PapaMarshall

Day 10 – 9/13 – Ship Builders

Today we Headed out to St. Martins (they let you abbreviate the “Saint”) to check out New Brunswick’s ship building heritage.

We started with a visit to the Quaco (the Mi’kmaq name for St. Martins) Museum – a small but excellent museum recounting the industry in that community.

We were lectured by a very entertaining genealogist (who regaled us with stories of local color)

and the museum curator (who went into great detail about how you go about building a wooden ship).

These are “tree nails” (abbreviated “trunnels”) used to hold planks together.

He was fascinating and knowledgable and we spent way more time than we was scheduled before he led us out on our walk thru town.

The walk was more of a trot but he did talk about colorful

and significant

The tri-window “widow’s watch” is very common in older homes throughout the maritime provinces. Of course in most cases the “watch” actually faces the water, but hey.

homes

“Orange Lodge” – organization of “orangemen” who populated the town

and buildings along the way.

 

We also stopped to learn about the bay

Modern-day lobster pots

and the wooden bridges

Yes, the bus fits thru the covered bridge

before we headed out to the strand to pick up rocks and check out the sea caves.

Depending on several factors tides in Fundy will either create sandy beaches, cobble beaches, or rocky beaches.
This is a cobble beach
Caves carved into the sandstone by the tides

The village is on the Bay of Fundy so he also talked about how the tides impacted their village and industry.

Following lunch we boarded the bus for the 5 1/2 hour trip back to Halifax.  We’ve got one more day of exploring before we head for home.

One other note about New Brunswick.  We’re a couple of weeks too early for fall colors, but that didn’t stop some of the trees from teasing us with the a little bit of what we will be missing.

That’s it for this evening.

Nite all.