Day 9: Annapolis Royal to Cape Breton Island

Looking back at all the driving I've done I'm only starting to appreciate how much smaller the maritime provinces are compared to Ontario. In a 3-4 hour drive I was able to traverse a good section of Nova Scotia.

Well, it looks like weather karma is starting to kick in. The beautiful sunny and hot weather I saw last week in NB and PEI is giving way to a good stretch of cloudy, foggy, and rainy weather. The rain continued overnight into this morning. I got my umbrella out as I left the B&B and gamely went to the 3 sites I came to Annapolis Royal to see.

To say the area around Annapolis Royal was contested by the British and the French is like saying the Greeks made a few attempts to take Troy. Apparently the area changed hands 7 times. The French were the first to settle in the area and they named it Port Royal. When the British conquered the French they named it Annapolis Royal after Queen Anne.

I first went to Fort Anne which was a British bastion-style fort (or star fort)which was common in that era. With the invention of gunpowder and smooth bore cannons the medieval 4 sided castles just wouldn't cut it any more. With the changing technology, defensive structures evolved to keep pace.
In the following photos you can see some of the techniques that were used. They not only made the walls thicker but also added bastions (which gave the fort a bit of a star or snowflake type shape). The bastions not only eliminated blind spots and created crossfire zones but also presented angled walls and sharp edges instead of flat walls.
The hill on the right is a ravelin -- a triangular mound that is detached from the fort. It's primary purpose to to defend the vulnerable flat wall behind it and also to provide supplementary cannon fire.
The whole fort was also sunken into the ground so the cannons of the invading army had much less to shoot at. This is the gunpowder room (an important target to hide...)
The funny thing about this scene is the flag -- it's a white flag. Doesn't that mean surrender? Well, actually, it's the white flag representing the French "Ministry of Marine" which begs the question...what did the French do if they wanted to surrender?

Next I went to see a more modern attraction: Annapolis Royal is home to one of only a handful (3 or 4) of tidal power generating stations in the world.
There wasn't much to actually see since the plant is underground. The technology is pretty much identical to other hydroelectic dams except this plant can only produce power for 12.5 hour periods when the high tide is ebbing. FYI, tidal kinetic generators have been developed which can producing power when the tides wax and wane -- they're building them over in Europe (I think the English channel was mentioned as one spot). Although this attraction had the fishy smell of corporate sponsorship (read: NS Power), it was nonetheless quite informative.

After lunch I crossed the Annapolis River to check out the French side of things: Port Royal. Samuel de Champlain himself helped found this settlement (he was the cartographer on the trip). The French initially tried to settle in St. Croix, NB but after a brutal winter there they abandoned that location, headed south across the Bay of Fundy, and arrived here.
This reproduction was built according to a plan that was documented by the original settlers and near where they think the original site was. The British attacked and destroyed the original settlement and the French moved the site to present day Fort Anne...where they were attacked again and again and again by the British. Apparently, Port Royal was the whipping post of the French Empire. Quebec city was too far away and too heavily defended so whenever the British wanted to take revenge for anything, Port Royal was the obvious choice.

These 3 sites kept me busy until early afternoon and then I made the trek to Cape Breton Island. I'm currently at the southern tip near Port Hawkesbury. Tomorrow I'm going to do one of the highlights of my trip -- driving the Cabot Trail. However, the weather doesn't look like it's going to cooperate with more clouds and rain in the forecast. I just hope there isn't much fog (the Canada Parks employee at Port Royal said that the Mikmaq name for Cape Breton Island was "land of eternal fog". Doh!).

Lastly...as I was flipping through the forecasts at The Weather Network...I saw a familiar corkscrew symbol off the eastern seabord...what the -- a hurricane?! Well, not exactly but Tropical Storm Cristobal is tracking northwards along the east coast. Based on current projections, it's going to be in the neighbourhood of my ferry crossing to Newfoundland! DOH! What are the odds....

I called Marine Atlantic (the company that runs the ferry) and they made no promises. It'll be a decision made by the Captain on the day the ferry leaves. This could be bad because either A) My ferry will be cancelled/delayed or B) it'll be a rough trip and I'll be seasick the whole time....