Nova Scotia revisited

Dad and I took a short trip back to Nova Scotia to visit with family in East Ship Harbour from July 14-19. It was a great trip, and I'm glad I managed to get a week off work to go. Here are a few pics from the trip:

Here you can see my Uncle John, Grandma, and my Dad, visiting Dad's Aunt Rita who's sitting in this photo.




This is the car my dad rented for the trip, a Chevrolet Impala with only 49km on the odometer when we got it.




This is the view looking East along the shore from my grandma's back yard, which is directly on the Atlantic coast (the end of the yard is where the water meets land).




Veggies in need of water:




On the 16th we drove across the province to Pictou for a céilidh. They have a replica of the ship Hector which brought over the first group of Scottish settlers way back in 1773, quite neat.




The Nova scotia flag as seen on the replica ship. If you care to know, the flag is the inverse of the Scottish flag (which is a white St Andrew's cross on blue) with the Scottish Lion Rampant (formally known as the Royal Standard of Scotland) crest in the centre.




The detail on the back of the ship:




We were a bit early for the céilidh so we sat outside the Decoste Centre for a while listening to a practice session of a local pipes and drums group. I love bagpipes, so it was really nice to get to watch these men and women play.






The céilidh was probably not too well advertised, as only 20 people were there as spectators, in a place that was set up to seat about 150 very comfortably. The performers didn't let it phase them, so we had a great time. This is Jimmy Sweeney, an Irishman who came to Canada some time back, and was our MC as well as one of the performers. He's a really good singer; I really enjoyed his performances of a bunch of traditional Irish and Scottish songs that I know.




This is a 9 near old Highland dancer performing the Sword Dance, something to do with dancing around the swords which were still hot from battle.




These two young ladies were down from Cape Breton. They're sisters and both play a bunch of instruments. I personally preferred when both were playing fiddle, but I enjoyed everything they did, including one song where the pianist was step-dancing while the other fiddled.




This is Stephanie Hardy, winner of the 2008 ECMA Up And Coming Young Artist award. She sang a bunch of her own stuff, in a contemporary style. She's super talented. Her voice in some of the songs sounded a lot like Sarah McLachlan.




The next day we went to Monk's Cove, named after my family (my great grandfather was Daniel Monk, and a large area where my family still lives was all settled by the Monk family when they came over from Scotland). Did I mention that almost everyone in the area is related to me in some way or another? Anyways, we saw our friend Charlie DeWolfe there, and then we drove to Murphy's Cove to have a look around. This scene on the short drive seemed photo-worthy:




The next morning we were up early, and Dad, Uncle John, and I set out to Martinique Beach for a walk. It was nice and windy with big waves and people surfing on one side of the spit of land, but on the other side the air and water were perfectly still. I skipped a bunch of stones, as that side of the beach had hundreds of perfect skipping stones. Then I followed a small butterfly until I could catch it on camera:




We also found some wild strawberries in the scrub, which are really tasty. Wild strawberries tend to be tiny, as you can see:




This is the road back to our parked car after our beach walk - nice and foggy, the way I like Nova Scotia.




Lobster fishing is much smaller in Nova Scotia than it used to be, but there are a small number of lobster fishermen around still, like Charlie DeWolfe. We passed this lobster boat on our drive back from the beach:






Lastly, for a little humour, if you're a fan of Krispi Kreme donuts (I don't care much for them myself) then maybe you'd also enjoy Krispi Kraut! Product of Nova Scotia.