Gaboteux - an acadian word meaning a person ...
Trip Start
Jun 29, 1999
1
4
29
Trip End
Dec 04, 1999
Antigonish,
Nova Scotia,
Canada
Sunday, July 25, 1999
When last we left our intrepid Gaboteux he was enjoying a lovely Friday evening in Halifax...
Friday, July 16th
My plans for the evening in Halifax kind of fell through. I played a little too long on the internet and when I arrived at the Crash Cafe the bands were already finished. I mean, at 11pm in Toronto things are just starting to happen. I hung around the place for a bit but then the siren song of my bed called once more.
Saturday, July 17th
One of the great things about Halifax is that you can drive for 5 minutes out of town and you'd swear you were deep within Algonquin Park (actually, about 20 steps into Point Pleasant Park and you forget you're in a city)
Cabot Trail just north of Chéticamp, NS
. I headed out early to go see Peggy's Cove. It is a very special place. Even with two busloads of blue-hairs trampling all over town the place still retains a certain fragile charm - a place where time stands still. I snapped a couple of pictures of the small harbour and headed off to Lunenburg (where 78% said "Yes"). Lunenberg is another nice touristy place and quite a bit different from other "fishing towns" in that it was a completely planned community from Day One. Thus it's laid out in a typical grid fashion. Many of the houses are quite pretty. For some reason I stopped in at a Real Estate Office just to measure the difference in prices between there and Toronto. I was able to find a 6000 sq. ft. home in Lunenberg for $109,000. I then moved on to Liverpool. I was hoping that they'd have a lot of good historical stuff about this town because this is where the British Privateers were centered during the early 1800's. The privateers were essentially government sanctioned pirates who raided American ships. Unfortunately, the town really doens't have much about its lurid past. I did stop in at the Hank Snow Country Music Center however. Hank Snow, The Singing Ranger, was born in nearby Brooklyn and there is an old CN Rail station that has been converted into a small museum. The museum has two very nice artifacts - Hank's first Cadillac (still is opulent condition) and a Grammaphone that he bought for his mother. I purchased a "Best of..." cd at the gift shop and listened to songs like "I'm Movin' On," "The Golden Rocket," "Music Makin' Mama from Memphis" and (Of course) "I've Been Everywhere." (man, across the desert air, man I've breathed the mountain air, man)
Hazy evening along the Bay of Fundy
. I then headed across the interior of Nova Scotia to visit the Annapolis River valley. This was the setting of one of my favourite books called "The Mountain and The Valley" by Ernest Buckler. I camped right on the river in Bridgetown and then took an evening drive up over the hill and along the Fundy shore. After a hectic day of trying to see too much this drive was sooo relaxing. I threw on Mogwai's "Come On Die Young" and carelessly daydreamed my way down the shore and back.Sunday, July 18th
After feeling somewhat hurried the day before I made the decision not to worry about going to Newfoundland. It's something I'll definitely regret but I know it's the right call. I took a lazy drive back eastward through Truro and New Glasgow to a provincial park in Caribou. I spent the rest of the day relaxing on the beach. Swimming was a difficulty as the water was infested with jellyfish.
Monday, July 19th
I was on the road early and headed toward Cape Breton. I'd heard a lot of things about our Maritime provinces so I was prepared to be let down but there are some things you can't over-hype and one of them is Cape Breton.
Me at Fishing Cove
I headed across the Canso Causeway and up along Bras D'Or Lake to Baddeck to take in the Alexander Graham Bell Museum. Baddeck is town where Bell chose to live after the fame of his telephone invention and because he didn't like the summer heat of Washington DC. This museum is fantastic. I wasn't aware of many of Bell's achievements either before or after the telephone such as he oversaw the first powered flight in the British Empire and his experiments in hydrofoils which led to the world's fastest boat in 1919 (a record 114kph which stood for 10 years). I then headed back west along the Cabot Trail to Cheticamp. This part of the trail winds through the Margaree River Valley where they have trouble of thinking of town names. They have Margaree Center, Margaree Forks, Margaree Harbour, North Margaree, Southwest Margaree, and East Margaree. Cheticamp is a pretty little Acadian village. I had a fabulous lunch at the "World Famous" Cheticamp Fish Market. There's nothing that tastes better than a freshly killed animal. I ended up back here a couple of times. I highly recommend anything with crab in it. I played 9 holes of golf at La Portage with a couplwe of local fishermen. I was terrible. It was the first time in my life that I stopped counting my score. Another thing you cannot over-hype is the hospitality of the people here. After my nine holes the fishermen kindly bought me a beer to drown my sorrows in. I talked with them about how friendly every here was and I found it quite weird that every car in the parking lot had their windows rolled down which is something you'd never see in Toronto
Me at the viewpoint along the Skyline Trail
. "Hell," one of them replied,"half of the cars probably still have the keys in the ignition and the other half are tourists."I camped on Cheticamp Island at beautiful Plage St.Pierre. The island runs along the town only about 300 yards from shore. You can drive along it and see a wonderful view of the city.
Tuesday, July 20th
Cheticamp is one of the main western gateway to Cape Breton Highlands National Park.. The Cabot Trail here is one super drive as it hugs the coast line and then snakes up and down the mountains. I camped at the main campsite at Cheticamp and then headed out for some hiking. The Skyline trail takes you to a windswept mountain side that plunges straight down into the sea. From here you can watch for whales and eagles... I left empty-handed. I'd also recommend the L'Acadien trail which offers a superb mountain view of Cheticamp. In 1934 a local farmer, Donald MacIntosh, willed 100 acres of land to the government to start a small park which grew in to the massive National Park in 1936. One of the provisions of MacIntosh's will was that there was to be built a Lone Sheiling which is a small thatch hunt that the Scottish tenant farmers used to live in. You can see this just off the Cabot Trailon a short hike. All told I did 18 km of hiking that day
Peggy's Cove
. In the evening I talked to Donna Doucette who is a park ranger and a Cheticamp native. I had noted earlier that everything here is defined my weather and geography. She probably told me about the southeast winds that sometimes buffett Cheticamp in the fall and winter. These winds usually gust to 200 kph. I noticed later that most of the buildingins in Cheticamp have no windows on the southeast side. She also told me that people in Cheticamp have very little imagination when it comes to choosing names. Her maiden name is Devaux (of which there are many in Cheticamp) so people are usually known by their forefathers names as well. For example I would be Brad Hughes son of Fred. In her case she was Donna Devaux, daughter of Gerard, son of... and she went on for 10 generations.Wednesday, July 21st
I got up early to do the most amazing hike you can do at the park - Fishing Cove. You hike 8km down MacKenzie mountain to a remote cove that used to be the site of a small fishing village in the 1800's. Nothing from the village remains but you can visualize the town crouched along the grassy plain by the river's edge. The north wind was blowing that day and the waves were rolling into the pebble beach 4 feet high. After hiking my ass 8km back up the mountain I was pretty much done for the day. If you have the time (and the courage) do this hike
The view inland from Fishing Cove
! The cove is a deserving reward for your time and effort.Thursday, July 22nd
I followed the Cabot Trail (by car) along the park's edge occasionally sidetracking to see Capstick and Meat Cove and then did an 8 km hike called Glasgow Lakes Lookoff. This hike takes to a hilltop overlooking many boggy lakes and the windswept highland barrens. I then headed along the eastern shore to Ingonish Beach where I camped. After being quite disappointed with my golf game on Monday I headed over to the Highland Links to see if they had a driving range. They did not. Highland Links was the top-rated course in Canada and the 75th top rated course in the world. I dared to play anyway. I got on at 4:15pm with a couple of guys from Burlington and I played decently actually. After overcoming some problems early on I played well enough to regain some confidence in my game. The course is quite worthy of its ranking. There isn't a throwaway hole in the 18 and all of them are quite scenic. My favourite was the long par 5 number 15 that plays a slight dogleg left and then down the hill to expose a dazzling view of Ingonish Bay with the green nestled across the road from a white seaside church and cemetary. Best of all this course still has Nova Scotia prices. The twilight greens fee was $29. Memberships are $600.
Friday, July 23rd
I did small but wonderful hike along Middle Head which is a spit of rock between Ingonish and Ingonish Beach. Afterwards I was wiped out. I had done more walking and hiking in the last few days than my legs could endure. I took a long nap and awoke just in time for dinner. Then the rain started to pour. I sat in my car listening to the news when the family next to me invited me over into their camper for fresh strawberries. Ah, the hospitality of Newfies can't be beat. Jim, Kim, Matthew, Samuel, and Hayley and I had a good time playing trivia (I won) and discussing topics ranging from icebergs to tattoos to Crazy Bones.
Saturday, July 24th
I headed over to Historic Louisbourg Fortress for the day. It just so happened that I chose the same weekend as "Encampment 1999" which was a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the fortress being returned to French rule. Normally the fort receives 5 to 10 thousand visitors a day during the summer. They expected around 100,000 for the weekend. The place was jampacked but fun. They had thousands of amateur re-enactors living in the fortress for three days in the style in which they would have in the 18th century. Most of the re-enactors were Americans from New England. These kind of fanatics kind of give me the creeps but they were fun to talk to. There was an hour long re-enactment of the British taking the fortress back in 1758. I then got back on the road and blazed down to Antigonish for the evening. I drove by Rita MacNeil's "Rita's Tea Room" in Big Pond, NS. I was going to stop there for a bit to see the place. They had advertised that they had a "trophy" room full of her accomplishments. Once I realized that these accomplishments would be how many gold records she has and not how many pounds of bacon she can eat in one sitting I decided it wouldn't be worth my time.
Sunday, July 25th
So here I am in Antigonish. I'm going to be heading back into New Brunswick today along the Fundy shore and towards home. I get the feeling that every day is a Sunday here. It's nice a relaxing.
Bradley T Hughes, Gaboteux at Large.
