Part 3 - Nova Scotia (Halifax, Sydney, Peggy's Cove and Lunenburg)

 Monday

We crossed into Nova Scotia at 5:30 pm Atlantic Time. There was lots of napping and quiet time in the car! We reached the Holiday Inn Express just after 7 pm and everyone was very happy with the room, the hotel generally but the kids were most excited about the pool. I set out to do laundry, and Ken went swimming with the girls. 

Part way through doing the laundry I decided I did really want to swim and so I did eventually join Alice and Fiona in the pool after waiting for the laundry! The pool felt amazing after travelling, and Hopewell Rocks and all of it. It was so fun. And there was this adorable kids area with a little water slide. It was so fun.

Tuesday

Today's agenda Peggy's Cove, Lunch, Lunenburg and Halifax part 1. Ambitious, you bet! Dartmouth and Halifax are separated by a bridge, so although we weren't staying in Halifax, we might as well have been. We had breakfast at the hotel and then we set off for Peggy's Cove. 

It was cloudy and rainy, and the forecast called for rain right when we got to Peggy's Cove and like clockwork it rained so we hid out in the welcome centre for a few minutes and then we made our way to the little school for a Cèilidh. The performers were actually late driving in from Halifax so the concert was delayed by about 15 minutes. It was all pretty casual.

Fiona and I walked down to a little art gallery while we were waiting. We looked at pictures of Peggy's Cove from earlier days. We learned that the school house was the actual school house. At the height of Peggy's Cove there were about 150 inhabitants. Now there are about 30 residents. The school ceased to be a school in 1958, and we found out during the concert that last year a few of the last kids to go to the school house came to visit last year. Oh and Fiona mailed a postcard to Hazel from the little gallery.

Wendy MacIsaac played the fiddle and she had a guitarist performing with her whose name I cannot remember. He was so good, and watching them play together was so much fun. Wendy told stories about Cape Breton music and culture, she did a little dancing and they played a few songs. It was so great! We all loved the concert. 

The most perfect thing was that after the concert was done, the rain stopped!

We walked from the school house to the light house and back. We all wanted to walk around a little more, but we had lunch reservations at a restaurant a few kms south. 

Potato!

GF fish and chips at Rhubarb Restaurant! It was so so good.

Next up was Lunenburg. Driving around the coast of Nova Scotia is challenging. It was an hour ish from Dartmouth to Peggy's cove and then it seemed that it should be just a little bit further to Lunenburg, but a little bit further involved back tracking to get around a cove and so that meant about an hour. We made a happy accidental discovery after getting gas at a Shell gas station. (The Shell station was on the Gold River Reserve No. 21, and I bought a new orange shirt at the gas station.) We ended up driving through a pretty little town called Mahone Bay. We didn't stop and we barely stopped in Lunenburg but we did. It was beautiful. So beautiful. We walked around a little, got some ice cream and we then we went back to Halifax.

Lunenburg is the home of the Bluenose which is on the dime. Sadly it was not docked, but Alice and Fiona posed by the big dime.

A memorial to those that have died at sea.

I was sitting in the dark blue chair above. I loved that there were just Muskoka chairs all over the place. I could have easily sat there for an hour!

We drove back up to Halifax, found parking and went straight to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. It was open until 8 pm (it is free on Tuesday nights from 5-8) and there was a concert going on. There were scavenger hunts to complete, Alice took one and Fiona took the other. We scurried around looking at the exhibits, soaking up as much we could in the just over an hour that we had in the museum. There was a huge display about the Halifax explosion in 1917. A relief ship collided with a munitions ship in the harbour. Virtually all of the north end of Halifax was destroyed, 1900 people killed and over 9000 people injured. We all enjoyed learning more about Halifax, shipping and different boats. 

After they kicked us out of the museum we walked around by the water a bit.

Wednesday

We ate breakfast, packed up, checked out and went to explore a little bit more of Halifax before heading over to Sydney. Oh and I took a pic of the awesome pool. 

You can't see the cute little slide but you can see the little set up in the back and the pool that we all had so much fun in on Monday night.

You could see the work crews up on the bridge taking the pride flag down.

I really wanted to drive around the Halifax Citadel, so we did. Sure couldn't see anything from the little roadway around it!

I decided that I really wanted to go to the immigration museum aka Pier 21. It was a great choice. It was a fantastic museum. There was so much to learn about, there was a lot of interactive stuff for the girls, and there was a family history centre. I went to the family history centre while Ken started exploring with the girls. Essentially the consultants search for information about your family online - and they can help with anything. The main tool that was used was Family Search - I thought that was really cool, amazing actually. What a gift that the church has given the world! El didn't find anything for me that I hadn't already known about, but did give me some very helpful research tips - start very specific, and then go broad. And using S* allows you to get lots of variations = if you are unsure of the spelling, or if the spelling might be inconsistent. 

There was a bunch of interactive stuff that Ken and the girls did while I was in the family history centre. Fiona loved the role play stuff.

This was what the room would have looked like where everyone sat and waited to talk to a customs agent waiting for the "landed immigrant" status stamp. This pier opened in 1928 and if my relatives did come to Canada through Halifax I'm not sure what it would have looked like, but I was imagining a lot of feelings today. The mixed up feelings of anticipation, excitement, fear, relief, dread? I don't know. I hope there was some peace and comfort in their journey.

This cracked me up so bad!

On the way back across the bridge heading over the Cape Breton we saw them putting up this flag and had to google it. It's the Pan-African flag. I found this on the website "Best Colleges" and it explains the flag, it's colours and symbolism.

"The red represents the blood that unites all Black people and that has been shed as a result of slavery and subjugation. The history of the U.S. is also a history of racism and violence. In America, as well as in other parts of the world, Black people have been brutalized and discriminated against throughout history.

The flag's middle black stripe is a nod to Black people's skin color. It also serves to indicate the strength of their community.

Finally, the color green represents the fertility of the African continent. In many ways, Black Americans are a people without a country. Because of the American slave trade, many have lost their ancestral heritage. The symbolism of green in the Pan-African flag relates to the desire to belong to a physical land that is budding with promise and development. It signifies Black people's belonging within the history of the African continent.

The combination of these three colors represents the spirit of Black Americans — a dynamic people who are creating a community, a space to call their own, and a society free of oppression."

This is one of the car pics that I took of the red road. The aggregate used to make the road had red rock in it. It's kind of cool. This is also it for this section of the trip!