Rowkin Rovings Blog

Today started out with us bidding a fond farewell to Allan as we headed out the door on our southerly trip along the east coast of Nova Scotia to Mahone Bay with stops on the way. Paige and Emmett had well beaten us out the door as they were off to music appreciation lessons before we even opened our eyes.

Off to pick up our poverty pack hire car to be very surprised to find that they had not just upgraded us but had supersized upgraded us. This thing has all the bells and whistles you could imagine plus more and rather overwhelmed us. For those of you into cars it was a Lincoln something or other. All we want is to bring it back in one piece as well as ourselves.

Next it was off to Fairview Lawn Cemetery where over 100 passengers from the ill fated Titanic are buried.

The cemetery is very well cared for and the Titanic graves are laid out in three neat rows.

Many of the victims were unable to be identified due to having no identification on them so a lot of the headstones have the date of April 15, 1912. They predict this is the date that most of them died as the hypothermia would have caused a quick death.

The number you see under the date is the number that was pinned to their clothes as soon as they were retrieved. There were three cable ships sent out to the wreckage site and the initial ship picked up as many bodies as they could. Unfortunately, they had no room left so they started sea burials of those who they worked out were third class passengers. As soon as the second ship arrived, this course of action was ceased. Hmmm…….the good old English class system in action.

The White Star Line who owned the Titanic had the small plain headstones erected but for some of the identified passengers their relatives erected more elaborate head stones. Sidney Leslie Goodwin (9 September 1910 – 15 April 1912) was a 19-month-old English boy who died during the sinking of the RMS Titanic. His unidentified body was recovered by the Mackay-Bennett after the sinking, and for decades was referred to as The Unknown Child. His headstone read “Erected to the memory of an unknown child whose remains were recovered after the disaster to the Titanic April 15th 1912”. In 2008, mitochondrial DNA testing by the Armed Forces lab revealed his identity. Baby Goodwin is the only member of his eight member family whose body has been recovered and subsequently identified. The visit was a very moving experience.

It was then off to the famous Peggy’s Cove along the coastal road. It should have only been a 45 minute drive except for the obnoxious navigation system which kept bullying us in a very annoying nasally accent. She has since been relegated to mute!!!

Peggy’s Cove is known for its rugged beauty but also for turning a lobster like this…

into this – yuuummmmyyyy!

Peggy’s Cove is very small and at times can feel like Grand Central Station due to all the tourists but today we were lucky so took the opportunity to take some fabulous shots.

These are buoys for the lobster pots. Each fisherman painted his buoys his own specific colours to be able to identify his lobster pots.

These lovely birds we are told by Paige and Allan are known locally as shit hawks – the seagull that is.

It was then off to one of the two memorial for the Swissair 111 Air disaster that occurred on 2nd September 1998.

Swissair Flight 111 was a passenger flight from JFK Airport in New York City to Geneva, Switzerland. The plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Halifax International Airport at the entrance to St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia. The crash site was 8 kilometres (5 mi) from shore, roughly equidistant from the tiny fishing and tourist communities of Peggy’s Cove and Bayswater. All 229 passengers and crew onboard were killed, making the crash the deadliest McDonnell Douglas MD-11 accident in aviation history. The main cause of the crash was determined as a fire on board.

Swissair Flight 111 was known as the “UN shuttle” because of its popularity with United Nations officials; the flight also carried business executives, scientists, and researchers.

It seems that this area of Nova Scotia is identified by awful tragedies and very rugged beauty.

We were very blessed with the weather today but tomorrow the gods have decided not to look favourably on us so we tried to pack in as much as we could. By the time we headed off to our final destination of Mahone Bay, Allan and Paige had contacted us and arrangements had been made for them to join us for dinner. What had taken us nearly seven hours to drive on windy roads took them one hour and fifteen minutes in heavy Friday evening traffic along the highway. Does this mean we now are officially classified in the old category?
Mahone Bay is a very quintessential east coast village along the Nova Scotian coast with brightly coloured wood buildings and a big leaning towards the Atlantic Ocean.

M

We were greeted by this picturesque store which was promoting Halloween which is still over 35 days away…..ho hum marketing at its best.

Little Emmett enjoyed fish pieces and chips and entertained himself by training his dad to pick his detritus up off the floor every time he hurled them out of his high chair. It was an evening of great company and lots of great natter along with a lovely meal and for the second time in 24 hours we were identified by fellow diners as Emmett’s grandparents. Oh dear, we do feel old now.