Down By the Bay

June 25, 2015  Day 10

The skies were beautiful for our drive today.  We arrived at Cove Oceanfront Campground, Annapolis Royal, NS, overlooking the Bay of Fundy.  We’ve been so lucky to stay in these beautiful campgrounds with awesome views of the water!

We stopped on the way for a tour of Grand Pre, a historic farming settlement created in the 1680’s by the Acadians.  It is also a place of remembrance of the Acadian deportation.  I never really knew the details, but a movie at the museum brought the whole story together.

  I even found our family name “Broussard” listed on the list of people deported from this site!   I can’t wait to get more information from my Mom and Uncle on how far back the roots have been traced.  Just think, I could have been a Canadian, Eh! 

The area is an actual Acadian farm that has been restored and preserved.  The Acadians used a series of dykes, wooden sluices and a drainage network to take advantage of the tides, and farm the marshlands.  This system is still in use today. The local church that was burnt down at the time of deportation has been rebuilt on the site.  What an amazing story.

The poem, Evangelina, written by Longfellow immortalizes the plight of the Acadians and there is a statue of Evangelina in the gardens.  Now I am going to have to read the poem, as well as learn about family history!
This afternoon we went to Digby, the home of the largest scallop fleet in the world.  Of course we had to try the scallops.  We had a wonderful meal at the Fundy Restaurant right on the water with a beautiful view of the fishing wharf. 

Then we went down to the wharf and watched the fishing boats come in.  There is a truck on the dock that lifts the crates from the boat to the truck using a wench.  The ship captain (young guy, dark cap) is present for the weigh-in as the crates are unloaded.  He smiled when they showed us a big old lobster from one of the crates.  One fisherman along the wharf was alone in his boat and asked for a hand in getting a rope to the dock.  Jim gladly caught the rope to help him get docked!  We watched them unload a lobster boat that came in with quite a haul!  It was interesting to see how they unload.  The crew pulled the crates of lobsters (about 100lbs per crate) from the hold in the boat. 

Tonight we went on a tour of the graveyard.  It was a clever way to share the history of the area, with the tourguide (on the graveyard shift)  leading the tour with candle-lit lanterns, as he described people from the area, and wove in stories about life at that time.  It was very different, and quite a unique way to share history.  The tombstone markings are barely visible, but have been preserved by someone who traced the markings on each stone in the graveyard over 70 years ago!  It’s impressive that this small town has done so much to preserve history.


We were up way too late, and I didn’t have time to post my blog.  We are starting to experience poor internet service, and there is not a McDonalds or Tim Hortons close by, so hoping to be able to continue to post daily!