Road Trip Day Four

We began our day in Charlottetown with overcast skies, drizzle and a low ceiling and so we spent some time at Future Shop where John bought himself some electronic gadgetry. As we got to Truro we actually decided not to head out to Cape Breton today because of the drizzle and because we were only an hour away from Halifax thought we would go there first. So we took the scenic route from Truro to Halifax via the Minas Basin and sections of the Bay of Fundy.

In other news, I found it actually quite strange that the first two churches that we saw on day four were fairly ugly compared to the beautiful country churches we had been seeing along the way. One was the PAOC church in Charlottetown and the other was a Baptist church so hopefully I'm assigning blame equally here. How is it that these old buildings seem to beautify the landscape and the new ones just look like eyesores? Where one dominates the landscape and creates a wow experience, the other seems to pollute the landscape and create an uugghh! experience.

Just in case you didn't notice the first picture is a lighthouse on the Minas Basin and the second is one of those eyesores and the third is one of those that beautifies the landscape.

I've also been noticing distinct differences as we go through regions of he country. In Quebec every town had a huge cathedral like structure in the middle of the town dominating and defining the entire community. It was also on the highest point of ground in the town and then often raised up on a built up portion of ground. In Quebec almost all the churches had two symmetrically balanced usually square but sometimes round towers with steeples at the front of the building. The churches were predominantly white with silver coloured roofs on the church and the steeples.

As we went into New Brunswick, there was almost always only one steeple and it was square and more squat looking than the steeples in Quebec. Here the churches were almost exclusively white and sometimes there was more than one church in town. Interestingly enough the churches were usually on the main road but not usually in the centre of town.

In PEI the churches were similar to New Brunswick but were sometimes outside of the town altogether or sometimes on a back street in the town. In Nova Scotia the churches were similar to NB and PEI but seemed more weathered with paint peeling. It seems as if they were not as well taken care of and other times the churches had been converted (pardon the pun) into community centres or theatres. I have no real verifiable conclusions about all this, but it seems that in Quebec the church was central to all of life in a small town and it still serves as a symbol of that today - even if the reality of it is not there. In NB and PEI religion was important but was separate from day to day life - maybe a reflection of the holiness tradition. Whereas in NS religion does not seem as important and is reflected by the lack of maintenance. I don't know enough to make more than a guess.

As for our trip today, the Bay of Fundy and downtown Halifax at night dominated the photos. Jared and John slept for quite a while in the car as we travelled. I'm still amazed at the beauty of our country and could stop every few kilometres and take some more pictures.

In Halifax, we went straight to my sister Dorothea's place. Her husband Michael and son Daniel were there but her daughter Christel was at her new apartment (she had just finished moving out today!) We will see her tomorrow. So then Daniel played tour guide and took us downtown and we walked through downtown and headed up to the Citadel and took some night photos of the city and the harbour. As always you can check them out at my Flicker site HERE.

These last two pictures are first of all my sister Dorothea and her son Daniel. The second is a shot of the lighthouse in the eastern part of the harbour in Halifax.