It was a dreary day to leave PEI, but there was no reason to stay. The Aussie couple caught a ride with me to Nova Scotia. M, the Canadian girl was getting off near Highway 3 because she was going to Souris to catch the ferry to Iles de la Madelaine to take a plane back to Montreal. B decided at the last moment to catch a ride with me to NS. So they all piled into my car. It would only be cramped until M got off.
The ferry ride was longer than from Cape Tormentine to Borden, but I disliked doubling back so I felt it was worth the extra time and cost. The ride was unremarkable and weather even more dreary by the time we reached the mainland. Close to lunchtime, I left the Aussies on the main highway to Halifax, near a diner. They gave me their address in Australia, in case I was ever in that part of the world again. B got off near the Canso Causeway.
Once I reached the causeway, the scenery got more interesting. Northern NS is Cape Breton Island, joined to the mainland by a 2 km causeway. What's more the island has a partial salt lake, the Bras d'Or, running through the centre. This as you may imagine, makes the scenery magnificent.
I was trying to reach the Seal Island hostel before dark. It was no problem, but first there was a diversion, the Alexander Graham Bell national historic site.
The museum is in Baddeck and really interesting. Bell tinkered with many things besides telephones. It was an age when inventors didn't work for big corporations.
Near Baddeck I picked up an interesting hitch hiker, carrying a briefcase. He was a worker from near North Sydney (NS) who had been down in Halifax for a medical checkup. He told me how much he liked the Canadian welfare system. I later found out how concentrated the population of NS is in and around Halifax. Only about 10 towns in NS have a population of over 10,000.
The Seal Island hostel was actually a camp ground with one building set aside for hostellers. There was no heating. I made dinner from the rest of my provisions and some that I bought from the camp store. When you shop for oneself, invariably the portions are too large and you eat the same thing (haddock, in my case) for a couple of days. I still had the haddock when I reached Halifax and it was about to really go bad then so I made a stew of it.
Just before the hostel was a low hill about 300 metres high. The overview of the Bras d'Or was magnificent. It was also the most beautiful hour of the day, dusk. By nightfall, a motorcyclist I had met in Campbelton arrived too. I had a magnificent view of the stars. The Milky Way could be plainly seen. Unfortunately I did not have a star map handy and it was cold so I crawled into my sleeping bag and dozed off.
I still hadn't visited Charlottetown so I headed downtown, parked the car and strolled around.
Charlottetown had a pleasant provincial feel, a place where life proceeds at an unhurried pace.
I also visited a nearby market that morning.
The marina at Charlottetown.
Even so, Charlottetown was small enough that I was finished touring by lunch and had an afternoon in hand.
Looking at the map and the list of events, I noticed there was an Arcadian festival going on near Abrams-Village. They were demonstrating traditional skills such as woodchopping and horse team pull.
There was a small crafts shop (artisanat) near the fairgrounds. They had some interesting objects. An old quilt came with the story that one day the artist saw a plane for the first time in the sky. It made such an impression on her that she recorded her feelings with quiltwork.
Because the original Arcadians were a small group of families, a few names predominate. It seemed like every second family was called Arsenault, for example.
Nearby Cape Egmont afforded a fantastic view of PEI cliffs, these ones facing the mainland.
It took a bit of work to find the gravel road to the lookout.
After dinner, at the hostel, the German girl claimed that she knew Chinese numbers. She showed us various arrangements of matchsticks and named the corresponding numbers. It was an old trick. One by one people catch on that the presenter is just making it up and pretend to agree with the numbers called out. The last person is the butt of the joke.
Part of the reason why my Aussie friends wanted to drive out to the countryside was to see Green Gables. I'd never heard of Anne of the Green Gables or Lucy Maud Montgomery and apparently I've missed out on a childhood treasure, similar to being ignorant of Winnie the Pooh.
Green Gables is a restored house where Lucy's cousins lived. The character of Anne and her surroundings are based upon the author's childhood visits to this farm.
There is a serene, wooded walk on the grounds where Lucy drew inspiration for her novels' setting.
The Anne series of novels has given impetus to the development of the tourism in PEI. It seems that the novels are very popular in translation in Japan. Sort of fits in with the Japanese penchant for fictional characters that stand out (Anne was a redhead, Pippi Longstocking was another). Sociologists can have a field day comparing this with the conformist nature of their society.
PEI can be divided into 3 regions and we were in the middle. We took the Blue Heron Drive. The red soil is a remarkable feature of PEI landscape. It's due to iron oxides.
To the north near Cavendish is a national park, set up to protect the dunes that protect PEI's soil from being blown away.
It was very windy but the jagged coastline was very scenic.
Fort Amherst historic site tells the story of the struggle between the French and the English in the early 1700's.
The poor Arcadian farmers got caught in between the two warring powers and their subsequent expulsion became a cause célèbre. American poet Longfellow based his epic poem Evangeline on this historical event.
Some Arcadians settled in Louisiana and became Cajuns but many later sneaked back or were allowed back into the maritime provinces.
Arcadians have been separated from France for so long that their language retains features that have died out in standard French.
The daylight gave a good view of the bridge where I crossed from Quebec Province. The morning was shivering cold. Fortunately the hostel was heated. Crystal clear blue skies. I decided to drive southwards along the coast to Cape Tormentine, where a ferry crossed the 14 km to Borden, Prince Edward Island. (Note from the future: The ferry was replaced by Confederation Bridge in 1997.) The day warmed up gently and I was in good spirits. I didn't even mind waiting 10 minutes for railcars to clear a crossing.
At a farm stand I picked up a few ears of ble d'inde (corn) and a jar of strawberry jam. At a rest stop I decided to find out how tasty fresh corn was. Fired up the propane stove and boiled them on the spot. No salt, no nothing. They were the most delicious corn I had for a while.
The guide books warned about the long queues for the PEI ferry in peak season. That day there was no problem. It must have close to the end of the season.
I arrived at the PEI hostel close to 7 pm. It was a large green barn near the UPEI campus. PEI is Canada's smallest province. The Confederation had its roots here but ironically PEI was a late joiner. When they stick This Week on PEI on your windscreen while you wait for the ferry, you know this is a tourist spot. Fortunately, Canada is so spacious that you can always avoid the tourists and pretend you aren't part of the problem.
The PEI hostel was unremarkable, but the characters I met were most memorable. An Aussie couple, M and M, were looking for someone to share a ride with around the island tomorrow. I offered to drive them and split fuel costs. They had come from Bar Harbor, Maine (Bear Hebber, as the natives called it, they said). They would be going back to Boston and other destinations in the States before returning to WA.
S was a student from Glasgow who would begin studies at UPEI come fall and was staying at the hostel until the dorm became ready. B was a salty old coot from Canso, Nova Scotia who seemed to like drifting around. P and J were social studies students from Ottawa on a fling before term started. I met them again in Halifax later. M, a German girl, was feeling somewhat homesick. M, a French-Canadian girl, lived in Montreal.
I had to make a decision: Nova Scotia or Gaspésie. (Gaspésie is the peninsula south of the St. Lawrence River where Quebec Province meets the Atlantic.) Labrador and Newfoundland were definitely out of the question, given the limited time. In the end I decided it was Halifax or bust. So in the early morning rain, I started towards New Brunswick. The only reasonable place to stop was Campbellton, where the youth hostel is a lighthouse.
Highway 20 east is unremarkable, the land gently rolls around the Fleuve St. Laurent. I began to lose sight of the opposite bank of the St. Laurent. At Mont Joli I turned south towards New Brunswick. The road ran along the Matapédia River. This valley is very scenic. But the rain and mist were so thick that at some spots I couldn't see more than 200 metres ahead.
I wished I had more cassette tapes, I like Flora Purim but I was getting sick of listening to Nada Será Como Antes for the twentieth time. But what can you do, even a dozen is a lot to carry.
I also lost an hour crossing to the Atlantic time zone, but I didn't expect crowds at this hostel. I heard French at the dépanneur. They spoke English with equal facility. There were half a dozen other people at the hostel. Troy, a clear-faced youth managed it. It was quite small, located at the base of a lighthouse overlooking the bridge across the head of the Matapédia River. It is one of a pair of lighthouses. Vessels can navigate into the harbour by keeping the pair in line. It was also the last night of the season for this hostel.
All of the people here came by motorcycle or car. There are jokes about NB in Canada. If you tell your friends you intend to go to NB for a vacation they smile at you sympathetically, as if you were an idiot. Who wants to travel NB? Well, the scenery is good in places, but tourism isn't well developed. People here just, well, get along. The hostel management is so sure they won't be getting any more Afghanis or New Zealanders that they have already written the totals for those countries in the summary sheet. While we were having dinner, Troy relayed the occupancy figures over the phone to his supervisor. The decision came back: shut down tomorrow. This hostel was very clean and neat, the best hostel of the whole trip.
Quebec City is ideal for a self-guided walking tour. The guide book was very detailed.
I scoured almost every inch of the old city.
I liked the French feel of the city. I missed Europe after living for a couple of years in the US.
I explored both the inside and outside of the citadel.
Imposing buildings on the hill.
Good place for a double-barrelled lunch?
On the Plains of Abraham the British and the French had one of their wars of domination. Both commanders were mortally wounded. I sat in the park and finished writing the postcards I bought in Toronto, but these didn't get mailed until I reached Halifax, half a lifetime later.
There is a lot of history in this old city. Quebecers are proud of living in a world heritage city.
Back at the hostel, I was asked translate to French by a USAn who wanted to play his guitar and was worried about the disturbing the black guy next to him. So I took a deep breath and did my best. It turned out the guy was from Spain. At first he thought the USAn wanted him to play a tune and pleaded ignorance of music. I don't know if I got the message through.
I had dinner in the old city with H, a cyclist from Toronto. He had just quit his current job. He enjoyed travel too and had been labelled as a black sheep by his parents.
A girl in the hostel was sitting there waiting for someone. Apparently her friend was supposed to come from Montreal to meet her. (It turned out later that her friend had gone to the other Quebec City hostel and not finding her friend there, had gone home in disappointment.)
A group of us got into a conversation about what we do. One was a demoiselle from Belgium, very pretty and self-assured. Her family lived in Montreal. She wanted to do law. Somehow the conversation got around to which Louis was the Sun King. She insisted that she must know the answer and went upstairs to fetch her book. Most determined lass.
The ferry ride was longer than from Cape Tormentine to Borden, but I disliked doubling back so I felt it was worth the extra time and cost. The ride was unremarkable and weather even more dreary by the time we reached the mainland. Close to lunchtime, I left the Aussies on the main highway to Halifax, near a diner. They gave me their address in Australia, in case I was ever in that part of the world again. B got off near the Canso Causeway.
Once I reached the causeway, the scenery got more interesting. Northern NS is Cape Breton Island, joined to the mainland by a 2 km causeway. What's more the island has a partial salt lake, the Bras d'Or, running through the centre. This as you may imagine, makes the scenery magnificent.
I was trying to reach the Seal Island hostel before dark. It was no problem, but first there was a diversion, the Alexander Graham Bell national historic site.
The museum is in Baddeck and really interesting. Bell tinkered with many things besides telephones. It was an age when inventors didn't work for big corporations.
Near Baddeck I picked up an interesting hitch hiker, carrying a briefcase. He was a worker from near North Sydney (NS) who had been down in Halifax for a medical checkup. He told me how much he liked the Canadian welfare system. I later found out how concentrated the population of NS is in and around Halifax. Only about 10 towns in NS have a population of over 10,000.
The Seal Island hostel was actually a camp ground with one building set aside for hostellers. There was no heating. I made dinner from the rest of my provisions and some that I bought from the camp store. When you shop for oneself, invariably the portions are too large and you eat the same thing (haddock, in my case) for a couple of days. I still had the haddock when I reached Halifax and it was about to really go bad then so I made a stew of it.
Just before the hostel was a low hill about 300 metres high. The overview of the Bras d'Or was magnificent. It was also the most beautiful hour of the day, dusk. By nightfall, a motorcyclist I had met in Campbelton arrived too. I had a magnificent view of the stars. The Milky Way could be plainly seen. Unfortunately I did not have a star map handy and it was cold so I crawled into my sleeping bag and dozed off.
