ice was too thick and the men passengers had to get out of the boat to tow the boat across the ice with straps. Can you imagine this?

 

On the other hand, in some places the ice was not thick enough to hold up the boat and the people, and then one of the men had to walk in front of the boat and grab hold of the bow just in case the ice broke through and he fell into the icy waters.

 

Some men would stay in the boat and use grappling hooks to pull the boat. Meanwhile, the other men would remain in the boat and use grappling hooks to pull the boat along. This process could take about 4 hours in the chilly winter. They even used hot bricks to keep the passengers warm for the 4 hours it might take.

 

These ice boats were used until 1915 when they started using ferries that could break the ice. Over the years the federal government had to pay a lot of money to subsidize the ferries, paying as much as $44 million in the 1990s. More and more it seemed to the federal government that they would be better off helping to finance a bridge. And that is what they did.

 

The Confederation Bridge carries the Trans-Canada Highway across the Northumberland Strait connecting Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick. It is 12.9 km (8 miles) long the longest bridge in Canada and the longest bridge in the world over ice-covered water.  It took nearly 4 years to construct. The bridge is curved and most of it is 40 metres (131 ft.) above the water. The highway is 2 lanes.

 

The engineering of the Confederation Bridge was complicated by the fact that the water there freezes in winter.  As well, in summer ice bergs could ram into the bridge at up to 4 knots causing severe damage. The ice bergs could come from either direction Therefore, measures had to be taken to protect the piers that held up the bridge.

 

Each component of the bridge was constructed in a specially designed fabrication facility. Once the component was built, a specialized trawler had to be used to move it from that facility to a pier.  Then once it was placed on the pier the section was lifted and placed in position by a Dutch-built heavy lift catamaran. This vessel was huge. In fact, at the time it was probably the highest human made structure on P.E.I. at 100 m. (328 ft.). It could lift 3,000 tons.

 

To deflect icebergs from the bridge, steel-reinforced concrete deflection “cones” were built and strategically placed around each of the supports. Of course, they had to consider that most an ice berg was below the water surface.

 

The bridge was paid for by private developers and cost about $1.3 billion and the Canadian government agreed to pay them $44 million per year for 33 years, which was the same amount they had been paying to subsidize the ferries.  That seems like a pretty good deal for Canada, but no one knows how much profit the developers made.  They were private companies and did not have to tell. The developers collect the tolls until the contract expires, but have had large maintenance expenses. I remember that when we first crossed the bridge many years ago, not long after the bridge had been built, we noticed that it was already necessary to reapply asphalt which had difficulty sticking to the bridge on account of all of the salt water and ice on the bridge.

 

To me the most important part was the beauty of the bridge. Almost as beautiful as lighthouses!

Mundane Matters

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Fat Opinions

 

After lunch it was still raining so we returned to our hotel room. We spent the day on mundane matters. Once in a while that is good. Just don’t make a habit of it. These matters included reading, blogging, some history by Barbara Huck on the fur trade, the Winnipeg Free Press and New York Times on line. And above all laundry. Even on vacation laundry needs to be done. A dreary task that needs to be done.

In our hotel we had a TV with 5,818 channels. Unbelievable. Yet we could not get our TV with 5,818 channels to work. We called for the Hotel Teckie. He fared no better than us Luddites. The television is so complicated no one can understand it. We are OK with that. We have watched hardly any TV in 2 weeks on the road. Why start now? We are travelling for 6 weeks and can’t take excitement every day.

Sometimes mundane is good.