Last Day in Halifax

Today was Laundry day at the Williams road show (I know, we lead such exciting lives), and so we didn’t get away until almost noon. The item on todays list was the Annapolis Valley on the northwest side of Nova Scotia. We didn’t know much about the area, but when I looked up the list of Must-See items for Nova Scotia, three of the items were located in Annapolis Royal.

This area was at one time the capital of Acadia for the French when it was known as Port Royal, (until the British took over by force) and was subsequently the capital of Nova Scotia until Halifax was founded in 1749. The original French town was occupied in 1605, and was overtaken by New Englanders in 1613 when it was burnt to the ground. In 1928 a Virginian by the name of Harriette Taber Richardson began a project to reconstruct the site, figuring that if New Englanders destroyed the place maybe they should rebuild it. The Canadian Government got involved in 1938 and the site was rebuilt from drawings made by Samuel De Champlain. It opened to the public in 1939 and is a good look at life in the early 1600s.

The town of Port Royal was rebuilt a couple of times and moved up the river a few km. By 1711 the British established their dominance in the area and renamed the city Annapolis Royal and it began to prosper. It is still an elegant looking town, but only has about 500 residents.

On the right side of the picture the original Fort Anne which is on the list of things to see, but after all the forts we’ve already visited, we are pretty well ‘fort’ed out.

The last site we wanted to see was the Historic Gardens in the town. This is a 17 acre garden showcasing roses and plants from the last 400 years. It’s pretty late in the season for a lot of the flowers, but it was a nice walk and we did see lots of pretty flowers.

One interesting thing that we drove over is a Tidal Power generation station. The Nova Scotia power utility is harnessing the tidal action of the Bay of Fundy (which the Annapolis River empties into) and generating electricity through turbines placed in the mouth of the river. I don’t know how much they are generating, but when we drove over the site the water was flowing BACK into the river at quite a clip.

We took the scenic route back from Annapolis Royal, and quickly found out that the valley is the agricultural centre of the province. We passed more orchards, corn fields, pastures and farmers markets, as well as  absolutely gorgeous heritage homes, than we’ve seen since we left PEI. It was a very nice scenic drive, and very pretty country.  It was a perfect sight-seeing day.

Lunenburg and Peggys Cove

As we knew we’d have a lot of ground to cover today we left first thing this morning and made a beeline to Lunenburg. This is about an hour west of Halifax and has been a boat building centre for hundreds of years and is where the Bluenose and Bluenose II were built. Bluenose II is undergoing a reconstruction, so we really couldn’t see much of it under the tarps and scaffolding. There are a couple of other tall ships which call Lunenburg their home port, and they run several sea schools out of the area which will allow kids or young adults to spend as little as a week or two on a sailing ship right on up to the full winter season up until April travelling the high seas. This building is the Lunenburg Academy where the shorter schools are run from.

 

Lunenburg, and a few of the other small port towns we visited are built on a rigid British road system, all the streets are straight as an arrow, and all corners right angles. This is so unusual from elsewhere we’ve visited in the east where roads follow the contours of the land and twist and turn enough to make you dizzy when you’re trying to drive through them. The Nova Scotia towns look quite prim and proper as well. It looks like there’s some money floating around this area, as there are quite a number of large pleasure craft in the various bays, and we passed an untold number of sailboats today.

The town boasts some impressive architecture, and there are posters in the shops documenting the various doors to heritage buildings in town.

Next we drove on to the town of Mahone Bay. This is another pretty place, and had a number of interesting shops and artisan stores. We stopped for a while in a shop that makes everything out of pewter. And I mean everything from small decorations to jewellery to Christmas ornaments to flatware to stemware. They have a shop in the rear of the store, and we watched the process for a while. In case you’re wondering, the little critter in front of the house on the right is made up of car parts. Coil springs, tie rods and an alternator were just some of the parts used.

From here we drove on to Peggys Cove. We stopped at one of the memorials for the people who died in the SwissAir flight 111 crash in 1998, and from there you get a good look at Peggys Cove itself. All the granite in the area is pretty massive, and fairly easy to walk on as it’s been smoothed over by the waves.

Peggys Cove itself was a very busy place, and we had to wait sometimes to get pictures that didn’t have people from the bus tour crowded around anything. They have a sign at the start of the path to the lighthouse warning you not to step onto the black rocks, as the ocean could sweep you away. Quite a few people were ignoring the advice.

After a very long day of exploring we were tired and got back to the RV for a late dinner, but we did have a great day.

Halifax!

We are still trying to recover a bit from the long night and day we had yesterday travelling from Newfoundland. With the winds associated with Hurricane Irene last night on top of the several days of high winds we had in the St. John’s area it’s been quite a few days since we had a good nights sleep. So, we slept in a bit this morning and took it easy all morning. After lunch, as the winds from the storm were starting to die down, we took off for the aptly named Point Pleasant Park in downtown Halifax.

Despite the name of the park, it’s history is not so pleasant. The point sits at the end of the Halifax harbour and has been the site of cannons protecting the harbour since the 1700’s and was still in use until the end of WWII. 

This is the Prince of Wales tower,  the oldest tower of it’s type in North America. While the roof has been removed you can still picture the 22 to 36 cannons they had there at various times. The ground floor was a powder magazine for all the other gun emplacements in the park area, and the second floor was a barracks. It must have been interesting to sleep above 1800 barrels of gunpowder.

There are several locations in the park where the foundations of the gun batteries and military forts in the area are still visible, but they just make things more interesting. There are no roads into the park, and we parked right at the edge of the city and walked for a couple of hours around and through the area. At the end of the park they have monuments to those who gave their lives in the Canadian Navy and Merchant Marine during the wars, as well as the anchor from the HMCS Bonaventure which was the last aircraft carrier Canada ever had (we’ve only had 3 over the years and they were all quite small compared to today’s behemoths).

The park it quite an oasis of solitude, and we really enjoyed the peaceful environment.

Halifax itself has a pretty congested downtown area, and it took a while to get anywhere. All of the roads are quite narrow and none too straight. Driving around the area really reminds me of Victoria; You can be on the same piece of road for 5 km, but its name will change 3 times. It made it challenging to follow on the map we were using, but we managed to get where we wanted to go without getting too lost.

Made it before the storm (what storm?)

We arrived in North Sydney, Nova Scotia at 6:00 this morning. This is the same port we left 2 weeks ago today on our travels to Newfoundland. The ferry ride was uneventful, which is not a bad thing when you’re spending 15 hours on a ship. We had a nice dinner on the MV Atlantic Vision, which is a European built ferry that the local ferry company has leased. It was smaller than the ferry we were on to head to Newfoundland, and very different in it’s layout, but the staff was just as friendly, and the food just as good if not better.

As you can see it was a very nice day, probably the nicest we saw in all our time in Newfoundland. Ah well.

After arriving so early, we didn’t have to hustle too much to make it to Halifax as it was only about 400 km. That left us time to stop in a school parking lot to make some breakfast in North Sydney, as well as making a snack stop in Antigonish. I actually managed to get Sylvia to darken the door of a McDonalds, though she really wasn’t happy with the muffin she ordered (it was suppose to be heated, and it wasn’t). Oh well, at least the coffee was good and hot.  Sylvia thinks McDonalds, Tim Hortons, Subway and the like are trying to ‘assimilate human kind into their deceitful diet plans –  resistance is futile’, but she is strongly resisting anyway.

While we were in Antigonish, we were walking around the campus of St. Francis Xavier university. They must have very good sports programs, as on one side of the parking lot we watched the football team go through drills while on the other side there were several young men heading into the arena with their hockey gear. Hmmm, hockey in August. That can’t be a bad thing can it?

We arrived in Halifax by 1:00 and set up between downpours, and a bit of wind. It wasn’t too bad though, and the winds have been coming and going all afternoon and evening. So far, Irene isn’t nearly as windy as what we experienced in St John’s, although we’re going to bring in the slide outs tonight to be on the safe side. It’s very muggy here, more so than we’ve experienced since we were in Quebec City, and that’s expected to be the same for tomorrow. It’s 23 degrees today, but feels like 32 according to the weather network. That must be due to Irene.

Tomorrow we try and figure out what to do first, but Lunenburg and Peggys Cove are on the short list.

Last Day in Newfoundland

We woke up this morning to a gale that was rocking the trailer and threatening to rip off our slide toppers this morning. As it was going to be our last day here we had to decide whether we were going to do an outdoor or indoor activity. With the nasty winds, and black skies on the horizon, indoor won out.

We drove into St. John’s to visit ‘The Rooms’. This is the provincial museum and archives and the building was built to resemble the various structures around the province used by families to process fish. Of course they were also used to get together and sing, talk and tell stories. This picture of ‘The Rooms’ was taken earlier this week on a much nicer day.

The Museum chronicles the history of man in the area over the last 5000 years or so, and includes quite a few sections on what happened to the indigenous native population once the Europeans arrived. There were never many of the Beothuk nation on the Island, but within 200 years of the European settlement the number was down to 29, and they vanished completely by the 1850’s. There were several attempts made to kidnap natives over the years, in order to convince them to be mediators, but the idea never took hold, and they usually ended up killing several Beothuk trying to capture one alive.

The museum also documents the various animals found in the province, and documents the differences between those species found here and those found elsewhere in the world. One thing they didn’t have in the museum was a moose, as those were introduced to the island in 1904. It’s hard to believe that 150000 moose today descend from 4 brought over from New Brunswick.

After the museum we headed over to Quidi Vidi Village, a small area that’s good for taking pictures just beyond Signal Hill, and home to a local brewery. We also found out that the area is a favourite for wedding pictures, and as we drove into the very narrow streets we were confronted with 2 delivery trucks, 2 stretch limousines and 2 small tour busses filled with wedding parties trying to get to the same small parking lot we were heading to. We decided to abandon the attempt, but did get some pics of the bay from above the area.

Tomorrow we start heading west again. So far we’ve put 17740 km on the truck, and from Mapquest I’ve determined that our driving distance so far should have been just under 9800 km. We’ve seen a lot of territory other than where we’ve pulled the trailer to so far.

Again we’ve enjoyed our time in this province, but we’ve missed great stretches of the area as there’s never enough time to see it all. We’re on an afternoon ferry tomorrow, and will be arriving in Sydney at 6:00 am Sunday. Hopefully we’ll get some sleep on the ship.

This post has taken a couple of days to show up, as we’ve been unable to find internet service that my Windows laptop could connect to. I know, I know, I should have bought a Mac. The IPad connected fine on the ferry, but no luck with the Toshiba……..

Anyway, we survived the 15 hour ferry ride, and were pleased to have a cabin to bunk in and get some, and I only mean some, sleep. We’re in Nova Scotia this morning heading for Halifax, and watching the hurricane status fairly closely. We will probably have some decent winds tonight, but not much more than we dealt with on the Avalon Peninsula the last few days.

Bell Island

We returned to the Killick Coast Drive today to pick up a side trip that was recommended to us by a tourist info worker. Bell Island is a quaint little spot in Conception Harbour reached by ferry from Portugal Cove. We arrived at the cove with no real idea on the ferry schedule, but were under the understanding that they ran every 40 minutes or so. A ferry was discharging traffic just as we arrived, so we thought we were in luck. Not so, as we ended up being the second vehicle left on the dock. Then we got the bad news that the crews take an hour long lunch break, and the next ferry wasn’t for another hour and 40 minutes. Then it was late on top of things, so we ended up sitting on the dock for almost 2 hours. Oh well, at least we don’t have a schedule to keep.

It turns out that a Killick is a large rock that ships used to use in place of a metal anchor. A few hundred years ago, most of the killicks used in this area came from Bell Island, as the rocks are particularly heavy there. These rocks are called Hematite, and they are really iron ore. In the late 1800’s it was discovered that the north end of Island was a fine place to start mining this ore and operations began. This was timely, as the cod fishery was in serious decline at the time. This is kind of like the present times, as the cod is in decline, but the discovery of oil has really helped the economy in this province.

The ore was discovered to be in very defined seams, sandwiched between solid rock, and descending into the ground at a 10 degree angle. Two open pit mines were developed to extract what ore could be reached on the surface, and four others were dug into the ground and followed the seams of ore wherever they went. It turns out that this was under the sea floor, and by the time they were finished mining, they had dug almost 3 miles into the ground, all at a 10 degree grade. The mines never ran out, it just became too expensive to extract the ore, and they figure that there are upwards of 10 billion tons of ore left to mine if it ever becomes financially expedient. Mining ceased in 1966, and they have preserved Mine #2 and turned it into a tourist attraction. We walked down only 650 feet into the mine, as the rest of the 3 miles is flooded.

One of the reasons we were told about visiting Bell Island is that there are great opportunities to take pictures. This is from the east tip of the island.

And this is The Bell, which the island gets it’s name from.

We stopped in several places to take pictures, and really enjoyed our time on the Island.

And here’s the greenhorn miners. Our tour guide, Bonnie, had a real passion for the mine, as several of her relatives worked the mine their entire lives. She also has a great voice, and at one point she shut off all the lights to let us see how dark it really was and started singing a portion of Rita MacNeil’s song Working Man. It was pretty special.

Here you can see how abruptly the ore seam stops and the rock starts. The mines all start in the same general area, but some of the seams travel right over top of other mines. The engineering required to ensure that they won’t collapse must have been extensive. Mind you in the early 1900’s they probably didn’t care much about the lives of the miners.