Halifax and the Titanic

On Sunday we decided to take the short trip into Halifax.  We needed to take the rental car back to the airport at some point so we made a day trip into the city.  There is much to see and do there but we decided to go to the Maritime Museum and see the special Titanic exhibit, some permanent and some just for the 100th anniversary, and visit one of the cemeteries where most of the victims recovered by cable ships from Halifax are buried.  The wharf is a fun happening place with play areas for children, restaurants and as we found, Theodore the Tugboat.  We ate out our first meal in Nova Scotia (after cooking in all week) at a great seafood restaurant called Murphy's on the wharf of the harbor watching the fog roll in.  We also watched a huge yacht right next to our table window prepare to sail out of the harbor and across the ocean to Great Britain. 

Looking down at the Halifax harbor from an upper street.

3-D glasses, ready for the Titanic experience at the museum.

Model of the Titanic, there were many of these with various information.  I did a lot of reading a loud to some very very interested children.  I think I know what we will be checking out books on when we return.

Sarah Kelly sitting in a reproduction of a Titanic deck chair.  There is an original chair (below) that was brought back on the cable ships when they brought back the bodies they found.

"Included in the salvage was this beechwood deck chair.  Almost fully intact, it featured the White Star Line trademark, a five pointed star, emblazoned on the headboard.  100 years later and fully restored, this deck chair survives at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.  One of only two known deck chairs remaining, this piece is the heart of the museum's permanent Titanic exhibit." - Taken from a postcard about the chair.  In the bottom left you see a piece of caning also recovered.  They used this pattern to re cane the chair.

A piece of the railing from the first class staircase.

Shoes worn by the unknown babe - more on him later down

Drew and Elizabeth admiring a ship; the boys loved this place!  This huge museum was all about ships from the beginning of shipping (sailing ships) up to modern day ones.  Lighthouses, cable-laying ships, and the special exhibits on the Titanic completed it.  We ended up staying until closing because none of the children wanted to leave. 

A huge lens from a lighthouse.

Where Titanic sank.  The town of Halifax is in red just above.  You can easily see its proximity in Nova Scotia to the disaster site.  This town, closest to the sinking, with many ships in the harbor because of the continuous cable laying operations on the Atlantic and the many activities of the port, was therefore available and had ships ready to head out on a recovery mission.  The White Star Line with an office in Halifax commissioned 4 ships for the recovery mission.

Elizabeth listening to information about cable ships dragging the ocean floor looking for broken cables. 

The unknown babe, now known 100 years later, hence the updated gravestone on the bottom.  Several days before I had read a piece from the April 14, 2012 Chronicle Herald (the Halifax newspaper) about "Our Babe".  You can read it too on this website here, the whole tragic story is there and it will move you.  If you look elsewhere on that website, there are many more stories of the Titanic for those of you who are interested or you can google The Chronicle Herald, April 14, 2012.  It's a special 100th anniversary edition.

Gravestones from some of the victims of the disaster.  All the "box" typed stones were provided by the town of Halifax unless the relatives wanted something else, then they were able to use whatever type of monument they wished.  Bodies were brought to Halifax, the closest port.  The recovery ships located 328 victims and brought back to Halifax 209.  The rest were buried at sea.  Any thought to be Protestant were buried here, in this Fairview Lawn Cemetery.  In recent years, some of the "unknown" have been identified and names have been respelled correctly due to better research.

I drove around the Halifax airport and found these hitchhikers.  I picked them up.

Quote of the Day: "He's my favorite, I have him in the car." - Jackson talking about Theodore the Tugboat and a colorful brochure he picked up earlier in the week and had been looking at it for several days.  Unfortunately, he had not said anything until we happened to see a model of it in the museum and then found the actual tugboat outside on the wharf where we took this picture.  The last "cruise" of the day had left just minutes before.  Had we known about it, one of us would have taken him on this; it was quite inexpensive and he just raved about Theodore the rest of our time there.  I will have to look for the television series on DVD that aired in Canada for several years.

Touching a lobster from the "touch tank" inside a restaurant on the wharf where we ate dinner.

Lunenburg Whale Watching

JB is done teaching his 3-day class to bridge inspectors in Nova Scotia and now is home with us.  We had debated about going whale-watching, an expensive endeavor but something we knew the children would really like.  Now, none of us except for JB has seen whales before.  He's seen a bunch by default working in Alaska and especially up close.  My new friend, Dutch, who works down at the Marina within walking distance of our house, has given me the scoop on the best place and the best tour.  After calling him, he is willing to give us a discount since we are such a large family.  Jackson and the baby of course can go free and he'll give us a discount on top of that.

So we drive to Lunenburg on Friday morning and get there and find the lady behind the ticket counter with an even bigger heart.  She not only gives us the freebies but takes off $10 each on the other children and discounts Scott to the same rate even though he should be the adult rate.  She then takes some money off our tickets and comes up with one flat rate along with no tax which is a 15% savings in itself.  I am amazed and grateful for her kindness.

Leaving Lunenburg

Now, before you look at these pictures, you must know that if you have never been on a whale tour, you're in for a surprise.  Since I had never been I wasn't sure what to expect and I deicded not to have any preconceived ideas.  It was a good thing because I was wondering how we were going to *see* whales when in reality unless they are out of the water on the beach you cannot *see* an entire whale.  The whales we saw were all Fin whales, the second largest in the world.  Last week on the tour, a blue whale was spotted and I was secretly hoping for that but we didn't see one.  Again, I'm not sure how exactly you tell the difference when you are seeing very little of the whale and a lot of it's spouting.  We saw some fins though and some of the backs of them as they came up for air but other than the blowing up of air and water, that was that.  I think the children weren't really sure if they had seen this what they were supposed to see or not but when we saw the one with the fin on its back come up and we could see the whole back, they became excited about it.  In all honesty, I think one has to go on these whale tours an awful lot to get a feel for what you are looking for and what you are seeing.  It would happen so fast I wondered what I *did* see.  If you went often you would get a schema for it and began to understand how it works and their size in relation to us.  Apparently our boat at 50 feet was smaller than some of these whales but we were not real close to them.  Even knowing that whales are gentle giants is still not comforting when I know they are longer than our boat.  One of the most fun parts was the actual boat ride, about 10 - 15 miles out in the ocean.  While I don't get seasick and no one in our family did either (!), being on open water like that makes me uneasy; open water is scary to me although I don't know why. 

So here's a few pictures we managed to take although we were trying to look at the same time.  I didn't get one of the fin and the back and another time we saw a fin as well.

Someone throughly enjoyed the boat ride

Scenes from around Lunenburg - The Bluenose (a famous ship)

Colorful houses and houses turned into restaurants and stores are the norm along coastal Canada.

Quote of the Day:  "How big is it?  I just can't tell!"  - Mommy says when seeing the first whale.

Margaret Elizabeth Elliotte Whisnant July 17, 1912

Originally posted July 17, 2012

Today would be my maternal grandmother, Margaret Elizabeth Elliotte Whisnant's 100th birthday.
She died almost exactly 10 years ago in June, right before her 90th birthday.  Only 2 of my children ever saw her on this earth and I have many many fond and wonderful memories of my time with her for over 30 years.  One of the reasons I am thankful for salvation is because I know I will see her again and know her in heaven.  I also know that she is there oohing and awing over my 2 little baby boys and know she is enjoying them so much.  She liked babies, maybe that's why I feel such a kinship to her as I love babies too. 

She didn't have any easy life (do any of us really?) but she kept her spirit and grace, and laughter with her.  I have so many memories they jumble up inside me and threaten to come out in a big gush, all tangled together only making sense to me and I have to sit quietly and sort them out, like untangling a ball of yarn so that I can put it on paper and make them neat enough to share with anyone else.
Today I thought of my Maw-Maw a completely different way, a way I never knew her.  She was born just 3 months after the Titanic went down, 3 and a half years after her husband, my Paw-Paw was born, whom she did not know then, and just a few years before World War I, The Great War.  The last and 6th child of my great-grandparents, she and her nephew, James Ridenhour both nursed at the same breast.  My great-grandmother, Emma Lee Hartman Elliotte and her daughter, Rosa Ridenhour having had babies 9 months apart and Grandmother Elliotte nursed both her daughter and grandson. 

I have all the memories, tangled ones at that, but recent events in which she was not here, not here for me to tell her or lay my head on her lap and cry them out, like I would have done before.  Did she not feel the same way in February 1943 as I did in 2008 when she rode home silently from the hospital with her dead infant daughter, Brenda Elizabeth in the back seat in a box?  I heard many times about the hardships of it and the pain of bringing home the baby to bury and the memories of the hospital so raw still that she said she never never wanted to go back there.  I listened in wonderment as a small child but didn't understand because modern technology today and when I was little, even, would have saved my aunt.  But I did understand on a beautiful fall day, October 10, 2008, when my husband and I drove home from a hospital with our infant son in the back seat of our car, bringing him home to bury.  A hospital which I had never been to before and haven't since and know I would have a panic attack if I had to go back there.  Knowing now, that modern technology is not always an answer, knowing that no technology now or ever would have saved our son for us on this earth.  Did my Maw Maw not go home to her almost 3 year daughter and older children?  Did I not return home to my just turned 2 year old son and my older children?  The comparison to feel another's pain brings me to my knees.

She later birthed another namesake, my mother, Margaret just as I birthed another child as well, one I named for her family, the Ellis Family.  Another daughter of mine's name is Elizabeth which is the name my Maw-Maw went by her whole life.  And life continues on and only God knows what He has in store for these children He blesses us with. 

Not knowing my great-grandmother myself but hearing many stories about her and visiting her home as a young girl (it is no longer there but I remember going inside and walking around and can still see it in my head today), I wonder at her acceptance and love of my grandmother, her sixth child, her fifth girl.  (In today's culture she might have never have been born.) I'm sure they would have loved her graciously and she was spoiled by these older sisters and big brother.  And here I am with my 3rd daughter born and as the youngest, she is adored and spoiled equally by her older brothers and sisters.  And I know my great-grandmother's love for this child of hers, as I can understand the same love with our new baby.  Boy or girl, no matter.  Love is unconditional and multiplies exponentially.

I have so many fond memories and a few unpleasant ones but I knew my Maw-Maw long enough to know her through mostly the good times and the happy times.  She taught me how to use a chamber pot (even though she had an indoor bathroom), I guess habits she learned as a young child never left her.  She cooked whatever I wanted for breakfast, let me sleep as late as I wanted, washed and ironed my clothes, cooked meals for me, even if she and I were the only ones around, and kept my 3 year-old hand print above her bed and my picture beside it, always.  Today I have the hand print returned to me and I treasure it because she did.

I  was the one who got her to quit smoking cigarettes.  She would pretend to get mad when I threw them in a trashcan but then she would laugh, and finally she did quit.  I remember riding in the car with her, swinging on the swing together, and she rocked me always in her rocking chair.  Most of my children have been rocked in that same rocking chair and it sits in my bedroom today between my bed and the crib.  Maw-Maw spoiled me so much she even dressed me!  When I was 16 she said she wanted to give me something, something of hers that she had and she wrote it down on a piece of paper and signed it (I still have it today).  She offered me her vanity dresser with a small stool that didn't match it.  It is veneer and peeling today and needs some work and is not valuable, but it's so sentimental to me and both have a special place in my home.  I spent a lot of time sitting on that stool and at that dresser.  I tried on all her shoes and I still remember the smells of her creams and powder, and her make-up that she would wear when we "went to town".

Years after she died, when the house, where the sun sets streaming through the kitchen windows, was sold, the porch furniture was being offered with the house, unless I wanted it.  I had sat in those metal chairs most of my life, the rocking glider she and I sat in together for hours.  So, today they are with me and they will be finished and painted again.  I have a gold locket, shaped like a heart that is worn as a bracelet, in fact it leaves tight marks on my wrist, that she gave me.  It was given to her in 1928 when she was 16 but by whom I'll never know; she never told me.  She was married by the age of 17, March 30, 1930 to my Paw-Paw and they were married for 67 and 1/2 years.  I never knew the story of the bracelet and no one else seems to know either.  Perhaps I will never know but I wear it today and more often the older I become.

I remember Christmas presents at their house and my 3rd birthday party was there too with all my cousins.  I remember that party, especially the balloons.  I grew up in the house, it was a part of my soul and spirit.  I didn't want to go there after my grandparents were gone, that was too hard, the house was too silent.  The radio was off.  Lil' Abner was not playing in the background.  But there were things for me to look at.  Did I want this or that?  No, I shook my head.  I had a few things she had given me but other than that, I took very little.  I had exactly what I wanted, which was what I needed, my memories and the things she pressed into my hands over the years, both tangible and unseen.
She bore my mother at the age of 33, her fifth and last child and when she died I was only two years shy of that age and still needed and wanted her very badly.  I know that their marriage was not peaceful, I know there were lots of difficulties, life was hard and not easy but all of us face our trials and our crosses and it's how we face them that's important.  There is always "stuff" we have to work around and sin is every rampant and can get out of control.  This is a fact of life for each of us.  But, I mostly only remember the good, the lovely, the laughter, the joy, the singing, the time spent, the investment made in my life and I know that we all have this opportunity in the life of a child, some child, somewhere.  May we not squander it and may we be wise enough that when we know this is our mission that we embrace it with all the grace, love, and joy we can, just as it was done for me for many years, years ago.  I am a better person because of it.  I would not be the same without it.

Oak Island, Nova Scotia

"If you go ashore from a boat you probably won't get shot but "they" will make their presence known."   

We were having a discussion with Dutch at the Marina about Oak Island, the theories, the tours, and asking if anyone ever tries to go to shore by boat, and this was Dutch's response.  ~~~The Quote of the Day

When we first started looking for a house on Nova Scotia, we were looking for one close to the town where JB is teaching his class.  It was evident immediately that the only homes for short-term rent are along the Bay of Fundy on one side or up and down the Atlantic shore on the other.  We refined our search to the southern shores of the province specifically looking at St. Margaret's Bay, Hubbards, and the Chester area.  Unfortunately no homes were found that we could rent there, all booked so we looked a little farther south and came up with the house in Western Shore.  There is actually another house on the same road that rents as well but it was already reserved.  It turns out that we ended up with the best house to rent for our family.  The homes here all advertise that they are overlooking Oak Island. 
While we were trying to figure out why they all made such mention of an island, Scott appears and exclaims, "Oak Island, that's where those boys found the pit and dug for buried treasure."  He begins to tell us the story and the history.  Apparently he first found it from an e-book I downloaded from Homeschool Resource of the Day several years ago.  Then I vaguely recalled the story as well.  So here we are looking for a house to stay in that's right across the water from the famous Oak Island.

It is very intriguing to watch documentaries and videos about Oak Island and we are very curious now to stay near here.

Sunrise over Oak Island from our Yard

The house we're in is about as close to the island as one can get without going ashore which is not possible unless you want to be shooed away.  According to Dutch at the marina, some Americans own it now for the last couple of years and have sunk about $30 million into equipment and resources to start digging again.  There are only a couple of houses on there in which caretakers live and they also keep people off the island.  There is a causeway to the island which has no trespassing signs on it but there are no signs or any seemingly restrictions on the rest of the shores surrounded by water.  We have watched this island for days and other than an old barge that we can see on our side and an occasional vehicle on the causeway to it, there is no one and no activity.

Early in the week we went to the Chester Visitor Center which has a permanent display about Oak Island and all the happenings over the last 200 years with treasure seekers and others.  There was enough visual information to get the little ones full of questions.  I must have tried to answer 100 or more.  There was a reproduction of the tree with the rope attached and the pit in the ground, a cross-section of the depth that has been dug with the oak logs found in between every 10 ft and lots of photographs, newspaper accounts, and even artifacts from the island. 
One morning JB and Scott decided to take the boat out and they rowed over to the island and then disappeared behind it.  Later they reappeared on the other side of it and hefted their boat up and over the causeway to come back on this side.  They made it all the way around and no, did not go on shore.  Apparently though on the side where there is an inlet that cuts into the island for a long ways, they saw the other house and child playing on its deck.  There are weekends, about 4 or5 each year when you can pay $10 and go on a short tour where you see a shack and Borehole 10X in the ground but not in July.  The next tour is in August.
Here are some pictures of the island from the house, the dock, and the boat.

Daytime View of Oak Island in the distance as seen from the house

The chair is on the dock we use.  Oak Island is the further island in the distance.

The one visible house from the side as seen from the boat.

Another view from the boat.

More views from the boat.

Going Crabbin'

Tuesday, July 10th's Quote of the Day:

Drew screams over and over, "I got one!  I got one!  I got one!  I got one!  I got one!"... You get the idea!

In 3 and a half hours Scott has snagged 5 crabs using a small piece of chicken (part of our dinner).  So we go up to Sode's store to get some more and he recommends we use salmon pieces attached to bone which are basically scraps.  He gives us these free.  In less than an hour we catch 27 crabs!

Somebody has to watch the baby while all this is going on.

Gathering more sea water for the crabs.

Harris has no problem picking them up by their back legs and...

throwing them in the buckets.

Look carefully, do you see that large crab in the water?

Crab grabs the salmon, we grab the crab.

Everyone checking their lines.

A dead crab is a bad crab so those that make "the cut", i.e. they are not too small, get cooked right away.

Cleaning the crabs.

SK showing us her cleaned crab.

Father and son cleaning crabs together.  I don't mind the catching, the handling but I don't like this part.  I'll just take the pictures, thank you!

Picking out the meat.  I don't mind this part either. 

Cutie pie watching all this crab meat picking but she is eating something else and apparently enjoying it very much!