Maritime Vacation

The sound of the wind surging through birchy Eastern woods isn’t like the same coastal gusts in my own Pacific rain forest; around you not above you, alto not baritone. The colors differ too: Forests, houses, soil, and sea. And everywhere little white churches, each with its cemetery. A scattering of forts, far too many cannons. And everything faces the sea.

Birchy Cape Breton forest.

For the first time since Covid and, more important, since Lauren’s 2½-year battle with Long Covid, we went on the road for pleasure; Lauren and I and our dear friend Sally from Warragul, Australia. To my shame, all my decades’ travel had never taken me to Canada east of Montreal, so we spent a couple of weeks poking around Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, plus a bit of New Brunswick. I took many pictures and it’ll take a few blog pieces to share those that I think deserve it.

No part of Canada’s settler culture is old by European or Asian standards, but ten generations of white people lived and died here before the first rough town organized itself near what’s now Vancouver. They had to be buried someplace, thus the graveyards everywhere you go. These were captured near