108 goodthingsmagazine.comFLY London Heathrow to Halifax (aircanada.com) STAY Algonquin Resort, St. Andrews (algonquinresort.com), doubles from £120;
Blomidon Inn, Wolfville (blomidon.ns.ca), doubles from £100. MORE Visit novascotia.com & tourismnewbrunswick.caScotia’s breadbasket, passing overflowing
farm shops and clapboard seler churches.
Barnacled lobster traps are piled high in the
dinky fishing wharf, and I find myself in an
impatient queue of families, retirees and the
odd gumbooted fisherman staring at a line of
trough-like tanks of lobsters.
‘Back in the 1800s and early 1900s,
lobsters would wash up on the beach during
storms and be gathered by farmers who’d
put them in the soil and plough them under
for fertiliser,’ I’m told by my weathered
server Lowell on a tour of the pound. Even
today, the price of lobster in Canada’s
Maritime provinces is sta
geringly low – just
$6 or $7 per pound from the fishermen.Engineering wine
Back in the Annapolis Valley, I go in search of
Tidal Bay, the Bay of Fundy’s namesake wine,
engineered to pair with seafood. ‘Nova Scotia
doesn’t really have anything other than wine
and seafood – so we need this wine,’ jokes
Megan as we taste crisp, apple-y Tidal Bay
at Lucke Vineyards, where towering cellar
door windows survey vines sloping down
towards a broad sweep of looking-glass bay.
Although Nova Scotia’s modern wine
industry is in its relative infancy, the
province was one of the first North
American areas to cultivate grapes thanks
to the 17th-century arrival of the French
Acadian selers. Today, my wine tasting
with local Wolfville company Grape Escapes
follows the Good Cheer Trail – a network
of 35 wineries, breweries and distilleries
harnessing the legacy of one of North
America’s earliest gastronomic societies,
the Order of Good Cheer, set up in 1606 by
French explorer Samuel de Champlain toraise the spirits of early selers.
Across the Bay of Fundy, the Nova Scotia
passenger ferry docks in the New Brunswick
port city of St. John. On Uncorked Tours’
tasting route, I visit the 1876 City Market.
The raers above my head resemble the hull
of an upturned ship – homage to the city’s
shipbuilding heritage.
But it’s not just the ocean that yields
bounty. Foraging is big on both shores of
the Bay of Fundy. An hour east of St. John,
in a fledgling reserve called the Fundy Trail
Parkway, wild berries, mushrooms and
edible ferns have turned 2,559 hectares of
coniferous coastal forests into a wild larder.
Guide Nancy Lockerbie, who drew the
first Fundy Trail map almost 50 years ago,
shows me a native fern. Commonly referred
to as a fiddlehead fern, the ostrich fern has
become a foraging chef’s favourite. Deeper
into the trees, Nancy points out other
edibles: sarsaparilla, ‘the original root beer’;
bright-red but bland bunch berries; and a
whisper of coveted mushrooms. ‘We have
two patches of chanterelles,’ she reveals. ‘But
if I show you, I’m going to have to kill you!’Murmurs of the sea
In St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, creative chefs are
turning a quaint seaside town into a culinary
destination. At Rossmount Inn, daily menus
are built around kitchen garden, local
organic, and foraged produce. Aer dinner,
we meet chef Chris Aerni – still in kitchen
whites, slightly dishevelled from service, and
with a glint in his eye: tonight the tides are
right for squid-ji
ging, and his excitement is
palpable. The ‘ji
ging’, he explains, refers to
the motion used to skewer squid.
A tour with Turtle Shore Adventuresreveals scenes of maritime spirit and loyalist
heritage. To the sharp shrill of gulls, we take
in murals featuring pastel-brushed tall ships
as a human-sized lobster beckons tourists for
fishing charters. The manicured demeanour
of white clapboard houses with racing-green
shuers belies their age; some were ferreted
piece by piece across the bay on barges from
Castine in Maine by United Empire Loyalists
in 1783 – sticking two fingers up at the
American independence victory.Harvesting creativity
At the 27-acre Kingsbrae Gardens, the
bracing, salt-tinged air gives way to a delicate
floral breeze. Overlooking St. Andrews bay,
it was planted in the late 1990s to save one
of the town’s most beloved family estates
from slow demise. Savour in the Garden
restaurant is tucked inside the estate’s
turreted 1903 guesthouse, amid an anything-
goes sculpture trail. Local chef Alex Haun
opened his first restaurant aged just 22.
‘Both my parents were born in Europe, so
growing food was a big part of growing up,’
the Maritimes’ culinary young gun tells me.
Self-sufficiency in the kitchen was a
natural progression. Reaping the rewards of
his gardens, Alex organises popular multi-
course tasting dinners and runs a coveted
apprenticeship programme. ‘It’s not just
cooking, it’s learning about and harvesting
sustainable food. We climb apple trees in
the Fall, and forage wild asparagus on the
beaches,’ he explains.
I eat that asparagus atop a buer-so
lobster claw splashed with silky Hollandaise.
The taste of the ocean transports me back
to the rock pools at Burntcoat Head Park –
the Bay of Fundy on a plate once again.LUXURY ESCAPESThe tides are right for 'jigging' – the motion used to skewer squid
MAKE IT REAL Image: Lorna Parkes
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