LYNN AND TOM'S TRAVELS: SHELBURNE, BIRCHTOWN AND LOBSTERMANIA

A bit of a travel day today. We left Mahone Bay this morning, and headed south. Our first stop was Liverpool on the Mersey River, but didn't see any ferries crossing, and neither did I see Mary's cousin Percy....those of you that know my reputation of mixing up song lyrics will understand. Funny thing tho, just as we turned off the highway at the exit for Liverpool, a Beatles song came on.....coincidence.....or not?

Next stop Shelburne,

where the United Empire Loyalists landed in 1783-4. Brought back memories of my grade 7 social studies class. Another pretty, little (emphasis on little) town on the water. They filmed part of the mini series Book of Negroes here.....more on that in a minute.

Timing being everything, we were so lucky to be there for the one day, largest in North America, "Whirligig Festival".....and to think we could of missed it!

Look who found us....

I tried my hand at rug hooking....Tom says I'd make a good hooker.

Just a few miles down the road is Birchtown, where a lot of the Black Loyalists settled. We spent the afternoon at the new Black Loylalist Heritage Centre, a beautiful interactive museum.

When you enter, you are given a card with the name of a black loyalist who was listed in the Book of Negroes ( the document listing the 3,000 refugees that boarded ships traveling from New York to Nova Scotia 1783).

As you go through the museum you find details of the lives of these people, and what they went through. I was given the name of Jenny Bruce, who was 15 years old, 3/4 white and was given to her master as part of a dowry. They have a virtual copy of the document, the actual Book of Negroes, and I found her name in it, ( if you saw the movie, you might remember how fancy the writing was, so hard to read) but there are no records of her getting off the ship that she boarded from the United States.

Tom's person left Nova Scotia with his family and settled in New Brunswick, where his descendants live today. It is extremely well done, with so much information, you could spend hours and hours there.

This is a Pit house that the blacks dug out of the ground, covered with wood, and lived in through the winter. Supplies were scarce, so anything that arrived was divided amongst the white people first so they could get their houses built before winter, and nothing was left to give the blacks in Birchtown. Free but not equal.

We are now settled in at another little B&B ( after stopping at the Bates hotel looking for a room, luckily no one was home....but I am sure I saw someone in the upstairs window) in Pubnico. We had a great dinner at the local fish house, right across the street from the Dennis Point Wharf, the largest commercial fishing wharf in Atlantic Canada.

Tom went for the whole lobster, 18.95 with all the trimmings,

and I had haddock and scallops, soooo good.