A love-letter to Quebec, and especially Île d’Orléans, an amazingly productive island that is testament to a once-conquered peoples’ enduring way of life.
Category: Canada
A Mount, a Valley & The Flats
The Okanagan Valley in British Columbia is a prime example of what geographers call “Basin and Range”. In the spring of 1980, that basin filled right up to the brim, the result of an earth-shattering cataclysm in a mountain range over 600km away.
The Gentle Province
Twenty or so kilometres out in the Northumberland Strait, off the north coast of Nova Scotia, lies a little island that also happens to be an entire Canadian province. It’s a beautiful, peaceful, well-cared-for place that is known above all else as the land of Anne.
New-fun-lan
Newfoundland is nothing short of a revelation; the sort of thing that happens when you travel to somewhere you thought you knew, but then realise is very different to what you had always thought. It’s a place of many wonders, and the discoveries you make of the natural world are simply superb.
Life on The Rock
When you experience the interior of Newfoundland, you realise that the coast was the only real place to live. And because there is so little soil, and a climate that doesn’t exactly lend itself to growing much besides potatoes and the odd cabbage, if you wanted to survive, you had to take from the sea whatever you could.
Snakes Bite & Nameless Cove
There’s nothing quite like Newfoundland for place names. You’ll find River of Ponds, Trouty and Camp Boggy, as well as Logy Bay, Boxy Harbour, Old Shop, and Ha Ha Bay. And verging into the realm of shear whimsy, how about Tilting, Seldom and Little Seldom, Happy Adventure, and the ultimate in the art of naming, Nameless Cove.
Newfoundlandese
Newfoundlanders are known for their accents, and the unusual words they use. The Lonely Planet Guide describes the way people speak here as “Irish meets Canadian while chewing a mouthful of cod”. The cod aside, there’s no doubt that English as it was spoken in both Ireland and England formed the basis for “Newfoundlandese”.
A Field Guide to Houses
Nova Scotia is like a little jewellery box containing architectural gems from a by-gone era; a rural Eden of the 18th and especially 19th centuries. It sounds more than a little ironic, but fortunately, due to poor fortune, all these treasures have been left intact for tourists from around the world to see.
To the Satisfaction of His Family
Amherst, Nova Scotia, may be a town of former glory, in a province that has seen better days. But for me it also happens to be the most important town in the country. Because this is where my first truly Canadian ancestor made his home, almost a hundred years before it became the sovereign nation we now know as Canada.