News and Views From my kids accomplishments, to my heretical perspective of the world

We are in the south-west coastal area of Nova Scotia now, slowly making our way to the east where we will catch a ferry to Newfoundland on Friday.

Nova Scotia is Latin for “New Scotland”. I don’t know for sure where the name came from, but in parts of the province road signs are in both English and Gaelic. Apparently a lot of Scots settled here.

At a glance on the map, Nova Scotia looks like an island, but it is actually connected to New Brunswick in the north west. Parts of the province are islands, with Cape Breton Island on the far north east the outstanding example.

The first European settlers were from France, and they called the area “Acadie”. They become known as “Acadians”. They built many settlements, built dykes to keep out the sea, farmed and lived here for many years. However, in the early 1700s when Britain and France were having one of the frequent spats, the British forcibly expelled the Acadians for fear that they were helping the French. Many of them went back to France (often to return when the political climate improved), some hid in the mountains, and some went to Louisiana. Over time in Louisiana, the word “Acadian” evolved into “Cajun”, with the obvious influence they have had there.

The Acadians who returned continue to have an important presence, and we toured at least two museums dedicated to them.

Yesterday, passing through the town of Annapolis, I saw a sign for a Tidal Power station, so we stopped in to take a look.

It is one of only 5 tidal power stations in the world, according to the interpreter at the center. It consists of a one-way turbine, and only generates power as the tide goes out. When the tide comes in, they open other gates that let the water fill a basin above the turbine. Then when the tide starts out it starts generating electricity again.

At best it can put out 20 megawatts, but it varies by time of day and time of month. Like solar and wind, it does not generating 100% of the time, but unlike those it is very predictable when it will be generating and how much it will put out at any given second.

Here’s a scale model of the turbine. In the actual turbine, the diameter of the turbine blades is about 22 feet.

They didn’t let us tour the actual turbine, so this model, views of the water coming out below and our imagination had to fill in the picture.

We went back to the same point in the Bay of Fundy this morning to see what it was like with the tide out.

As a reminder, here’s a picture with the tide in.

Here’s what the same location looked like this morning with the tide out.

Here’s another scene down the beach a ways. All the miles of sand you see will be covered with 10s of feet of water in a few hours.

There are lots of rocks like the one in the picture below along the beach. The rock is very soft here, and the deepest areas of carving indicate where the waves spend more time than elsewhere. Remember that the tide comes in and out like a sine wave, rapidly in the middle, but slowly at the top and bottom. So as the tide peaks out, it spends more time in the few feet near the top, and those rocks get more wear.

We camped last night in the Fundy National Park, but we didn’t get out to see the Bay until today.

The Bay of Fundy is famous for having the highest tides in the world due to a fortuitous combination of bay shape and size. Tides can have up to 50 feet difference from low to high, though we’re here at a point in the moons phase where they are only running about 30 feet.

We came to Hopewell Provincial Park in the afternoon to coincide with high tide, and took some pictures. We’ll come back tomorrow morning at low tide and compare.

Stay tuned.

The bridge connecting Prince Edward Island with New Brunswick about 14 km long, or about 9 miles. Here’s a picture of it taken from the NB end.

We drove over from PEI yesterday. The bridge is only 2 lanes, one in each direction, no passing the whole way. On the NB end, as you see from the picture, it is highly elevated to connect with the cliffs on the shore.

Obviously the ocean must not be very deep across the whole strait. Still quite an engineering feat.

We’ve been on 3 ferries in the past 48 hours, a Papa, a Mama, and a Baby ferry.

The Papa lasted about 7 hours, and brought us from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia. The Mama lasted a little over an hour and took us from Nova Scotia to Prince Edward Island. And the Baby just took us on a short cut across a strait on Nova Scotia, and lasted less than 5 minutes.

We’ve decided to include a piece of New Brunswick in our tour. The Bay of Fundy National Park is in New Brunswick and could be the best place to see the tides. It’s only a couple of hours out of our way anyway.

Canadian geese honking in the distance as I write this. Nova Scotia is about 10 degrees F warmer than Newfoundland. 77, rainy and cloudy today, supposed to clear tomorrow.

We spent the past two nights in Gros Morne National Park, though in retrospect we should have set aside an extra day or two. It’s quite spectacular, comparable I think to Yosemite.

There are two main features. In the south where we stayed there’s an area where the earth’s mantle has pushed up through the crust, creating a barren brown rocky mountain called the Tablelands. The chemical composition of the mantle is not conducive to plant growth, so there are only a few small adapted plants growing through the brown rocks. As you drive into the valley the contrast between the brown mountain on one side, and the lush green on the other is striking. Unfortunately it was too foggy for me to get a good picture of both sides. I’ll try again on my way out and if successful I will post it here.

We went on a ranger-guided walk into the Tablelands and were told that the rocks here are around 500 million years old, much older than most rocks on the surface of the earth. Geologists come from all over the world to study the rocks here.

The other striking feature of Gros Morne is the fjords, or sounds. Again, it was too foggy to get a good picture, and we didn’t have time to get closer. With an extra day we could have taken a boat ride deep into the fjord that you can see in the distance, covered here by fog. Of course, even in a boat the fog would have been a real damper on the views.

Today we leave Gros Morne and drive down to take the Ferry to Nova Scotia. Our ferry leaves at 11:45 this evening and arrives in Nova Scotia around 8:00am. We got a room with a couple of beds and hope to get some sleep.

We’re also hoping that tropical storm Henri waits until we are safe on land before arriving.

One province, with a compound name. Established in 1949 as simply “Newfoundland”, the name was changed in 2001. In general conversation Canadians refer to the province as Newfoundland, but in all official discussion the full name is used. Practically, the island is always “Newfoundland”, while the mainland portion is often just “Labrador”.

I had always pronounced the island “New-Fund-Lund”, but I hear locals say “New-Fund-Land”, saying “Land” like we would in isolation. So that’s how I’m trying to say it.

Talking with some Torontons last night, they said that “Newfies” are often the brunt of jokes in metropolitan Canada, I think like the old Polack jokes we used to tell, or blonde jokes. “How many Newfies does it take to screw in a light bulb?” I’m sorry to say that I don’t know the answer.