Nova Scotia has its share of strange foods, slang, ghost ships, and legends.
THE SHAG HARBOUR UFO CASE
On a beautiful, dark but clear evening at about 11:20 pm on October 4, 1964, dozens of people from Shag Harbour, on the southern tip of Nova Scotia, saw many strange lights in the sky, including a huge orange sphere. Some, including members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, saw a series of flashing lights that suddenly crashed into the harbor at a 45° angle. A pale yellow light was seen moving underneath the water, before it disappeared.
Fishermen rushed out in their motorboats to try to save any survivors of what was assumed to be a plane crash, but they only found a patch of yellow foam that smelled of sulphur. Authorities put out a call to see if any aircraft were missing, but there were no reports of missing planes or other aircraft. While something had crashed into the water, no one knew what it was. Teams of military divers were sent to search for wreckage. Townspeople reported that they pulled something from the water and drove away with a package, but they would not tell anyone what they found.
The truth about what actually crashed on that night may never be known, but the incident remains one of the most widely seen sightings of what was, technically, a UFO. Each August, the town usually holds a UFO Festival with a barbecue, parade, and people sharing memories of the event.
BRIGHT BLUE LOBSTER
The odds of finding a vibrant blue lobster are one-in-two-million according to the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute. But in June of 2012, Bobby Stoddard, a lobster fisherman from Clarks Harbour, Nova Scotia, found one. He and his father have been fishing the waters around Nova Scotia for decades, and Stoddard says that his father actually caught one about 45 years earlier and hadn’t seen one since. Stoddard, who hauls in an average of 3,000 lobsters on a good day, is keeping the bright blue one in a tank in his office for folks to come and see.
The Blackberry smartphone was developed in Waterloo, Ontario.
On September 8, 1863, an unidentified man missing both of his legs was found at the beach of Sandy Cove on the coast of the Bay of Fundy. While the area’s residents took him in and cared for him, the man refused to explain how he got there or even give his name. The Acadians dubbed him “Jerome” based on the sound of his grunts; the man spent the rest of his life in almost total silence.
The mystery man became an attraction, and people came from far away to see him. Rumors spread about his true identity: Some said he was an Italian nobleman who had been mutilated out of revenge, others said he was an Italian naval officer who had been abandoned after losing his legs. Still others thought him to be a lumberjack who had lost his legs in an unfortunate accident and was left to die.
The mystery man Jerome has inspired many Acadians and Nova Scotians who have paid tribute to him in song, film, and paintings—but his true origin remains unknown.
EARLY HOCKEY PUCKS WERE HORSE POOP
The boys at Canada’s first college—King’s College School, established in 1788—played a field game called hurley. A hurley was a wooden stick used to hit a leather ball. Teams would try to get the ball into their opponent’s goal. Some students took the game to the ice and ice hurley was invented. That game evolved into ice hockey, and players used skates to zip along the ice more speedily. Boys often played with wooden pucks, but pucks were also made from whatever material was available—heels from boots, compressed tin cans, lumps of coal, and frozen horse droppings, which they referred to as “horse puckies,” or “horse apples.”
The rubber puck came into play in the late 1880s. Whole balls were originally used as pucks, but when the sport moved indoors, rink owners found that a slice from the middle section of a lacrosse ball made a more manageable puck.
CHIN UP, SURF’S UP
It’s hard enough to balance on a surf board, but Doug McManaman can balance a surf board on his chin. In fact, this sturdy-jawed 68-year-old from Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, holds the record for balancing a surfboard on his chin for the longest amount of time—51.47 seconds.
Jordan Tootoo, Cal Clutterbuck, Zarley Zalapski, and Hakan Loob are all real Canadian hockey players.
McManaman calls himself “The Balance King” and holds more than 340 other records, most of them for balancing things on his head. He once balanced a bowling ball, a golf club, and a hockey puck on his head. . . at the same time.
A GAELIC OLD TIME
Nova Scotia (which in Latin means New Scotland) is the only region outside Scotland where the Gaelic language and culture remain everyday aspects of community life. Gaelic speakers came from the highlands and islands of Scotland to Canada starting in the 1700s. Late in the 19th century, about 100,000 residents of Cape Breton spoke Gaelic.
Today, between 1,000 and 2,000 speak it in the province. Interest in Gaelic heritage is growing again in the area—you’ll see Gaelic words on signs, and the language is even taught in high school in Mabou. The Gaelic College of Celtic Arts and Crafts in St Ann’s is dedicated to preserving the language. It hosts more than 1,000 students each summer from around the world, who study the language, piping, fiddling, singing, dance, and other customs. A few Gaelic words that have become part of the local dialect in Nova Scotia are : boomaler (an oaf), sgudal (garbage), and skiff (snow)
YOU CAN GET THERE FROM HERE
In July 2010, Italian couple Valerio Torresi and Serena Tavoloni boarded a plane in Rome that they thought was heading to Sydney, Australia. When they touched down in Halifax, Nova Scotia, they weren’t concerned. They thought they were merely changing planes for the final leg of the journey. While they did change planes, their final destination was off by about 16,818 kilometers (10,451 miles). They arrived in Sydney—but Sydney, Nova Scotia.
Their travel agent had goofed and booked them on a flight to the wrong city. The wayward travelers were rewarded for their misadventure.
They enjoyed free accommodation and a lobster dinner, and an Italian-speaking local gave the couple a grand tour of the sites before they were able to get a flight to the slightly more popular Sydney, Australia.
In Nanuvut, the farthest Northern part of Canada, cabbage can cost $28 and chicken $65 a pound.