Kernville, Nova Scotia July 27

Drove here on 24th.  Went to see Grand Pre in the evening.  It is a memorial to the French speaking settlers called Acadians who  were deported from here in 1753.  This land had passed back and forth between the English and the French but finally the English won out.  The French had gotten along with the local Indians for 100 years, but they did not like the English.The English were afraid theAcadians would help the Americans against them, so they came in one day and called the men to a meeting and arrested them.  A poem by Longfellow called Evangeline made this event famous.  They shipped them southward, but some places would not let them in, so they spent many years drifting around.  Some went to Lousiana and settled in the New Orleans area.  What we were interested in was the fact that they choose this land because it was a tidal flat of the Bay of Fundy, and they thought they they could make it good farm land.  They built dykes to drain the land .  We were told it took 2 years for the rain to wash the salt out of the land so they  could farm it.  What did they have to eat in the mean time?  So after all that hard work, the English shipped them out with nothing separating families as they did it.  The next day we drove 130 miles down Digby neck to go whale watching.  Saw lots of blue whales and birds called petrals who swam around with their head under water looking for fish and a few puffins and seals.  It was lots of fun! The next day we drove to Halifax and looked around the city.  Started with the Citadel which is an English fort where they have people dressed like the Scottish soldiers in their kilts  like they would have been around 1870.  They were marching around drilling and practicing shooting off their muskets  and cannon.An interesting fact was that all though the fort was built on the harbor, it was built to defend the land.  They said other forts on islands in the harbor were built to defend the harbor from ships. The fort is on a hill over looking the harbor.  We walked down the hill and went to a Maritime Museum which had lots of boats in it.  We had a very English lunch- fish and chips- very good.  Halifax is the capital of Nova Scotia.  Enjoyed looking around there.