Day Six (August 11)
This day started off with travel. We left Utopia at the crack of dawn, and loaded up the car. My Honda is 13 years old, and has been the most reliable travel companion for all of that time… but this morning, I moved the car closer to the landing dock to load it up, leaving it parked on an incline. When I went to start it again, the engine flooded, and would not start. Mark and Jon tried to push the car up the incline to a level surface (with me inside foot ready near the brake paranoid that the car would roll backwards into the lake, making a minor problem into a very major one, not to mention possibly running over a friend or two), but that’s a heavy little car.
Jon dashed back to the camp to get his car keys, and a tow rope. We pulled the car up the hill, and manually started. We made it to the Saint John – Digby ferry at 9:00 am with some time to spare, and what’s an adventure without a few close calls… BTW, the federal government desires to shut down this ferry, this after the province spent millions on making the province easily accessable by modern roads that Ontario should envy. Hello? That ferry makes vacationing in NB and NS a treat, as you can easily tour both provinces in a big circle. I do wonder about 12:45 am booking choice though... I heard that on the last voyage, six cars took that ferry. Hmm...
On the boat, I worked away at the blog, and downloading an email from our next destination, a cottage in Kentsville, Nova Scotia. A friend of mine from Kitchener, David Hall, happened to be vacationing in NS at his wife Lilla’s family cottage, and offered us beds for a couple of nights. He sent us directions, and then told us that he would meet us on the road into the cottage, and hitch a ride with us.
Now, I am driving a little Honda Civic hatchback, loaded to the gills with recording and camping equipment. So, we tried to call David… aack! No answer. We did meet up with David on the way in, and through some creative packing, made a spot for him to curl up.
After unpacking our gear at the cottage on beautiful Lake Aylesford, we headed out for a tour of the region.
I am on a quest to learn what I can about the Acadian culture and people, and I should really have done some more research before I left Ontario. I would have known that just north east of Kentville was the place where the Acadian story virtually begins. When they first settled in Nova Scotia, they built dikes and reclaimed a huge section of marshland from the ocean. The land was rich in minerals and enabled the Acadians to flourish, but also made them the envy of the English.
When the French finally ceded control of the region to the English, some unscrupulous government officials forced the Acadians (French to the core) to leave the region by deporting them. The stories are horrendous, but not uncommon when one group of people fears and envies another (eastern Europe only a few years ago, or Canada and the Japanese during the war, and hopefully not Canada and the Muslims in the upcoming near future…).
There are virtually no Acadians in the region today… those who returned years after the deportation settled in other parts of the two provinces, and I am sure that memories of the injustice that was cruelly inflicted on them are very much at the heart of the Acadians.
After an excellent seafood dinner, we headed down to a small church in Port Williams, where a concert was being given by the Petric/Forget Duo, accordion and oboe. No Acadian connection here, but I offered to record the concert, and as it turned out, the program featured a work by Andrew Paul MacDonald. Andrew is a well-known Canadian composer, and a fellow graduate from the University of Western Ontario, and happened to be in attendance at the concert, as the performance of his work was a world-premiere. It was fun to reconnect.
Jon dashed back to the camp to get his car keys, and a tow rope. We pulled the car up the hill, and manually started. We made it to the Saint John – Digby ferry at 9:00 am with some time to spare, and what’s an adventure without a few close calls… BTW, the federal government desires to shut down this ferry, this after the province spent millions on making the province easily accessable by modern roads that Ontario should envy. Hello? That ferry makes vacationing in NB and NS a treat, as you can easily tour both provinces in a big circle. I do wonder about 12:45 am booking choice though... I heard that on the last voyage, six cars took that ferry. Hmm...
On the boat, I worked away at the blog, and downloading an email from our next destination, a cottage in Kentsville, Nova Scotia. A friend of mine from Kitchener, David Hall, happened to be vacationing in NS at his wife Lilla’s family cottage, and offered us beds for a couple of nights. He sent us directions, and then told us that he would meet us on the road into the cottage, and hitch a ride with us.
Now, I am driving a little Honda Civic hatchback, loaded to the gills with recording and camping equipment. So, we tried to call David… aack! No answer. We did meet up with David on the way in, and through some creative packing, made a spot for him to curl up.
After unpacking our gear at the cottage on beautiful Lake Aylesford, we headed out for a tour of the region.
I am on a quest to learn what I can about the Acadian culture and people, and I should really have done some more research before I left Ontario. I would have known that just north east of Kentville was the place where the Acadian story virtually begins. When they first settled in Nova Scotia, they built dikes and reclaimed a huge section of marshland from the ocean. The land was rich in minerals and enabled the Acadians to flourish, but also made them the envy of the English.
When the French finally ceded control of the region to the English, some unscrupulous government officials forced the Acadians (French to the core) to leave the region by deporting them. The stories are horrendous, but not uncommon when one group of people fears and envies another (eastern Europe only a few years ago, or Canada and the Japanese during the war, and hopefully not Canada and the Muslims in the upcoming near future…).
There are virtually no Acadians in the region today… those who returned years after the deportation settled in other parts of the two provinces, and I am sure that memories of the injustice that was cruelly inflicted on them are very much at the heart of the Acadians.
After an excellent seafood dinner, we headed down to a small church in Port Williams, where a concert was being given by the Petric/Forget Duo, accordion and oboe. No Acadian connection here, but I offered to record the concert, and as it turned out, the program featured a work by Andrew Paul MacDonald. Andrew is a well-known Canadian composer, and a fellow graduate from the University of Western Ontario, and happened to be in attendance at the concert, as the performance of his work was a world-premiere. It was fun to reconnect.
posted by Chestnut Hall Music at 9:07 PM
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