New Scotland

September 30, 2007
Sunday
We returned to Wood Islands to catch the morning ferry to Nova Scotia. No bridge toll for us.
The ferry departed at 0930 and arrived in Caribou at 1045. We drove up the west coast to Glenora, the only single malt distillery in North America.
We had lunch in the pub room to the music of a fiddler and guitarist in a performance optimistically billed as a ceilidh, which is actually a rather more exuberant Gaelic social event that includes singing, dancing and storytelling.
We toured the distillery and learned why Scotch whisky is important here. Twenty-five per cent of Nova Scotians are of Scottish origin, a result of the Highland Clearances that took place after the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
At the end of the tour, our hostess poured a wee dram of Glenora Gold, modestly priced at $79 a bottle. It tasted a lot like Scotch.
From Glenora, we drove to North Sydney and watched the departure of the overnight ferry to Newfoundland, checked into our hotel and prepared for the next day.
Monday
We finally succumbed to the call of Tim Horton’s, a ubiquitous Canadian version of McDonalds, for coffee and breakfast. It was better than McDonalds.
From North Sydney we headed up the east coast of Cape Breton following the Cabot Trail, past Ocean View Cemetery (as if it makes a difference). We took a ferry across St Anne’s Bay for $5, sharing the deck with an 18-wheel truck and a utility van.
We stopped at Cabot Landing Picnic Park which commemorates John Cabot’s landing on the Canadian shore on 24 June 1497.
At 10:52 am, we stopped at the end of the road in Capstick, at the northern tip of Nova Scotia. This was as far from California as we could drive, 6,527 miles from home, and from now on, every mile would take us back toward the Central Coast.
We passed a hostel in Cape North that looked friendly enough.
Le Gabriel in Chéticamp served an Acadian lunch. The restaurant is named after a character in Longfellow’s Evangeline, a story about the expulsion of the French from Nova Scotia in 1759.
More than an expulsion, it was ethnic cleansing. The English loaded the French inhabitants onto ships, men and women on separate vessels, and relocated them all over the world. Many Acadians migrated down the east coast as far as Louisiana, which was Spanish territory at that time. Spanish authorities welcomed the Catholic French settlers.
Later, small groups were allowed to return and to settle in dispersed villages. Fourteen families who were originally expelled from Gran Pré founded Chéticamp.
Tuesday
We drove to Halifax to sample the wares of Alexander Keith Brewery on Lower Water Street.
Alexander Keith arrived in Halifax in 1820 with a brewmaster’s license and a dream. Three thousand English troops stationed in Nova Scotia were entitled to a ration of a gallon of beer a day and no one in the province at the time made a potable brew. Alexander Keith filled the void and built the foundation for a brewing dynasty that survives today.
Our guides were young ladies dressed in 1863 costume who played the parts of lasses of the period and regaled us with stories and songs of Halifax in the middle of the 19th Century.
We had lunch next door at the Red Stag Tavern, haddock and chips and pints of ale.
Wednesday
This was our last day in Canada, a sad day leavened only by thoughts of things to come. We hit Tim Horton’s for breakfast, then the Atlantic Superstore for maple syrup, in case we decide to make a maple syrup pie for Thanksgiving.
We used the last of our Canadian stamps that we bought in Calgary three weeks ago to send post cards home.
Then we drove to Peggy’s Cove, a tiny town (population 40) perched on granite boulders at the end of a peninsula. Peggy’s Cove lighthouse is the town’s post office. Three tour buses were parked next to the gift store and lots of their passengers were on the rocks taking pictures of everything in sight. Seven more buses drove in on the narrow, winding road as we were leaving.
Outside town was a memorial to Swiss Air Flight 111, honoring the 229 men, women and children who perished off shore on September 2, 1998.
We drove south to Yarmouth to catch the Cat, a twin-hulled ferry that traverses the Gulf of Maine three times a week. On the way, we passed a sign that warned of a "Hidden Driveway," but we didn’t see it.
At Yarmouth we pulled into Rudder’s Seafood Restaurant and Brewpub, two of our favorite things combined in one place.
After lunch we lined up to board the Cat, along with 129 other vehicles and 501 passengers. On the main deck, we found a duty-free gift shop, a pizza bar, a movie lounge, a casino and a sports lounge.
It took three hours to cross to the U.S. at 55 miles per hours and saved us 750 miles of driving.
We docked in Bar Harbor, Maine, at 6:20, and lined up for Customs. The two hundred bus passengers had to debark and walk through the Customs line individually.
At 7:00 p.m. we checked into the Bar Harbor Inn. I mentioned my cousin’s name and the desk clerk gave us complimentary tickets for a lobster bake.