Day Eight and Nine (August 13, 14)
Day Eight
Time to turn the car and head back towards home… but there is one more musical adventure to experience yet, and that’s not for two more days. Today will be a day of travel.
We left Lake Aylesford mid-afternoon on Sunday, and drove up through Truro, and then headed up Hiway 4 and Route 307 towards Wallace, and the Atlantic Ocean.
Perhaps I should have researched my adventure a bit more in advance, but I’m not sure that if I had, that it could have worked out much better than it did. As we headed west along the ocean, we encountered numerous small villages, and soon the Acadian flag became a prominent feature, along with businesses and houses with the name “Le Blanc” prominently displayed. A sure sign that we are traveling through an Acadian community.
There are regions of Acadian dominated settlements throughout Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. When the Acadians began to return in the late 1700s and early 1800s, they were initially discouraged by governments from forming large communities. It turns out that the Baie St Anne region, where Saulnierville and the bluegrass festival we attended on Saturday are located is one such region. Bouctouche and Rogersville are part of another such community.
Cap-Pele and Shediac are part of another, and there we were, driving through, stopping for a sumptuous seafood dinner at Chez Camille. This whole region is a little corner of paradise.
Day Nine
My traveling companion must now head home on his own, via VIA Rail. Mark signed up on this adventure with full knowledge that its mission was very focused, and that many other features that the average tourist would want to see and experience would not likely be a part of this adventure (Magnetic Hill, Bay of Fundy National Park, Halifax and the Citadel, Peggy’s Cove, etc). And they weren’t and Mark was not disappointed.
He did manage to keep his focus more “omni directional” as we drove along, though, and this did balance my “hyper-cardiod” perspective on what received our attention. Thank you Mark for sharing my adventure!!
Thanks also to your "Google-enhanced brain", courtesy Nokia and its marvelous cellphone/video recorder/audio recorder/everything-except-the-kitchen-sink device. So long as we had a cell phone signal, we could see via Google Map where we were, and where we needed to get to and how to go about getting there.
Ben Steeper became my new companion for a while on Monday, as I visited music stores, theatres and cultural centres in Moncton to find out what and where I could go to experience Acadian music on the most important day of their calendar year, August 15, the anniversary of the beginning of the deportations 251 years ago.
That night, the two elder Steeper children, Matt and Becka, allowed me to turn their home into a recording studio. Matt is a gifted composer and performer, and Becka has a magical voice that I am sure some day will delight many (over her dad’s dead body).
Time to turn the car and head back towards home… but there is one more musical adventure to experience yet, and that’s not for two more days. Today will be a day of travel.
We left Lake Aylesford mid-afternoon on Sunday, and drove up through Truro, and then headed up Hiway 4 and Route 307 towards Wallace, and the Atlantic Ocean.
Perhaps I should have researched my adventure a bit more in advance, but I’m not sure that if I had, that it could have worked out much better than it did. As we headed west along the ocean, we encountered numerous small villages, and soon the Acadian flag became a prominent feature, along with businesses and houses with the name “Le Blanc” prominently displayed. A sure sign that we are traveling through an Acadian community.
There are regions of Acadian dominated settlements throughout Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. When the Acadians began to return in the late 1700s and early 1800s, they were initially discouraged by governments from forming large communities. It turns out that the Baie St Anne region, where Saulnierville and the bluegrass festival we attended on Saturday are located is one such region. Bouctouche and Rogersville are part of another such community.
Cap-Pele and Shediac are part of another, and there we were, driving through, stopping for a sumptuous seafood dinner at Chez Camille. This whole region is a little corner of paradise.
Day Nine
My traveling companion must now head home on his own, via VIA Rail. Mark signed up on this adventure with full knowledge that its mission was very focused, and that many other features that the average tourist would want to see and experience would not likely be a part of this adventure (Magnetic Hill, Bay of Fundy National Park, Halifax and the Citadel, Peggy’s Cove, etc). And they weren’t and Mark was not disappointed.
He did manage to keep his focus more “omni directional” as we drove along, though, and this did balance my “hyper-cardiod” perspective on what received our attention. Thank you Mark for sharing my adventure!!
Thanks also to your "Google-enhanced brain", courtesy Nokia and its marvelous cellphone/video recorder/audio recorder/everything-except-the-kitchen-sink device. So long as we had a cell phone signal, we could see via Google Map where we were, and where we needed to get to and how to go about getting there.
Ben Steeper became my new companion for a while on Monday, as I visited music stores, theatres and cultural centres in Moncton to find out what and where I could go to experience Acadian music on the most important day of their calendar year, August 15, the anniversary of the beginning of the deportations 251 years ago.
That night, the two elder Steeper children, Matt and Becka, allowed me to turn their home into a recording studio. Matt is a gifted composer and performer, and Becka has a magical voice that I am sure some day will delight many (over her dad’s dead body).
posted by Chestnut Hall Music at 6:46 PM
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