Our B'n'B was a Victorian mansion. Dave picked the hotels and this one was superb. It was also perfectly appropriate for Annapolis Royale, the capital of French colonies in the Americas throughout the 1600s and early 1700s. When the British expelled the French Acadians in 1754 and moved the capital of Nova Scotia to Halifax, Annapolis Royale sank into genteel obscurity. It is a beautiful time warp of historic buildings, botanic gardens, and elegant homes waiting for a rebirth. We spent an afternoon and evening in Annapolis Royale, on the west coast of Nova Scotia, on August 10, 2018.
The two flags flying in front of our B'n'B, Hillsden House, are the Canadian flag and the Acadian flag. There are many French speakers in this area of mostly English-speaking Canada. The Acadians were the original French settlers of the Maritimes, who were forcibly expelled by the British to France, Louisiana, and the American colonies in the mid 1700s. Some fled from authorities or found their way back, and settled in French-speaking communities in far corners of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI. The Acadians who were shipped to Louisiana became the Cajuns.
After the Acadians and British left, Annapolis had brief periods of prosperity as a fishing port, and the Victorian mansions turned into B'n'Bs are a souvenir of the city's former greatness.
We spent an hour at the reconstructed French fort, which was ultimately taken over by the British. I loved reading all the displays in French.
There were gravestones dating back to the 1700s.
The heroes celebrated in statues at Annapolis Royale are the French, not the English.
Gunpowder was stored in below-ground buildings.
The views were empty and beautiful, whether looking across fields or towards the river that leads to the sea.
We also spent an hour roaming the city's botanic gardens. One highlight was this replica of an Acadian house and kitchen garden.
Later in the afternoon, we took a walking tour with a historian who told us about the native Miqmaq tribe and about the Acadian exodus.
Every summer visitors and residents put up cairns in a semi-Miqmaq tradition.
Our guide showed us the spot where ships had docked to haul Acadians away from their homeland. Many of them died on the ships headed for France or America.
After the tour, we took an ice cream break.
And for dinner, we ate Digby scallops, fresh from nearby Digby, where they are harvested.
Dave rented us a white Jeep. He wants to buy a similar, high-off-the-ground car next year. I tried to picture myself, as a 90-year-old, trying to climb into that thing.
On August 11, 2018, we drove across northern Nova Scotia to catch the ferry to Prince Edward Island. We stopped at Grand Pre, a memorial to the Acadians and their genocide by the British.
There was a huge statue of Evangeline, the heroine of a poem by Longfellow. She is separated from her lover in the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia, and she spends her life searching for her lover, all across America. When she finally finds him, he is an old man, dying.
The chapel at Grand Pre included this beautiful stained glass window, memorializing the expulsion of the Acadians.
The chapel also included paintings, showing the Acadians being forced to leave their homeland.
This is a statue of Henry Longfellow, the American poet who wrote "Evangeline."
Our last stop was at a museum near the ferry port.
The museum included the "Empress," a reconstruction of the ship that, in 1789, transported the first Scottish immigrants from Glasgow to Nova Scotia. The island was named by those immigrants Nova Scotia, or "New Scotland." I was especially interested in the ship because my ancestors traveled from Scotland and Ireland to Canada at almost that same time. I could picture them crammed into a tiny ship like that one, with whole families squeezed into a bunk or two below deck.
When we arrived on Prince Edward Island, we headed for Charlottetown, with its fancy restaurant on the pier. More mussels and another lobster for me.
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