Welcome Bikers
text by Layla
photos by Layla and Sasha

Our visit to Digby Neck coincided with the Event of the Year:
Continue reading Maritimes 2009 – part 11

Wednesday morning, we started for the Bay of Fundy.
At the tourist office in Horton’s Landing, we met our first black person in the Maritimes. She confirmed that, indeed, she was a rare specimen in this part of Canada. “Let’s say that the social situation does not inspire people of colour to come and settle here. I’m born here, but I still don’t feel much at home or too welcome”. Continue reading Maritimes 2009 – part 10

Halifax
Monday, 31st August – Wednesday, 2nd September.

Cities are known for signs. John Zerzan traces the fall of the primitive into civilisation to the beginnings of language, symbolic thought, and technology leading led to hierarchy, violence, and domestication. Walter Ong and Jack Goody presented research that linked literacy to the need to systematise oppression and hierarchy around which time cities came into being. My observation is that signs and symbols are linked to ads and billboards proposing to link people through the information of exchange but whose presence signals the fact that these people lack a presence in togetherness. For, if they were together, why would they need signs, billboards and ads?

Continue reading Maritimes 2009 – part 9

All Roads Lead to Cape Breton.

Monday the 31st brought some improvisations to our plans. After all, we went to Antigonish. Leaving the Arisaig Cliffs behind, we passed by remnants of small scale lobster trappings that, by now, have mostly been replaced by large ocean vessels and companies.
Continue reading Maritimes 2009 – part 8

Leaving Pictou, we headed north west to Caribou Provincial Park, named so after the Woodland Caribou was hunted to extinction by the European settlers in 19th century. Naming and murder are intricately connected in civilisation: as Tawd explained to Ljuba, when we arrived in Memphis and were looking for Poplar Avenue, that it was the same as with Cedar Lane or Pine Heights, or other places named after trees, because all the poplars, cedars and pine have been cut down and their space has been occupied by plastic houses. The residents of these plastic boxes and naked spaces, I added, are highly dedicated to mowing grass and cutting down anything that might grow taller than 3 inches. Sadly, the caribou is facing the same fate elsewhere in Canada as well. Their abundance two centuries ago and extinction now confirms Petr Kropotkin’s study that species and individuals flourish through mutual aid and cooperation, whereas the capitalist notion of competition, private property, and the survival of the fittest introduced by European intrusion, annihilated most of the animate species and inanimate “resources” of the world.

Along the road, I noticed a man indulging in a peculiar activity: he chose one tree and was trimming it into a rounded shape. How much time of his life must he spend on battling nature and its desire to grow out to reach the skies? Why does a round tree appeal to him or his master more than the magnificence of the widely spread majestic branches of an old tree that whispers of timeless existence to the wind?

Finally, on day 7 of our trip, in Caribou Park, we see a bird:

And, another bird:

Continue reading Maritimes 2009 – part 7

Towards Cape Breton

We left P.E.I. in the morning on Saturday, the 29th of August, spending the day on an isolated beach in New Brunswick.

In the evening, we headed towards Nova Scotia, spent the night close to Tatamagouche planning to proceed along the coast to New Glasgow and down south to Halifax, but, tuning in to the spontaneity of the universe can take one in a different direction towards the most interesting encounters with the world. Continue reading Maritimes 2009 – part 6

PEI continued.

Statues of armed soldiers guard most of the churches I’ve come across in the Maritimes.

The northern shore was much colder, but the red earth just as stunning:
Continue reading Maritimes 2009 – part 5

Prince Edward Island, 26th- 29th August

We splashed and swam in the shallow and warm waters of Northumberland Strait and in the evening of the 26th drove to Argyle Shore on Prince Edward Island.

The sky was deep, the Strait shivered with violet waters, and Confederation bridge, like Jack’s beanstalk, vanished into the night. This picture is the day version of our experience:

Source for photo: wiki

Upon entry into PEI, the license plate was photographed just like they do at the border with the U.S. Probably to keep people away from stealing potatoes and pesticides. Continue reading Maritimes 2009 – part 4

I’ll continue on the logical path from the last picture of the farmed and industrial landscape. What attracted the European settlers to the Maritimes at the beginning of colonisation in the 17th and 18th centuries, was the abundance of fur that the invaders could steal from the animals and of fish. Later, farming, mining and quarries were added to the list of exploited «resources» and today the region is highly contaminated with the aerial sprays of DDT and contemporary pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides as well as with the mining industry.

Prior to European fisheries and farming, the maritime ecology was gushing with biodiversity. Many of the peoples who inhabited the land were the Abenaki, the Algonquin, the Attikamek, the Micmac, the Montagnais, the Nipissig, the Ojibway, and the Ottawa. Across tribes, they communicated in the Algonquin language and spoke a variety of other languages. Continue reading Maritimes 2009 – part 3

First thing in the morning on the 25th, we left Campbellton and headed further east along the coast, past Miramichi and into Bouctouche.

Continue reading Maritimes 2009 – part 2