SATURDAY, JUNE 1st (continued)

      Halifax International Airport is some 21 miles outside the town and the only international flight out tonight in addition to our Air Canada flight to London (Heathrow) is an Iceland Air flight to Reykjavik. Soon, and on time, it was the moment to leave "this fair land" of Canada, as a Canadian friend described it in an e-mail later, hoping we had arrived home safely. Fair, indeed, it was. The holiday had given us great opportunities to see its diverse landscapes and experience the friendliness of its diverse people. We had passed through eight of its ten provinces, and, for me personally, it has afforded the chance to be reminded that I can still chat fairly fluently in French, as we experienced the particular contribution to Canadian history of its French-speaking population in Quebec.

SUNDAY, JUNE 2nd:

    A night flight usually offers the possibility of some sleep, even if not in the most comfortable posture, and this proved to be the case, making the five and a half hour flight pass relatively quickly. Indeed, time-wise, it seemed not much longer than some flights to parts of Europe. A display in the Halifax Tourist Office proclaimed that Halifax Airport is the closest international airport in North America to Heathrow! The girl next to me on the flight was on her first (very short) visit to Europe. She has several hours in London to tour the main sights before her ongoing journey to Zambia, via Johannesburg, to do a month's voluntary work with an NGO.

   Our arrival in Heathrow was even a little early and at the luggage carousel it was time to say our goodbyes to the members of our tour group of twenty eight and our tour manager Peter. It had been a really good group to travel with: no difficult people nor people who were always late. We had shared food, fun and laughter and more sombre times, as when we walked amongst the graves of the victims of the Titanic. For some reason, I am always reminded, when such groups part, of a line in the leavers' hymn at the school I attended: "though never more in one place all may gather". The farewells and thanks were sincerely meant as we went our several ways. Hopefully some friendships made will be able to be continued.

    Robert and I walked from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 and checked in for our ongoing flight on Virgin to Manchester for which we had a three hour wait. There was ample time to wander round the shops and also to people-watch at one of the busiest airports in the world as folk from across the world pass through its concourses. Our short flight to Manchester, with, as it happened, the same cabin crew as we had had on our outward flight, passed quickly and we landed at 1.50pm in warm sunny weather. There being engineering work on the rail line up to Bolton, we were bussed to Bolton station and from there caught the 3.35pm train to Chorley. Tom Simpson again kindly picked us up from the station and we arrived in the house, safe and sound and full of good memories at 4.15pm. Incidentally, another memory of this very day took me back sixty years to Coronation Day, June 2nd 1953, when the Stubbings side of the family gathered at an aunt's house to watch the day's events on a ten inch television screen, the only one possessed at that time by anyone in the family. Who would have thought then of all the possibilities of travel that I have been grateful to have in the years since, this trip to Canada being the latest, and, hopefully, not the last

SATURDAY, JUNE 1st:

     Skype buzzed at 4.05am when a friend in the UK didn't know we were here and was thinking we were back home! Still we managed to get back to sleep and didn't rush to get up. We went across the road to the cafeteria and had porridge - a bowl that was certainly not small. 

    We packed and went out and had a walk around near the Governor's residence and St Paul's Church, which was sadly closed to visitors on a Saturday. Outside we met two priests who turned out to be Roman Catholics and chatted with them. They pointed out their bishop across the road and they were all in Halifax to discuss the formation, of a new diocese. 

     We chose then to spend the bulk of our time in the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. Of greatest interest was the Titanic exhibition with artifacts from the ship and many stories of human interest from that dreadful night. Equally poignant was an exhibition layout the Halifax Explosion that took place on December 6th 1917 when two ships collided in the Narrows and the subsequent explosion of munitions on one of them flattened much of Halifax leading to the deaths of two thousand people and leaving nine thousand people injured. The event and the number of people and buildings destroyed ranks second only to Hiroshima in devastations caused by explosion.

     We had lunch in the middle of our visit at a nearby cafe which several of our group were patronising. 

      Then it was a case of wiling away the hours until 8pm when the bus came to take us to the airport. Bit by bit the group gathered in the hotel foyer and duly on time the bus arrived and drove first to the Holiday Inn to deposit Iain who is staying there overnight and flying to Glasgow tomorrow on his way back to Orkney. 

     

FRIDAY, MAY 31st:

  Our day was to be a full one: an excursion along the Novia Scotia coastline south west of Halifax, often known as the Blue Nose Coast. The  epithet comes from the colour of the dye that the fishing wives would use  when they knitted mittens for their husbands. When the fisherman wiped his nose, the dye would come off, hence the "blue nose".

   Our driver was Daphne, an amazing character. She was as tall as she was broad, had spent a few years as driving a "slinky", an eighteen wheel lorry, and also a few years as as school bus driver. This was all out of necessity, having been widowed young with two young children. Her voice was as loud as a foghorn, so certainly the bus microphone was not needed! She had a great sense of humour and kept is entertained throughout!

   Our first stop was Peggy's Cove, a delightful fishing village, reminiscent of Cornwall or Norway. There are now only about 35 residents, but many visitors. Sadly, it gained notoriety in 1998 when a Swiss Air flight with 221 passengers came down in the sea nearby on a flight from New York to Geneva. It was a joy to wander around it in the time available.

    Our bus journey continued through lovely coastal scenery with  neat wooden houses and manicured gardens. In the most desirable locations house costs rose to over a million dollars. 

    At length we came to Lunenburg, the town plan laid out by the British in the mid 1700s when they were eager for another settlement loyal to the crown. They then offered the land to Protestant settlers from Germany and Switzerland. Although they were mainly farmers they soon turned their hand to shipbuilding and fishing. The beauty of the town was shown when Lunenburg was declared a World Heritage Site. We couldn't really visit Nova Scotia without having lobster at some point. This was the day! We enjoyed a superb lobster lunch and were given the usual plastic bib, crackers, and scalpel to deal with it. Several other members of the group chose the same restaurant and we had a great view overlooking the sea coast.

    On then to Mahone Bay where Daphne parked the bus lob the outskirts and we had a leisurely stroll along the road through the town with its three steeples. There was the opportunity to have an ice cream - well appreciated!

     We drove on to Chester, again, a pretty coastal town with an interesting memorial to Norwegian seamen killed during the war as they helped with convoys.

      It was on our return to Halifax when our tour became an adventure! Soon after getting on the highway the alternator on the bus failed and we all got out on the roadside and waited for the best part of half an hour before a relief bus arrived. History was to repeat itself when the relief bus failed as we arrived at the Titanic graves in the outskirts of Halifax and a third bus had to be summoned! In the cemetery there were 121 graves of people drowned when the ship went down and their bodies were brought back to Halifax. It was a moving and somber walk along the lines looking at the gravestones and their inscriptions. They included the one of the unknown child whose name was in 2010 determined to be Sydney Goodwin.

     The third bus got us back to the hotel safe and sound!

For our evening snack we again went over the the Waterfront Warehouse where we had a pleasant time sharing the tables with Anthony and Alan, David and Jackie. Good food, good company, good conversation!

THURSDAY, MAY 30th:

After an excellent night's sleep, during which we moved from Eastern Time to Atlantic Time and thus are only now four hours behind the time in  Britain, we woke up in New Brunswick near Campbellton. I had breakfast with Peter our tour leader and heard something of his interesting life story. Our route took us across the eastern part of the province through Bathurst, Miramichi, Rogersville, Moncton, Sackville, crossing into Nova Scotia a little after 2.00pm at Amherst. On then to Truro and finally Halifax about half an hour late at 5.50pm. Our lateness was exacerbated when the engines could not make manage to pull the Tain up a hill and lost traction. They had then to back back and then try it again with greater speed. I chatted en route with a 26 year old man from Jordan, Ontario, whose grandfather lives in Skipton, Yorkshire. Earlier in the month he had travelled outside Ontario for the first time, other than a trip to England. His train from Vancouver arrived in Toronto twelve hours late!

     After pulling into Halifax Station and having picked up our luggage, our minibus to the hotel was a stretched limousine. We all sat in Katherine round inside rather than in bus seats set out in rows. Our hotel was not very far away: the Four Points By Sheraton. Having settled in the room, we chatted on Skype with Robert's sister Betty and granddaughter Kiana in San Jose.

     Afterwards we walked down to the harbour side walkboard and found a place to eat at the Waterfront seafood restaurant. Also there was Ian from our group and we took his recommendation of seafood thermidor. It brought together shrimp, mussels, scallops, haddock, salmon  in a rich creamy sauce, all on a bed of pasta. It is very seldom that I can't manage to finish what is put before me, but this was one such occasion! It was excellent, but on the end over facing in quantity and richness! Our waiter was interesting. He is reading political science at St Mary's University here in Halifax, and has travelled quite widely playing the double bass in bands on cruise ships!

     And so we walked across the road and up the hill back to the hotel after another day of seeing beautiful scenery on our travels.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 29th:

This was our free day until the train leaves for Halifax, Nova Scotia tonight. We returned to Cafe Paillard for breakfast for croissant and coffee. Peter, our tour leader, had said he was going to Montmorency Falls to reconnoitre for a future tour and said anyone was welcome to join him. About a dozen took up that possibility. However, I had decided that I wanted to spent some time at the Musee des Beaux Arts de Quebec which was about half an hour away on foot. My route took me past the Quebec Parliament building which I was able to photograph up close. There was a one lady protest outside where placards told she was not allowed to export the maple syrup she had made. then I walked down the  Grand Avenue de L'Ouest and the Avenue George VI and along the Plains of Abraham. I realised that Quebec City is an easy city to negotiate  and orientate oneself in. The Museum brings together early French-Canadian artifacts and paintings, and very modern, abstract works of art. The top floor has a fascinating collection of some 2,600 Inuit artifacts  from the Arctic regions of Canada. It was time well spent. As I left the forecast rain arrived and I waited barely two minutes for the No. 11 bus that took me to the Place d'Youville and then the short walk back to the hotel. By the late afternoon many of our tour group were seated in the foyer. It is a very good group to be in and conversation and laughter flowed. Just before 6pm we went up the Rue Saint Jean with Monica and Mike from Rainford, St Helens and we found again a small, intimate restaurant Au Petit Coin Latin, and shared raclette as our main dish, a communal meal in itself, which one cooks oneself on a central heating circle placed in the middle of the table. Robert and I had snails as a starter (not bad at only $1.95 for six! We very much enjoyed. Chatting with the patron.

   Also in the restaurant was a school group from Vermont over the border in the USA who were with their French teacher on an educational visit. It was rather like the feeding of the five thousand in that their teacher spent about a quarter of an hour putting in trays all the raclette ingredients that had not been eaten. She told me that it would all go into sandwiches for tomorrow. Judging from the amount left, there would be enough to feed them until their return to the USA on Friday!

 Soon after we returned to the hotel the bus arrived to take us the half an hour or so journey to Charny Station across the St Lawrence from Quebec City. It was a small station and the waiting room soon filled; however the wait was not long and we were soon called to our sleeping compartments on, in our case, coach 23. Prior to boarding I chatted to a young man sitting next to me from Bielefeld, Germany who had been in Canada for the last ten months. After some time in the bar on the train chatting, it was time to get to bed and soon the train was making its way through the night from Quebec towards New Brunswick.

TUESDAY, MAY 28th:

  We have been so very fortunate with the weather and blue skies and sunshine again became the order of the day. We went out to the Cafe Paillard round the corner from the hotel for an excellent breakfast of croissant and coffee. 

    We are now in a very different Canada from our previous journeyings. For centuries the clifftop site of Quebec City was occupied by the Iroquois village of Stadacona. Although Jacques Cartier visited in the sixteenth century, permanent European settlement did not begin until 1608 when Samuel de Champlain established a fur-trading post here. An imposing statue of him stands opposite the Hotel de Ville. French missionaries and traders began to arrive as the seventeenth century progressed and by 1663 the entire French colony which stretched from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico was known as New France and had become a royal province. However, long-brewing struggles between England and France had continued and in 1759 during the Seven Years War, the most significant battle in Canadian history took place here in Quebec when General James Wolfe led British forces up the Heights of Abraham and in a battle that lasted barely twenty minutes, defeated the French forces under their commander, the Marquis de Montcalm. Both leaders were mortally wounded in the battle and Quebec came into the hands of the British, a state of affairs that were ultimately confirmed by the Treaty of Paris in 1763.

   This morning we were taken on a city tour with our excellent driver/guide Francois. We made a stop on the Plains of Abraham, of iconic significance in Canada's history and looked down at the place where the British forces made their assault. We also had a conducted tour of the Citadelle which, covering forty acres, is the largest North American fort still occupied by troops; it's home to the Royal 22nd Regiment, Canada's only French-speaking regiment. The strategic site, a hundred metres above the St Lawrence River was first built upon by the French, but the British constructed most of the buildings under orders from the Duke of Wellington who was anxious about American attack after the War of 1812.

   We also stopped for a while in the old port area and walked along fascinating old streets up to the Place Royale, with its bust of Louis XIV. 

It has all certainly been very good for my French and I've enjoyed speaking it again.

     After the tour Robert and I ventured to eat a typical Quebec dish called a "poutine" which is really chips in gravy with melted cheese on top. Quite nice, but probably would  not rush to have it a second time.

We then wended our way around the old city and visited both the Roman Catholic and Anglican Cathedrals. In the latter it was interesting to see that the 10th Bishop of Quebec was born in Barrow-in-Furness in 1925. I wonder if he was an old boy of Barrow Grammar School where I used to teach?

   We walked up to the Chateau Frontenac, the hotel on the the top of the hill that often affords the iconic view of the city and walked through the plush lobby area. There we saw Alan from our tour group and had a coffee with him at the 1640 Restaurant opposite the Hotel de Ville. 

  For our evening meal we walked down to the lower town and found an excellent place to eat, the Bistro du Cap. The patronne was German, from Koblenz, though she had been in Canada for many years. Our young waitress was from Montevideo, Uruaguay! The bistro only had eighteen places so it was pleasantly intimate and we chatted with the girls at the next table who were on their first trip to Canada from Dusseldorf, Germany. We chose the table d'hôte which for me brought lentil and carrot soup, medallions of beef in pepper sauce with mashed potatoes and greens followed by orange and saffron rice lauding. All very tasty. We then proceeded up the hill and back to the hotel after an very interesting day getting to know Quebec

MONDAY, MAY 27th:

Quite a leisurely morning before our 11.35am train. We ate breakfast in the York cafe in the underground shops area of the hotel. Afterwards, needing an ATM I walked along Front Street and, after getting cash from the hole-in-the-wall, I noticed that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation building was opposite the bank. Not thinking about looking him up, in any case I only had about twenty minutes, but someone I was at school with both at junior school and grammar school, Keith Horner, has presented music programmes on CBC from Toronto for several years. I just wondered if there might be a photo of him in the foyer and inner atrium - there seemed to be photos all around depicting many aspects of CBC's programming. There wasn't, however there was an interesting museum off the foyer showing some of the history of Canadian broadcasting down the years.

      I got back to the hotel with a few minutes to spare before we all walked across the road to Toronto railway station for the train to Montreal, and then the ongoing train from there to Quebec. The rain left at 11.35am and our route took us along the north shore of Lake Ontario through Oshawa, Coburg, Belleville, Kingston, Brockville (with its platform mural of the visit of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh in 1951), Cornwall , soon after which we crossed from Ontario into Quebec and were soon pulling into Montreal station, very much to time around 5.00pm. Suddenly we were in the predominantly French-speaking area of Canada, indeed 95% of the population of Quebec are French speaking. I had already chatted in French to two ladies in the seats opposite. Incidentally, on the rain journey from Toronto to Montreal there was free wi-fi on the train and I beamed up Yaroslav Alekseev in Yekaterinburg in Russia on Skype. I could see him sitting in his flat in the Urals and by pointing my iPad out of the window at the back of the train, he could see the passing scenery in Canada! 

     There was time for a bowl of soup and an orange juice in one of the food outlets in the station before our continuing journey on another train to Quebec City. The train left at 6.15pm and there were good views of the St Lawrence Seaway as we crossed over the river on leaving Montreal. After its opening by The Queen and President Eisenhower in 1959,  it enabled massive ocean-going freighters to sail up the St Lawrence right up to Duluth, Minnesota. An amazing feat of engineering, though its usage has declined somewhat in more recent years with the movement towards transport by rail and road. Our journey through the province of Quebec took us across the St Lawrence and inland through saint Hyacinthe, Drummondville, Sainte-Foy. 

   Our train pulled into the chateau-like station in Quebec City almost on time at 9.35pm. There a bus was waiting to take us to the Hotel Manoir Victoria in the Old City. Once we had found our rooms Robert and I had a short walk in the area immediately around the hotel and had hot chocolate and a muffin at Tim Horton's next door. We walked up the Rue Saint Jean as far as the Porte Saint Jean, one of the old gates in the city walls.