Actually one would think that this is enough time to get to know “someone” quite well, especially while spending 24 hours a day together.
We spent two and a half of our first three months in the east of the country. 7 weeks alone on the island and province of “Nova Scotia”.
Here in the East, Canada gave us the warmest of possible welcomes.
We spend the first few days in the apartment of a then complete stranger – who has now become a good friend. We get to know the city of Halifax from a locals perspective, walk and drive around the area together, cook together and get to know his friends over a few glasses of wine.
What a start!
We now also have a map of Nova Scotia. It is filled with lots of handwritten recommendations. So many that we don’t really know where to start. Unfortunately, two large forest fires are currently raging in the south-west of the island, one of them the largest fire Nova Scotia has ever seen, destroying more than 150 homes, 60 other houses and other buildings over an area of more than 200 square kilometers over the next few weeks and temporarily driving more than 6000 people from their homes.. [1] [2]
For us, this means that we first head north, away from the fires and towards the picturesque Cape Breton, which is also advertised a lot by many notes on our map. At the same time, two new friends we met at the airport drive north in their rented camper and offer us the chance to spend a few days with them.
This offer is what exactly we need at the moment. We’re both just totally exhausted from the past few months of travel preparations and desperately need a vacation. So the four of us travel through Cape Breton for a few days. During the day, we go hiking and visit lots of beautiful places. In the evenings, we listen to relaxing songs on the acoustic guitar and drink a lot of beer to make up for the bad weather and the rain, which here in the north is a crazy contrast to the fires in the south.
Over the next few weeks, we will get to know what will later be explained to us as a “cultural mosaic”. Canada – especially Eastern Canada – is a country in which immigrants from a wide variety of cultures, religions and countries of origin have found a new home over the past centuries and continue to do so today. Almost all the people we meet personally have ancestors who emigrated or were expelled to Canada from Ireland, Scotland, France, Poland or Germany and, especially in larger cities, you get a good feeling that there are at least as many people from all the other countries and cultures of the world in Canada.
On our way through Nova Scotia, we drive through many Acadian regions where French is spoken almost exclusively. Here you can buy delicious croissants in the “Boulangerie”, the “KFC” (“Kentucky Fried Chicken”) is called “PFK” (“Poulet Frit Kentucky”) and one evening we find ourselves in a singing evening for French / Acadian folk music and are the only ones in the room who don’t understand a single word. Street signs here are partly or exclusively in French and every second property is plastered with the blue, white and red French/Acadian flag.
Just a few kilometers further on, Gaelic translations can be found everywhere on the road signs. One evening we end up in an Irish pub, a band plays traditional Irish folk music in the background and we talk to a visibly enthusiastic teacher our age about the fact that children in this region of Canada can learn Gaelic at school and that they have managed to keep old Gaelic dialects alive here in Canada that have been extinct in Great Britain for ages.
A little later, we find ourselves invited to a square dance event somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We are quickly invited into a car and our entrance fee is paid before we know it and we are sitting comfortably in a Canadian community center. On the opposite side, someone is rattling up and down super fast melodies on his violin and tapping a wild beat with his feet on the floor. A second person is doing everything humanly possible on his piano and a third is shredding out chords on his guitar as fast as he can. A few minutes later, we both find ourselves with a new dance partner and learn the traditional group and step dances of the village and find out that these events take place here several times a week throughout the summer. For a moment, we almost think we are back in Ireland or Scotland, but no, we’re still in Canada!
A few weeks later, on the other side of the peninsula, we walk through towns like “Lunenburg”, drive past regions like “New Germany” and places like “East Berlin” and “West Berlin” and here and there we see things like “German Knackwurst” in restaurants. Already after the first few weeks, Canada seems big and diverse and somehow we are again and again positively surprised at how well the country seems to cope with its many different cultures. The country and its inhabitants repeatedly give me the impression that they deal with the whole topic of “immigration” in a more relaxed and better way than the European countries.
Every now and then I have the feeling or at least the hope that there is simply less racism and generally less exclusion of minorities here. In the next moment, however, I always realize that as a white, rich, privileged person and tourist, I naturally notice very little of such racism.
While the descendants of the first European immigrants are all in a similar situation and form the majority of the population, such problems seem to be limited mainly to the minorities of the indigenous population (who originally lived here before the Europeans arrived) and to more recent immigrant groups such as people from Asia.
But at least I have noticed that immigration is perceived differently, at least from the official side. While many people in Europe continue to try to convince themselves that migration is always something criminal and illegal that has to be prevented with fences, boats and, if necessary, violence, people in Canada have understood that people have always, for millions of years, gone to where they have the best chances for a good life. This is exactly why all these European immigrants came to Canada, because they were hoping for a better future than in Europe and by this they made Canada the country it has become today.
With the country’s history in mind, it makes sense that the Canadian government deals openly with the topic of migration and officially speaks positively of a wanted immigration and multiculturalism as a state ideology.
When it comes to this topic, I keep thinking that Canada is of course a bit bigger than Germany and perhaps has different opportunities to take in people than we do.
And this thought is not entirely wrong.
Canada is about 28 times the size of Germany, the second largest country in the world after Russia and, with 3.9 inhabitants per km², it is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. You would think that there would be plenty of room for new inhabitants. In fact, however, in conversations with many Canadians, we repeatedly discover that Canada is gigantically huge and largely empty, but that this is also simply because most parts of the country are simply uninhabitable.
What impressed us already in the first few months, time and again about Canada, is that there really is still untouched nature here, which cannot be taken over by humans in the future because its area is subject to special laws as a national park or provincial park.
We also find it exciting that the Canadian government sometimes even buys back or expropriates land from hotels or private individuals so that the protection-worthy nature in these areas cannot be further exploited. Even small, unknown national parks are often several hundred square kilometers in size, so big that you could easily spend days or weeks hiking or canoeing through the wilderness without seeing any civilization. We were also very impressed by the fact that only fractions of these gigantic areas are made available for tourism and other areas are deliberately kept away from human influence in order to give nature space without humans.
We have the feeling that a few things are going really well in this country and that Canada is ahead of Europe in many respects. But also in this regard, Canada is a country of sharp contrasts. On the one hand, there is a great deal of commitment to the conservation and protection of nature, but on the other hand, animals such as cougars, bears (even Polarbears) and moose can still legally be hunted in Canada.
We are shocked to discover that it is really easy to book cougar or polar bear hunting trips in northern Canada online and during our trip we keep coming across people who proudly talk about their moose and bear hunting skills. Although these species are not officially threatened with extinction in Canada, I cannot stop asking myself the question : “Do we always have to wait until something is endangered to protect it?”.
So even here in the vast wilderness of Canada, not everything is perfect in the end…
Nonetheless, the wilderness and the way people interact with it is simply different here and that inspires us. Already in our first few weeks, we see a bald eagle in its natural habitat as we go for a walk in the morning, gliding majestically over our camping-spot in a bay. What felt like a childhood dream come true at that moment was repeated many, many times over the coming weeks, as these kings of the skies are relatively easy to find here everywhere.
On a beach near Louisbourg, we meet a shy young red fox and he repeatedly shows us how tired he is by yawning profusely.
On the Skyline Trail on the Cabot Trail, two moose cows suddenly appear behind us on the hiking trail and less than 15 minutes later, we spot a whole school of pilot whales moving up the coast in front of us.
At dusk, a porcupine demonstrates us how safe it feels with its quills and how incredibly slowly it can move across the road. While we are sitting in the car talking on the phone, a coyote walks past us with its pretty dead lunch hanging out of its mouth. On the way to Kejimkujik National Park, we brake unexpectedly for a painted turtle and follow it to the other half of the road. In St. Mary’s Bay, we see a few humpback whales from a zodiac boat that are a easily 1-2 times the size of our boat. Again and again we observe nesting seagulls raising their cute, fluffy chicks and more than once we almost step on a snake while walking, which fortunately are all non-poisonous here. Every now and then we see a few raccoons at night that look a bit like little bandits with their funny faces.
Here in Canada we are also learning for the first time in life what it means to really share a living space with other creatures. Here, too, humans have of course claimed large areas for themselves and within these areas their “rules apply”, so to speak. But as soon as you are outside these areas you simply have to follow certain rules that are necessary because this area is not “governed” by humans alone. As we never have to be considerate of other animals in Germany, this is quite unusual at first. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that humans are not the only living beings who have a claim to the planet, but have to share it with all other living beings. And if this includes not walking alone through the forest in the dark to avoid being mauled by a wolf-coyote hybrid or being overrun by a moose or bear, then this might seem like an “annoying” restriction that we are not used to, but in reality it is not really a problem and it also shows a certain kind of respect for these animals and that they are also given the space and time of day to live. From this point of view, you can actually see very clearly how broken our ecosystem and our approach to wilderness is in Europe.
We have eradicated everything “dangerous” for so long that our entire food chain is so defective that we now have to regulate even populations of animals that no longer have any natural enemies and while the Canadians can only laugh about the “very reserved and basically shy and harmless wolves”, in Germany they all go nuts when here and there a few packs of wolves return to their natural habitat. Of course, everything always has its price. In Canada, for example, you can’t really go hiking without first passing a bunch of bear-, coyote-, cougar- or wolf-warning-signs. In some areas, I probably wouldn’t go for a walk in the wilderness without bear spray or with strong-smelling food and admittedly, when windsurfing, it’s not exactly easy for me to be happy about cute, curious seals “watching” me surf, when I always have to think about the 5-6 meter great white sharks that I was able to track on the Internet just a few days before right here off this coast using their GPS trackers. But here, too, I can use very simple rules to reduce the chance of ever encountering such an animal to almost zero. Of course, this also means restrictions for me, but after a while you quickly realize that it’s actually not a tragic problem at all and that you don’t need to be afraid at all if you stick to some simple rules.
If you give these animals space to live, you never really have a problem and if you do get into a tricky situation, there are simple rules for each animal to scare them away or ward them off. This probably explains why Canadians are so relaxed about this issue. If you have grown up with such rules from an early age, then at some point they are taken for granted and then you can relax and allow nature its space without feeling restricted yourself.
Another thing that immediately jumps out at us in Canada is how BIG everything is here. No matter where you look, everything has to be big. Eggs are available from 12, but the larger packs of 18 or even 30 are of course cheaper. Milk, juice and water are usually available from 2 liters, another common size seems to be 4 or even 10 liters, but neither is really compatible with our fridge 😀 We usually buy oatmeal in 2.5 kg packs and with a pack of kitchen towels or toilet paper you can get by for months. The fridges in the houses here are correspondingly huge and are often at least twice or three times as big as large fridges in Germany and almost look more like a small closet. As you would expect from North America, the vehicles here are also somewhat larger than in Europe. The standard vehicle for most people here, and especially for people who care about cars, is a large pickup from Dodge, GMC, Ford, Chevrolet or Toyota, which are almost always powered by a V8 with a displacement of 5-10 liters.
A good average pickup is of course equipped with huge off-road tires, which protrude neatly from the left and right of the fender and are raised so much that the hood starts pretty much at children’s head height. In the same spirit, there is always a matching logo at head height, such as the “RAM” logo from the Dodge RAM, which would certainly leave exciting impressions.
Those who don’t have a pickup truck and probably don’t attach that much importance to cars usually drive a mid-range car from Asia. A car that would probably consume around 5-7 liters of fuel in Germany will easily swallow up 13 liters in normal traffic here, because of course these vehicles have not been optimized to be fuel-efficient and almost always have all-wheel drive, because in general it feels like there are hardly any vehicles without all-wheel drive.
We experience something similar with North American camping vehicles. The average recreational vehicle here seems to be either a ginormous motorhome with thousands of slide-outs, several air conditioning systems, an integrated emergency generator and a second vehicle attached as a trailer, or a huge trailer towed by heavy-duty pickup truck that probably has more square meters and more luxury than most European tiny houses. Of course from time to time we also meet people who travel in a tent or a small pickup truck cabin, but it feels like there is hardly any other sizes inbetween the two concepts of either a tent or the giant-private-travel-spaceship. As a result, we always feel like a small minivan in our 8-metre Sprinter and often fit into normal parking spaces, as the pickups are almost as big as we are…
In addition to the BIG things about Canada, we are always struck by the BIG openness and hospitality of the Canadians. As already mentioned, we are welcomed here like good old friends from the very beginning. Our first host passes us on to friends from the university in Cape Breton after we leave his cozy and well-located apartment heading north. We spend a few days here, tinkering a bit on unfinished projects in our van, drinking beer and wine and getting to know the whole family at the weekend at the traditional family supper in the uncle’s house. Then we spend a few days driving through beautiful Cape Breton with a German-Canadian who lives in his self-built minivan, have long conversations on equally long hikes and eat together in the evening.
A short time later, we are invited to Porters Lake by two windsurfers and are allowed to enjoy life there for a few days on a very nice piece of land by the lake, are surprisingly invited to dinner, go windsurfing together and philosophize about the problems of the world. And again and again people ask us about our foreign license plate. Many people are interested in where we come from, where we want to go and how exactly a trip like this works. Over and over we are given contacts, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers of friends or relatives from other parts of Canada or North America. We have many interesting conversations and once such a chat on a supermarket parking lot even ends up in arrangement to meet for a very funny evening in an Irish pub in Halifax.
Our first months here in Canada somehow fly by. In a way, we have so much more time than in “normal” life and yet so much happens every day that the weeks and months fly by faster than we can imagine. Later on, we are often asked in amazement how we managed to spend so long in the east and especially in Nova Scotia – well, what can we say? This part of Canada was exactly what we had dreamed of for the start of our trip: plenty of time to slow down a bit, beautiful and super diverse nature without having to drive much and so many memorable, interesting and friendly encounters that we could never have imagined and more than we ever experienced later anywhere else in Canada – simply a perfect start!
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