Hirtle’s Beach, south of Lunenburg, is a popular destination year round for local residents, though it is less known to tourists than Rissers Beach or Crescent Beach.
It’s one of those beaches where the sand gets washed away for the winter and returns for the summer – soft beige sand deep enough to bury your brother in.
The waves can be big enough for fun body surfing. This is the North Atlantic and the water tends to be cold, but once in a while, warmer ocean currents will come by and surprise you. Not that these teenagers care that much.
At the far end of Hirtle’s Beach is a wonderful hiking trail around Gaff Point.
Here’s some more scenery of Hirtle’s Beach featuring my brother and his dogs, Nixxy and Jake. These are Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers – yes, it’s an official breed. They are smart and fast, great agility dogs – these dogs have lots of ribbons at home.
One of Nova Scotia’s best kept secrets is the “Noel Shore” along the Minas Basin between the Avon River at Windsor and the mouth of the Shubenacadie near Truro. The deep clay soil supports large, lush trees, and the rolling scenery is only surpassed by stunning views of the Basin.
Recently, we were lucky to stay a week with friends at Tenecape near Burntcoat Head. The beach is grand to explore at low tide. Such a contrast with the water lapping at the cliffs at high tide.
If high tide occurs toward the end of a sunny day, the water can actually be quite swimmable, as it gets warmed by the sand as it comes in.
CBC Radio host Peter Gzowski once said, “Rose Vaughan’s songs are like Alice Munro short stories.”
High praise, given that Munro just won the Nobel Prize in Literature!
Halifax singer/songwriter Rose Vaughan has penned many iconic tunes over the decades. As a young and vibrant septuagenarian, she still performs occasionally and plans more recordings.
The Trio’s second album
One of her tunes, “Stone and Sand”, from the Rose Vaughan Trio’s 1993 Fire in the Snow album, is featured in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2e7VMqJKt4
Rose’s songs have been going around in my head lately, as well as on my DVD player, because she recently hired me to get her songs online so people could buy them digitally.
The Trio’s third album
I was delighted to be asked, as I’ve known Rose since the 1990s and even played a little accordion on her Winter Rose album. Cathy Porter, a consummate musician who did most of the Trio’s arranging and has gone on to be a sought-after side performer with some of Nova Scotia’s biggest stars, also enhanced the sound of bands I was in back then – much smaller stars in the firmament, I assure you.
Their music was part of my life in the years after I returned to Nova Scotia and before I had my family. They’re lovely human beings whom I feel privileged to know.
The Trio’s first album, Sweet Tarragon
Each of Rose’s songs paints a story. The music is gentle and melodic, and the lyrics thoughtful and introspective. I can’t claim to be objective because of the nostalgia factor, but I’m truly enjoying listening to the albums again.
If you like “Stone and Sand” above, I invite you to take a listen to the songs on the Artist Playlist on her Facebook page, and samples of her other songs there and on her website, where she now sells CDs and mp3s.
Talking to people who are drawn to live on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, I find it interesting to learn about what attracts them here.
Living in Nova Scotia is a choice, whether you come from “away” or have your roots in the province.
I often buy meat from Kevin Veinot at local farmers’ markets. His farm has been in his family for seven generations. Yet he too has made a conscious choice to live here, and to farm sustainably.
As he says in this video, “There’s lots of room here to be different.”
This stunning video by Nova Scotia’s tourism folks features flyovers of the Bay of Fundy coastline, especially dramatic Cape Split. The Bay of Fundy, including its inner Minas Basin is a fascinating place to spend time watching the world’s highest tides. The video gives you the high speed flyover, but if you can spend a few days along this coast, taking in the changing landscape at a slower pace, you won’t regret it.
An iconic sight in the waters of Mahone Bay and beyond, Dorotheahas taken hundreds of young people on maritime sailing adventures as part of the Nova Scotia Sea School.
It’s the kind of intense, group adventure that teenagers crave and need for their development, and that schools don’t usually provide.
Lives have been changed.
Dorothea needs an overhaul. Compare the $30,000 they’re looking for to the cost of rebuilding Bluenose II! Small projects like this are very satisfying to support as they can have a huge positive impact on individual lives.
The 12th annual Sand Castle Competition was held on a perfect sunny day, July 14, 2012. Here are photos of some of the entries. The winners were the giant lobster and the pyramids.
Storms don’t always coincide with high tides, but today’s nor’easter did.
Tide was 2.2m (7.2 ft) late this morning (see this link for tide chart), and near the causeway to Oak Island the road was covered with several inches of water. In 8 years of watching storms here, this was the highest storm surge we’ve seen, with water flowing completely over the road.
