Canadian adventure #3

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 27 October 2005 20:42:28

One of the things we noticed about the places we visited was the stark contrast between city and country.

Most of our time was spent in the small towns, which are common, and are surrounded by large areas of open land dotted with isolated houses and farms. Driving through these outlying areas we could pass one house and not see another for 20 mins or so. The other odd thing about these roads was the numbering of the houses. While numbers were always in ascending or descending order, they rarely followed on from each other. We could pass number 317 and the next house could be 332. We never worked out what happened to the intervening houses!

Travelling from these small towns to Halifax and then to Toronto we noticed how much more pronounced the difference is than in the UK. In a country so large with relatively few large cities, there is a lot of space between which is only sparsely populated, and makes the contrast between ‘country' and city even more obvious. Here, while cities are smaller in comparison, there are more, and the spaces between are smaller. And in general, your next door neighbour tends to be within walking distance!!

The other interesting thing about the places we came across were the names. Cities from all over the world can be found in this small area of Canada! We passed through Inverness, Iona, Falmouth, and Truro, Sydney, New France and Brooklyn and coffee in Liverpool at the end of the River Mersey! There are also some truly silly names in Nova Scotia, from the highly original Little River and Big Hill, to the inviting Wreck Cove, Marsh Brook, and, the old name for the town of Wolfville- Mud Creek!

PS I've added a couple of links to post #1, just in case anyone's interested where any of these far flung places are...