Our kilted guide Ken toured us through the Anapolis Valley where French Catholic settlers, known as the Acadians, first settled.
They built clay dikes to permit the high Bay of Fundy tides to flood the area, leaving mineral rich silt for farming when they rolled out.
The British forced their expulsion from the land in the mid 1700s. Longfellow's narrative poem "Evangeline" popularized the cause of the Acadians internationally. In the last century, Queen Elizabeth dedicated the histroic park at Grand Pre to the memory of thier tragic exile.
We ate in the small college town of Wolfville. Mom and I tried out the "national obsession" Tim Horton's coffee shop. I had a few sips of the brew - my tounge grew fur and my ears began ringing. Later, we journeyed to a local apple orchard where I tasted a 400 year old cultivar, the German Gravestein. Most everyone else enjoyed a scoop of homemade ice cream.
When we passed back through the Anapolis Valley the tide was high and the clay dikes we'd photographed earlier in the day were now swollen marshlands. As a bonus, our coach took us to the star-shaped dry moat Citadel that looks over Halifax, guarded by soldiers in traditional costume.
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