Unlike some other visits -- notably last year's -- the family was waiting for us this time around. As in, all of them knew we were coming and bringing Mama with us, and all of them were awaiting our arrival or were otherwise planning to be in when we were there. Daisy's cousin and his daughter had flown in from Alberta a week in advance to align their vacation time with ours. Her other cousin had come up from New Brunswick a day or two before. Yet another cousin who lives basically between the family homestead and Halifax (easiest way to describe it, really) was coming in for the weekend and would later join us, with her two kids, in PEI (we'll get there). All of these cousins are children of the same uncle who lives next door to the family homestead, so they all had a base of operations.
Almost all of the other living aunts and uncles (so, two couples, four people, including the daughter of one of the couples -- five -- another cousin) had also planned time to come into town to see all of us while we were there, with varying arrival times throughout the first week or so we were there. And, of course, Daisy's sister, her husband, and their five children would arrive from Pennsylvania several days after we would.
This...is a lot of people. When all of us were there in one place, group family photos were taken and we had close to twenty people in said photos. Actually, there may have been more; I haven't seen most of the photos yet as Daisy took them on her fancy new phone, with a tripod attachment.
It is also just a lot in general. I have mentioned here before that when I'm on vacation, especially a destination vacation like Nova Scotia, I really like having things to do every day, places to go, people to see -- this was the fourth time I've been to Canada in ten years, and the third time in as many years (2022, 2023, and now 2024). I know my way around. I know all the things we do and the daily missions we undertake. I know the people we come to see and the people who come to see us, too. However, going into Canada this time around, I was -- severely -- burnt out.
2024 has been a miserable year, in case you haven't noticed. Almost everything that could've gone wrong in 2024 up to this point, short of the deaths of friends and family (none so far, as of this writing) has gone wrong, and I've documented a lot of it here. I have not documented all of it, and I have reasons why I haven't documented some things -- mainly for privacy's sake. So let's just run down the shortlist, shall we, of shitty things that have happened so far this year:
- Maggie took a hard turn and died very quickly
- Daisy's car died on the freeway in the middle of traffic and cost us a good chunk of money to repair
- Daisy was sick for months to the point where we didn't know if she'd need to go on disability or not
- It was -20 for like a week straight in the winter months and we didn't know if we could keep the house warm enough to keep all of the pipes from freezing
- We had several awful snowstorms almost back-to-back
- The washing machine died, necessitating its replacement
- Pete and Sadie's health have both started a steep decline -- I'm not sure Sadie will last the rest of the summer -- Sadie was diagnosed with diabetes and hyperthyroidism and Pete is in the middle stages of kidney failure and also has hyperthyroidism
- We've had the worst tornado season and severe storm season that the midwest has seen in about twenty years, with numerous tornado scares around our area
Who would've guessed more was coming after that? Well...we'll get to that.
Anyway.
I wanted as much downtime as possible on this vacation. The AirBNB we were staying in was a wonderful little place -- it had three bedrooms, a positively giant big-screen wall-mounted TV, onsite washer and dryer/dishwasher/side-by-side fridge, fast wifi, a giant deck that overlooked the ocean with a hot tub on one end of it, TVs in every room on the dressers, etc. It was everything we could've wanted in a place we'd be staying in for almost two weeks (and I did not ask Daisy the cost of it, because I did not and still do not want to know).
And...we were barely there. With everyone in town and plans to be had, I'd venture the guess that we were at the family homestead or on the road to a destination far more than we were in the AirBNB. There was but one day I got of quiet, peaceful downtime in the house -- when Daisy and her mother drove to the other end of the province to see her mother's aunt. Or great aunt, or cousin, or something -- I can't remember the relation off the top of my head, honestly. That day, I sat down in the dining room of the house with my notebook and a pen and wrote almost nonstop; I wrote twenty-five pages of the screenplay I've been wanting to write for years. When typed up, it will likely be more like fifteen pages, and I haven't even gotten into the first big plot point yet -- it's more just introducing the characters to the audience and showing how they interact at this juncture.
After that point, Daisy returned home and our hectic days continued. I got to meet Daisy's aunt (uncle's wife) for the first time -- she wasn't there for Daisy's grandfather's funeral in 2022 and I didn't get to meet her in 2015 or 2023 either, though we have talked extensively on Facebook and she is a very sweet person. One day we went on a beach adventure with Daisy's cousin and his daughter -- what really just ended up being an adventure of "let's drive up Cape Breton Island and...go where the road takes us, stop where we want to stop, see what beaches are up here, see what gift shops are in these little towns, etc" -- and that was a full, really fun day where we explored two different beaches, a cove or two, a small beachside park and hiking path (we did not hike) and the cutest little touristy gift shop where I got a baseball cap and Daisy got a flamboyant sequined shirt with a leopard (or some other big cat of some sort) on it.
Speaking of flamboyant, we were in Canada in June -- Pride Month -- and holy shit does Canada take Pride Month super seriously. Pride flags are flying everywhere. And when I say "everywhere" I mean outside of police stations, government offices, churches, etc -- alongside the Canadian flag, the Nova Scotia provincial flag, and the First Nations flag. A giant Catholic church in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island was not only flying a pride flag but also had HAPPY PRIDE written on the church sign. Can you imagine that happening in the states? At a Catholic church? I was stunned.
Because of course I took a picture.
Also, I only assume it's Catholic because the size and ornamentation or the church and mention of St. Paul and the eucharist -- but honestly as I am not a religious person and it's been 20 years since I took a religious studies class in college...I have zero idea and don't care enough to actually check. They accept and love the gays? They're cool with me and that's good enough.
There's even a Canadian flag version of the Pride flag, where the red on each side of the maple leaf in the center is replaced by the rainbow colors of the standard Pride flag. We saw that one proudly flying in a few places as well.
I've now been in Canada in May, June, August, and September, but not July. Maybe next year we'll shoot for July -- I would love to see what a Canada Day (July 1) celebration is like.
So, getting back to the story, there were a lot of activities to do when we were there. Many people to see and spend time with, people coming and going like an airport. Aunts and uncles and cousins would come and go, making their appearances and spending time with us before returning to their lives. Daisy and I would do our grocery shopping, sometimes with Mama joining as well, and we filled the fridge and some of the cupboards with our foods -- most of which we ate, some of which we left behind, and an even smaller amount we brought back home to Omaha. I have learned that bread -- just normal, store-baked bakery bread at the grocery store -- is phenomenal in Canada. Canada's flour and yeast is somehow just different. Mama clued me in to this a few years back and I'll be damned if she wasn't right -- it tastes cleaner, crustier, just plain better than bread in the states.
Cheese is something else that's wildly better in Canada as well -- but oh man will you pay outlandish sums of money for it. A pound of run-of-the-mill Swiss cheese is $15 in Canada. But, I will tell you, it is one of the best ways to spend $15 while you're in the country, because you likely won't find better sliced-and-packed Swiss anywhere on the planet.
As an aside, when we got back to Omaha, I did a Walmart delivery for groceries and got some of the Great Value Swiss cheese for comparison. There is zero comparison. The American stuff tastes so cheap and processed. But it's $3, versus $15, so....
Actually we noticed an ungodly hike in grocery prices for so many things when we were in Canada this year. Last year when we were there, prices were mostly reasonable for our necessities. There were some things that were expensive (I covered this in last year's travel narrative of our trip) but for the vast majority of everyday items, prices were similar to what they are in the states.
Not so this year. Inflation has spun wildly out of control in the grocery store aisles of Canada. Stuff that used to be affordable and close to US prices is now insane. We're talking $8.99 for a package of Oreos insane, $12.99 for a three-pack of paper towels insane. $11 for a stick of deodorant insane. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Yet there are things that are 100% comparable to the states -- lettuce and most produce was comparable if not somewhat cheaper. Vegan turkey for my sandwiches I'd subsist on for a lot of the trip (don't you judge me) is about the same price. Soda, chips, chocolate and other candy bars -- the same price. It will make you very closely watch the price stickers on the items in the aisles while you're shopping, because a $100 grocery order stateside could easily end up being $250-300 in Canada.
And then there are the items that make you feel as if you've awakened in a Sliders-esque parallel universe, such as....
...Mind you, Spam exists in Canada. So I either walked into an aisle and momentarily slipped into a parallel universe where it's called KAM or someone's getting sued.
But I keep getting off track.
A few days after we arrived, Daisy's sister, her husband, and their five children ages 7 to 18 arrived in Nova Scotia. They stayed at their own AirBNB on the small island of Petit-de-Grat, an hour or two south of where the main homestead and our own AirBNB was. We drove out there to see their place, spend time with them and had a beach day with the kids -- after which, I'd been to three beaches over the span of four or five days; I was beach'd out. The sun was brutal and we hit a heat wave in Nova Scotia just as they arrived -- temperatures in the high 80s and 90s, which is almost unheard of in Nova Scotia, especially in mid-June when the snow has just melted a month or so prior. Several members of the family joked, again, that we must have brought the heat with us from Omaha.
It then proceeded to rain for three days straight.
Rain and storms in Nova Scotia aren't like they are here in Omaha. The rain will start and it will be a downpour for either ten minutes or for three days -- there's rarely an in-between. If it storms, it's a bit of light thunder and lightning that quickly dissipates and is gone just as fast as it came, flowing out over the ocean. The only exception is, well, the occasional hurricane -- which they've gotten a few times in recent years when even that was relatively unheard of in the past.
When it rains, you can either sit around one of the houses and socialize or you can go do shopping and explore indoor places in the area. We did both about equally, to be honest. Yes, we did go to Walmart and Giant Tiger. Yes, we did do some more grocery shopping. Yes, we did go get poutine -- twice -- while I was there, the second time of which I was able to get some compliments on my blue jay tattoo from a kind old man traveling through the area. On these rainy days, Daisy and I finished Bridgerton on Netflix, Mama and Daisy both went to the stylist and got haircuts, we picked up some groceries for Daisy's grandmother, and Mama bought a live lobster, cooked it, and ate it -- because maritime living, I guess.
We did have a set schedule for time, of course. We were in Nova Scotia for about twelve days, then we'd be packing up and heading to Prince Edward Island for two more days, before returning to Halifax to fly out and come back to Omaha. By the time we'd gotten through the first week, we'd already had the rest of the trip planned out since we knew when everyone's comings and goings would be. I didn't have much on the agenda aside from my near-daily trips to Tim Hortons to get Double Doubles, and I was basically along for the ride when it came to doing things with the family. We had but three things Daisy wanted to accomplish while we were still there:
- Go whale-watching off the coast of far northern Cape Breton Island
- Go eat at some of the vegan restaurants in Charlottetown, PEI
- See Green Gables in PEI with her sister/family and her cousin/cousin's two kids
Anything other than that was a bonus.
So, with vapes and phone charged, we set off to do those things.....
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