If It's Tuesday This Must Be Pictou

The Canadian Maritimes are green, and they're on the coastline.  This might give you clue about the dominant weather pattern.  When we were on Prince Edward Island, we were seduced by some beautiful, sunny, warm days.  Today was our first day in Nova Scotia, at Pictou, south and east of PEI, and the weather was cold and windy and raw.  We only have two days here, so we had to make the best of what we got.  Since the weather was blustery, we played tourist and found lots of things worth investigating.

Before we launched into local history, we stopped for lunch at a wonderful local cafe, Stone Soup Cafe, where David found a wonderful, fennel-laced lobster chowder and Kathy tore into a scrumptious falafel wrap on pita bread.  It warmed our innards and strengthened us for the cold afternoon ahead.

Enough of the gustatory details.  Our first historic stop was the Ship Hector --

and the adjoining interpretive center at the Hector Heritage Quay.  Together, they tell the story of over 180 settlers who bravely sailed (were lured?) to Pictou, Nova Scotia from Scotland, at the behest of (dare we admit it?) the Philadelphia Company, which numbered the Honarable Benjamin Franklin among its investors.  Snatching up this colonial pig in a poke, the settlers agreed to embark for the New World to homestead on lands in Nova Scotia for a minor price which they could pay over time to the Philadelphia Company.  Their ship was a sailing vessel built for freight named "Hector."

After two miserable months at sea (and almost 20 of them dying enroute of smallpox), the settlers confronted a wild, forested land that had to be cleared before it could be farmed, and not enough time to clear the land or plant crops before the coming winter of 1773-1774.  By the time the next Spring arrived, only 70 settlers remained, the rest having resettled in other existing towns in Nova Scotia in order to survive the cruel winter.  Nevertheless, those hardy settlers established Pictou as a new Scottish community which today proudly displays its history after centuries of timbering, shipbuilding and coal production.

To memorialize the town's founding, in 2000, the local townsfolk of Pictou commissioned the building of a replica Hector Ship, which was built in the same manner as the original, exactly to scale, according to the original plans of Dutch sailing ships such as the original Hector.  The interpretive center has a workroom which, in addition to exhibiting the tools of the shipbuilding trade, also serves as the center for maintenance activities:

We were offered our own private tour of the Ship Hector, which we gladly accepted.  Once on board, we could look out over the prow, into the Northumberland Strait, and imagine ourselves on the high seas:

Imagining ourselves as one of the immigrant settlers wasn't so pleasant.  The ship's hold was converted to cramped living quarters with row on row of bunkbeds from floor to ceiling.  The interpretive center had a diorama what accurately showed the conditions in which the immigrants found themselves:

The settlers were not quite so fortunate as the captain and first mate, who had their quarters in a cabin abovedecks at the stern of the ship.  While not a mansion, the cabin was roomy enough for a table and benches, as well as two bunks with storage underneath.  Kathy models the cabin below:

The captain's cabin was the only room with a view -- in this case, of the Pictou waterfront:

As we walked down the gangplank of the Ship Hector, we looked across the waterfront toward the Pictou harbor light --

 -- which sits on a pier with the Northumberland Fisheries Museum.  The Museum pays tribute to the fisheries industry of the region by preserving the rich sea heritage and culture and by helping to conserve the vulnerable lobster populations in the Northumberland Strait.

And there's no doubt it fosters appreciation of lobstering.  The Museum has this photo of a grizzled old lobsterman showing off his huge, 14-pound catch:

Wandering (well, skittering, considering the heavy, windblown rain) along the pier behind the Museum, we had a closer look at the Pictou Harbor Light, and from there could look back at the Ship Hector, floating placidly at the dock by these colorful harbor buildings:

We had hoped to take a long walk around town to appreciate its many historic buildings, many of which still stand in the same form in which they were originally built.  But, alas, the weather had other plans.  So we could only drive around and sample the beautiful architecture.  The town's old post office, built in 1895, stood out beautifully from more recent structures.

And this stone building at 98-94 Water Street is a double house that dates back to 1824, and is typical of Scottish architectural style in its sturdy construction, the use of stone, and the shaping of dormers:

Touring works up a powerful thirst, but, luckily, we had already been advised where we could quench it -- at none other than Uncle Leo's Brewery:

Leo Whiffen (great uncle to the brewr, Karl Whiffen) lived in Southern Harbour, Newfoundland, where Uncle Leo ran a small general store (and, incidentally and perhaps not legally) made beer in a back room. In the winter months he stored his bottles of beer in the attic next to the stovepipe so they wouldn’t freeze.  Beer was hard to come by in 1940’s rural Newfoundland.  If you wanted to enjoy the occasional ale you probably made it yourself or… you went to Uncle Leo’s.

As it is, since we are full-time RV'ers and cannot make our own beer...we tried out Uncle Leo's.  And we weren't disappointed!  Kathy tasted and purchased Uncle Leo's "Vohs Weizenbier," which has won numerous gold medals in Canadian brewing competitions.  David, in turn, glommed onto the Smoked Porter, which won a Bronze Medal in the Experimental Beer category at the Atlantic Canada Brewing Awards competition in 2015.

Suffice it to say that Uncle Leo did not disappointed us, and is helping to warm the cockles of our hearts as we pound out our current blog entries.

See you in a day or two for another adventure here on the wild Northumberland Coast of Nova Scotia!