Great War Ghosts, Orchid Quests, a New Way to Do Lobster

I spent Friday morning prowling the NS Archives building in Halifax for 25th Battalion Great War ghosts. My best find: a 1915 W G MacLaughlan photograph of ‘C’ Company before its embarkation for England: 250 faces posing at the Armoury, all of them eager to face the Hun in Flanders. Some of them mere boys who would never see their native land again.

Friday afternoon we joined Kathleen and Jon for a search of the Hants gypsum hills for ram’s head ladyslipper. Jon spotted a clump hiding under a conifer, the blooms long past their best-before date but now the Nova Scotians will know where to look next May. We made do with admiring the carpets of gypsum ragwort –prettier than it sounds – flourishing in the carbonate.

Feast days follow one after the other. Saturday featured a novel way to dispatch lobsters. The execution weapon, a cleaver. That might seem cruel but would you prefer a cauldron of boiling water?

Environment Canada’s five-day forecast needs just one icon at the moment: the one with heavy rain pouring out of a dark cloud. Indoor activities are indicated but I need to wander in some creekside woods so we’ll don the raincoats and take our chances. I haven’t had a trip bird since we hit Halifax.

We’d planned on firing up the Cummins to head for Cape Breton Tuesday but opening up the cabin in a deluge has never seemed a lot of fun. Given the lousy forecast maybe we’ll emulate Captain Cook and overstay our welcome with the natives.

Alan

Perth-Andover to Cobequid Bay to Halifax: Atlantic Blue Heaves into View

One of the attractions of traveling backroads and byways is happening upon unadvertised gems you’d never have discovered from the glossy brochures. We stopped at Perth-Andover NB looking for sustenance. Lucky for us, Perth-Andover is home to Mary’s Bake Shop and Luncheonette. Across the street is the beautiful Saint John River. We were lucky to find an open table – the place was crowded with local diners locked in conversation with friends and neighbours.

I like to study regional accents as we wend our way. Had I been plunked at Mary’s without knowing where I was I would have quickly deduced my whereabouts from the New Brunswick accents on display. Excellent food excellent, terrific river vistas, folks as friendly as you could ever want. Once she learned we we’d come all the way from Victoria, our server asked that we sign their special guest book, so that’s exactly what we wrote.

New Brunswick’s main highways are first-rate. Mile after mile you see attractive Acadian forest vistas uncontaminated by billboards, hotdog stands or tourist tack. In a short span we enjoyed a little invasion of ‘northern’ birds: northern goshawk [#169 for our trip list], northern logcock, northern harrier.

We crossed the Nova Scotia border about five o’clock Wednesday and made a bee-line for the Nelson hacienda at the mouth of the Shubenacadie River on Cobequid Bay, home to the world’s highest tides. The Nelsons – sister Nancy and brother-in-law Don – have renovated and expanded their place and made it a show home. A first-rate place to savour our first Nova Scotia evening in nine months. And what better bird to make #170 for our trip list: Nelson’s sharp-tailed sparrow, singing his head off from the marsh just beyond the front yard.

Thursday brought us back to my Halifax birthplace and a happy reunion with my beloved 85-year Mom. The Raisin’s fans will be pleased to hear we found her looking hale, hearty, happy, and hell-bent for a cribbage tournament.

Alan

Sweet Serendipity Strikes Again

Still in Toronto, we walked Ana to school then toured Michael and Alice’s neighbourhood by shank’s mare. We took an alfresco breakfast at an eatery in a building that was originally the first Ford automobile factory in Canada. Despite being in the heart of the city the breakfast stop delivered two trip birds for our list, northern mockingbird and chimney swift. We ambled in ethnic neighbourhoods and found a suitable backup guitar to keep Jan sharp while we’re in the Boularderie Island woods.

Serendipity led us to a jewel of a place near Lancaster ON. Had there been an Ontario provincial park anywhere nearby we would never have landed there. But there wasn’t, so we got the Ontario Conservation Area map out of the LeoTaj library. I was drawn to a place called the Cooper Marsh. We arrived there late in the day and walked a boardwalk through the marsh. American bitterns sounded their ‘oonk-a-lonk’ vespers, Virginia rails called to their young. Wilson’s snipe winnowed high overhead. In turn, swamp sparrows, marsh wrens, alder flycatchers, green herons proclaimed sovereignty over their turf. All of them were new for our trip list. Cooper was sublime. Nearby we found a campground at Charlottenburgh Park Wetland Project. It is a gem too. Ducks Unlimited shines again.

Tuesday morning took us to the veterans hospital at St Ann de Bellevue, and a visit with Uncle Ed, my dear old mom’s kid brother. By evening we crossed the New Brunswick line, stopped at the visitor centre and added northern parula to our trip list, number 168. Not too bad given that the birding has been mostly catch-as-catch-can from our hurtling truck.

Nova Scotia beckons. We aim to be there Wednesday.

Alan

To Strathroy: Back to the Front

Before tearing ourselves away from Pinery Park on Sunday morning we tramped one final trail, the Carolinian. Pinery’s hardwoods – basswoods, ironwoods, hickories et al – are unfamiliar and exotic to us; none more so than the tallest of them all, the tuliptree. We were lucky to be there at the right time, tuliptree flowers were in full bloom, making it obvious how this tree comes by its name.

We set aside wildflowers and birds for a bit and went looking for an echo of The Great War. The town of Strathroy is about an hour’s drive east of Pinery. Strathroy’s happens to be the home town of Arthur Currie, who masterminded the great Canadian victory at Vimy and soon after was promoted to command the entire Canada Corps. In 1914 Currie was a Victoria realtor and local militia officer. By war’s end he was one of the most highly regarded generals on the Allied side. I was keen to see Currie’s boyhood home.

Fellow WWI student John Sargent gave me good instructions on how to find the farmhouse where Currie spent his early years. The old house – which ought to be preserved as a national historic site – is much deteriorated from Currie’s day but I was grateful to see it anyway. I was struck by the similarity between the gently rolling fields and woodlots of this part of Ontario and those of the battlefields of Flanders and France that Currie would come to know all too well from 1915 through 1918. I wondered whether his boyhood experience of the Ontario terrain helped inform his strategies for conducting war on the Western Front. Thank you, Sarge, for getting me to Napperton Road.

We moved on to Toronto. Nephew Michael lives just a block north of the ballfields of Christie Pits. Another set of good instructions led us to his place with little difficulty. The latest member of Mike’s family will attain age 2 in September. I had never met Rex but I’m familiar with his press clippings so I had high expectations. I wasn’t disappointed.

I am not a big-city person but Toronto always impresses me for the diversity of its population. The whole world and all of its culinary delights must be represented there. We enjoyed a fit-for-a-rajah Indian feast with Mike, Alice, Ana and Erica and went to sleep serenaded by nighthawks.

Alan

The Bruce Delivers an Orchasm

And it came to pass at last that the wayfarers emerged from the cold wet dark insect-plagued wilderness and entered a land of light and beneficence. They rejoiced and offered gratitude to the cosmos.

Your dutiful correspondents fled Northern Ontario at Espanola, traveling by ferry to the Bruce Peninsula. During the crossing of Georgian Bay we learned that the Bruce is paradise for those who love the wild orchid. Some 44 species flourish among the limestone-rich habitats of the peninsula. That was good enough for us.

We camped in Bruce Peninsula National Park. Yellow ladyslippers ran riot everywhere. Everyone said take the trail to The Grotto. We did, and were gratified as promised. We sought local intelligence and succeeded in finding one of the most beautiful of all orchids, the Calypso, including a rare albino individual. Acting another hot tip we carried on to Dorcas Bay and found our main quarry, the complex and subtly exquisite Ram’s Head Ladyslipper, a long-desired lifer for both of us.

Already spoiled rotten we were given more. A fellow wildflower nut steered us to the Bruce Alvar, an Ontario Federation of Naturalists site, just one of 16 places in the whole world to find Lakeside Daisy. We found and photographed this rarity then reaped one final floral reward, the rare, diminutive Dwarf Lake Iris.

The Bruce delivered a memorable day, one of our best ever in the truck and camper, but we tore ourselves away to revisit another southwestern Ontario jewel, Pinery Provincial Park. We were smitten with Pinery the first time we saw it and liked the encore every bit as much. Less than one tenth of one per cent of North America’s once-enormous oak savanna habitat survives. Pinery preserves the largest of three remnant patches.

We spent pretty much all of Saturday outdoors, tramping five of Pinery’s fine trails, revelled in the dunes, oaks and pines, and boosted our trip bird list to 158, adding several special birds including eastern bluebird, hooded warbler, red-headed woodpecker and whippoorwill.

Two fabulous days in a row. The rain and blackflies of the north are a fading memory.

Alan

The Wonderful Magic of Northern Ontario

We paused at Winnipeg to see Steven and Elizabeth. Jan’s elder son plays fullback on his Manitoba Major Soccer League Division 1 side. I went to see his Sunday evening match and was impressed with Steve’s athleticism and knowledge of the game. The lads took a 1-0 lead into the last few minutes before surrendering a late goal on a penalty kick and had to settle for a draw. C’est la vie.

Still awaiting fulfillment is my grail quest to discern with my own eyes the ineffable charms of Northern Ontario. We have traversed this part of our broad land many times now but I am a slow student: I still don’t get it. The government park brochures display pictures of happy adventurers contemplating fabulous vistas, basking in sunshine under clear blue skies. Never in these photos do you see people shivering in freezing rain wearing a living balaclava of ravenous blackflies.

The truck’s windshield wipers flapped semi-constantly. The sun hid for days at a stretch. We camped at Kakabeka provincial park where the rain let up enough to permit a misty morning walk. We resumed acquaintance with an assortment of eastern warblers fattening up on fresh mosquito hatches. Never having seen The Sleeping Giant park we made a diversion there. The weather forecast promised a 30 per cent chance of showers, enticing enough odds to get us imagining we might brave the 22.4 km round-trip hike to The Giant summit. The forecast proved a hoax. Rain beat on the camper much of the night; morning brought no relief. The gunmetal socked-in sky insinuated that hope for a dry hike was extreme folly. We moved on. The Giant will have to await another lifetime.

I have heard people assert that if it’s boring roadscapes you’re after, try the prairies of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Nonsense. The prairies let you see forever; every pond and pothole brims with birdlife. Here along Canada 1 the roadside views are stopped by impenetrable walls of black spruce, jack pine and aspen only beginning to leaf; the countless little roadside lakes are entirely birdless.

With no birds to see from our rolling blind we sometimes make do with impromptu peoplewatching. At Terrace Bay on Superior’s north shore we fled the highway to escape a mad trucker and to seek out sustenance. Drifter’s Roadhouse called out to us. Inside was a full house of oversized diners tucking into big cheeseburger platters and great heaping mounds of poutine. I drool with the best of them at the sight of a big batch of poutine but a good angel, sounding a lot like Bob Nagel, sits on my right shoulder. ‘You don’t wait ‘til you’re 70 to start looking after yourself,’ the angel said. We settled for a cup of the soup-of-the-day and split a splendid Greek salad. I felt an exultation of virtuous self-satisfaction.

Amazingly, just east of Wawa, a ray of sunshine burst over Leo’s bow for the first time since we crossed the BC-Alberta line. Euphoric, I reached for the sunglasses but they’ve been ignored so long they had gone for a walk. The sunshine endured maybe 50 km, long enough to make Lake Superior Park look just about as fetching as it does in the glossy brochures. Maybe the lesson of our Northern Ontario travels lo these many years is biblical: the glories of the Canadian Shield reveal themselves to those who have the patience of Job.

Alan

Morse Mollifies the Herbert Horror

Serendipitous encounters with birds are often the subject of this travel blog but sometimes it’s a delightful encounter with human strangers that makes our day on the road. On Friday night we had a sour experience with a bad campground operator at Herbert SK. Just 13 km further along Highway 1 lies the hamlet of Morse whose proximity to a prime birding location drew us there on Saturday morning for breakfast.

Morse is a one-cafe town. In just a few minutes its proprietor, Linda Lalonde, made up for the previous night’s fiasco – in spades. Linda and her husband fell for Morse during a tourist stop four years ago, bought a little fixer-upper house for $5,000 – no, that’s not a typo – and set up their eatery in the oldest building still standing in Morse. They appear as happy as lottery winners. I asked whether she is related to Newsy Lalonde, the great long-ago hockey player. Indeed yes, her granny and the prolific goal-scorer were first cousins.

Newsy’s cousin steered us to the town museum, housed in Morse’s original school building and operated by a young curator, Heather, whose museum just happens to have recently won a national award. We could see why. Heather showed us the highlights of her pride-and-joy; we relished it all.

We lingered in Morse ‘til mid-morning then headed back out into the rain, wind and cold to look for birds. Saskatchewan highway 58, a good gravel road heading south out of Chaplin, delivered the goods. With almost no vehicle traffic we could stop at whatever pond and pothole looked promising. In miserable weather the truck makes a comfortable and effective bird blind. At one stop a gang of barn swallows showed interest in our freshly mud-encrusted rig. A suitable structure for nest building? We moved on.

We picked up trip birds in twos and threes as we drove south to Shamrock, then east on SK 363. A black-crowned night-heron here, black terns and purple martins there. A gang of 15 white pelicans on the wing. By the time we reached Moose Jaw we’d added 18 species to the trip list. It would be nice if the rain and wind would give it a rest for a while but for the time being I’ve mastered Jan’s mantra: I content myself to play the hand we’re dealt.

Alan

To the Desert for a Deluge

We are at last on the road again in Leo and the Taj. A succession of events pushed this year’s transcontinental departure date into June. We departed Wednesday, June 3, our latest-by-far embarkation date in the truck and camper. We raced through BC as though it were an old car dumping ground rather than the ‘Best place on earth’ bragged about on our home province’s embarrassing new license plates.

We drove through four spectacular mountain national parks – Mount Revelstoke, Glacier, Yoho, Banff – without stopping once. We’d been there before. I like to see new vistas, which gets more difficult after a decade of cross-country travels. I had my heart set on a ‘lifer’, another of Canada’s six natural-area World Heritage Sites – Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta.

On Thursday, leaving our campground in Hope at 6:20 in the morning we drove 1,040 km and managed to reach Dinosaur just past 10 at night, early enough to see that the hoodoos of these desert badlands would be fantastic in the early morning light. Alas, the best laid plans gang aft agley: Dinosaur is a desert with all the cactus and sage a desert-lover could ever want to see. Overnight a steady rain beat a tattoo on the camper roof. Sunrise brought no relief. I was inclined to sulk about it but Dr. Jan, country psychologist extraordinaire, delivered a slap to the head and ordered me to buck up. I did.

The lovely young thing in charge of the campground kiosk evoked Drew Barrymore. I might have imagined she was the inspiration for Van Morrison’s ‘Brown-eyed Girl’, but that’s impossible: she was too young and besides, I know better – Mary Sanseverino was Morrison’s brown-eyed gal. Missie told us she‘d been on the job since April and this was the first rain she had seen. Marvelous.

We walked the Badlands Trail, ignoring official advice not to do that in bad weather. Rain turns the smectites of the park’s Bentonite clay deposits into slippery gooey slime. But we slip-slid our way around the circuit without major incident and, best of all, had this wet desert world all to ourselves. Pretty soon I was turning liability into asset: hardly anyone gets to experience these desert badlands in the rain. We were the lucky ones.

The fossilized bones of some 35 species of dinosaur have been found at the park, the latest just this year we were told. We took in the hadrosaur and centrosaur bone displays before exploring the very ‘birdy’ Cottonwood Riparian Trail. The cottonwoods along the Red Deer River delivered magnolia warbler and prairie falcon among a host of others. The rain even relented for spell and we wound up hauling in an even 50 species for our morning effort.

The prairies are a vast nursery of waterbirds. Almost very pond and pothole features a pair or three of breeding ducks, some deliver far more than a few. While driving Highway 1 at 100 kph we only get to ID a few of the birds seen in fleeting glances through Leo’s rain-speckled windows. But as the second full day of our journey drew to a close – at unlovely, uncharming Herbert SK – we’d somehow managed, despite all the non-stop driving – to bring our trip total to 96 species. As I type this post at 0530 hrs on Saturday morning, rain lashes the camper and wind rattles our windows but what the heck, Psychologist Brown says sagely that our best course is to embrace the circumstances fate provides. Good. Let’s see how quickly we can get to a hundred this morning.

Alan