Monday Sep 24, 2018

Map and road video – Annapolis Royal to Digby, NS

I spent most of today in Annapolis Royal wandering around taking photos and then visiting Fort Anne National Historic Site followed by Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens. Annapolis Royal is considered to be the cradle of European Canada and, after St. Augustine in Florida, was the earliest European settlement in North America. It was also the capital of Acadia and, later, Nova Scotia for 150 years.

There are two National Historic Sites in the area, Fort Anne and Port Royal but I was taken aback to find out that they are not open on Sundays and Mondays. Luckily, the grounds at Fort Anne, which became Canada’s first National Historic Site in 1917,  are always open and the only thing I missed was the museum in the replica officers’ quarters on the site. The fort was attacked 13 times and changed hands 7 times as Scottish, French and English settlers fought for the area.

The Historic Gardens were open and were the highlight of the day. Despite the name the gardens only opened in 1981 but they are organized historically. Our guide, Jim, took us through the four areas which each represent plants and arrangements from the four centuries of European history here. At each stop Jim described the plants or trees we were viewing and put them in the context of the lives of the people living here at that time and explained the purposes they served. It was history taught in a way that was new to me that I found very engaging.

As a former physics teacher I had to visit Annapolis Tidal Generating Station which is the only power plant of its kind in North America and one of only seven worldwide. The water level in the Annapolis river can vary by as much as 29 feet and an old dam that was built across the river in the early 1900s to provide steady water levels for farming has been converted to generate electricity. Gates are opened as the tide rises that allow the water in the large lake behind the dam to rise about 3 feet in a few hours. Once the tide starts to fall the water from the lake flows through a single 27 foot  diameter turbine in the dam to generate power. In this way they can generate for about five hours twice each day. There was not much to see here but the guide was very interesting to talk with and helped me understand the technical problems that have prevented widespread use of this method of generation.

My final stop was at Point Prim which has been the location of a light on the Bay of Fundy since 1705. The current lighthouse is the fourth and dates from about 1871.

This is the Annapolis Royal lighthouse, in the center of town since 1889, and still functioning every night.
The town’s courthouse has been in continuous use since 1837.
Fort Anne represents the way it was when the British had control.
This section of the Historical Gardens represents the Victorian era and displays plants that are rarely seen nowadays but that graced the gardens of wealthy residents in that period.

This replica home, also at the Historical Gardens, is used to show how plants were used by French settlers in the late 1700s.
The Point Prim lighthouse with its foghorn in front.