Coming Home

I have to plan how to get from Nova Scotia to New York for my flight home. It feels a bit like a puzzel - one wrong move and I might end up days or kilometres away from my destination. It has been a theme of my time here that public transport in the province is going down the pan Originally I thought it might work well to take the ferry from Yarmouth in the south, across to Maine in the US, but I soon find out that my guidebook is a few years out of date and this ferry no longer runs. This is contributing to the decline of Yarmouth, as they are losing tourists and business. I can get the train to New York, but this involves travelling 1000s of kilometres back into Canada via Montreal, which doesn't seem very appealing and this is also the route for the long-distance bus, which I hear is ceasing service before Christmas. It is a 'don't-start-from- here' kind of place. Perhaps the provincial government doesn't want tourist here, or maybe they don't want the locals to leave.  After doing some research it seems that a flight is the only viable option. Actually it turns out to be two flights; the first to Pennsylvania and then a really nice 1/2 hour one in a little propeller plane to La Guardia airport. I was last here nearly 5 years ago, for a great reunion with my lovely college friends and I feel a little sad, that it hasn't worked out to see Lindsey again this time. It is a clear sunny day as we fly in across New York harbour and the Statue of Liberty raises a hand to wave. I can see the whole of Manhatten - the space where the Twin Towers were; the Empire State Building and Central Park. Then we fly up the Hudson River before looping back round to land at La Guardia airport, where the runways seem to be floating on the water.

Plane to New York

 

I take a shuttlebus to transfer from La Guardia to John F Kennedy airport and then settle down for a 7 hour wait for my flight to Hearthrow. I seem to be is a state of suspended animation where time passes neither quickly or slowly and I don’t do anything other than eat occasionally and wait.

By early evening I am on the plane, but we have to sit on the tarmac for an hour and a half while we sweat and fan ourselves, because some passengers have not boarded the plane and they have to find and take off their luggage before we can take our queue in the line up for take off. The captain and crew keep us well-informed about our progress and there is a rather disconcerting announcement to say that a jet engine in the rear of the aircraft is not working, but reassuringly this is the explanation for the excessive heat in the cabin because it powers the air conditioning. Eventually we take off and have an uneventful flight. Looking out of the window as we come into land at Heathrow in the early morning I can tell that I am back in the UK, as the farm landscape of fields and hedges is very familiar and the London roads are curved, rather than laid out in straight gridlines. 

I come out into the arrivals hall it feels like a scene from ‘Love Actually’ as Peter is there to meet me, with a bunch of pink roses. He is the friend I was with in New Zealand at the time of ‘the robbery’. When we parted there we thought that another time and place might bring us together again. We have been e mailing each other over recent weeks and this now feels like the right time and place. I have kept this part quiet from most of you and I have even concealed my intention to create this bubble in time and spend some days with him before returning to Devon. I feel somewhat uncomfortable about this deception and now need to come clean. We spend a lovely few quiet, reflective days together staying a friends’ house in North London and it feels like a buffer and transition between my travels and returning to Devon to my local family and friends.

I know I am in the UK, but it doesn't yet feel like 'home'. I get used to the traffic being on the left and how to cross roads safely. Wandering up the Holloway Road feels like a continuation of my travels, with sights that I would normally try and capture with my camera.

A few days later Peter and I say goodbye (for now) at Paddington Station and I catch the train to Plymouth. Leaving London and rushing through the English countryside in the train really begins to feel like being home. The layout and look of the landscape of farmland and villages is so familiar and so far nothing appears any different from what I remember. The journey is the reverse of how I started my travels a year ago; it feels like re-winding back to that time and place, but I know that once my view becomes more focussed on the really familiar details of home, changes that have taken place within this last year will become apparent. Some I am expecting and predicting and others will no doubt catch me by surprise . After Exeter I start to concentrate more fully on the passing scenery – the iconic section along the coast past Dawlish and Teignmouth; Newton Abbot from my childhood and adolescence; Totnes where I will soon be living; Ivybridge where I lived and worked before leaving England and on to my final destination of Plymouth where Kate and family live. I find myself reflecting on my travels and musing about the choices and decisions I will soon be making which will shape this next phase of my life.

Kate and the grandchildren meet me at Plymouth station. They all look great and my eyes fill with tears as we hug our hellos. Megan is not at all shy, but Elliot looks unsure and a bit confused. Back at their house they show me the chart on the wall, amongst the postcards I sent, which has been counting down to my return over the last days. We sit in the garden in the sunshine with toys around us and within an hour or so it begins to feel very natural and almost as if I haven’t missed anything over the last year. I am so happy to be back and re-involved with their lives again.

Megan and the Granny Countdown Chart

 

Me, Megan and Elliot

 

THE END

Nova Scotia Coast

Mirjam and I decide to hire a car and make a tour around the south coast of Nova Scotia. For me this is great because it fills my last few days very nicely and Mirjam is pleased to have the company too. We set off from Halifax travelling south and in a clockwise direction around the coast. She is the driver and I am the navigator. We won’t get lost if we keep the sea on our left. Soon after leaving the city we come to a beautiful area of coast, where the road winds around inlets and very close to the intensely blue water. What look like holiday or retirement properties are built along the shore and the sheltered waters of Shad Bay are dotted with small craft. 

 

Hire Car

Shad Bay

Then the coast changes and low mounds of smooth granite are exposed among low-growing vegetation and shrubs. We arrive at Peggy’s Cove, which is a picture-postcard beautiful small fishing village, with clapboard houses built directly onto bare rock and a stone built lighthouse. There is still some fishing here, but although the main catch here now is tourists, it doesn’t feel spoiled or overly busy as somewhere like this in England would be – Mevagissy for example. The tourists wander on the exposed rocks around the lighthouse and try and take pictures of each other with the lighthouse behind and no other tourists in their shot, if possible. It proves very difficult and I am sure I am inadvertently in several other people’s photos. 

Coast at Peggy's Cove 

Peggy's Cove 

 

Lighthouse at Peggy's Cove

Me and Mirjam at Peggy's Cove

We the drive further along the coast to Mahone Bay, where we are staying overnight in a hostel. Here there are 3 churches built side-by-side; one Anglican, one Evangelical Lutheran and one for the United Church of Canada. I wonder if the church-going residents pick and choose which one to attend on any given Sunday? We wander up and down the street in the early evening and have a meal on the balcony of a pub, looking out across the water of the bay as the sun goes down.

Three Churches at Mahone Bay

Mahone Bay

The next day we drive out along a peninsula and come to a dead end where there is a little community with a working sail loft and a mixed farm with a few horses and cattle. We walk along a farm track alongside a field of cabbages to admire the view across the water to several small islands. Butterflies and dragonflies flutter around us and the only noise is of insects. 

Farm on Second Peninsula

Our next stop is the little town of Lunenburg. This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as the best preserved example of a settlement laid out in a grid pattern. The settlement was authorised and arranged by the British, but with mainly German and Swiss Protestants, as a counter-measure to the nearby Catholic French Arcadian communities. In 1753, 1453 settlers arrived on 14 transport ships from Rotterdam. The motivation for these families was that they were each given a town lot, a garden lot, a 50 acre farm lot and 300 acres of woodland, arms and munition and some livestock such as a cow, some sheep, a pig and a goat. The lots were allocated to each family literally by the draw of a playing card, on the reverse of which was written which area of the town would be theirs.

When they arrived the ground had been cleared and laid out in a grid, surrounded by a pallisade with a blockhouse for protection from the natives and the French, but there was nothing else here and they had to set about building their houses with the 500 feet of boards and 250 nails, plus a few bricks for a chimney which they were also given. They soon found that the area was not very suitable for farming and so they turned their hands to fishing and boat-building, some of which still continues today.

Lunenburg  

 

Me and Lunenburg

Lunenburg Church

Inside Lunenburg Church

Lunenburg Museum

Lunenburg Town Plan

Choosing a Plot

On the waterfront there is a memorial to the hundreds of local fishermen who have lost their lives to the sea over the years. 1927 was a particularly dangerous year and there are 3 sides of a pillar to these victims, with the same family names repeated several times: Reginald Andrews, Sam Andrews, Wilfred Andrews.

Fishermen’s Memorial

Leaving the town we take a small ferry across the water and stop on the other side at an old bakery and sit on the wharf with tea and cake. I am reminded of one of the entries on the 'In my life I have learned’ boards in Halifax, that everything is better with cake.

Ferry

Tea and Cake at the Bakery

 

We drive on to Yarmouth, at the south western end of the island and stay overnight here at a bed and breakfast. The lady, Robyn, has only just started doing bed and breakfast and we are her first guests. Yarmouth used to have a ferry which went across Portland, Maine in the US, but this is no longer operating and the economy of the town is suffering as a result and the locals feel badly done-by. We drive out to the lighthouse at the end of a spit, but as we approach the sea mist envelops everything and there is no view.

Robyn tells us about a locally-famous chain of second hand clothes stores, called Frenchy’s and she opens her closet which is jam-packed and she pulls out various designer label items which she picked up for $4 a piece. She tells the story of a small red leather handbag which she researched and found out it came from a design house in Italy and its full price would have been $500! As we drive north from Yarmouth we stop at a Frenchy’s store and I find 4 items for $18, which will give me a few extra things to wear once I get home. We stop at a pretty little historic town called Annapolis Royal and meet up with a friend of Mirjam’s, who takes us for a walk around the grounds of the fort. 

Me and Miriam at Fort Anne, Annapolis Royal

Our next night’s stop is at a camp ground on a lake just inland from here. We want to check into the hostel, but it is full, so we are allocated a cabin all to ourselves. We feel very excited about having all this space to ourselves – 2 bedrooms, kitchen cum lounge, barbecue outside and a balcony overlooking the lake. In the evening and again in the morning we swim in the warm dark brown peaty water of the lake.

Lake Swim

 

Our Lakeside Cabin

 

Our journey continues along a valley which runs parallel to the west coast and we drive out to the coast to a small fishing village called Halls Harbour. This coast is on the Bay of Fundy, which is famous for having the highest tides in the world. 

Halls Harbour

 

Tidal Gauge at Halls Harbour

 

Me and Mirjam at the Bay of Fundy

 

We have one more night’s stay in another bed and breakfast. Mirjam has a panic when she thinks she has lost her passport. She is a very polite girl, but her language gets foul when she is stressed and she repeats, fuck, fuck…’. When she calms down she realises that she has just moved it from its usual place to a safer place and then forgotten that she had done that. She apologies for her language to the bed and breakfast lady, who laughs, but looks slightly shocked.

The next day is our last day together and we complete our circuit with a short journey back to Halifax. We have a last lunch together and a big hug before parting. Mirjam is travelling on further in Canada and I am heading to the airport for my flights tomorrow for my final journey back to the UK.

Halifax

I travel by bus down the east coast of the Gaspe peninsula and arrive in a small town called Campbellton, which isn't a destination in itself; most people seem to go there on their way to or from the Gaspe peninsula, or to catch the train and I am here for both reasons, as from here I am planning to catch the train to Halifax in Nova Scotia. The hostel here is in a little wooden lighthouse and it is owned and run by the town. It only has 2 dorms and a lounge cum reception in the old lighthouse keeper's house and a kitchen in the base of the hexagonal lighthouse. Only the ground floor is accessible, as there is still an automated light at the top.

Lighthouse Hostel at Campbellton

Apart from two snorers, the only other guest in the hostel was a Swiss girl, called Mirjam (pronounced Miriam). She recognises me from the hostel in Quebec City. It's funny how travellers meet and re-meet; everyone pretty much does the same circuits. Since leaving Quebec City were have both pretty much done the same route, but in opposite directions and we have been trying to work out when we passed each other. We have just been comparing photos and laughing that we saw many of the same things, but in different weather. She has a photo of her at a lookout at Land’s End with a beautiful panorama behind her and in my photo there is only me in the mist and we have almost the opposite shots in another location, me in the sun at Tadoussac and Miriam in the mist.

Mirjam She is also travelling to Halifax on the train today and is also staying in the same hostel as me there, so I have some company again for a while, which is nice. We join the train at 7am and are due to arrive in Halifax just after 5pm. The train originated in Montreal, so the other passengers are sleepy from their overnighter and arms and legs hang out of seats into the aisles. The train rumbles along quite slowly and to begin with are close to the coast of the Gulf of St Lawrence and look out across the water on this grey misty day. It is reminiscent of the train journey along the South Devon coast from Teignmouth to Exeter. That's a coming home/going away memory for me, as I used to catch the train from Newton Abbot to Liverpool during my college years. After we leave the coast we travel through broadleaf forest and sometimes break out to run parallel to a road as we approach a small town. It’s a single track line, with an occasional piece of double track, like a siding, where we stop from time to time to allow a freight train to pass. When we pass into Nova Scotia the countryside becomes more familiar and opens out into rolling farmland, with rather scruffy-looking fields surrounded by trees and the occasional farm house and out-buildings dotting the landscape.

I read my guidebook on the train and it tells me that in 1917 Halifax experienced the greatest man-made cataclysm of the pre-atomic age. In World War 1 Halifax was a departure point for conveys transporting troops and armaments to Europe. Two ships collided in the harbour, one f which was carrying half a million pounds of TNT. The blast killed 2000 people instantly and flattened 300 acres of Halifax and with fire destroying much more. Part of the anchor of one of the ships was later found in a field 4km away. To make matters worse 40cm of snow fell that day, hampering rescue attempts and bodies of many of the victims were not recovered until the following Spring.

Via Rail to Halifax

Halifax is a small city and our hostel is in an old heritage building close to everything we want to see and visit. The waterfront has a boardwalk which is pleasant to wander along at any time of day or in the evening. It goes along by restaurants, a small marina, tourist kiosks, passenger ferries and docks where tourist boats wait. The city looks out across the water of Halifax Harbour, with its various islands, to Dartmouth on the other side, where there is an oil refinery and a flame and plume of smoke escape from the top of a tall chimney.

Halifax Waterfront

Oil Refinery

The city is somewhat of a hotchpotch of old and new buildings, but they seem to be making an effort to keep old building where they can, even if it is just the facades.

Old Town Houses

Old Building Façades

Restored Waterfront Buildings

Public Garden in Halifax

On a hill at the top of the city is the Citadel, which is the original fort, built in a star shape. From here they fire a noonday gun and a changing of the guard is enacted for the tourists.

Changing the Guard at the Citadel

We visit a farmers’ market where people wander around inside and outside an old waterfront building. One stall is selling Eccles Cakes and Cornish pasties. There are many free tasters on offer and we stop to try homemade chutney at one stall and chat to a woman there. She tells us that she was born in Scotland and immigrated with her family when she was a baby. For 45 years she was officially a ‘landed immigrant’, with a British passport and she only sought Canadian citizenship after 9/11, because she said that then ‘everything changed.’ 

Cornish Pasties and Eccles Cakes in the Farmers' Market

Cow

Stall Holder

We visit the immigration museum at Pier 21 to find out more. It was here between 1926 and 1971 that all immigrants to Canada arrived. It was also the departure and return point for Canadian troops during the Second World War. We learn about the different waves of immigration during these years from various parts of Europe and the reasons why people decided to move across the Atlantic. For many they had very little choice, no possessions or documents, as they were refugees. It is all very informative, well-presented and moving. There is also an exhibition which celebrates Canadian multi-culturism and how people have maintained and continue to celebrate their original customs and practices in their adopted country. 

Pier 21

Immigration Hall 

On the wire fence surrounding a large building site there are blackboards printed with the starter, ‘In my life I have learned….’ Chalk is available in a box to add your own wisdom. Many of the phrases are serious such as ‘happiness is a choice’ and often to do with love in its many forms, such as, ‘that there is always room for more love’; ‘the best present is my own family’. But there are also truthful light-hearted ones such as: ‘always bring my camera’; ‘sushi is terrible for hangovers’; ‘that I should have gone back to Ontario’; ‘everything is better with cake’; and written at the top of one board, ‘it’s useful to be tall’. 

In my Life I have Learned 

Do you remember when I stayed with Ann and her grandson in Orillia, north of Toronto? Well Harold lives in Dartmouth, across the water from Halifax, with his Dad, also called Harold and his mum, Michelle. I give them a ring and arrange to meet up and fulfill my promise of taking Harold for icecream. Mirjam and I take the ferry across the harbour and as I am early, Mirjam and I take a look around the waterfront and admire the view across the water back to Halifax. 

Me with View of Halifax

In the ferry building there is an event going on and as we walk through the doors it is like entering a parallel universe. This is a comic book festival. Stall holders sit behind trestle tables displaying their art and many are absorbed with drawing their strange and often violent images. Punters mill about and watch and I catch snippets of strange conversations that I don’t understand and wouldn’t know how to join in. They are all taking it very seriously, but also having a good time.  

Comic Book Festival

Just along the waterfront there is the ‘World Peace Pavilion’. The idea came from a youth group in 1989 and all the countries in the world were asked to contribute a piece of rock or a brick. The rocks are to represent the earth we all share and bricks to represent our ability to shape the future. It is interesting to see the different contributions from the various countries; some exhibits come with a little explanation and others have no information, other than the name of the country – maybe those just sent any old rock and didn’t give it much thought. There is a piece of ‘The Wall’ from Germany, complete with graffiti and metal reinforcing rods. Standing out amongst all the pieces of rock and bricks, there is a clay pot from Fiji. I bet when the Fijian delegation saw it in with the others there was a lot of whispering and nudging of each other, 'Hey, everyone else has brought a brick...'  'I thought they said ‘pot’, not ‘brick’ 'Never mind, keep smiling and no-one will notice'.

Piece of the Berlin Wall

I meet up with Harold and give him a hug and meet his parents for the first time. They take me a short way along the river in the direction of the sea, to a little place called Eastern Passage. Here a shingle bank juts out, with the ocean on one side and the river on the other and a pleasant sea breeze .freshens the air. We wander along a pleasant broadwalk past colourful wooden kiosks, mostly selling gifts. In Nova Scotia lobster is plentiful and the local delicacy and we visit one shack where live lobsters lie in an open tank of water, with their pinchers tied closed. The girl there tells us she doesn’t like to eat lobster herself, but she shows us a couple of 5-6 pounders and tells us that these are really bigger than the most sought-after specimens. She picks a couple of smaller ones out of the tank and they buck and clack the shell plates on their backs. Smaller lively ones like these make a tasty dinner. 

Eastern Passage

Kiosks

Lobsters

Shingle Bank at Eastern Passage

We stop at a kiosk and choose ice cream. I discover a new flavour of orange and liquorice, called tiger tail. Then we take a wander along the beach and shingle bank where families paddle in the incoming tide and fish in the fast-flowing water of the river mouth. It has been very nice to see young Harold again and meet his parents and Ann will be pleased to know. I’ll send her a picture for her to enjoy our meeting vicariously.

Ice Cream with Harold and his Parents

Harold and his Dad, also Harold