A Canadian adventure

or: 'What I Did on My Holidays'

Hello

Some readers may already know that my son and his family live in Alberta, Canada. We decided this year to meet up halfway for a family holiday, but Canada is big. “Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space Canada”.* This means ‘halfway’ is still Canada. Nova Scotia to be precise.

*apologies to Douglas Adams

So earlier this month we went on a bit of a road-trip, staying in four different places. First stop was a motel an hour from Halifax, from which we made the obligatory excursion to Peggy’s Cove, the picturesque village of fewer than 40 permanent residents which welcomes 700,000 visitors annually, most of whom appeared to be turning up on coaches just as we left. Fortunately we had beaten the crowds, as the photo below shows.

Extremely blunt signage informs visitors that a number of tourists have died while scrambling on these rocks, or rather falling off them. It doesn’t stop anyone, obviously.

Then we spent three magical nights in a log cabin on the edge of the Kejimkujik National Park.

The view from the deck of our cabin. I mean, seriously…..

We’ve got a bit blasé about seeing moose, deer, gophers and black squirrels when visiting Alberta, but we had new wildlife to encounter in Nova Scotia. I downloaded the ‘Canada East’ pack to my Merlin app which told me the little grey birds hopping around and chirping in the bushes were Dark-eyed Juncos, the more tuneful cheeping was an Indigo Bunting and the distant squawks were a Blue Jay. However the app consistently failed to identify the clear and repetitive cheeps from the trees above us, insisting it could not hear a bird. After two days of this the light finally dawned and a spot of googling confirmed this was actually the sound of the American Red Squirrels which were scuttling around outside our cabin. They are larger (and I’m afraid less cute) than our red squirrels, but smaller (and cuter) than our grey ones. They regularly appeared bearing acorns almost as big as their heads and looked astonished to encounter humans every single time. In contrast the chipmunks (yes real chipmunks), were as bold as brass and and apparently bewildered by our resistance to their charms and our refusal to feed them.

British readers might be surprised to hear this is the Mersey River.

I was also ridiculously excited when an ACTUAL RACCOON ran across the path in front of us.

In terms of wildlife though, four humpback whales probably trump a racoon. We had visited Nova Scotia once before back in 2002, never imagining at the time that the energetic little boy with us would one day be a Canadian Citizen or that we would have a Canadian daughter-in-law and grandson. Back then we went on such a successful whale watching trip the organiser asked us not to tell anyone what had happened or subsequent clients would be disappointed and make complaints. We didn’t expect to strike that lucky again, but we did. Four humpback whales swimming round the boat and checking us out for a good 40 minutes or more, a couple of them actually swimming underneath us, and regularly treating us to synchronised tail splash dives. (Maybe it’s us? Perhaps we are whale-nip and should hire ourselves out to whale watching tour companies?).

The nearest one with the white spot on his head is called Socks, or possibly Sox. I’m not sure if he knows this, or is bothered about the spelling.

After this it was a night in a hotel on the docks of historic and impossibly pretty Lunenburg, with a trip round the Fisheries Museum, by which time I had gone native and was pointing out the ‘boots’ to my grandson instead of the boats. We finally wound up in an AirBnB on the coast to the south of Halifax, where our gallivanting was curtailed by the approach of Hurricane Lee, so we hunkered down with food, board games and Disney+ while watching some pretty scary waves out to sea and the odd tree coming down. With unusually good timing, our flight home was the day after the storm had passed by so we were still able to come home as planned. The residual wind cut half an hour off our scheduled flight time, but we made up for that by having to queue for nearly an hour to get through passport control at Heathrow and ENTER OUR OWN COUNTRY, compared to less than 10 minutes and a polite and cheery welcome in Canada. (Don’t get me started….).

Well, I’m back now, just in time for….

York Printmakers Print Fair

A reminder that this is happening this weekend. 22 printmakers showing very different techniques and artwork. Free entry and a guaranteed friendly welcome - think more Halifax airport than Heathrow. Click the button for full info and a map.

My shop is closed until the Print Fair is over, to make sure I don’t sell the same print twice, but will re-open on Sunday evening.

See you again soon. If you come to the Print Fair do introduce yourself and say hello. Meanwhile, thank you as ever for reading.

Jane