My Maritime Provinces Road Trip
A Sunday to Wednesday Drive across a part of Canada I've never seen before, with more lessons learnt for future road trips
Last Saturday (12 April 2025), I find out from one of my closest friends from my time at UW (Kayleen) that a mutual friend of ours (Nate) was living in the Boston area now, which spurred me to finally execute on a planned road trip idea of mine, which was to go see the Atlantic Provinces (which is a part of Canada that I, as a Canadian citizen and the fourth generation of my father’s paternal line to be Canadian hadn’t had a relationship with).1 After some back-and-forth texting with Nate, we agree to meet up at his abode the next day (Sunday, 13 April 2025), carpool to Boston to see the Gibson House Museum, etc., which began my trip.
So, on Sunday, I wake up, thought I’d have time for breakfast before driving down to meet up with Nate (although I seemingly misplaced something that I theoretically needed for the trip, so that ended up chewing up the time I would have allocated for breakfast had I not misplaced said item), drove down to Wakefield, got in Nate’s car, where we drove to Boston, saw the Gibson House Museum (which was rather cool for me since it allowed me to see a framed copy of the invitation that President Theodore Roosevelt (one of my biggest heroes from childhood) had sent to Mr Gibson to invite him (Gibson) to the wedding of his (TR’s) eldest daughter, Alice, to the then young congressman (and future Speaker of the House) Nicholas Longworth for their wedding on 17 February 1906.
Note: All photos on this post were taken with my iPhone, and other than the one taken of Nate and I, all taken by me as well. The one taken in front of the Gibson House Museum was taken by someone else who had just been on the house tour with us, my apologies that I didn’t get his name at the time to credit him here.
That’s the front of the house, or at least the sign and what can be seen behind Nate and I, and for any of you wondering, given my height of 1.82m, that Nate is in fact just over two metres tall (201cm => 6'7” for US/Imperial using people reading this)
After seeing the Gibson House Museum, and a brief stop at the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial across from the Massachusetts State House since Nate hadn’t yet seen it (which of course allowed me to discuss it & I do love discussing things related to Colonel Shaw), we drove back to his place, the two of us spent time conversing with his partner and then I rolled out at roughly 16h00.
I stopped in Brunswick in Maine to see Bowdoin College and get dinner, before refuelling to get to Fredericton (all of that was about 90 minutes in time expended), which is where I planned to stop for the night. I eventually got there, but what I forgot to account for was:
Once I crossed from Maine to New Brunswick, I also crossed into the Atlantic Time Zone, so when I arrived at the hotel in Fredericton was almost 02h00 Monday (01h45 was my hotel check-in time in Fredericton)
Given the craptastic weather that I encountered from past Bangor (Maine) to past the US/Canadian border, that also slowed my driving time, which in turn caused additional delay for my arrival (which is why it was almost 02h00 local or 01h00 thinking in Eastern time)
Anyway, that was the end of Sunday.
I woke up around 09h00, ate breakfast, walked to the Government House (where the Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick lives), then drove to see the House of Assembly for New Brunswick, refuelled, and then headed to Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island to see the capitol complex for PEI.
That drive was roughly four hours in length including the crossing of the Confederation Bridge (behind someone who wasn’t even going the speed limit and there was no way to pass this person), but got to Charlottetown, and after a bit of driving, found a place to park near the front of the Legislative Assembly building, got out, and walked to the front of it.
After taking these, I quickly stopped for a nosh, posted these pictures on my Facebook and Instagram, refuelled, and got on the road to Halifax. Stopping just once more to get fuel about an hour outside Halifax, I then checked into my hotel, did some work, got dinner, and went to bed.
The post associated with the PEI Legislative Assembly photos reads as follows:
The Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island - under construction.
The PEI war dead memorial, whilst small, is quite legit.
At this time, I would like to remind my American friends who are pleased with President Trump’s tariff policy with which he’s poking Canada with that since its founding in 1867, the US & Canada have fought side by side in every war, and even in Viet Nam, when the Canadian government didn’t send forces to the lands of the former French Indochina, that for every American draft dodger hiding in Canada, there were an estimated 2-2.5 times as many Canadians who volunteered to serve in a US military uniform to go fight the Vietnamese Communists.
This also makes it the sixth provincial capitol complex I’ve seen. Only four more to go.
🇨🇦 🇨🇦 🇨🇦 🇨🇦 🇨🇦 🇨🇦
Tuesday (15 April 2025), I got breakfast, did some trip planning, realised I couldn’t fit in a ferry ride to Newfoundland and back given I needed to be back in Burlington by Thursday morning, so eliminated that from my plan, and then I did a bit of sightseeing in Halifax, first to the Citadel of Halifax, second to the House of Assembly.
As you can see from this panorama, there is definitely a lovely view to be seen of downtown Halifax and of the harbour.
The Citadel of Halifax itself, whilst smaller than the Citadel of Quebec City, was still impressive to see and I am glad I had the chance to spend roughly 45 minutes partaking of it.
I wish I had gone there after 1 May, when it’s open for tourist season, but I was still mostly pleased with this experience.2 Afterwards, I drove to see the Province House, where the House of Assembly for Nova Scotia meets.
After sharing these with the following post:
This here is the Province House, where the General Assembly of Nova Scotia (Nova Scotia’s provincial legislature, which is unicameral) has met since 1819.
The General Assembly, along with Nova Scotia’s lieutenant-governor, combine to make up the Nova Scotia House of Assembly.
Canadian parliamentary democracy was started here in Halifax, with this body, in 1758. Prior to that, all governmental authority (executive, legislative, & judicial) in Nova Scotia was held by His Majesty's Council of Nova Scotia (aka the Nova Scotia Council).
According to the Wikipedia article about the latter:
“The lack of civil government with an elected assembly was a drawback to attracting settlers from the older, established colonies of New England where the population was expanding and seeking new lands. New Englanders wanted guarantees that they would have governmental institutions the same as or similar to what they had become accustomed in New England.”
So, by 1758, enough pressure had been applied regarding the issue to force its creation.
It’s a fascinating thing, the forces that bring our institutions into being.
🇬🇧🇨🇦📚🤓🥳
And seeing that there was a ferry available to Saint John (NB) from Digby (NS), I drove towards Digby, which was a 2.5 hour drive, allowing me to arrive at 13h00. After buying my ticket and finding out that I had a three-hour wait for the ferry to leave, I went back into town, got lunch, took a phone call from a friend, and then returned to the ferry terminal.
Given the delay imposed by the choice to take the ferry of 5.5 hours (the three hours I had to wait for the ferry to leave, plus the 2.5 hours of actual ferry transit time, leading to a net loss of roughly 3.5 hours relative to if I had just driven the route, which would have placed me in Saint John at roughly 14h30 instead of the 18h15 I instead got there at by taking the ferry), I lost the ability to do anything touristy in Saint John, as well as needing to spend an extra night outside of Burlington.3
So, getting to St John when I did and refuelling there before immediately getting back on the road, this meant I just had to drive until Manchester (NH), with my only two stops en route being the US/Canada border, and stopping to refuel in Bangor (Maine), even with more craptastic weather from pretty much as soon as I crossed the US/Canada border to when I neared Bangor, I got into Manchester at 23h35 (back on Eastern Time), checked into my hotel, and went to sleep within the hour.
Wednesday morning, I ate breakfast, did some work, refuelled, got on the road at 11h30, and drove the distance in just under three hours, getting back to Burlington at 14h30, and doing more work as soon as I got back to my abode.
Things I learnt or had reinforced from this trip:
1) Check the Schedule, Not Just the Route:
Check the ferry schedule, not just what Google tells me is the crossing time - since my net delay of 3.5 hours and what that did to the schedule of the remainder of my trip as a result, was caused by the fact that Google Maps didn’t tell me how long of a delay I would have at the ferry terminal, just what the total ferry crossing time was.
2) I am a relatively decent driver and trip planner - trust it:
Even with craptastic weather on both ends of the trip through Maine which impacted my driving conditions, thus speed, I still made decent time as a whole. Neither rain, nor snow, nightfall, or time zone shifts broke my stride. That performance re-confirmed that my travel confidence (and in meeting my scheduling markers) is rooted in my actual capability, not some form of false bravado.
3) Rigid planning is good - but adaptive control is better:
Once again in my life, I have lived the maxim of President Eisenhower with respect to the value of planning, even when the plans themselves fail.
4) Travel can be mission-driven and emotionally restorative:
This trip began as a goal pursuit (seeing the Atlantic Provinces before I drive back west in May), but the spark was a friend (Primarily Kayleen for letting me know that Nate was in New England now, but also Nate for our gathering). That social interlude impacted the tone of the whole journey. It can be said that my ability to integrate structure and serendipity gives my travel an enduring value beyond the metrics.
5) Completion goals are best pursued with a sense of historical humility:
As I note in the first footnote of this post, my road trip through the Atlantic Provinces wasn’t just personal - it was also, in some respect, corrective, given that it filled in a gap not just in your map, but in my paternal family’s lived Canadian geography. It can be said here that this reflective humility adds depth to the kilometres I travelled.
And lastly, but less importantly than the five lessons enumerated above:
6) I lost time but gained additional story - usually not a bad trade-off:
Yes, I lost a net 3.5 hours by taking the Digby–Saint John ferry - however I also bought for myself more physical rest than I would have gotten if I had driven the Saint John from Halifax and then spent an hour or two in a museum (as I was originally planning to do), gave Claudia the Chariot (my car for those that forgot her/its name) actual rest for almost a quarter of a full day, a maritime experience not a whole lot of Americans get, and added narrative value, and the latter, which whilst not the greatest thing in the world, is far from horrible as well (another reinforced lesson).4
And that’s a full lid, folks!
Everett Family Historical Note Leading to a Canadian Geographic Note: My patrilineal line great-grandfather (Joseph) and several of his brothers (most of the ones younger than him, so also not going to inherit from my patrilineal line great-great-grandfather) migrated from England to Canada at the turn of the 20th Century, first to Montreal (thus beginning the Everett family loyalty to the Montreal Canadiens hockey team of which I am a proud but pained lifetime fan) and later to British Columbia where my great-grandfather and his brothers set up as (primarily) dark-coloured tulip farmers (don’t ask me, I don’t get it myself), where my grandfather, father, and elder brother were all born. So, as far as what I know and as far as I can tell, none of them had even been to the Atlantic/Maritime Provinces (the Maritime Provinces (as defined) are: Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia - the Atlantic Provinces are a superset of the Maritime Provinces that also includes the province of Newfoundland and Labrador) for any length of time, even so much as a stopover en route to somewhere or even a visit. However, it should be noted that my dad’s mum’s paternal line went from Northern Ireland (where my great-grandfather’s parents aka grandmother’s patrilineal line grandparents) to Nova Scotia to Northern Illinois (where my great-grandfather Robert was born, and met my great-grandmother (who was born in Iowa)) to Alberta (where my grandmother was born) to BC (where my grandmother met my grandfather and where they lived their married life together).
Yes, I plan to do another trip to the Atlantic Provinces after 1 May of some year…it just won’t be later in 2025 more than likely.
For anyone interested in the Google Maps plots that these pictures were generated from:
a) Actual route, and b) Route without ferry
An interesting thing about being a citizen of two countries, and travelling to that second country from the first country, is that, in this case, yes I am a Canadian as well as an American and I view myself as equally of the two characters as they have both applied to me all of my life, but in some instances, like the results of taking the ferry route instead of the doubled-back driving route, is that it causes me to mentally flip the switch from “as a Canadian” to “as an American”.
It’s the closest to accurate way I can describe the sense of code-switching between my two nationalities in my head, especially given that I currently live in the United States and not Canada. It’s even more complex of an exercise when factoring in the fact that both of my parents are citizens of three countries (both of them citizens of two by birth (one by location/condition of birth and the other by their own ancestry in both cases) as well as a third by naturalisation), since, it forces my brain to have to consider, for my father his “As a Briton”, “As a Canadian”, and “As a Mexican” brain switch, and for my mother her “As a Greek”, “As a Spaniard”, and “As an American” brain switch. It’s very complicated, I promise you.