“The Barrington Woollen Mill was unusual for its time as its water wheel was laid flat in the water rather than up and down.”
We follow our guide outside, and where the water on the Barrington River is the fastest, and the mills’ trestle over it the most precarious, we lean over the railing to peer at the rapidly spinning wheel half submerged in the churning water beneath us.
“Every machine in this mill – the spinners, twisters, skeiners and looms – were powered by that hard-working wheel right until the millworkers’ last shift in 1962. Mr. Stephens, the owner, would only turn the wheel off on Christmas and New Year’s Day.”
Everything else about this 19th century mill in Barrington, Nova Scotia, was like the woollen mill I had chanced upon in Scotland years ago. An elegant red and white trimmed wooden building, with gable roof and carriage-friendly entrances, couched between river and gardens. Rambling wall-to-wall raftered rooms featuring rows of that newfangled invention – the spinning jenny.
Victorian to its bones, the floors creaked and the lamplight shimmered as we crept through the washing and carding rooms, imagining the flurried delivery of wool from stage to stage, and the voices calling to each other over the click-clack of the whirring looms upstairs.
Surprisingly, time-travelling experiences like this one, where you feel as if dropped on the set of a period movie, is not uncommon in Canada.
Given that it is home to some of North America’s oldest European settlements, scenes of Normandy France and Georgian England become standard backdrops for many of your travels here. And for those of us missing those opportunities to leap, guiltless, across ‘the pond’ to wander through medieval market streets and stare gobsmacked up at Gothic spires and gargoyles, knowing these historical ‘highs’ are but a short trip away is welcome news indeed.
While western Canada is steeped in gold rush history, and the pioneers who followed, staging your great European escape gets a lot easier the further east you travel.
I would recommend starting in Ottawa, which owes much of its architecture and ambience to the early 19th century when the city was welcoming refugees – and staunch British loyalists – from the American Revolutionary War.
Immerse yourself in the regal centre of the city – Parliament Hill and its Gothic-inspired buildings – and the jumble of red-brick districts, like The Byward Market, that lie alongside it.
Grab your Roquefort cheese and baguette and head down for a picnic and a chance to marvel at a ‘lock flight’ alongside Colonel John By’s other legacy, The Rideau Canal.
Two hundred kilometres east, long before Colonel By was capitalizing on Ottawa’s potential, the French had been busy establishing their presence in Canada on the island of Montreal. Officially christened Ville Marie (City of Mary) in 1642, the ‘city of spires’ and financial hub for the North West Company’s fur trading business was, by mid 19th century, the economic and cultural centre of the country.
The old mills, warehouses and refineries in Vieux Montreal today are a testament to that history, where labyrinths of narrow streets and greystone buildings are home to no less than fifty National Historic Sites.
What were once public market squares are now, like Place Jacques-Cartier, stylish promenades of bistros and classical Parisian-style terraces, or like Place D’Armes, courtyards to magnificent cathedrals like the beloved Notre Dame Basilica (which attracts almost as many admirers a year as the Notre Dame in Paris!).
Continue downstream another 250 kilometres along the St. Lawrence River, through the Eastern Townships and the patchwork of seigneuries along it (the long narrow strips of farmland traditionally operated by subjects loyal to the French king), and you reach Quebec City, a city that was at the heart of New France.
Today it is unmistakably Old France, wearing its storied history with pride. Like how cartographer Samuel Champlain together with his mercantile sponsor, Pierre Dugua de Mons, and a handful of hardy settlers, set up camp here in 1608. And how, by the end of the century, the camp looked like any other medieval town in France; a cluster of stone buildings with steeply pitched roofs and chimney stacks and towers huddled within a walled precinct. And how successive eras of development simply built around this central core, leaving today’s Unesco-enshrined World Heritage Site a beguiling tapestry of old world charm and character.
Visitors flock to take in the cobble-stoned streets lined with bistros and boutiques and flowers spilling from dormer windows, Ursuline convents hidden down narrow alleyways, and cathedrals presiding over squares buried in chestnut trees.
De rigueur is an evening stroll along the governor’s promenade to enjoy the views of the Saint Lawrence River, the legendary Plains of Abraham, and what is allegedly the most photographed hotel in the world – the towering Chateau Frontenac.
East of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence River, European roots run even deeper. Acadie (present day Nova Scotia) was actually the first port-of-call for Champlain and Dugua in their early forays across the Atlantic.
In 1604, at a sheltered point off the Bay of Fundy, they established Port Royal, which, when commandeered by the British, became Annapolis Royal. And today, the rich heritage of this community, from French trading post to refuge of the Loyalists and New England Planters to capital of Nova Scotia, is proudly on display.
Peak-roofed churches and bijoux galleries vie with Georgian-fashioned inns and theatres on some of the oldest and loveliest streetscapes in Canada.
Follow other storybook lanes through farming communities and fishing villages nearby, past ‘The Fundy Thread and Thimble Club’ and freshly painted churches peering from groves of white oaks and elms.
As travel continues to come with cautionary clauses, it behooves us to consider our options closer to home.
Rather than travelling there, we need to remember that Europe, and successive emigrants’ versions of it, was brought here as early as the 17th century.
While I gave you a glimpse into those versions here, the European influence lives on in so many of the beautifully preserved cities and hamlets and homesteads in our country. Go ahead and be charmed…by just one more perk of staying home!
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