Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Sea Wolves Chase Kayak!


Canso Village is reputed to be one of the oldest fishing villages in North America. Today is it the very end of the road on mainland Nova Scotia. One of the islands, called Green Island just across the harbour, is where one of the first trans-Altantic cables came ashore. Today you can go out there, tour the island and read about its history. Of course today Canso is also famous for the Stan Rogers festival it puts on each summer.


With that done, I paddled through a narrow gut between two of the larger islands and came out in a maze of granite islands which reminded me very much of the part of Georgian Bay I had visited a month or so ago.


This lone cabin looked over the island group. It had a commanding view of the whole archipelago almost to itself, although there were a couple of other houses hidden on one of the larger treed islands a bit further out. All in all, a quiet little paradise on the day I was there. I suspect things can get a lot livelier when the wind kicks up!


Returning to the mainland I headed southward in Glasgow Harbour to get a look at what the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia looked like. Again, it resembled Georgian Bay with the addition of salty water, tides and grey seals. This group attracted my attention with their wolf-like howling. When I got closer to investigate, many of them got in the water and swam out to have a closer look at me. Bobbing up ever closer, we all got good views of each other. Several followed (chased?) me for a while as I paddled away to explore some more.

5 comments:

Silbs said...

Never heard any say they paddled through a gut before. Can you tell me what that defines, a gut?

Michael said...

Silbs - it's a place you paddle that's so narrow the sides come out and try to swallow you... Gives you that acidic feeling if you get caught in her!

Stan Mac Kenzie said...

Yeah it must be an Eastern Canadian thing because we have a gut here in NL, called Quid Vidi gut. Same sort of thing very narrow passage like you're sailing down the euastachian tube. lol

Well Michael glad to see you were able to paddle in my home Town. Kind of barren these days with the fishery gone and all nice photos that bring back a flood of memories. We use to talk to the lighthouse keeper on Green Island on Friday nights when I was a kid. My brother had a CB radio set up and it was interesting to here the keeper's stories. Happy paddling.

Stan

Douglas Wilcox said...

Michael, thast looks nothing like the Glasgow Harbour I know!

:o)

William deB. Mills said...

Delightful blog; great pictures. I'll be kayaking in NS next month and on past trips have also had seals come right up to my kayak to check me out - young ones shyly, old ones without blinking an eye. I've long wondered how they would react if you slid gently into the water and tried to swim with them. Any experiences?