More Maritimes News

We spent a few days with the Nova Scotia fam including Thanksgiving dinner for the first time ever. 

Rachel had Kings-Edgehill (KES) friends with her from Barbados, which added a fun element to the celebrations. We met several of the girls' friends over the weekend and were impressed by their intelligence and awareness of world affairs. Barak Obama is speaking in Halifax in a few weeks and Paul and Sue are hosting 6 young people to go to the event with them. 

Our visit to KES also left us feeling the future is in good hands with a faculty and student body fully engaged in the pursuit of excellence in academics, athletics, fine arts, and leadership.  

KES began as Kings College School in 1788 (the oldest independent school in the British Commonwealth and the genesis of Kings University in Halifax) followed by Edgehill School for girls in 1891 and they amalgamated in 1976.

The Maritimes provide an endless juxtaposition of old and new, for instance. the KES library built in 1863 and the new Halifax Central Library that opened in 2014, both housing up to date digital information technology.

the exquisite Convocation Hall library/museum at KES 

Halifax Central Library on Spring Garden Road

downtown Halifax

We love Mahone Bay for it's olde charme from the ship-building glory days. It has managed to keep chugging along, unlike many small towns, by attracting tourists and specialty shops like Amos Pewter. It also seems to have a thing for stuffed creatures, bringing people to town in the off-season. We've been to the Father Christmas Festival and this year the Scarecrow Festival. some were themed to the business that created them, odd but cute.

in front of O My Cod seafood restaurant

waiting for service outside a spa

advertising a wool shop

In the 30 years that we have “lived away” we have rarely “been home” in October. It’s not much different than British Columbia at this time of year though maybe a bit warmer on average until into December.We took the old road through the Wentworth Valley to enjoy the leaf colour, realizing that the trees are already dropping their canopies and it won’t be long until they are bare. With a high deciduous content the colour is spectacular but short-lived and if you hit a patch of wild blue berries it is breathtaking

Speaking of deciduous trees, while we tend to think Maritime trees are on the small side there are some that challenge anything the west coast can offer. This Linden tree has stood on the corner of Rochford and Grafton for at least a hundred years surviving everything nature and humans could throw at it.

Jim looking pretty tiny next to this Linden

It has been rewarding to have time to wander down so many memory lanes during this extended visit. There is nowhere quite like the Maritimes and Maritime people. Not to mention the lobster!

Winding down

My gym membership expired last week and rather than renew I tromped all over Charlottetown. Jim has had an Achilles tendon irritation so my walks have been solo and what I re-learned is that the old part of Charlottetown is compact. You can walk almost anywhere in about 20 minutes, not counting the burbs of course which sprawl as they do everywhere.

For context, we were 3 blocks from Confederation Centre and 4 from Province House. All the restaurants, coffee shops, amenities of every description including “my” gym are in that midtown area.

I went into the building that Used to be Prince of Wales College and found a photo of the 1930 intercollegiate rugby champions in the front hall. My father, age 15, was on the team; while the printing is faded, the names I could decipher were all very familiar. 

Dad, upper right

Our apartment was on the east side of the street and the house of Betsy’s and my teens is on the west side. Of the 8 houses on that side, one is a museum, one is an inn, one is being converted to a B&B, one is apartments, and 4 are single family homes. Those four houses are circa 1945-50 and modestly sized while the conversions are all the beautiful but huge and drafty Victorian mansions. 

And then there is this oddity going up at the end of the street...

While you might get all googly-eyed about the gorgeous architecture, that first house I owned had 11 foot ceilings on the first floor, 10 on the second, and 9 on the third in a cold climate. My grandparents had boarders on the third floor and when that era passed, the stairwell was closed off with heavy drapes backed by blankets. The house has 2x4 construction with newspaper for insulation and single pane windows and the fireplaces burned coal as did the furnace before the Grands retro fitted it for oil. We put on storm windows in the fall and took them off in the spring and it took 3000 gallons of oil to heat the place.
There are hundreds of viability conversions all over town: inns, vacations rental apartments, B&Bs, or long term apartment conversions.

Not a wise investment opportunity despite having a lot of bolts holding it together; a distinct bulge! 

It is October 10 and we are down to 10 days left in the Maritimes and we have moved out of the apartment and are in Nova Scotia for Thanksgiving weekend.

Today we went to Grandparents' Day at Kings-Edgehill School, the co-ed amalgamation of my alma mater and Kings College School (oldest independent school in the Commonwealth apparently). Rachel and Jillian started at KES this year as day students, about an hour from home for them. The school is a dramatic cultural and social change for them but they seem to be liking it. Hilarious is that the girls’ uniform is almost identical to the one we wore in the mid-sixties at Edgehill: a knee length tunic over a white or blue shirt, tie, dark knee socks, and “sober” shoes. 

Different is that when I was there the two schools, Kings and Edgehill, were on separate hills and only very occasionally did the twain meet.

Me, age 17 at Edgehill

Old girl and two new girls; Jill (15) on the left and Rachel (16) on the right