CANADA’S EAST COAST BREATH OF FRESH AIR FOR THOSE OF US WHO ‘COME FROM AWAY’

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

Ed. note: Exploring Canada, enjoying a summer ‘Staycation’

MARITIMES — If you’re severing 600 for supper, what do you boil them?

At the Fisherman’s Wharf in North Rustico, P.E.I., it’s tons of lobsters.

And how do you catch that much shell fish?

Kyle, who owns the aluminum fishing trawler “Shake Me,” tells me it’s relatively simple, but hard work.

“String out your nets — even not that far off the end of that long pier — and you can haul in 1,800 lobsters a day.”

What entices a lobster into the iconic Maritime shell fish traps? Haddock, P.E.I. fish trawler captain Kyle told me yesterday in Victoria By The Sea. PHOTOS Mark Clairmont

After yesterday travelling four provinces in one day, a weeklong tour of the Canada’s East Coast ended on a happy note flying home just under the wire amid Air Canada labour strife.

And with fond memories of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. A quarter of the country worth intimately experiencing — even if rushed by coach. Where Scottish and Arcadian roots permeate the coastline culture.

Lois and I arrived here a couple days after the start of the Aug. 11 lobster season — the second of two each year. There are two lobster fishing seasons in P.E.I. — the first runs from early May to late June, and the second is a fall season from mid-August to mid-October.

Captain Kyle, who’s 39 and owns his boat, has been fishing “since I was teen.”

He says if the iconic lobster traps (catching up to a dozen lobsters in each three-foot trap) are set deep down in the Atlantic Ocean — as during this hot summer — hefting them up and out is back-breaking.

Kyle and his relatively small boat and crew of three are out most days and harvest 50,000 lobsters both halves of the season.

He expected the price yesterday to be about $9.25 each when he brings them back to the fish plant up the coast.

Bibs on, there was room to sit 600 at the Fisherman’s Wharf in North Rustico, P.E.I. Tuesday, said the owner, where a 1-lb. lobster dinner and 60-item all-you-can eat salad bar was yours for $53.

Enough to feed an army of seafood lovers at Fisherman’s Wharf and the many other smaller restaurants and community suppers that dot the island coastline in Canada’s smallest province, which with just 187,000 active and busy residents is seemingly surviving just fine building and living off a summer that doesn’t appear overly busy by Ontario and Muskoka standards.

But it’s a life unique to Canada’s east and west coastal waters.

Sit back, grab a mug of coffee, a peanut butter cookie and life’s your oyster sitting and watching the boats and tourists come and go for Victoria By The Sea residents Ruth and Shirley.

And one Ruth and Shirley enjoy every day. They’re the two elderly friends who gather every morning on Ruth’s front porch across from the fish pier to relax, enjoy coffee and biscuits, and wile the hours being entertained watching the coming and goings of all the fishing boats and bustling buses and tourists.

Both have lived in North Rustico their whole lives, but aren’t fishers. Though some of their family are.

“You can’t move here by noon,” Ruth says proudly.

A week out East along touring the inlets, bays and shorelines is a literal breath of fresh air compared to the rest of polluted urban Canada. It its invigorating and awe inspiring those of us who “Come from away” — the genial term islanders and others from the Atlantic Provinces including Newfoundland and Labrador refer to outsiders.

The eastern charm lies in its people who turn their not too dissimilar topography to our in to a world class destination notably to Nova Scotia’s Cabot Trail where its dramatic ocean cliffs capture travellers worldwide.

And where ocean cruise liners overflow tiny villages, like the one blown off course from New York and was forced into Halifax by Hurricane Erin winds while en route to Bermuda.

That’s just one amazing story of the allure I’ll share about a much-heard part of Canada that continues to be a destination worth the 18-hour drive or short two-hour flight from Toronto. Including the Confederation Bridge (the world’s longest), incredible beaches not for sale, Titanic gravesites, “The Commons” Canada’s first public park, Alexander Graham Bell’s late life summer home, his Silver Dart airplane and first successful hydrofoil boat. And yes, Anne of Green Gables.

Iconic lobster traps dot the Maritimes landscape where intrepid reporters can hoist the three-footers, which can capture up to a dozen with smelly haddock as bait.

More tomorrow.

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