Canada's Maritime Provinces thrive on a history rich with real and fictional folk heroes, from explorer Samuel de Champlain to Evangeline Bellefontaine, the focus of Longfellow's epic "Evangeline" who was separated from her lover when the British expelled them and other French citizens from Acadia (now Nova Scotia). Throw in the red-haired, pig-tailed, freckle-faced orphan from "Anne of Green Gables," and what more could one ask?
The perception that the Maritimes are in some remote section of Canada is wrong. For New Englanders, they are next door. Saint John, New Brunswick, for example, is an easy day's drive from Boston or other area cities.Here are highlights of a trip to the Maritimes - New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia - taken last fall.
NEW BRUNSWICK:
About 3,000 loyalists fled the 13 colonies after the American Revolution and landed on the rocky shores of Saint John, New Brunswick, in May 1783. Another 11,000 loyalists followed and, by 1785, a city was forged from the wilderness.
Today Saint John is Canada's oldest incorporated city and New Brunswick's largest. It also is the most industrial city of the Maritimes, thanks in part to the Irving family that operates about 300 companies out of Saint John, including a large oil refinery, huge paper mill and equally enormous ship dry dock, Saint John's largest employer. Family patriarch K.C. Irving, in his 90s, reputedly is one of the 10 richest men in the world.
Located about 70 miles from the U.S. border at Calais, Maine, Saint John once was the capital of New Brunswick. But fears that the city would be subject to attack because of its location on the Bay of Fundy prompted officials to move the capital 60 miles inland to Fredericton.
An arm of the Atlantic Ocean, the Bay of Fundy boasts some of the highest tides in the world. On the St. John River, Reversing Falls is a phenomenon caused by the tremendous tides, which reach 28-1/2 feet at this location. Twice a day, the tides change the mouth of the river so violently that the rapids reverse direction, forcing the river to flow back upstream.
The tide rises and falls about once every 12-1/2 hours, and visitors can best see the Reversing Falls at Fallsview Park. Nearby, an information center provides a short film presentation on the phenomenon. Printed timetables of the tide are available throughout Saint John.
To get a grasp of the city's history, traipse the Loyalist Trail and retrace the footsteps of Saint John's founding fathers. Spots include the Loyalist Burial Grounds, where the oldest headstone dates to 1784; the still-used Old County Courthouse, built in 1829, whose original 49-step stone staircase spirals up three stories without a central support; St. John's Stone Church, completed in 1825 with stone brought as ballast from England; and City Market, in continuous use since 1876, where families who have been selling here for generations tempt shoppers with local specialties such as fresh seafood, cheeses and dulse (90 cents a bag), an edible seaweed harvested during the Bay of Fundy's low tide on Grand Manan Island off the New Brunswick coast.
From Saint John it's an easy drive to other Bay of Fundy communities. About 50 miles away sits the resort of St. Andrews (By-The-Sea), also founded in 1783 by loyalists. They dismantled their houses in Castine, Maine, and reassembled them in St. Andrews, which everyone says looks just like Castine. You can play golf at the grand old Algonquin, a Canadian Pacific hotel; take a walking tour of heritage homes; or shop at cottage stores that sell English china, woolen and arts and crafts.
Nearby, take a free ferry to Deer Island, a haven for bird watching and hiking. From here, another ferry (toll) makes crossings during the summer to Campobello Island, where President Franklin Roosevelt spent many summers. (Campobello also may be reached by bridge from Lubec, Maine.) Visitors may go through the 34-room Roosevelt summer home, maintained as it was when the president was there.
If you want to visit Nova Scotia, a ferry leaves Saint John twice daily, crossing the Bay of Fundy to Digby (a 2-1/2-hour trip), or you can go the long way around and reach Nova Scotia by land.
A three-hour drive to Cape Tormentine on New Brunswick's eastern coast will lead you to the ferry to Prince Edward Island. It's a 45-minute ride.
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND:
This island will charm your socks off. Nicknamed Canada's "Garden in the Gulf," PEI, as it is called, is tiny (about the size of our Delaware) with rolling green hills, red soil, lush forests and dramatic coastline. Architectural treasures dot the landscape throughout, mostly churches with strange-looking spires, designed by Victorian architect William Critchlow Harris.
Charlottetown, the provincial capital and only city, is a good base from which to tour the island after seeing some of this charming capital's sites. Visit Province House, the birthplace of Canada, where 23 men met in 1864 with a common desire to build a great country with one government.
The significance of Province House not withstanding, PEI's top attraction undoubtedly is Green Gables House, the old farmhouse in Cavendish made famous in Lucy Maud Montgomery's beloved novel, "Anne of Green Gables."
Montgomery was born in 1874 on the island she called "that colorful little land of ruby and emerald and sapphire." The 1800s farmhouse belonged to her cousins, whom she often visited, inspiring the major part of the setting for her first book.
Published in 1908, "Anne of Green Gables"' central figure, Anne, is a freckle-faced, red-haired orphan whose character has become the symbol of PEI. A theater production of "Anne of Green Gables" is presented each summer as part of The Charlottetown Festival.
Visitors can follow an Anne-of-Green-Gables route that will lead to the homes where Montgomery lived and the places that inspired her writing. In addition to Green Gables House, sites include her birthplace, the place where she wrote her famous book, her uncle's house that contains many artifacts pertaining to Montgomery's life and the Cavendish Cemetery where she was buried in 1942.
Near Cavendish is Prince Edward Island National Park, fringed by the Gulf of St. Lawrence and featuring wide white-sand beaches.
Still other attractions are outlined on three proposed drives, varying from the 115-mile Blue Heron Drive, to the 175-mile Lady Slipper Drive and the 230-mile Kings Byway Drive.
Although PEI is only 120 miles from east to west and 35 miles from north to south, there is a lot to see and enjoy. Most peope make the mistake of trying to take it all in in a day. So did I.
NOVA SCOTIA:
This is the forest primeval.
That famous line begins Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's greatest of all works, "Evangeline," the story of the 1755 French expulsion from Acadie, the land that is now Nova Scotia.
Although Longfellow's Evangeline was fictional, the literary pathos of the Acadian people will jump off the pages into your heart as you explore the Evangeline Trail (Route 1 between Halifax and Yarmouth) and its Acadian (French) Shore, sprinkled with fishing villages and wooden houses.
Dwellers along this 30-mile stretch of shore highway descend from the early-1600s French settlers and, although bilingual, mostly speak French and fly tri-colored Acadian flags with the single Stella Maris star that guides the Acadians during times of adversity. When the British deported the French in 1755, many became the Cajuns of Louisiana; others went to France itself and many to Quebec, then French Canada. Over the years, many eventually returned to this area.
The early history of Canada unfolds at Annapolis Royal, originally called Port-Royal and situated five miles from the present town. Reconstructed on the original site is The Habitation of Port-Royal, where costumed interpreters dressed like explorer Samuel de Champlain explain 17th century Acadian life. French fur traders built this colony in 1605, the earliest European settlement in North America north of Florida.
There are walking tours of the charming town of Annapolis Royal, a Victorian delight. Nearby Fort Anne National Historic Site is the gateway through which French troops marched out and English troops marched in in 1710.
About 200 miles east of Annapolis Royal, the provincial capital, Halifax, is an interesting old/new city with a town crier who reads the news at noon, and a gorgeous waterfront, the second-largest natural harbor in the world.
A marvelous maritime museum relives the tragedy of the Titanic, which struck an iceberg April 14, 1912, off the coast of Newfoundland. More than 200 of the bodies that were recovered were taken to Halifax. The legacy of one of the worst marine disasters lives in three Halifax cemeteries, where the graves of 154 Titanic victims are simply marked by numbers.
The museum recounts another tragedy. More than 2,000 people were killed and 9,000 injured in a 1917 explosion when the French ship Mont Blanc, loaded with explosives for the war effort, collided with another ship in the Halifax harbor.
The charming village of Peggy's Cove, about 30 minutes southwest of Halifax, is a not-to-be-missed spot if you want to photograph one of the most photographed lighthouses. Many of its 50 full-time residents are artists. Some say that the village took the name Peggy from the diminuitive of St. Margaret's Bay, but many prefer to believe that the lone survivor of a shipwreck, who later married one of the men of the cove, lent her name Peggy to the village.