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