Saturday 6th November 2010 – IT’S A GOOD JOB …

… that I wasn’t able to blog last night as much of what I would have written would have been unprintable. I was already in a bad mood due to a lack of sleep – some guy and his ladyfriend returned from somewhere at about 03:50, making a lot of noise as they returned, but that noise was nothing what was to follow.

I made a suggestion about what he could do about that but he was clearly far too preoccupied to take any notice of me, and I couldn’t even applaud the finale because that just isn’t something that you can do with just one hand.

So eventually it was dawn and after breakfast I set off to Exporail, the railway museum about 20 miles from Montreal on the site of the old ALCO locomotive works.

17 dollars to get in to see the largest collection of railway locomotives in North America (I only wanted to see them not buy them!) and after spending about 3 hours in building 1 I went over to building 5.

This is where the more interesting locomotives are to be found – the ones that have been salvaged from scrapyards, industrial plants and so on and have yet to be brought up to exhibition standard

But all the doors were locked

“That room is closed for the season”
“What?”
“Well, there’s no heating in it …..”
Heating? This is Canada. what does heating have to do with anything?

So no advance warning, no reduction of the admission price, no nothing. And no interesting locomotives either.

And so they got a piece of my mind. I won’t have any left at this rate if we carry on like this. But no heating. How about sending all of the “workers” to do a spell at a museum in Labrador City? And then they’ll find out what it’s like to be without heating.

And talking of heating, they aren’t kidding about Ottawa being the second-coldest capital city in the world behind Ulan Bator in Mongolia.

Driving up off the Plain of St Lawrence onto the Canadian Shelf the temperature suddenly dropped 5 degrees and from a fairly sunny 5 degrees in Montreal we had a cloudy zero and flurries of snow.

It’s a good job that Exporail isn’t situated there. It would all be closed, and permanently too.

-1

Friday 5th November 2010 – I WENT FOR MY WALK …

… around Old Quebec this morning but I only stayed for two minutes. And if you look at the roadway in front of the building you will see why.

There were waves of rainwater cascading down the hill. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen rain like this.

And that’s been the story of the day so far – torrential rain until about two hours ago.

Mind you I headed out for Battlefield Park so that I could scale the Heights up to the Plains of Abraham in the footsteps of Wolfe’s soldiers of 1756 and fall upon the city from the rear despite the atrocious weather, but would you believe this – the park is closed for the season.

Probably the most absurd thing that I have ever seen. I had to content myself with peering through the gloom at the Pont de Quebec instead.

So I went off to Montreal to run a couple of errands. The first one took a while as I expected and then I went off to Mount Royal Military Cemetery (where my great grandfather is buried) to speak to someone in the little museum there.

Regular readers of these pages will recall the map I found at a brocante over a year ago – the cloth map of Belgium dating from about 1910 and marked up as the property of one R W Seath, 11th battalion Canadian Field Artillery and showing the position of the Front Line in Belgium round about Armistice Day – anyway I’ve presented it to the Museum as that’s where it probably ought to belong (and if not, they will find a proper home for it).

Now I’m in a motel here in Montreal. The Howard Johnson Motel at St Leonards has a special offer on – a single room at $59 with breakfast included, and that’s where I’m staying.

Tomorrow morning I’m off to the Canadian Railway Museum just outside Montreal and then off to see Ottawa which, for the benefit of those who don’t know, is the second-coldest capital city in the world, beaten only by Ulan-Bator in Mongolia.

-1

Thursday 4th November 2010 – TODAY GOT OFF TO A BAD START.

I sat up bolt upright in bed at 06:20 – what happened to my 06:00 alarm call? So I quickly showered and dressed, loaded up Casey and took the key back to the office ready to give them a piece of my mind when I glanced at the clock – 05:55. Yes, I’d forgotten to retard my mobile phone to “Quebec Time”, hadn’t I?

D’ohhhh!

So at least I was ready nice and early down to the ferry port and I insinuated myself into the queue with all of the other cars.

As we were loading up I idly noticed another smaller ferry making its way out of port. “I wonder where that might be going” I said to myself, and thought no more about it.

And maybe two hours later we had the skipper on the ship’s PA system”we will be arriving in Godbout in about 30 minutes ….”
Consequently I buttonholed a passing steward

“Godbout? isn’t this the ferry to Baie Comeau then?”

“No – that leaves from the terminal next to ours about 30 minutes before we go”

So Godbout it was – about 20 minutes farther across and a 50-minute extra drive. Blast! This is going to mess up all of my plans.

I headed off to Baie Comeau where I fuelled up Casey, and set out for the 400-odd km drive to Quebec. I didn’t hang about too much, although there was still time to take some photos of all of the things that I had missed on my way up and when I had come here in 2001.

But getting closer and closer to Quebec it was getting darker and darker, and I realised that what with the changing weather and the late arrival I was never going to get my two hours or so around the old town.

And as we started to climb up the legendary Cap Tourmente out of the wilderness and over into the Plains of St Lawrence (you saw the pic on my way out a few weeks ago) there was a huge snowplough parked ominously at the side of the road.

The hill is about 790 metres high according to my altimeter (this satnav really is good what with all of these options) and at about 500 metres it started to snow. And by the time we made it to the top it was a veritable blizzard blowing.

But I’m in Quebec and the light beat me to it. But anyway I didn’t fancy going out because it’s absolutely teeming down outside. I bet it’s snowing like hell up there.

And the motel is a reasonable one – 60 dollars plus tax and quite respectable (or at least it was until I got here) – good value for a major city motel.

Mind you I can’t get used to the noise and the people after all this time in the wilderness. It’s all quite uncomfortable. It makes me wish I was back out on the Coasts of Labrador again.

And I certainly don’t want to go home.

-2

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 – AND NOW THAT MY MEMORY CARD READER SEEMS TO BE WORKING …

… I can show you some more pictures of the Gaspe Peninsula to make you realise just how beautiful it is and how happy I would be to stay on here.

In fact I’m still here now despite my words of yesterday, for I missed the 17:00 ferry by a country mile. That was mostly because I had spent a nice hour or two wandering around the town of Gaspe to see what there was to see – of which there was plenty.

I then went off down to the headland for a nosy and I was still there at 13:00. One claim to fame of Gaspe Bay is that it was fortified as a base for the Royal Navy if the UK fell to the Germans in 1940 and not only is there a fort in the hills to protect the harbour, it also still has its guns.

And after a bit of a clamber and a hike across the cliffs I managed to track it down. And yes, its guns are still there as you can see.

I couldn’t get down to the far end of the Point though. What with one thing and another (and once you get started you would be surprised just how many other things there are) I’d left it far too late to go there on foot. It’s not possible to go all the way down to the end.

But not to worry. There were still plenty of things to see in the area and I can always come back here again, can’t I?

Now followers of my outpourings will know that I wrote some stuff about the coffin ships – the sailing ships that took the Irish to the New World in the wake of the potato famine in the late 1840s.

I mentioned the cholera that they endured and there was also the starvation on board ship if supplies ran out, as well as countless other sufferings that the passengers had to endure.

But one suffering that must always have been on their minds was the risk of shipwreck and I went to visit the site of the shipwreck of one such coffin ship – the Carrick’s of Whitehaven out of Sligo that ran aground just off Gaspe Point on 28th April 1847.

It’s pretty much largely forgotten now, being isolated in the middle of a huge new road system (such as would be huge out here) and the monument to the 187 immigrants lost and the communal grave of the 84 whose bodies were recovered is nevertheless pretty poignant.

There was a further update to this story at the beginning of June 2019.

There has always been an apocryphal story about a mass grave relating to victims of the disaster, and starting in 2011 following a severe storm, bones started to be washed ashore close to the memorial.

This was followed by the unearthing of several other sets of bones on the beach in 2016.

An analysis of the bones was published by Parks Canada, which suggests that the age of the bones together with the likely diet identified during a DNA analysis corresponds with that which one might expect to see in victims of the Carrick’s disaster.

You might remember me talking about Marconi and his bouncing of messages across the Atlantic. Of course once they reached land at Cape Race they would need to be bounced by shore stations and we saw one of those on the coast of Labrador.

The next one further down is on the north shore of the Gaspe Peninsula here at Pointe à la Renommée and after trekking about 6kms down a dirt track that would be a match for the bad ones of Labrador and then descending 150 metres to the shoreline I managed to find the remains of that as well.

And so I’m still on the Gaspe – in a motel in Matane.

It’s Thursday tomorrow so there’s only one ferry and that’s at 08:00 so that’s a 06:00 alarm call. I won’t be up for long. And if I can’t get a place on that then I shall have to drive down the south bank of the St Lawrence and head for Quebec City that way.

I can’t afford the time to wait until Friday to get across.

-3

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 – HAVING SURVIVED …

… last night’s motel I woke up to the coldest day of the journey so far (Labrador excluded of course).

It’s minus 1°C as I leave the motel and I’m now in winter gear – thick jacket, hat and gloves.

I’m just amazed at how quickly winter has arrived here.

So off for a quick tour of Dalhousie and its neighbouring town, Campbelltown, where the predominant language spoken here is, as you might expect, … errrr … French, even though this is New Brunswick.

And crossing the head of Chaleur Bay into Quebec, the predominant language in the town in which you arrive is … errrr … Mikmac.

Strawberry Moose and I had the pleasure of being introduced to the new tribal chief, the old one having just won the world’s tea-drinking championship, he died in his teepee.
“I am Chief Sitting Duck” said the chief
“How” I replied
“How” replied Strawberry Moose.
“And this is my favourite squaw Minnimama”
“How” I replied
“How” replied Strawberry Moose
“I bought her for two buffalo skins” said the chief
“How” I replied
“Never mind how” said Strawberry Moose. “Where?”

And so then along the north bank of the Baie de Chaleur, or the south shore of the Gaspe Peninsula, depending upon how you look at it.

The first European to set foot here was Jacques Cartier in his epic voyage of 1534 (although if he did indeed set his foot in everywhere that he is supposed to have set his foot he would never have had time to have written about it)

This north bank (or south shore) is really beautiful and you can’t move along it without tripping over a motel ir a guest house. There are thousands of them.

And quite right too – it is one of the most scenic parts of whatever passes for the Canadian Riviera and well worth the visit, and it’s not all that often that you hear me say that.

Highlight of today’s part of the voyage has to be the town of Perce, and this was where I was headed.

Cartier also had a landfall here and this time there would seem to be no doubt at all about this – he describes perfectly the offshore island with the hole through the middle, and it truly is spectacular, so I’m not surprised that he remarked upon it.

I’m now in a motel in the town of Gaspe – the eastern-most town on the peninsula.

Gaspe is quite a historic place, a well-known former port but, alas, with everything demolished in the 1970s and much of it not yet rebuilt, as modern ships are far too big to use the new port.

And I have realised that tomorrow, if I can get a place on the late evening ferry to Baie Comeau from Matane, this will be my last night south of the St Lawrence.

That is rather a depressing thought, you know.

-2

Monday 1st November 2010 – THE ONE THING …

… that I’ve learnt from stopping on my way around is that it’s very hard to start up again. And it was indeed hard to go back on the road. But this morning it was a case of having to. Turning on the radio and hearing Lindisfarne‘s
“I have no-one to call my friend”
“The road I travel has no end”
“and so I turn my face up to the sun”
“and walk on down the road to Kingdom Come”
that didn’t help matters.

I really enjoy my time in Centreville with Rachel and her family and friends. It’s the closest thing that I have ever had to a family and I am always really sorry to leave

And leave I must, unless I can pull off something truly spectacular, and I do have a cunning plan, from what I have learned while I have been over here.

In 2003 I started my circuit in Bathurst and that was where I was aiming for. I wanted to poke around the town as I didn’t see it then due to the thick fog that was there.

But the road across New Brunswick back to the east coast was exciting, due in no small part to the fact that we had heavy snow in places. Winter is truly here and how quickly it has changed since Thursday when I was wandering around Woodstock in shirt sleeves.

As for Bathurst, it’s tempting to say that I didn’t really miss all that much, but then I did pick a really bad time to call.

The big paper mill had closed down suddenly without much notice, and there was a big industrial dispute going on about a big hotel or something that had also closed down leaving scores of people stranded. No town could look its best under such circumstances, and I should perhaps have postponed my visit until another time when the town has had sufficient time to sort itself out.

So after Bathurst I had a leisurely drive along the coast northwards, admiring the wind turbines across the Baie des Chaleurs in the Gaspesie, all bathed in the glorious evening sunlight.

And as I was driving through Dalhousie and debating whether to stop at one of two B&Bs at $65 or a motel “starting from $69” in Campbelltown, I came across a motel at $59 that wasn’t in the tourist guide.

And I’m not surprised either – but then again I’ve stayed in worse and there’s the internet and a TV (it’s Monday Night Football) and it might be tatty and so on but it’s clean, and I’ll have my money’s worth here without a doubt.

Remember that I’m on the economy package and I’m going for “value for money”. However if I don’t blog tomorrow you will know that I will have been stabbed to death in the shower.

-3

Sunday 31st October 2010 – I ATTENDED HALLOWEEN TODAY

First time ever that I have done something as North-American as this.

After what can only be described as a leisurely brunch (with my “never ever call me before midday on Sunday” I would fit in so well here) we all sat down at the table and started pumpkin-carving.

First job was to top and then to empty 15 or so pumpkins and that led to seeds and flesh everywhere. Darren had a pile of images and so we photocopied them and used them as templates for the carving.

We sellotaped them to the pumpkins, pricked out the patterns and then joined up the dots with a small knife. And considering that I’d never ever done it before, my group of bats, my witch and my “screaming skull” came out quite well, and I was so impressed. Little Amber even did a freehand carving of Strawberry Moose (you can see him modelling for his portrait) and that was pretty impressive too.

Darren’s friend George took a few pumpkins down to the gate and I set the rest up in the living room and put tea lights in them so that I could photograph them.

On a long exposure (which counteracted the flickering of the flame) the image came out really well and the effect is pretty good.

After Hannah and I had lined the drive with flaming pumpkins Rachel and I took Zoe, Amber and Amber’s friend (and Strawberry Moose who had donned a tutu and a bumble bee headgear for the occasion) out trick-or-treating.

It was all terribly tacky as you might expect but it was also fun and you can’t spend a Halloween amongst a family here in North America and not participate in the entertainment.

And tomorrow I’m moving on. My time here is up. I’ll be driving to Bathurst where my journey started in 2003 and heading north from there. The idea is to go around the shore of Northern New Brunswick and then round the Gaspe peninsula to Matane and then take the ferry over to Baie Comeau, where the adventure really began, and that will be the Great Circle route completed.

-3

Saturday 30th October 2010 – TODAY HAS BEEN QUITE CIVILISED …

… and hasn’t it been a long time since anything like that ever happened?

In fact we had a recycling day today and with Darren’s big pick-up truck, Rachel, Hannah and I did a tour of the neighbourhood picking up glass bottles, plastic bottles and aluminium drinks cans.

Once we had a full load on board we went off to a recycling plant in Bath about 10 miles away from here where we weighed it all in.

The plant was quite interesting – it was a simple hand-sorting operation where you tipped out your containers onto a kind-of counter and two people hand-sorted the cans and plastic and they also weighed the glass bottles, not by scales but by eye.

And having seen the price is on offer for scrap over here, not only do I now understand why in several cities that I’ve been to and down several roads that I’ve travelled I’ve seen gangs of people picking up the litter, I’m also going to bring over the scrap aluminium off the two caravans that I dismantled and weigh it in over here.

It was quite a windy day over here too and so the highlight was definitely this giant inflatable pumpkin that was busily making a bid for freedom down the highway in the general direction of the USA.

What you don’t see in the photo is the guy from a nearby house who was giving a rather desperate chase after it.

Thanks in no small measure to the long piece of rope that was tethered to it the guy managed to restrain it but it was touch-and-go at one stage and my money was definitely on the pumpkin.

I was also taken out old-car spotting too.

Darren took me to see his brother-in-law who lives just down the road. He has an old Cadillac convertible that he has restored from a rusty heap and had taken it out for a run-around this morning. And so we headed off down the road to catch him up.

This evening we all went out for pizza to celebrate Halloween and a good time was had by all. My pizza is the one in the foreground – the vegetarian one without cheese.

If I’m very lucky tomorrow I might get to spend some time with my great-nieces but the trouble with teenagers is that they always seem to have a much different agenda to any agenda that anyone else is ever planning. So I dunno.

Mind you, I have an important decision to make. Do I go out trick-or-treating with Amber and Zoe tomorrow night or do I stay behind with Hannah and hand out the candy?

But all three of them have decided that once Halloween is over I can take off my halloween mask. I don’t seem to be able to convince them that this is my REAL face.

-3

Friday 29th October 2010 – THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN AROUND HERE FOR A WHILE …

… will know all about this aeroplane as you have seen it all before.

It’s KB882, a Lancaster from World War II and it is one of only three “combat veterans” still in existence. It flew to Edmundston airport under its own steam in 1964 and ever since then it’s been stuck outside in all kinds of weather gradually deteriorating.

I spotted it in 2001 and ever since then I’ve been fighting single-handedly (I do other things with my other hand) to persuade the clowns in whose hands this historic machine has fallen to surrender it up to the Imperial War Museum or some other worthy organisation who can put a stop to this disgraceful neglect and get it back into the air before it falls apart.

In 2006 I was told that things might be happening and so being only 150 miles away from it I drove out this afternoon to see what they have done.

And the answer is

they’ve put a better fence around it
they’ve raised it off the ground
… errrr …..
that’s it

What is happening to this machine is nothing short of a national scandal, a total disgrace and the city of Edmundston should be thoroughly ashamed of itself. In the 9 years since I last saw it it has simply rotted away even further.

So having expected that, my blood has been boiling all day and it’ll continue to boil for a while I suppose.

and that’s not all I’ve done. In order to cool off, I retraced my steps from 2001 and retook a few pics of the falls at Grand Sault.

When I was here back then, the falls were all frozen up (mind you, it was midwinter at the time) and so I wanted a few with the water actually unfrozen, as well as a few other photos of interest that I missed when I was up here.

But I did get sidetracked a little … "no surprises there" – ed.

From Rachel and Darren’s house I could see a pile of wind turbines away in the distance to the north of Centreville and so I wandered off for a closer look. And at one stage I was so close to them that I could almost touch them, and my route towards them led off down a little country lane called Mars Hill Road.

And here I came to a dead stop as here on this hill the road also comes to a dead stop.

This is a frontier between the USA and Canada, and an unguarded frontier at that, although I do suspect that the barbed wire, searchlights, man-traps and machine guns are in that forest somewhere and that the purpose of the wind turbines is not to power up the local villages but to power the spy machines lurking in the woods.

The actual border is that orange fence to the left and this building here, Darren seems to think, might possibly be the old Canadian customs post from when this was a manned … "personned" – ed … crossing back in the distant past.

>And it’s for sale, even though it’s totally derelict. And I have a cunning plan.

Now just suppose I buy it and demolish the property that’s on it. I could erect a huge billboard and use it to display Anti-American slogans and then set up some loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda messages into the USA from here.

If it works for the North Koreans who habitually do this to the South, no reason why I can’t do it from here into the USA.

-8

Thursday 28th October 2010 – AND HERE I AM …

… in the bosom of my family – or at least the friendly part of it.

They say that being an intellectual runs in our family and of course anyone who has ever been an intellectual really had to run, and so it is nice to report that there is a civilised bit somewhere, even if one has to cross the Atlantic to find it.

Strawberry Moose has disappeared of course. I have three great-nieces aged between 7 and 16 and they have already worked out a rota as to whose turn it is to moosenap him for which night and so I don’t imagine that I shall be seeing him again until I go back on the road.

This morning though I went into Houlton, which is just across the river in Great Satan.

Its claim to fame is that it’s the town in the USA that has the largest fire brigade per head of population, and when you look at the statistics you’ll find that it’s also the town in the USA that has been burnt to the ground the most often.

Are these facts related, I wonder.

It was also the site of a German Prisoner-of-War camp for German soldiers captured in north-west Europe following the D-Day landings and I had to hunt around for hours until I found any trace of that.

But any trace – the site has long since been built over and it’s now a civilian airport and new industrial estate. There is however a little monument to the place as it was, but that’s well-hidden in the undergrowth and I stumbled upon it in more ways that one.

I was talking to Darren and his Dad about the Templars and my theory that Columbus sailed to America to recover the treasure for Ferdinand and Isabella that the Templars had carried across to there when they escaped from La Rochelle in France in the fourteenth Century. We chatted for hours about this and when we returned home,

Darren switched on the TV and there was a programme on the Templars taking the treasure across the Atlantic and the efforts made to recover it. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction at times.

-2

Wednesday 27th October 2010 – LAST NIGHT …

… the weather warmed up dramatically.

I had to go out to Casey at 11pm and it was so warm, even where the motel was, right on the shoreline of Baie Verte, that I was in shirtsleeves.

This morning it was just as warm – 13 degrees by the temperature gauge in Casey and the skies had closed right in. The dramatic rise in temperature coupled with the clouds could only mean one thing – and I was right. We had the torrential downpour to end all torrential downpours

I had time however to nip down to the end of the motel drive to visit the remains of Fort Gaspereaux.

This was the French “twin” of Fort Beausejour, sited on the south side of the Chignecto isthmus and the two forts were supposed to protect Acadia from incursion by British troops, but once Fort Beasejour fell to the British, the fort here didn’t last much longer.

Just down the road from here is the Confederation Bridge, the bridge that connects the mainland of Canada with Prince Edward Isle.

I came by here in 2003 but with nothing but a compact camera, it was impossible to do justice to a bridge that is 13kms long. Hence my return today, armed with a digital SLR and zoom lens, to set the record straight.

By now we were having the rainstorm that I forecast, and it’s rained like that for most of the day too.

Not that I would normally mind but the Satnav has had me going down all kinds of … errr … interesting roads over the mountains of central New Brunswick, some of which would not have been out of place up on the Labrador Plateau and so on city tyres and on loose gravel and mud in the torrential rain I’ve been sliding around all over the place.

But we are here now in Hartland on the south-western border of New Brunswick, and my motel is up there on top of the bank (taken next day in the bright sunlight).

We are so close to the border that you can spit into the United States from here, and I shall be doing that tomorrow, don’t you worry.

And then I shall be going 30 miles up the road to see my niece. I’ve told her I’m coming so she’s had plenty of time to hide the silver.

-2

Tuesday 26th October 2010 – NOW LIZ, WHO READS THIS BLOG …

… saw my photo of Pictou last night and asked me what the place was like and how it looked in broad daylight.

And the answer to that is “no idea”.

I came here the first time in 2003 and it was absolutely p155ing down so I didn’t stay long. And today, as if in keeping with some kind of tradition, it was likewise p155ing it down. And how.

But this time I’m made of more sterner stuff and went for a nosey, getting thoroughly drenched in the process.

We’re lucky in that many of the buildings are quite substantial – made of stone, not your usual timber framed stuff. North American urban settlement is famous – or infamous – for being ravaged by fire and these stone buildings will have resisted that quite well.

However, escaping from the ravages caused by human modernism and “progress” is another thing, and Pictou has suffered some from that.

Now for those of you familiar with North American history, you will know that Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts is significant as it was there that the Pilgrim Fathers landed in late 1620 in the Mayflower.

And Pictou has a similar kind of significance for Canada as it was here in 1773 that a group of Scots landed in the Hector – a replica of which is on display here – and laid the foundations for Nova Scotia – or New Scotland.

Look at any of the graves of people who were born in this area during the following few years – there are dozens of people called Hector interred there.

And after that it was a drive to Springhill to do something else that I … errrr … overlooked when I was here before.

I didn’t visit the Anne Murray Museum this time (so I didn’t meet Anne Murray this time like I did the last time) and I didn’t have time to visit the mining museum even though it was open today.

Instead I tracked down the monument to the hundreds of miners who died in the dozens of mining explosions and collapses in the shameful situation that passed for coal-mining here from about 1820 until just a few years ago.

If you know Peggy Seeger’s song Springhill Mining Disaster – made famous by U2 – then that is about one of the explosions here.

Next stop was Amherst to look for something interesting and really I must have been asleep the two times I’ve passed through here and not noticed anything worth photographing.

Apart from the fact that it’s a beautiful sandstone-built town, there’s tons of other stuff that’s well-worth seeing.

I was having health issues both of the times I came here and that’s my excuse anyway.

When I was here in 2003 I went to visit Fort Beausejour – the second-last bastion of the French army in Canada, not the last one (despite what most history books tell you – that dubious honour belongs to Fort Gaspereaux across the isthmus).

Here they hung on grimly to a toehold at the head of the Bay of Fundy as the French possessions all around them crumbled away into nothing, and eventually they too were swept away with the tide.

The British built a fort – Fort Lawrence – about 5 miles away from Fort Beausejour in order to blockade the latter and so I went in search of that.

It appears that this is in fact the site of the Nova Scotia Tourist Board offices and once I had realised that, it wasn’t all that difficult to track down. It’s not easy to miss all of those flags fluttering away up there.

From up on the heights I noticed what looked like early Acadian dykes across the Tantramarre marshes. The Acadians had done their best to drain the marshes and ended up with, what one commentator called “the largest hayfield in the world”.

So I had a wander out across the flats and, lo and behold, indeed they were, complete with a handpainted sign, displaying the Acadian flag. That’s the “Stella Maris” there on the pale blue background.

In the 19th Century, technology began to catch up with human ambition. And one of the ambitions was to make a short-cut across the Chignecto isthmus between the Strait of Northumberland and the Bay of Fundy so that ships would save days of sailing time and all the risks of circumnavigating the Canso Strait.

Someone had the idea of building a ship railway, where ships would sail into a canal and then be loaded onto railway trucks in order to be transported to the other side of the isthmus.

But just as technology made this a feasible proposition, making larger ships became more feasible too and the ship railway was overwhelmed by events.

Work had actually begun but was soon abandoned. Nevertheless there still remains considerable evidence of the earthworks and I managed to track them down too. This would have been quite an impressive achievement had it been completed, judging by what remains.

Whenever I see this sign, I always end up laughing, even though I know that I shouldn’t. Coming from an oppressed minority myself, I can understand the feelings that minorities have about defending themselves and their cultures. But this sign is the kind of thing that brings this policy into disrepute.

I often ask about this sign – what’s the purpose of the “Nouvelle Ecosse”?. I’m always told that Canada has a policy of bilingualism (except in Quebec where their Anglophone minority is oppressed much more than the French minority ever was, but that’s another issue) and so every public sign in English has to be translated into French.

And I always wish that I had a camera handy to photograph their faces when I explain to them that “Nova Scotia” is Latin, not English, and so under the terms of the bilingual policy, there needs to be an English translation.

I’m now in Port Elgin just down the road.

Port Elgin is famous for its hand-cranked (so much for modern technology in the 1890s) pivoting railway bridge that moved so that ships could enter the harbour here.

Just on the edge of the town is not darkness but a motel, and next to the motel are the remains of Fort Gaspereaux. This is where i’ll be staying the night (the motel, not the remains of the fort).

There’s also the Confederation Bridge, the world’s longest bridge across iced-up waters. I saw that in 2003 but taking a photo of that with a compact digital was … errr … interesting so I’m going to do it again.

I hope that it’s still standing – I don’t seem to have much luck with bridges over iced-up waters – and that will be effectively my tourism over. It’s all downhill from here.

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Monday 25th October 2010 – I’M IN A BAD MOOD AGAIN.

Yes – I went into Truro today.

Now if Truro were ever famous for just one thing it would be the Teachers’ Training College. If you have been following my journey you will know that Nova Scotia is a province of mainly small villages in isolated situations and until the road-building process that started in 1918 and is still not yet finished these villages had no connection to any other.

But if you can’t bring the children to education the province realised that it needed to bring education to the children and in 1876 it created a small College in Truro to train teachers to educate children in the wilderness.

These teachers, once they had qualified, were sent to these isolated villages, lodging with parents and teaching children in empty fishing sheds and generally integrating into the village to which they had been sent. And this programme continued until 1960.

The college itself is a magnificent building crowned with a copper dome and spire, and features as the centrepiece of the Truro Heritage poster. And when I came here in 2003 I had a quick look for the building but couldn’t find it.

However today, with more time on my hands, I wandered around until I found it. And I had to find it too, because the people whom I asked, including the lady in the Tourist Office, knew nothing about it.

So here’s the building – the most significant in Truro and probably the most influential in Nova Scotia.

And the reason I couldn’t find it is that there is a huge concrete bunker – a public library – right in front of the building, built on the lawn, and a huge modern building – the police station – built in the old courtyard (this photo was taken around the back).

And of course the copper dome and spire have gone – sold for scrap, I shouldn’t wonder.

The building has been abandoned for probably 30 years and there’s a notice on the wall – “The Truro City Council is actively seeking new opportunities for this building”. So how about using the money spent on the new police station to refurbish the building and moving the police into here? Or demolishing the library and ……

But I’m not going to go on and on about this because I’ll get more and more depressed. My opinions about Canadian preservation efforts is starting to sink to the same depths as those of the USA. Or of France. Or of the UK. People no longer have any pride in their heritage.

So to cheer myself up I went in search of what may well be the oldest intact steam railway locomotive in the world.

My route north out of Truro took me along Highway 311 and Highway 326 took me over the watershed between south-western Nova Scotia and north-eastern Nova Scotia and I encountered some views that were truly beautiful.

However, it also took me into a load of traffic as you can see and I’m not at all used to this. Still, you can’t have everything, I suppose.

You can’t have this either, because the owner has no interest whatever in parting with it, although Strawberry Moose has a good go at driving it.

It’s basically a standard 1930s Ford 2-ton chassis with twin rear wheels, a single-wheel front and a Ford V8 flathead (sidevalve) engine and formerly belonged to a small paper mill out on the coast in British Columbia, a mill that was isolated from the main road network.

They built it themselves after a fire in the mill during the 1940s had caused considerable damage because they had no means of extinguishing it.

And the next fire, in 1994, he fire engine had been out of use for so long that it wouldn’t start and so the mill burnt down again. Consequently they junked it and the present owner rescued it and, having fixed it, drove it back here.

At least, that cheered me up considerably.

I eventually tracked down my steam locomotive, thanks to the owner of the fire engine who put me right.

A group of engineers have liberated it from its depressing situation on a plinth outside in all kinds of weather and, having restored it to something resembling working order, it’s now in the Nova Scotia Museum of Industry and I was lucky enough to be allowed in to see it.

The locomotive is called Albion and came to Nova Scotia from Newcastle upon Tyne in 1854.

For a long time it was considered that 1854 was the date of manufacture, but I would find this hard to believe without convincing evidence. If you compare this design with any other design of 1854 and the evolution has been considerable.

I’m not going to go into a long discussion here because I have expounded at considerable length elsewhere, where you can read at great length exactly what I think about this locomotive.

What is comforting about this is that the people who, while they might not know exactly what it is that they have, are fully aware of the fact that they are in possession of something that is truly special and they have gone to considerable lengths to take care of it. That can only be commended.

And that cheered me up considerably too

Having been bundled out of the museum with indecent haste because it was closing time, I wandered off to have a look at New Glasgow.

This was another town with quite an impressive past, growing rich on all of the industry and coal mining that took place in the vicinity, but now all of this is long-gone and the town is a shadow of its former self.

There were houses on sale here for as little as $26,000 which, for a European such as myself, is an astonishing price. You couldn’t buy a garage for that in the UK, never mind a house.

That down there is a new theatre, so if you did come here to live, there would be something to entertain you.

But on the site of the theatre and its car park, between 1821 and 1918, there were 5 shipyards and a total of 210 sailing ships were built there. The largest was one of 1400 tons, would you believe.

The ships were built by local men using local materials and from here they went out to sail the world. You would never believe that now.

You’ve all seen this before. This is the Lionstone Motel up the road in Pictou and I stayed here in 2003.

Time was marching on and I didn’t have time to look for another motel (I believe in spreading my largesse about) so I came back here. No reason why not, after all, I was quite comfortable here last time.

The restaurant that had served me a decent meal last time had closed down, so I bought some chips and went to look at the Bowater paper mill – one can’t escape the smell of wet paper around here.

With a better camera, this photo worked much better than the one that I took in 2003.

So having accomplished that task, I went to heat up some beans in my slow cooker. Pour them over my chips and I’ll have a meal fit for a king.

-2

Sunday 24th October 2010 – I ALMOST FORGOT TO BLOG AGAIN …

… “shame” – ed … but I remembered just in time.

So here in the comfort and privacy of a cheap ($60) but comfortable motel in Truro where I smuggled in my slow cooker and coffee machine, I can bring things up to date.

And I’m whacked. I’ve been on my feet from 9:30 until 17:00 and I’ve tramped everywhere all around Halifax and Dartmouth and the only time that I sat down was on the ferry across the Strait between the two cities.

And I’m still in love with the city

Today I tramped around the two towns and saw much more than I have ever seen before, and the more I see of the place the more I like it. I could really settle in a place such as this. Mind you, the weather has been astonishingly good – probably the best day since I’ve been in Canada and I deserve it too – the two other times I’ve been here, they have both been in snowstorms.

And if you are wandering why there are no photos, the answer is that they have all been moved. In the intervening time, I’ve completely written up my notes about my visit to Halifax and you can read them at your leisure.

I finished my visit on a poignant note – to track down the site of the legendary Pier 6. Back in 1917 the convoys to the battlefields of France assembled here. And the harbour was a busy place so a one-way system was operated similar to what is operated in the English Channel today. And as a small convoy was leaving port a ship came steaming in down the wrong channel. A collision was inevitable and sparks from the grating metal set fire to the errant ship.

Because the ship was not flying the special red pennant that it was supposed to fly, no-one knew that it was an ammunition ship, loaded with over 5,000 tons of explosive. And the crew, instead of opening the sea cocks to sink the ship as they are obliged to do when an ammunition ship catches fire – they simply abandoned ship, which then slowly drifted into the harbour, blazing away furiously.

Puzzled by this bizarre behaviour, crowds of people flocked to the shoreline to see the spectacle, and as the ship collided with pier 6, it exploded.

2,000 people were killed and many many thousands were injured in what is the largest non-nuclear explosion the world has ever seen. A primary school behind the pier was obliterated and no-one there survived, and they picked up bits of Halifax from gardens 60 miles away.

So armed with a little information and a couple of useful pointers I managed to track down the site. It’s now covered by the Halifax Shipbuilding Yard so there isn’t anything to see (mind you, after an explosion of that magnitide there wouldn’t be anything to see anyway) but it was something I had to do.

And tomorrow I’m going for my third attempt to take a photo of Amherst and also to look for the oldest steam locomotive in Canada.

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Saturday 23rd October 2010 – YOU WOULD THINK …

… that I would have learnt my lesson by now, but not a bit of it.

Does anyone still remember my voyage around Wyoming in 2002 and how I hardly had any sleep the first night due to having chosen, in the dark, a motel right next to a railway line?

So here I am, on the outskirts of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and there’s the Canadian Pacific main line between the industrial centres of central Canada and the largest port on Canada’s eastern seaboard, and it passes right underneath my window.

My excuse, back in 2002, was that it was dark, so I’m going to have to think of a pretty good excuse for this one though as it was broad daylight when I arrived here.

But then again, at the first place (a cheap B&B), no-one answered (they had clearly heard all about me). The second place was full. The third place – I took one look at it, made my excuses and left. Yes, even I have principles and scruples even when travelling on a low budget.

And so a convenient motel with kitchen unit at $69, and that will have to do. At least I can cook some food and that will save me something.

However, this is where I spent last night and I will say now that if I can ever find better value than this bed-and breakfast for just $45 per night all-in then I shall move in permanently.

Like everyone else that I have ever encountered on any of my voyages around the Maritimes (with the exception of those people in that museum – The Rooms in St John’s), the proprietors were extremely friendly, helpful and knowledgeable.

Furthermore, although they were Anglophones, the guy here had been a copper in Québec and so was perfectly bilingual and also had some kind of empathy with the Francophone communities around here.

They moved here about 30 years ago and in that time they reckon that not a week has gone by without someone leaving the area to move elsewhere, such has been the consequence of the collapse of the economy following the decline of the fishing industry. They recounted a long, almost endless list of local businesses that had gone – the loss of the local grocery stores being the most painful and now they have to travel miles for their food supplies.

It sounded every bit as depressing as the stories that I heard when I bought my house to the Auvergne in 1997

Now I have seen some strange place-names on my travels, that’s for sure, but the one just here is definitely the one that takes the biscuit to date.

It intrigued me, why they had singled this island out for special attention by giving it this particular name. The idea that there might be drunken islands lurching around in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast here was rather a sobering thought.

But then again, maybe not. This coast is infamous for the amount of maritime accidents, collisions and sinkings of vessels and all that kind of thing, and that might explain it.

I had another leisurely drive along the coast today and nothing remarkable stood out (well, not that I am admitting to anyway) but I did encounter a mystery.

At a wharf alongside a river in a small town there was a ship (well, I think that it was a ship) that looked like it had just been raised from Full Fathom 5 after 50 years in the deeps. A rusting old hulk would have been embarrassed to have moored alongside it

So, with the silliest question being the one that is never asked, I headed off to the library. After all, librarians know everything.
“Ohhhh – that thing” she said. “They sailed it into here about 4 years ago ….”
“4? Or 40?”
“Definitely 4 or so. And it sailed in from Newfoundland” She replied. “And when it docked the people aboard ‘scattered like rats’ and they were gone. The police searched the ship thinking that there might be drugs aboard but they found nothing at all”

“So what’s it doing moored up there?”
“No-one knows” she replied. “But it’s a private wharf and as long as the mooring is paid the owner of the wharf doesn’t care about it”
“So who’s paying the mooring fees?” – I mean, you have to ask the question.
“Now there’s a good question” she repled.
And good question as it might be, she didn’t give me any answer.

What has taken my by surprise just here is that I came this way in the winter of 2003 when I was quite ill, and I made no comment whatsoever about the railway museum at Musquodoboit. Was it not here then? I ask myself. How would I not notice a railway museum? I really must have been ill.

Another thing that has taken me by surprise here is that for once in a provincial Canadian railway museum there is actually a locomotive. I mean it’s not actually a locomotive in the same category as a Pacific 4-6-2 or a Garrett articulated 2-8-8-2, but it’s here and not being turned into a thousand baked bean tins and that’s something, I suppose.

I’m having to really think if I have seen another engine before at a wayside place like this, and I can’t say that I have. There was the steam locomotive that was a stationary exhibit on the waterfront at Windsor but that was about it I reckon – "it was as recently as Baie Comeau actually" …ed

And so here I am in Halifax. I’ve been here twice before, in 2001 and 2003 and on both occasions I was rather ill, and so this evening I’ve been out taking pics – after all the ones that I took on those occasions with cheap compact digitals just didn’t work out at all.

This photo is much better.

It was taken from up on the Angus MacDonald Bridge, the bridge that goes across the Straits between Halifax and Dartmouth. That’s Halifax down there, with the Canadian Navy’s Eastern seaboard base in the foreground.

It really was quite eerie walking around here in the dark retracing the steps that I had taken in my previous visits when I was trying to take pictures like this armed with nothing more than a cheap basic compact digital.

Here, with a top-of-the-range DSLR and an optional-extra zoom lens that cost a lot of money at last I’ve been able to make some of the pics look like something useful.

And if you want to see more of the photos that I took, your wish is my command

-2

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality