nb & ns: small towns and stories

We left Montreal on Tuesday morning and drove seven or eight hours to the sleepy little twin towns of Perth / Andover, where we found a comfy roadside motel that more than lived up to its 4.3-star average google review rating.

Perth and Andover are separated by a wide river and connected by a bridge. They have a couple churches, a town hall, a florist called "The Flower Pot", and seven different beauty salons. We ate at Carl's Dairy Bar, a cantine right next to the Anglican church, and breakfasted the next day at Mary's, a cafe/bake shop across the river. The patrons getting breakfast with us at Mary's brought me right back to small-town Saskatchewan, with their gentle, meandering conversations. Topics included: the price of local construction materials, the reputation of the Davenport family, and a trailer for sale & whether it could fit two four-wheelers or just one.

Yesterday was mostly driving to Nova Scotia and listening to audiobooks & our trip mix cd, with a number of scenic detours off the Trans Canada. We stopped in Tatamagouche to stretch our legs and found an old train station with train cars converted into hotel rooms.

When we got to our airbnb in the evening, the guest house was still having its roof repaired, so our host invited us to wait in her living room. She was a warm, matter-of-fact woman who told us all about her parents, who fled the Nazis for Communist East Germany, then sailed to Montreal after WWII and finally settled in rural Nova Scotia. Her dad was an engineer and had helped rebuild Dusseldorf after the war, so he eventually found work building the new paper mill - but his dream had always been to own a farm, so they bought one and raised their kids on it, teaching them how to butcher pigs and cook in the German style. For many years, our host ran her own restaurant serving German food to baffled and occasionally xenophobic locals, who were eventually won over by her now world-famous seafood chowder, which has been praised by everyone from Rex Murphy to Jamie Oliver. She closed her restaurant fifteen years ago and opened a B&B on a big farm that used to belong to the former premier of Nova Scotia, and has hosted Stephen Harper (with whom she's now on a first-name basis), Peter Mackay, and Elizabeth May, among others.

Anyway, the place was lovely, and we walked around the farm, and some deer hung out right outside the back windows, and she made us a delicious breakfast this morning to make up for the roof delay.

black & white photo by Beccah Frasier

close-up of house = host's B&B

last shot: B&B on left, our guest house on right