# The Tourist's Maritime Provinces/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II
HOTELS—CUISINE—SPORTS—AMUSEMENTS—FESTIVALS
Hotels.
Now-a-days one cannot say of Provincial inns, as did Sam Slick four score years ago, that a good one was no easier to find than "wool on a goat's back." The Yankee pedlar whom Judge Haliburton created to flay and spur the indolent Scotians would find himself comfortable at many a crossroads hotel in this day of bettered travelling facilities, and excellently housed in certain hostelries which have met the exacting demands of tourists.
The most pleasantly typical inns of this vacation land are those which embody in their simple, cosy rooms and their kitchen supervised by the housewife and her daughters the standards of American home life. One comes upon these modest guest-houses mayhap without anticipation, but leaves them oft-times with savoury memories of home-baked biscuits and well-seasoned game, of crusty pies and wild berries which far more pretentious ménus cannot efface.
​There is one such house "past the hawthorne bush and next to the forge" in Barrington Passage, a village of white cottages and dark firs facing the island of Cape Sable at the southernmost point of Nova Scotia. And there are others at near-by Lockeport and Port Medway, and in towns on Digby Neck, at Cheticamp far up in Cape Breton, at "Northeast" in the Margaree Valley, at Montague, Prince Edward Island, at Lakeside, New Brunswick, and at Arichat on an Acadian isle, twenty miles out in the Atlantic.
Frequented hotels at Liverpool and Bridgewater, Chester and Hubbards on the eastward shore of Nova Scotia, at Weymouth, Digby, Smith's Cove, Annapolis, Wolfville, Windsor and Parrsboro on the Fundy side, at Baddeck and Whycocomagh on the Bras d'Or Lakes, at Sussex, Hampton, Loch Lomond, Rothesay, St. Stephen, St. George, St. Martins, Woodstock, Grand Falls, St. Leonards and Chatham in New Brunswick, and at Brackley Beach, Hampton, Stanhope, Rustico, Tracadie and Alberton, Prince Edward Island, are elaborations of the country inn, with ampler accommodation for summer guests and more modern equipment, and, regrettably, a more stereotyped cuisine. It is a commentary on the tourist requirements peculiar to this region that large hotels dependent upon fashionable patronage are not as a rule successful. Several houses of this sort have closed their doors within recent years. An exception is ​the Algonquin Hotel, conducted by the Canadian Pacific Company, at St. Andrews, N. B., which burned in May, 1914, but has been rebuilt. In this instance, however, there is a large Montreal clientage to give support. On Campobello Island are delightful inns patronised chiefly by vacationists from the New England states. At Dalhousie, N. B., the Inch Arran Hotel, an unconventional structure on the shore of the Bay Chaleur, is the resort of Eastern Canadians and a few Americans. The Grand Hotel, Yarmouth, is the mecca of rustic honeymooners, being reputed for its size and for the length of its ménu. Experienced travellers forsake its barn-like pretensions for humbler and more hospitable inns.
Lour Lodge, also newly constructed after a fire which destroyed all but the annex and cottages, is not only the best hotel in Digby, but one of the most completely satisfying to be found anywhere in the Provinces. Less successful hotels would do well to take it as a model in cuisine, service and general conduct.
"JAPANESE DAY" AT THE WAEGWOLTIC CLUB, NORTH WEST ARM, HALIFAX
​distant by wagon-road 35 miles from Annapolis, the nearest sizeable town, the service is faultless, thanks to the genius of the charming and capable woman who presides as mistress of the club community.
Minard's cottage camp is also on Kedgemakoogee Lake; there is another resort affected by sportsmen at Milford, on the road from Annapolis (15 miles).
In the hotels of large towns the Knights of the Road hold sway in the office, and pre-empt the attention of the Hebes of the dining-room. In truth, one must share the verandah with members of the self-confident, loquacious fraternity at all but the strictly tourist hotels, of which there are regrettably few in proportion to the area and attractions of the Provinces.
The principal hotel at Moncton, the Brunswick, is set among paternal shade trees opposite the railroad station and is a genial, roomy house. At Shediac, near-by, is the Weldon, a summer hotel not far from Northumberland Strait. The hotels of Prince Edward Island are with few exceptions distinctly mediocre. The Victoria and the Queen at Charlottetown have the best rooms and the largest patronage. One could wish here, as in other towns of the Provinces, that less was attempted, and more achieved. The Clifton at Summerside is quite individually good.
Truro, at the junction of the Intercolonial trunk ​line and the line to Sydney, and a town of consequence, could scarcely have less desirable accommodation than that provided by the two hotels known as "the best."
The "Royal George" at Antigonish, a small Nova Scotia town on the rail and motor highway to Sydney, is a hotel worthy of a larger and more appreciative community. The owner has installed a dozen private baths, provided good beds, telephones and modern plumbing in every chamber and furnished his wide porches with awnings and lazy chairs. Mr. Broadfoot's 400-acre farm, to which guests drive for buttermilk and berries, supplies rich Nova Scotia produce to the hotel table. A hotel such as this is an aid to tourism. In its own district it is doing pioneer work.
A chain of summer hotels is mooted which will include new houses at Whycocomagh, Baddeck, St. Peter's and other scenic resorts on the Island of Cape Breton. At the present time, the New Bras d'Or, Baddeck, where mine host Anderson presides, is the largest hotel on this inland arm of the sea, the Arm of Gold, whose increasing renown among travellers is still far from commensurate with its deserts.
Sydney has a hotel or two adequate for tourist needs. Aside from its two best-known houses, Halifax has several smaller hotels within the city limits and in the adjacent suburbs. It seems to be the opinion of travellers that the old Halifax is ​waning and the newer Queen waxing in prestige. The Royal of St. John, the best of New Brunswick hotels, is quite typically British in substantial comfort and excellence of service. Like nearly all the hotels in the Provinces it is conducted on the American plan. A near neighbour is the well-kept Victoria just below King Square.
The terms for room and board without bath at the better class hotels of the cities approximate $3 per day per person. Principal hotels in smaller towns and at resorts charge $2 to $4 a day for the same accommodation, or $8 to $20 a week. Boarding-houses in towns and on farms, and humble inns, excellent, some of them, make a rate of $1 to $1.50 a day, or $5 to $8 a week.
Some tourist hotels have cabins in connection with the main building which are leased to guests preferring their restful isolation. Hotels having such accommodation (the Hillsdale, Annapolis, the Milford House, Milford, the Kedgemakoogee Club, Lour Lodge, Digby, the Hackmatack, Chester, the Gainsborough, Hubbards, the Rocky Point colony near Charlottetown, etc.) are specified in the Hotel List at the end of this volume. There are unconventional cottage colonies near Yarmouth, Weymouth, Smith's Cove, Wolfville, Antigonish and Charlottetown and on New Brunswick river and bay shores, where furnished cabins may be rented at reasonable prices.
Information concerning New Brunswick camps ​will be supplied by the Tourist Association, St. John. The Intercolonial Railway issues an exhaustive list of sportsmen's hotels in out of the way districts.
The traveller who for the first time fares the length of the Peninsula to Gaspé Basin, a long day's journey from main roads of travel, does so with misgiving as to what sort of tavern will, in so remote a place, offer him hospitality. He arrives after dark and crosses by launch to the shore opposite the railway station. From the landing there is a heroic dash in a carry-all drawn by splendid horses up a breathless hill, and at the top—lights shining down a driveway on pavilion and grassy parterre, and gleaming from the windows of turreted chateau Baker, a way-farer's home unique among Canadian inns.
For years the house sat modestly enough by the road-side, overlooking the bay and the Gaspé hills. The few travellers who came this way by wagon and steamer found a rare good welcome, and rare good beds and meals to compensate the journey's tedium. John Baker's fame as a purveyor of comfort seeped by degrees to the edge of the outer world. Then the railroad crept part way down the coast and finally laid a path along the cliffs of Bay Chaleur to the Basin. As traffic increased, so did the size of Baker's House, and climbed and spread its wings and put forth new chambers and ​baths fit for the Ritz, at Baker prices. But it never outgrew its homeliness.
The bachelor proprietor, whose taste governs even details of furnishing and the packing of fishermen's baskets; "Earl," the young vice-host; "Rose" and her bevy of dining-room helpers, and the cook who came into the household indefinite decades ago are all friends to make one's stay happy. Every one remains longer than he expected, and departs with a wish to return.
At Percé, a few miles south of Gaspé Bay, there is a new and very pleasant hotel kept by a young Jerseyman and his wife—Bisson's Percé Rock House—set on a knoll above the sea, facing the red and green heights of this marvellous coast. Other towns between Percé and Matapedia have sufficiently good accommodation to satisfy the few tourists who stop there.
Cuisine.
A long tour of the Provinces, of Newfoundland and related tourist regions undertaken in the summer and fall of the year 1914, and frequent inquiry of chef and housewife, revealed but two dishes peculiar to the country. The "brewis" of the Newfoundlander is a Sunday morning specialty composed of soaked hard tack and creamed cod. "Methodist bread" is made with eggs and raisins, and obtained its sectarian name because it was originally served to the mourners after Methodist ​funerals. "Bread" in the Newfoundland outports is hard biscuit. Soft bread is "a loaf."
From Newfoundland there came to the land south of it the familiar beverage known as spruce beer. In this brew the Irish fishing admirals used to toast "the Pope and two pounds" (for a quintal of codfish). Owners of fishing schooners supplied it in unlimited quantities to their crews. According to a recipe published in 1827, the beer is made by the following process: A bough of black spruce fresh from the tree is chopped and put in an iron pot with six to eight gallons of water and boiled over a fire until the leaves fall off. Half a gallon of molasses is thereupon added. When the liquor is cool it must be poured into a cask where a pint of grounds from an old brewing has been left and stood way to "work."
If so lucid a direction is carefully followed the result will be found almost as agreeable as Russian kwass—a comparison flattering to any beverage.
The Saturday night pot of beans is a favourite in Nova Scotia homes, many of which were fore-fathered by New Englanders. In the early fall, ménus are varied in both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick by the broiled or baked flesh of the moose which when tender is juicier and of better flavour than beef. If killed too late in the season the meat is tough and "garney." Indians like the moose liver. An author writing in 1818 recommends to epicures the upper lip of the cow moose, ​which "being of a consistency between marrow and gristle is a great delicacy when properly dressed." An old diary (1759) speaks of baked beaver as very good, and of fat cow caribou as "better than porcupine, and equal to beaver." The porcupine is "the lost man's friend" in the woods. Turned on a spit, the waddling despoiler of trees yields a roast not to be despised. Little rabbits which browse on spruce roots are cheap and delicious. In the open season, partridge and plover are designated thus upon numerous bills of fare. Other times they may appear as "broiled chicken" or in a meat pie, and lose none of their flavour by the deception. The lamb of Cape Breton and of the region about Antigonish has especial fame.
"Fish" signifies cod to the Maritime dwellers, who eat surprisingly little of it. Until one has partaken of cod fresh from the hook and crisply fried by a deft Provincial hand, he knows nothing of its merits as a fish delicate, moist and of an excelling tastiness. Cod's tongues and sounds with cucumbers are voted a palatable dish. The boned fillet, slightly salted and smoked like finnan haddie, or haddock, is a specialty of Digby, which is also renowned for its plump dried herring. Margaree salmon is especially commended by gourmets. But newly-caught salmon is good everywhere in these northern waters, and rarely costs more than 5 to 9 cents a pound. The tunny-fish or horse ​mackerel, much esteemed by the Romans, is harpooned or seined in great quantities on the Atlantic coast from Yarmouth to upper Cape Breton. Most of the catch is shipped fresh to the States for Italian consumption. The flesh is dark red before cooking; boiled it has the flavour of coarse salmon. The sword-fish, disdained in Provincial markets, is highly regarded in cities of the eastern States. The dog-fish, sold under a more appetizing name, is thought by some as good as halibut. Sea, lake and brook trout abound in every part of the Provinces and are bought for a song. At the Commercial Hotel, Arichat, on the Isle Madame, Mrs. Cutler prepares mackerel after a palatable recipe of her own. The fish is cut into small pieces and when salted, peppered and allspiced, is covered with vinegar and baked in a bean-pot for about an hour, or until the flesh falls away from the bones. Served cold, this is an appetizer commended to future visitors to the Isle of My Lady.
Delicious great scallops are taken about the shores of Mahone Bay and Margaret's Bay. The season for lobster varies according to latitude. When taboo at one place they are a feast at another. Usually they bring 10 to 20 cents each and are served without rich sauces, but with simple condiments, and if fresh from the pot, with melted butter.
There are two hundred lobster canneries on Prince Edward Island alone which pack over two ​million cans a year. The razor-shell clams of "the Island" are plentiful, but the Malpeque oysters of Richmond Bay, north of Summerside, are its best-known sea product. New Brunswick claims superiority for her Shediac and Buctouche oysters.
Strawberries are ripe in July in the famous beds of Tusket, east of Yarmouth. As late as August one finds the wild variety for sale, at 50 cents the gallon, in northern counties of Nova Scotia. Huckleberries and blueberries are picked well on in September on woodland ridges of the major provinces. The bake-apple is a small fruit, yellow in colour but with a flavour like a blackberry, which grows abundantly in northern regions; likewise the wild cranberry, which Dr. Fernald of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard, identifies with the wineberry said to have been discovered by the Norsemen who touched the shores of Canada a thousand years ago.
The Annapolis Valley has a wide reputation for its apples of various kinds, and for its peaches and its plums, and Bear River, near Digby, is equally well known for its cherries.
In the remote districts of Cape Breton, where vegetables are sown late and have but a short season in which to ripen, the solitary potato, boiled, and rarely cooked otherwise, appears three times a day with wearisome monotony. In compensation for certain deprivations there is an abundance ​of fresh mutton and fish and rich dairy foods. Campers in the Margaree Valley buy home-made butter at 18 to 25 cents a pound, cream at 50 cents a gallon and eggs at 12 to 18 cents a dozen, according to the industry of the producer.
Sports.
Hunting and Fishing.
The moose, "gallant roamer of the woods," is stalked in the forests of western Canada and slain by "still hunters." But the Abenaki Indian of New Brunswick taught the white man of the East the treasonable craft of "calling" the bull at the nuptial season, in September and October. At that period he is in his prime. His broad palmated horns, which are shed each winter, are then firm, and ready for combat. The wailing solicitation of the cow is imitated by the guide through a horn of birch-bark. The treachery is attempted during early morning twilight preceding sunrise. Sometimes the trumpeter climbs a tree to send forth the minor summons across windless barrens. Unless the presence of human beings ​has been detected by the great nostrils of the moose, which are large enough for a man's arm to be inserted, the answer comes in a low grunt, quickly repeated. The waiting huntsman is warned of the bull's approach by the rattle of boughs and the hurtle of the branching horns carried side-wise through the trees. The "caller" leaves his perch, and with perfidy Indian-taught, places the horn near the ground to muffle faulty vibrations in the feigned appeal. The King of the Woods appears in the open. A murderous detonation is his greeting. If the gunner's aim is true the great body crashes to the moor, victim of an unforgivable deception.
The height of the North American moose at maturity averages about 5½ feet from ground to withers; its weight about 800 pounds. The hair of the male is black at the points, that of the female brown. The antlers of the bull (the cows have none, and it is forbidden in New Brunswick to shoot the cow) attain an average spread of 40 to 52 inches. A 60-inch spread is unusual. The mother gives birth to two calves each spring except in her second one. A book on the Present State of Nova Scotia, published in 1787, says of the moose, "Their amazing numbers we may in some degree estimate from those killed last winter: in one settlement alone they amounted to at least four thousand." In those days they were hunted for their hide and meat rather than for the trophy ​of the antlers. The Indians called beefsteak, "French moose-meat." Due to their killing being governed now by restrictive laws, moose are still plentiful in their original habitat.
Only one moose may be shot by one person in Nova Scotia, and in New Brunswick only one bull moose, one bull caribou and two red deer, in a season. The non-resident's license fee for big and little game is $30 in the first-named province, and $50 in the last-named. A Nova Scotia small game license (rabbit, mink, otter, woodcock, snipe, duck, goose, plover, grouse, partridge, etc.) costs $15.
The moose of New Brunswick are said to be more numerous and somewhat larger than those of Nova Scotia. The size of the body does not necessarily gauge the proportions of the antlers. The moss bogs of Nova Scotia are more accessible than those of the sister province, and guides and license fees cost less. Camping accommodations in New Brunswick are more luxurious and appeal to those who like to do their hunting, as well as everything else, on a rather grand scale. As indicated in Note Two, the railways which serve principal game regions issue well-devised literature for the aid of visiting sportsmen.
​It may be briefly mentioned that the chief districts for moose, caribou, deer, bear and small game in New Brunswick are reached from Campbellton, Jacquet River, Bathurst, Chatham, Newcastle (the Intercolonial main line station for the famous Northwest Miramichi big game country), Rogersville, Moncton, Hampton, St. John, Fredericton, Boiestown, Doaktown, Edmundston and Bonny River (the last on the C. P. Shore Line).
Principal starting-points in Nova Scotia, on the Dominion Atlantic Railway are Annapolis Royal (for the notable Kedgemakoogee and Liverpool Lakes region) , Windsor, Kentville, Middleton, Bear River (for cock), Weymouth and Brazil Lake (station for Kemptville). Outfitting headquarters of corresponding importance to huntsmen on the Halifax and Southwestern Railway are Tusket, Shelburne, Lockeport, Liverpool (for the prolific Rossignol district), Caledonia (on a spur of the trans-peninsula branch, Bridgewater—Middleton; this is another main gateway to camps and hunting-grounds in the Kedgemakoogee and Rossignol Lake territory), Hubbards and Chester (both in Halifax County, which, it is said, yields more moose per season than any Nova Scotia county, besides many other kinds of game). At Jordan Falls, on the way from Shelburne to Lockeport, an average of three moose a day was taken out between September 15th and October 7th, 1914, the game having been shot 6 to 20 miles ​north of the railway near Rossignol and Kedgemakoogee Lakes. It was here that the author heard a tale of a baby moose which swam out from shore to a canoe filled with hunters, and would have climbed over the side but for their protest. Gently, with a hand on its furry neck, the three-or four-day-old mooseling was towed back to the shore where the distraught mother was thrashing and stomping among the trees. When the calf was safely landed, the canoemen paddled off, and then the venturous infant would have put out again in the wake of its human friends if they had not shooed it back to its parent.
In this wild domain the beasts come sometimes to drink before the camper's door, too little acquainted with man's form to be wary of it.
Principal stations on the Intercolonial Railway for Nova Scotia hunting resorts are Amherst, Folleigh Lake, Londonderry, Truro, Halifax, Hopewell, Avondale, Pictou, Antigonish, River Denys (Cape Breton) and Sydney. The sections of which these towns are the pivot are especially rich in wild fowl, though big game is found in some favoured districts, particularly in Guysboro County. Caribou are taken in the Counties of Inverness and Victoria on the Island of Cape Breton. Inverness, terminus of the Inverness Railway, and Baddeck are entry points for a vast and unspoiled nature preserve.
MUSIC PAVILION ON ESTATE OCCUPIED BY DUKE OF KENT, FATHER OF QUEEN VICTORIA, WHEN COMMANDER OF THE CITADEL, HALIFAX
​and spruce partridge, the latter a rare species, are so tame that they can be snared.
The Island of Prince Edward, being purely pastoral in character, affords small game only, but that in great plenty. The big wild goose and the little brant are best shot in the spring and fall about the bays of Malpeque, Egmont, Savage, St. Peter's Island and Rustico. The north shore is reputed for its summer duck. October is the season for partridge, or ruffed grouse, as it is also known. Plover, snipe, woodcock, mallard, teal and curlew abound. Fish-eating birds are protected because they keep off the plague of dog-fish.
A "foreigner's license" to hunt, good for twelve months, is issued at a cost of $15. A "guest license," valid for one week, costs $2.
Trout appear to be the only fish of any consequence found in the numerous streams and fresh and salt water ponds of the Island. The non-residents' license fee is $5 for the season, April to October. The Morell, the Dunk, the Miminigash, the Fortune, the Murray and the Montague are the euphonious haunts of trout esteemed for their size and tenacity. Off-shore there is deep sea fishing for the weighty cod, and fat herring and mackerel.
The centre of Gaspé Peninsula, "as wild as Patagonia," has been converted into the Gaspesian Forest Fish and Game Preserve. The hunting ​license fee for non-residents who are not members of a club incorporated under the laws of Quebec Province is $25 for the season. Non-resident members of fish and game clubs, $10. Non-residents' salmon-fishing license, $25; other fish, $10. The finest salmon rivers of the Peninsula are leased for five to nine years. Part of the Grand Cascapedia rents for $12,000. Salmon have been hooked in it weighing up to 50 pounds. The Grand River is owned by a Boston man. The St. John of the North Shore is leased for $3300 by James J. Hill, whose party sometimes catch five hundred salmon on a fly in three weeks. From the St. John of the South Shore, on which Baker's Hotel, Gaspé Basin, owns fishing rights which guests may share without cost, salmon are taken weighing 18 to 20 pounds. The York River average is but a few pounds less.
Tunny, or tuna, of 300 to 400 pounds' weight are speared near Gaspé Basin. Off Percé, in the St. Lawrence Gulf, visitors may catch cod, halibut, haddock, herring, mackerel, smelt, caplin and lobster, and in the mountain streams, trout weighing up to three pounds.
Of all the finny tribes which swim Provincial waters, trout are the most ubiquitous, tuna the hugest, and salmon the most desired. To cite even principal localities where trout of various species rise to the hook and overflow the creel ​would be to compile a tedious dictionary of names. All of the towns mentioned as main portals to hunting territory give access also to trouting country, and in some instances to streams alive with land-locked salmon, pickerel, perch, striped bass, gaspereau and greyling. Brook trout are best in the virgin months of summer and fall. Ten pounds, or thirty trout, a day, so we are warned, is the legal limit in Nova Scotia. All non-residents are required to pay a fishing license of $5 in New Brunswick, and all except British subjects pay the same amount in Nova Scotia. F. G. Aflalo in his Fisherman's Summer in Canada says August and September are the best months for promiscuous fishing.
Tuna fishing is a comparatively new sport on the Canadian coast. At Port Medway, on the Halifax and Southwestern road, in Mira Bay, near Sydney, and in Bay St. Ann's, north of Baddeck, this mighty and gamy fish has been brought to shore by hook and line. A fish of 400 pounds is regarded here as a youngster. The record weight registered at the Tuna Club, Catalina Island, California, is 251 pounds. In the summer of 1908, Mr. J. K. L. Ross of Montreal hooked in St. Ann's Bay the first tuna ever angled in Canadian waters. His record fish, taken later, weighed 880 pounds. These Cape Breton monsters are conquered with a very heavy hook, and a 39-thread line, running 300 yards to the reel and having a 12-foot leader ​of piano wire. The bait is mackerel, or "tinkers," gaspereau or herring. Nova Scotia Waltonians confess that their fish is not so sporty in proportion to its weight as the leaping tunny gaffed off the California shore, but maintain that to conquer a sea creature of a quarter to half a ton's weight is excitement enough, even if he is a bit clumsy.
The salmon is the sphinx of fishes. Less is known of its habits and impulses than of any denizen of fresh or salt water. We are told by wise Indians that the salmon of each river comprise a distinct race. When they come from the deep to spawn in the streams, they invariably return to the same river in which they themselves have been spawned. Fish from, the same water average the same size. A river known for the lustiness of its salmon may rise from the same source as another stream in which only small fish are found. The salmon of the Atlantic coast, contrary to the habit of its Pacific cousin, takes the fly in fresh water. Why they rise to bait at all is an enigma since it has been proven that while in river pools for months at a time they maintain a rigid fast.
The young of the genus Salmo are called alevin at the spawning, then parrs, then smolts at the third or fourth year, when they go to sea, then grilse on their return, weighing three to six ​pounds, and after the fifth year, salmon. In salt water they choose the day for their migrations, in fresh water the night. The winter habits of the salmon are a further mystery. One that was tagged with aluminum in a river having its debouchement in the Gulf of St. Lawrence was caught months later in Norwegian waters. Yet it is ordinarily supposed that Canadian salmon remain always on this side of the Atlantic.
The season for salmon fishing in New Brunswick lasts from February to the middle of August; in Nova Scotia from April through September, the date of the opening and closing of the season varying according to locality. The angler usually fishes the pools from a boat manoeuvred by his guides. An American split-cane rod having a casting capacity of a hundred feet may cost $50. The heavy silk line has a gut leader and is wound at least 100 feet to the reel. As to flies. Silver Doctor, Admiral, Durham Ranger, Jock Scott are recommended by salmon savants, but each fisherman has an individual preference for some flies which he believes especially potent in certain waters. When the contest between fisherman and fish is decided in man's favour, and the guide has done his work with the gaff, then there comes "a struggle, a heave, a mass of silver in the boat," and, finally, the all-important weighing.
The most renowned salmon rivers of New ​wick are the Restigouche, the Upsalquitch, Tobique, Nepisiguit and Miramichi. The best water of the royal Restigouche is on lease to a salmon club with an American membership, whose clubhouse is near the station at Matapedia, Quebec, just over the New Brunswick border. Fish taken from the Restigouche weigh from 9 to 54 pounds. Until 1881, New Brunswick lands were sold to include half of any river which might traverse or border them, measuring from shore to centre. Since then, the Government has reserved the rivers when selling land, and now leases desirable pools. Only natives can buy fishing privileges outright. A lease of moderately "good water" may be secured for $200 to $250 a season. The fishing rights of the Restigouche and its tributaries are worth several hundred thousand dollars, single salmon pools having been sold for $30,000 each. A plutocrat disciple of the humble Izaak may spend three or four thousand dollars on a summer's fishing trip, including water lease, outfit, camp equipment, guides, canoes and provisions. A Restigouche guide receives $5 a day. But the usual charge for salmon "guiding" is $2 to $4 a day and this sometimes includes boat-hire. Among the Nova Scotia streams where the salmon lurks are the Nictaux near Middleton, the Salmon River in Digby County, the Tusket and ​the Jordan on the southern shore, and the rocky Medway and the Lahave on the eastern shore; the Musquodoboit north of Halifax, Waugh's River in Pictou County, and the River Denys in Cape Breton. The queen of Scotian salmon streams is the Margaree, whose lovely level vale is reached by wagon-road from Inverness or Baddeck, or from Orangedale on the Intercolonial route to Sydney; or by the little steamer which calls at Margaree Harbour on its way up the coast from Mulgrave to Cheticamp. The finest fish are caught at "the Forks" and on the Northeast Branch. Here a guide and a boat can be hired for $2 a day. Or, if you are just a summer boarder, the farmer's boy will do your fishing for you, bringing in 10-or 20-pounders for the noon repast.
Deep-sea fishing for haddock, halibut, cod, herring, mackerel, hake, pollock, flounder, smelt and sword-fish is obtainable from almost any point along the extensive and varied coast line.
Yachting, Boating, Bathing, Ball Games and other Sports.
The premier yatching clubs of the Provinces are the Royal Kennebecasis at Millidgeville, near St. John, the Royal Nova Scotia of Halifax, and the Royal Cape Breton of Sydney. St. Andrews, St. George, Fredericton, Digby, Yarmouth, Chester and Charlottetown each have a summer clientele of yachtsmen, as well as innumerable other smaller ​towns and resorts which are centres for regattas and races. The broken coast of Nova Scotia and harbours on the Bay de Chaleur and Gulf of St. Lawrence offer admirable havens for yachting tourists.
Halifax has a half dozen boat clubs whose headquarters are on the North West Arm, among them the North West Arm Rowing Club and the Waegwoltic Country and Boating Club. The latter's house quarters occupy a converted mansion situated among the birches of a splendid estate on Coburg Road. Strangers staying at the principal hotels of Halifax and its suburbs are granted cards of admission to the pavilions and grounds. The privileges of the Saraguay and Mic-Mac Country Clubs are also extended to visitors properly accredited. All the aquatic clubs of Halifax and Dartmouth have frequent regattas during the summer, and open-air band concerts on summer evenings. The Royal Nova Scotia Club's Saturday races from the squadron, near Point Pleasant Park, are among the most agreeable features of Haligonian outdoor life.
Regatta Week at Chester and Sydney is an annual event important to yachtsmen.
The Rowing course near Riverside on the Kennebecasis River, not far north of St. John, has been the scene of famous international contests.
Surf bathing is excellent at numerous beaches along the extensive coast of Nova Scotia and New ​Brunswick. The North Shore of Prince Edward Island is pierced by idyllic bays where mermen and maids disport in calm waters or play porpoise among the Gulf breakers. The summer towns below St. John and those which. front the Bay Chaleur nearly all have broad, safe beaches.
The "ball play" of the Indians, whose implements were one or two rackets and a ball of deerskin stuffed with moss, was the forerunner of lacrosse, the national game of Canada. The latter's prestige is menaced by the increasing interest in baseball w.hich is fast becoming the most popular athletic pastime of Maritime youths. Games of base-ball played on empty lots and association grounds are as wranglingly contested as in the country of its origin. In a meadow near the Inch Arran, on the shore of Bay Chaleur, the writer once witnessed a really ferocious exhibition between town boys from Dalhousie and juvenile guests of the hotel, resident in Ottawa and Montreal, the latter protesting that base-ball as played in northern New Brunswick was not in strict compliance with American league rules.
Golf, tennis, cricket, quoits and foot-ball, in the milder months of the year; hockey, curling, skating, skiing, ice-boating and tobogganing in the winter complete the list of open-air sports in the Provinces. The Studley Quoit Club, organised at Halifax in 1858, pitches Saturday afternoons. The colours are "green for the grass, blue for the ​sky and dark brown for the background of pine trees." The club-house is near the banks of the North West Arm, and has upon its roll of guests the names of many distinguished men.
Visitors are recipients of courtesies at golf clubs near St. John, Charlottetown, Yarmouth, Halifax and elsewhere, on payment of nominal dues. The Wanderers of Halifax and the Shamrock and St. John Athletic Clubs of St. John have a large membership, and organise interesting sporting events.
Nearly every city of importance boasts a driving park on its outskirts where annual meets are held. Racing on the ice is a winter diversion which tests the speed and wind of Provincial thoroughbreds. On Prince Edward and Cape Breton Island highways one meets many "roaders" with reputations for fast time on both ground and ice—may even be offered a racer with a record for a trip "up country" into the wilds.
Amusements, Holidays, Festivals.
The people of Eastern Canada, never a vivacious race, are but little given to pageants, parades and festivals. In the towns there are theatres, concert halls, rinks and clubs; in the country, the wayside meeting-places of religious and temperance societies, of fraternal and political orders are the hub of rustic festivities. Time was when the country-side assembled for thrashing-bees, flax-breaking parties and barn-raisings. In The Old ​Judge, Haliburton has preserved for us a description of the husking, apple-peeling, berrying and log-rolling "frolics" which amused the colonials of a hundred years ago, and of the "pickinick stirs, with chicken-fixings, ham trimmings and doe-doings, besides pies, notions and sarces," that beguiled summer days.
Now-a-days, the pie social is the most typical of Provincial merry-makings. On an appointed evening, sundry pies contributed by the housewives of the neighbourhood are auctioned in a public hall for the benefit of church or charity, the bids being affected by the reputation of the baker, or by her personal popularity. If a maiden is very beautiful, even the pallid and juiceless product of her hands may bring a top price. After the auction, Terpsichore reigns, and to the rasp of the fiddle the belle of the "social" perhaps agrees to make pies for Just One for the rest of her life.
On the First of July, Dominion Day, the Highlanders of western Cape Breton rally for orgies of Scotch dancing, and drinking (of Scotch), and for athletic tourneys which may resolve—usually do resolve—into a roaring onslaught of one coterie of Gaels against another. Judique, on the way to Inverness, is the seat of a fighting clan who brawl for the love of it. Taking their position in the centre of a field these husky warriors, many of them several inches over six feet in height.
​challenge creation to put them out. At which men of Inverness or Mabou fall to. . . . On such occasions, as a witness put it, "Ten miles from Judique is quite close enough for an onlooker to be—much closer than the same distance would be from a town less aggressive."
"Holy Fairs," held each year in the mountain valleys of central Cape Breton, are the excuse for Gaelic celebrations of a sterner sort no less enjoyed by the participants.
In remote Acadian villages of the Cheticamp district, northern Cape Breton, where the priest's visitations are comparatively rare, "marriage parties" are arranged in advance of his coming. A dozen or even two dozen couples are wedded on a single day, their guests driving from house to house for the feasting and dancing, sometimes through snow and rain. "Down Cap Rouge way," at the extreme north of the Island, nuptial festivities endure for three days, the invited ones being billeted upon the neighbours. In winter, teams crawl over ice-coated cliff roads, but in summer-time launch-loads of young Acadians are conveyed by water along the coast to cragged Red Cape.
JUDGE HALIBURTON'S LIBRARY AT "CLIFTON," WINDSOR, NOVA SCOTIA In this room "Sam Slick" was created
​being from a far-off settlement, the wedding reception was held at the house of the groom's parents on the edge of the town. Evening breezes from the broad St. Lawrence Gulf fluttered the starred flag of Acadia above the little platform erected near the shore. A single violinist provided dancing tunes for the "square" figures which, performed ceremoniously enough at the beginning of the bal, became the excuse for embraces, mischievous or sentimental, as evening wore to night, and night to dawn. Honoured guests were seated in the parlour of the four-roomed cottage, with chromos of the Popes looking down from: the wall. The wedding-table was laid in the kitchen where a fiery stove kept coffee and attendants hot while in kettles set over a bed of coals in the outer yard the feast was cooking.
Eight days before the wedding the parents of the pale young groom, according to Acadian custom, had driven from door to door to give the oral invitation which had to-night been so generously accepted. Now they beam among their guests, speaking their voluble dialect, passing cups of coffee. The doctor arrives, dusty from a twenty-mile drive; the priest is received, and duly shown the wedding tokens of china and coloured glass presented to the nouveaux mariés. Finally the curé, the doctor and the young Jerseyman who manages "the store" retire to an upper room to play "forty-five"; the young people swarm in ​from the dark to dance in the stifling kitchen—the month is August but the stove still blazes—; babies drop to sleep on their mothers' knees; the music-maker bends more resolutely to his bow; coffee is offered for the twentieth time; the bride dances with the groom's relatives and the groom with the bride's—and the groom's father heaps more wood in the stove . . . until Aurora comes. Then the horses turned loose in the pasture whinny that it is time to go home. And their masters, heeding at last, bid "Adieu, Marie" and "Bonne chance, Christophe," to the limp young people in the door. Some one pulls down the flag of Acadie. The groom's father pays the fiddler . . . the noces are at an end.
The national fete of the Provincial French celebrates on Assumption Day, August 15th, the convention held in 1880 to discuss for the first time since their eviction in 1755, the interests of the Acadians. Peals of bells, processions and "church picnics" mark the day of rejoicing.
Every year at the Feast of St. Anne, in July, the Micmac Indians of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia foregather—as many of them as can accomplish the journey—on the Island of the Holy Family, or Indian Island, seven miles from, the town of St. Peter's, where Monsieur Denys once had a settlement. Here for ten days they live in tepees of birch-bark, subsisting on provisions transported ​a long distance in small boats. The day begins with mass in the chapel whose shrine was brought from France two hundred years ago by the Abbé Maillard, who first reduced the Micmac language to writing. Then follow the reciting of the catechism and confessions, and in the evening, ceremonial dances, dramatic and pantomimic, and games of shinny, hunt-the-button and deer-foot, of wheel-and-stick and hatchet-throwing. The July "pow-wow" is also the favoured season for weddings arranged during the preceding twelve months, for first communions, and for the settlement of disputes by the high chief of the "Migmaks," or "allies," whose seat is in Cape Breton.
One of the oldest festivals of this race "of the morning" or "eastern" land is the Thanksgiving service—the Green Corn Dance, celebrated by chants and slow steps while the corn roasts in the fire. Much less picturesque is the white man's observance of Thanskgiving Day, which in Canada falls in October.
On June third, the birth of the King is celebrated by salvos and bell-ringing, and by mighty bonfires set ablaze on the tops of hills.
* ↑ See Hotel List at end of volume.
* ↑ Detailed advice concerning Game Laws, Licenses, Outfitting, Places to Camp, Canoe-ways, etc., may be obtained by addressing the secretaries of the St. John and Fredericton Tourist Bureaux, and the Passenger Department of the Canadian Pacific at St. John, N. B., of the Intercolonial at Moncton, N. B., and of the Dominion Atlantic at Kentville, N. S. Also the chief game commissioner of Nova Scotia at Halifax, of New Brunswick at Fredericton, and of P. E. Island at Charlottetown. The, railway folders are particularly explicit and helpful.
* ↑ Address Sec'y Guides' Association, Yarmouth, N. S., and Fredericton, N. B. Tourist Bureau. Minimum camping expenses per person, including guide, tent, provisions, and canoe, $4 to $5 a day. Guide (white or Micmac Indian) and canoe, $2.50 per day, and found. It is forbidden to carry firearms into the woods without a license, or for a non-resident sportsman to remain in camp over-night without a licensed guide.
* ↑ The average weight of salmon in the last four rivers named is 12 to 18 pounds.