Nova Scotia is beautiful. This is the view from the patio at the house we rented of St. Margaret's Bay - actually a subset of that bay - it's Frenchman's Village Bay.
People here are pretty universally 'house proud', so even the human habitation doesn't spoil the loveliness of this corner of the world. However, it's also hardscrabble in the same way every place without a robust economic base is. Yes, there is tourism, and yes, there is still lobstering and some fishing, but otherwise...
The woman whose house we rented here was rushing off to a board meeting the day we arrived. When I inquired idly, "What board?" She replied, "It's a charitable organization. This place may not look it, but Nova Scotia is actually a poor province filled with very proud people who conceal their needs." After that brief conversation, I began to look more closely at what I was seeing as we drove around southern Nova Scotia, and I came to the conclusion she was right. It has made us more generous in our dealings with people here as they met our tourist agenda.
I have had incredible food here. It's a given you have to LOVE fish and shellfish in particular. Well, duh. I've missed this wonderful fresh fish. It's just not available in the landlocked world; I don't care how fast you freeze it for shipment. The Atlantic Maritimes do teach you the fifty ways to eat lobster - well, maybe not FIFTY, but you get my drift. So far, I've had (1) lobster rolls - OK, several; (2) lobster Caesar salad; (3) lobster wraps - yes, more than one of those; (4) lobster pasta; (5) lazy man's lobster - whole lobster somebody else wrestles out of the shells - did this twice; (6) lobster bisque, (7) lobster mac and cheese, and, my favorite, (8) the lobster cocktail, then, in Newfoundland, I had (9) lobster, scallops and polenta - kind of the Maritime take on the current craze for 'shrimp & grits'. I have missed the lobster pot pie, the lobster club sandwich, and the lobster eggs benedict; however, I AM still in the Maritimes.
Of course, I've eaten fried clams - they're always fried 'whole' here and bowls of clam chowder. There's even something called "The Chowder Trail" which is accessorized by a blank stamp book. You're supposed to tote your stamp book around all of Nova Scotia, so you can paste stamps obtained from the various restaurants in to your book as you eat your chowdery way across Nova Scotia. (What an complicated, silly idea! Some tourist promoter's harebrained scheme, no doubt.)
Haddock is the big eating fish here akin to catfish in Texas. I've had a couple of amazing haddock dishes including a cajun blackened haddock sandwich perfectly prepared. If you're not jealous now, you should be because these folks know fish preparation just like the New Orleanians do.
Another unlooked for plus is you can get MAPLE stuff here. Maple hard candies shaped like little maple leaves are some of my favorite sweets. I found I like them better than the formed maple sugar candies. There's still no maple cotton candy, but that was probably just a New Hampshire thing. At least I'm full up on syrup. I've still got some frozen in my mother-in-law's freezer, so I won't have to carry a jug full of maple syrup along with us on this trip.
There's a lot of very, very good art in Nova Scotia. (We actually bought a new painting for the AZ house from a gallery down the road from our rented house.) I found a new to me artist whose work I will be looking for as we cross Canada. His name is Joe Norris, and he's a primitive. At least that's what I've seen so far. This is my favorite piece of several I saw in the Nova Scotia Gallery of Art (the island's premiere art museum).
I know, I know - everybody is thinking, "Oh, Jan, that piece is so silly. Are you sure it's ART?" I'm telling you it has a charming whimsy which is very, very difficult to achieve in this type of art.
There is, of course, breathtakingly lovely scenery everywhere you look here. I've snapped endless pictures of it.
And, it's spring again for us. The rhododendrons are in full roar here, and if you've never seen these bushes, well, let's just say they make azaleas look like poor relations in scanty clothes.
The man-made best sightseeing venue is The Citadel hands down, but the most interesting place I visited in southern Nova Scotia was an example of the early industrial revolution. This unassuming place is called the Wile Carding Museum, and it's a small red house which looks like a fishing cabin. At least that was my first impression as I walked up to the place. I thought I'd see the tired old pictures with too many words and be done with the whole thing in fifteen minutes.
Oh, no. It wasn't like that at all. This is an actual early industrial factory which operated from 1860 to 1968. "Carding" is preparing wool to be spun into thread or made into batting. What made this place so interesting is the original machines are still in place. This was seeing the early industrial revolution come to life. Even more amazing was being able to walk up and see the machines and touch them. The docent was really well informed, and one reason for her knowledge was the museum curators were able to interview people who actually worked on the machines.
Apparently, Mr. Wile, the owner, was a hard taskmaster expecting his 14 to 16 year old female workers to work 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, for the queenly sum of $2 a day. He installed an indoor privy, not for his worker's comfort, but to cut down on the amount of rest time his employees were able to take. There was no dinner break; they ate standing at the machines they operated.
The carding machinery had no automatic shut-offs or any other safety features at all. Ironically, one of the worst jobs in the factory was working fat by hand into the wool prior to the carding. The stinking, rancid, fat was obtained from the tanning factory down the road. The farmer was expected to present washed wool - wool with the lanolin washed out of it - to the factory since the natural wool lanolin was sticky and jammed the machines. However, with no oil in the wool, it became brittle when run through the machines necessitating the rancid fat being added.
The machines ran the fat saturated wool through a series of rollers each with a smaller and smaller sets of 'teeth. The finished product was either batting or a inch in diameter rope roll of wool - ready for quilts or for spinning into thread. At the height of wool production in Nova Scotia, there were about fifty of these 'factories'. Mr. Wile may have been hard on his employees, but he had a reputation for honesty. Farmers came from far away to let HIS factory card their wool since he returned the farmer's same wool to him after processing. Some factories pawned off inferior wool back to the farmers, keeping the superior wool to sell themselves.
It's somewhat of a miracle the building is still standing considering the most of these 'factories' (about the size of your living room/dining room combination) burned to the ground since the processing of wool was so flammable. The whole process at the Wile Carding Factory was powered by a water wheel at a natural small waterfall area in the river.
So, you can see why I was so excited when I left this place, and the unlooked for lagniappe was the duck family in the upper pond.
As we left Nova Scotia, I dreaded the eight hour ferry crossing to Newfoundland. I was sure I'd be barfing or fighting not to barf the entire trip. I feared we would have a small shabby cabin that smelled like feet with wooden bunks and a communal bathroom down the hall. Instead, we had a cruise ship type cabin with private bath, and a smooth crossing most of which I slept through. Just goes to show you, worry is such a waste of time and energy. Not a single one of my fears came true. On to Newfoundland.
As always, if you want to see ALL the pictures:
And just for good measure - can't remember if I included the Public Gardens in Halifax in the last blog - here is that set
