ADVENTURE IN NOVA SCOTIA

Friday 1st December 2006

John Saunders

Nearly noon, with a hot sun high in the summer sky, and the unmistakable skirl of bagpipes as a lone piper marches slowly out from behind the post office and down towards the harbour. We must be in Scotland. In fact, we are in New Scotland — Nova Scotia — one of Canada's Atlantic Maritime Provinces, and a place equally proud of its heritage and hospitality.

A leisurely Sunday morning drive along the south shore twists past coves and cottages, past signs advertising lobsters and quilts for sale. It passes through villages named Chester and Bideford, and towns like Mahone Bay, which has three glorious wooden churches and a boot fair in the main square.

By lunchtime you're at Lunenburg with its piper. Not a very Scottish name, but that's because the British recruited a legion of German and Swiss farmers to populate land over which they were bitterly fighting with the French. The farmers soon beat their ploughshares into anchors and took to the sea, founding a fishing community that still hosts a deep-sea trawler fleet and the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic.

To get a real taste of this community, book into the Mariner King Inn on King Street, occupying one of the many ancient wooden houses, and ask where you can find local guide Eric Croft. He will take you on a stroll through this World Heritage Site that will bring both past and present vividly alive.

Kejimkujik National Park Inland from Lunenburg, across the River Medway and through a landscape of rolling forest and sparkling lake, is the 200 square miles of Kejimkujik National Park. Home to ancient stands of maple, aspen and hemlock, a bewildering variety of wildlife, and engravings cut into rock over millennia by the Mi'kmaq people, you can camp in the park, hire a bicycle or canoe, or simply stretch your legs on one of the many sign-posted trails.