Ruth: We are staying at the house of Gord's aunt and uncle in Dieppe, New Brunswick (near Moncton). Tonight Gord's Uncle Hervé cooked us a lobster feast. The plate above is just the leftovers! We offered to make a salad, but were told quite firmly that vegetables are unnecessary with lobster. I can't say I missed them. Hervé and Marie-Anne moved into an assisted living place six ...
Ruth: It's wild blueberry season in Parrsboro.Parrsboro is located on the Nova Scotian side of the Bay of Fundy. It is the town where my Great Aunt Betty was born and grew up. When I was 16 my Great Aunt and Uncle brought me here for a wonderful summer vacation. I can still hear my Uncle Archie's stories as Gord and I wander through the ...
Gordon: When I was growing up I was told that my great-grandfather had died in the mines at Springhill. I had heard of the "Springhill disaster" (there were actually three), but I was told that his death occurred in one of the smaller explosions. My grandmother was the youngest of 7 or 9 children. She was only 2 or 3 years old when my great-grandfather ...
Gordon: Much of our communication in the past 6 weeks has been in French. While neither of us is fluent, we both have an intermediate knowledge and can comfortably travel in French. We have, however, struggled with the accents in Quebec and New Brunswick (which are not the same.). But today we truly were out of our depth when we encountered Chiac at an outdoor ...
Ruth: The ride from Miramichi to Kouchibouguac National Park was a straight flat road through scrubby forest, but without a headwind it was fast and fine. We are staying two nights in a cabin just outside the entrance to the park. Eastern national parks seem much more civilized than their western cousins, with more infrastructure and greater accessibility. The roads that once led to a number ...
Ruth: It became clear that Gord was underfed when he spent last night in Neguac researching the location and hours for the all you can eat Chinese restaurants in Miramichi. Even with a ferocious head wind we were able to make it to the Great Wok just as the food troughs were being filled. Oh my! Three plates later we were both feeling very full. ...
Ruth: Today is the Fête Nationale d'Acadie and we are spending it in Caraquet, often described as the heart of Acadian culture in New Brunswick. In the morning we hopped on our bikes and road to the nearby Acadian Historical Village. It has a fantastic collection of historic buildings that have been relocated from all over the province. Each of them has an actor in ...
Gordon: On our last day in Quebec (we spent almost four weeks in the province) we visited Miguasha Provincial Park. It exists to protect an area in which a remarkable collection of fossils, mostly of fish, have been unearthed. The 380 million year old fossils show the evolution of lobe finned fishes that were the ancestors of the first terrestrial vertebrates. The fossil collection was ...
Gordon: While I was discreetly cooking breakfast over a backpacking stove set up outside the door of our hotel room - probably the only one doing so in the upscale establishment- we were treated to a great natural show on our last morning in Percé. Presumably feeding on a large school of fish in the bay, hundreds of gannets were diving into the sea. It ...
Ruth: We cycled to Percé from Gaspé on our wettest day yet. We were fortunate enough to find a cafe serving up waffles to wait out the worst of the rainstorms. By the time we made it to Percé we were wet and exhausted and our motel had no record of our reservation. Everything in Percé was fully booked. After a dark moment I found ...