Life in Nova Scotia
It has been raining for weeks now, it seems. A quasi-stationary low has delivered warm, moist air to the South Shore on an ongoing basis.
Lunenburg is still picturesque through the fog. You get a new appreciation for why the buildings are so brightly painted. It’s a cool place to hang out.
It’s finished. Spearheaded by students from Chester Middle School, looking for ways to create more cool activities to keep kids out of trouble and promote an active lifestyle, and several years in the making, the concrete Skate Park is now a very impressive reality.
I bet that the successful organizing effort has yielded as many benefits to the community as the park itself. Congratulations to all involved!
More about the Chester Skate Park.
It’s a laborious but joyful spring chore for boaters in Nova Scotia: taking off the winter cover, cleaning her, fixing her up, painting her bottom, waxing her sides perhaps, and getting her ready to launch.
Owning a boat means using a lot of elbow grease, unless you’re wealthy enough to hire someone to do it all for you. And contrary to what you may think, boat owners aren’t all wealthy – partly because their boats keep them so. But the ability to get out on the water provides richness to their lives, whatever their bank balance may be.
A beautiful day begs a bike ride. We headed for Martin’s Point, which sticks out into Mahone Bay between Oak Island and Indian Point.
Martin’s Point points towards the many Mahone Bay islands that we like to sail to and around.
Like many coastal areas, it has a mixture of century-old homesteads, decades-old bungalows, and some new, modern, expensive homes that the average Nova Scotian can not afford, often built by come-from-aways as a summer home and a place to retire.
People who move here by choice bring a lot to our communities – financial resources, income for local businesses, support for the arts, etc. There is often a conflict in values and lifestyle between them and the local population, however, who have a different sense of belonging to the place and a history that goes back generations.
The result can be tension between groups with different priorities, as we have seen in the Town of Mahone Bay over the issue of whether or not to “develop” the woods and soccer field near the old school which is now a community centre. I could go on.
Meanwhile, it was a sunny Saturday and we enjoyed the peaceful bike ride on Martin’s Point. Not a single car asked to share the road with us.
We did it because we could. The ice is gone, the tide was high. My son and I dipped the canoe in the ocean and paddled out to a nearby island. He hiked around it and then we paddled back again.
A fun new site about hiking in Nova Scotia has just been launched by Don Crowell of Kentville. He has videos, screensavers, high-resolution photos you can download and print, contests, a blog describing his adventures, etc. Like me, he obviously loves living in Nova Scotia and getting close to nature, and he’s done a good job with his website. Check it out.
Canada’s Derek Hatfield (who makes his home in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia), was forced to retire from the Vendée Globe round the world, non-stop solo sailing race in December, due to damage to his boat. He nursed his Algimouss Spirit of Canada to Hobart, Tasmania, where he fixed the damage, and on February 27, he left Hobart, determined to complete the course of the race, even if he is no longer officially in it. Thus he will gain valuable solo experience and the knowledge of his Open 60 equal to that of anyone who completes such a race. He will not get the support from the race organizers that he would have had were he still in the race. However, he will be sailing along parts of the route in the company of some other major offshore races.
The Vendée Globe is gradually wrapping up with the final three boats now in the North Atlantic and due to reach France in the next couple of weeks.
Fair winds, Derek. Hope to see you back home safe and sound in a couple of months!