Lesser known things to spot when road-tripping through Canada
The World Peace Pavilion is a hidden gem
On the Dartmouth waterfront, just across the bridge from Halifax is a hidden gem — the World Peace Pavilion, which was built to commemorate the 1995 G7 Summit in the city. Contained within is gifts (mostly in the form of bricks) from a number of different countries. This includes a piece of the Berlin Wall from Germany, ancient pottery from one of the former Mesopotamian countries (I forget which) and some bricks from the British foreign office.
Canadian playgrounds must be really strict
Check this sign out, spotted in Halifax:
As my friend said at the time, it might as well just say “no fun”.
Part of the Berlin Wall are hidden in Canada
When the Berlin Wall fell, Germany did something brilliant with it: In Berlin, they paved the road along the route it took as a permanent reminder, and with the wall itself sold it off and shipped it around the world. There’s a segment in London outside the Imperial War Museum.
There’s also quite a lot of Berlin Wall in Canada. There’s a chunk at Halifax World Peace Pavillion, which the German government had sent to join the other exhibits, but if you drive about an hour north to Truro, there’s six complete segments hidden away at the back of an agricultural college.
I wanted to hunt them down on the trip as I’m… well, it’d be pretty awkward to say I’m a big fan of German history, but I certainly find it interesting. Apparently years ago they were brought over by a private collector.
To find them, we drove into the college, not really sure if we were allowed to actually be there, and followed the road around until we saw them. What was strange was that nobody seems to care about them: There didn’t seem to be a plaque, nor were the pieces positioned prominently as you might expect a major momento from world history to be — they were simply stuck at the back of a car park. Bizarre, but awesome.
Parliament plays the national anthem at noon
This was pretty awesome. After visiting the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa, having just been up in the Peace Tower (the tall central tower in the middle that is like a cross between the Victoria Tower and Big Ben on our own Parliament), the clock struck 12. So we get the bongs and then… the tune of “Oh Canada”, the national anthem kicked in.
If this were in Britain and Big Ben started playing God Save The Queen, I’d no doubt go on some sort of republican rant at this point — but when I heard Oh Canada, I just thought it was pretty neat.
Rideau Hall has the ultimate tourist collection
Rideau Hall is the home of Canada’s Governor-General, the person who sits in for the Queen and is situated bang in the middle of a housing estate (albeit, a very nice housing estate). You can go on a free tour of the building. Astonishingly, when we emailed ahead to see if there were going to be any tours when we were there there wasn’t, but the staff very kindly organised a tour for our preferred time. Canada wasn’t doing anything to dent the stereotype that everyone is nice.
The tour of the Hall is fascinating and takes you through several of the major rooms, and I asked perhaps a slightly too complex question for the tour*, but the tour guide was able to give me a succinct answer which sent me on to Wikipedia when I got back to the hotel.
What’s really cool though is the gardens that surround Rideau Hall — apparently whenever a world leader comes over for a state visit they’re asked to plant a tree in the garden, which I guess is the diplomatic equivalent of buying an eraser at the gift shop. This means that as you walk around you’ll find trees planted by everyone from JFK, to Nancy Reagan, to Haile Selassie, Boris Yeltsin and a tonne of British (sorry, Canadian) royals. If I were a better writer I’d describe it in poetic terms about how the age of the trees means that it is like walking through history or gives you a sense of time or something.
(*My question was something like “When the British took over, how was power transferred in terms of institutions? Was it the French leaving the Governors mansion to be replaced by a Brit, or did the British essentially rebuild all of the Canadian governing institutions from the ground up?”. Essentially I was wondering if it was a “surrender on the deck of warship” type situation, like Japan at the end of WWII. It turns out it was the latter — and it was awfully messy with periods of military rule and stuff like that.)
Canada likes big things
On our trip we managed to spot three things that have been variously claimed to be the “world’s largest”. Here I am at the world’s largest potato:
Atlantic Canada is known for being the home of the potato industry, so it is unsurprising to see a massive potato outside a shop, just outside of Fredericton. I like that they have given the potato a hat, but wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to give it a jacket?
And the world’s largest axe in the town of Nackawic, New Brunswick:
What was interesting about the axe was that it was actually built with serious purpose: It is designed to reflect the importance of the forest industry to the town. And the people there are clearly proud of it — if I recall correctly, the sign going into the town said “Nackawic — Home of the World’s Largest Axe”.
We also saw a giant milk bottle in Montreal, but sadly I can’t find a photo of it.
The Miami Deli is good for breakfast
If you’re in Montreal and looking for breakfast, check out the Miami Deli on Sherbrooke — it is pretty much the ultimate North American diner experience, and serves pretty much everything. It was so good we went twice.
Potato World is exactly what it sounds like
New Brunswick is potato country — it is where McCain, of McCain fries fame come from. To celebrate, there’s a small museum dedicated to potato farming called Potato World. Sadly we got there mere minutes after the cafe had closed (they sold fries), but we did get a chance to look around the museum, at the sorts of equipment that have been used throughout history — and find out more about the vegetable itself. At the end of the museum there’s a Potato Hall of Fame, paying tribute to all of the industry bigwigs.
Prince Edward Island has a lovely provincial park
We drove through at the perfect time — at dusk, and saw the setting sun reflected in the lakes, amongst the trees. I don’t really have anything insightful to add here other than it was lovely and I took probably the best photo I’m ever going to take:
Now watch this video of me pointing at things.
