Pedaled out of Salisbury today with good energy. Mayor Terry Keating gave me safe haven for the night, bought me dinner and had a great breakfast at K&B Takeout.
Then the locals sent me out Cornhill to get to Sussex. Total torture. There were 50 hills or more. The road was paved – which was good news. I may have worn out my tires because I know I wore out my legs. Nearly 40 miles on the day and resting – trying to knock down 18 more.
Salisbury, New Brunswick- As I mentioned in an earlier post, July 1 is Canada Day, very similar to our July 4. As I was making my way north from Amherst to Sackville, New Brunswick, I passed through several festivals which featured the playing of the Canadian National Anthem and officials giving speeches and games for the kids.
In Sackville, downtown Main Street was cordoned off on each end with orange and white barricades and a huge red and white Canadian flag. There was polka music and lots of seniors sitting on chairs lined up in the street listening.
I didn’t pay much attention until the lone accordion player on stage sat down at her keyboard and started belting out a Burton Cumming’s hit, “My Own way to Rock.”
Shelby Murray was the performer. She looked like a small-town girl, simple pink top and black skirt, short dark hair and she was wailing on that song and jamming on the keyboard like a mix of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard.
Shelby, at 23 years old, is also blind.
“I was born four months premature, weighed one pound 10 ounces and given a 1% chance of surviving,” she said. “The oxygen the doctors used to save my life somehow detached the retinas from my eyes; the retina is completely gone.”
Shelby confessed she really didn’t know the “medical mechanics of it all,” but she also noted her twin sister died at birth.
Playing keyboard since she was 3, Shelby took up the accordion when she was 15.
“I just always really like the sound,” she said. “I learned scales and then pretty much taught myself.”
The wind is brisk and Shelby good-naturedly curses her short hair. “Just keeps blowing in my face and it’s too short to tie up in a pony.”
A couple pass by in the street and shout hello. “Bye Dick and Bristol – thanks for coming,” she said, acknowledging them by name. “They’re big fans from Amherst.”
A confident musician, Shelby plays exclusively by ear and has progressed through an array of styles. “I used to really be into Bluegrass and I loved rap a lot. I’m not crazy about heavy thrash metal. I play Gospel and rock. I have a friend in Hillsboro who is an AC/DC tribute vocalist and we’ve jammed together a few times; we’re trying to get a band together.”
Musical influences listed on her Fandalism page include Eric Clapton, CCR, BB King, Ronnie Dunn, Sarah McLachlan and Burton Cummings. (She can also be found on YouTube.) Sitting on a black straight-back chair in the hot sun, Shelby has her Hohner piano accordion nestled in her lap. “I got this one second hand. I actually have three good working ones, including a Cajun accordion and one given to me by Ken Campbell. His dad died in 1991 – the year I was born. I was at a jamboree with some friends when he dropped it off at my house.”
Shelby excuses herself for a moment as a 70-year-old man asks to shake her hand.
“My name is Bob Wallace,” he said, reaching out. “My, you have small hands.”
Wallace passes his white cane to his wife as Shelby takes his hand to let him
test her piano accordion. “I’ve got five accordions, but I can’t play like you!”
Another man stops and eagerly asks, “When are you going to put out a CD?”
Shelby, who has an ‘awe-shucks’ demeanor, said she can’t afford to make one and
“time is an issue.”
After meeting with fans, Shelby said she’s been interviewed quite a bit by
Canadian media, including Global News, CTV, CVC Radio and CFTA in Amherst. She also has videos posted online, including one of her playing the Orange Blossom Special. She nimbly races over the keyboards the way Eddie Van Halen shreds a guitar.
“I don’t know if you lose one of your senses – another takes over,” said Shelby. “My mom loves music, my 20-year-old brother’s a metal head and he’s in a band. I’ve just always loved music and I’ve just been blessed to have folks that reach out to me, including those at Salisbury Baptist Church, and Dick and Carol from Amherst.”
Although visually impaired, Shelby said she could tell people were having a good time. When told about the bubbles that flew through the air during her polka on the accordion, she laughed at the impromptu Lawrence Welk atmosphere.
Prompted to follow her performance dates on her Facebook page, Shelby said she posts her schedule and regularly updates. The entries read, “I’m going to be there to make some noise.”
Trendy Black Duck Inn in Sackville for breakfast. Colorful mosaic tiles at the door and cozy interior complete with dark hardwood floor and chalkboard menu.
I had the breakfast of champions: scrambled eggs with chives, whole grain toast dripping with butter, a single sliced strawberry and hot, black coffee.
(Photo, right) Street-side painting along Route 106 in Dorchester.
Lloyd and Blair were solving the world’s problems sitting in a garage in Dorchester watching traffic go by. “Am I going to be on TV?” asked Blair when I stopped to take their picture. “I always wanted to be a Hollywood star,” he said mentioning Tom Selleck.
The further north I go in New Brunswick the more French I hear.
Man stopped me on the boardwalk in Moncton and asked me if I was a tourist. Isaid, “No, I just like to drive around town with about 60 pounds of gear on my bike.”
Just kidding… I was polite, but I thought it was a dumb question. The guy hadbeen parked by the water. “There’s supposed to be a big 4-foot wave of mud come rolling though here when the tide comes in,” he said.
I waited a couple minutes with him but shoved along thinking I could be there all day and I had things to do and people to meet.
The Campbell Carriage Factory Museum is on Church Street in Sackville, New
Brunswick.
Liam at the Carriage House Museum
It’s the only carriage manufacturing museum left in Canada. And the crazy thing is, when this company closed its doors in 1951 it wasn’t reopened until the 1980s and, according to Liam, “Nothing had been touched. It was like everybody just walked off the job and left things as they were.”
Liam, 23, took me on tour and pointed out some of the unique wooden wheel making
equipment. He said in the 80s antique dealers came in and bought a lot of the items. “The thing is, they didn’t really even know the carriage business so they took what they knew – hammers and chisels and stuff. But what they left were the really valuable tools like this,” said Liam, holding up a large metal pliers that looked like it could pull a tooth.
“This was used to help straighten the spokes and pull them into place on a wooden wheel.” I asked what it was called and Liam said he didn’t know the technical name but he called it the “spoke straightener.”
The carriage factory also built caskets. Above is a collection of hardware used
to decorate the caskets.
There were two floors to the shop. Pieces of the carriage were hand-crafted on the first floor and assembled and painted on the second. “It’s odd they would move the finished product a level up because then they had to get it down,” said Liam. “But because they had to paint it and dust would fall to the level below they had the paint department on the second floor.”
The door of the paint shop was used as a pallet to test the viscosity of the paint since only white paint was available and all colors had to be mixed by hand. “So this raised rough glop is over 100 years of paint being thrown onto the door to see if the paint was the right consistency,” said Liam.
In its heyday, the Carriage factory employed about 16 people. Liam said a single 4-horse engine ran the turbine for all the equipment. “It was so loud in this part of the building that the craftsmen had to talk to each other using a form of sign language.
The Campbell Carriage Factory Museum is now run as a museum and receives federal funding.
Amherst, Nova Scotia has a lot of cool things like free Wi-Fi in the downtown area, painted murals on buildings and sculptures made out of trees that were cut down due to Dutch Elm disease.
This mural (below) is in tribute to soldiers that went to serve in WWII. In the foreground is a tree carved into a Nova Scotia Highlander.
This tree art of a woman is located on Virginia Street in front of the Baptist Church. (Photo below)
One of the most interesting murals is on the back side of a building on Virginia and Laplanche Streets (photo below). ‘The Great Amherst Mystery’ is about Esther Cox, who was a bit of a whack job in 1879. She would see things in her home like matches that would light themselves on the floor and she would hear voices. Doctors came in to check her out and they confirmed they heard the things too.
The best story came from a teen in Amherst. Ben said Esther Cox once turned into a blueberry. It was such a Willy Wonka salute to Violet Beauregarde …
After three days on the bike I crossed into New Brunswick. It’s still considered Canada; they use the same denomination of money, but there is more French spoken here and motorists have a different style of license plate.
Making my way north out of Truro to Amherst …. with the best of intentions. Sunny skies and temps in the upper 80s – but strong headwinds most of the way.
Took the old Route 4 which was the primary road before the Trans Canada Highway. A bit more scenic, lot of up/down including a 50-minute slow climb of Folly Mountain. Rewarded on the back side with seven miles of down and top speed of 39.7 mph.
This mural (above) was alongside a barn at Wentworth Valley Ski Hill. It showed people getting off a train with their wide wooden skis with strap bindings.
There was a little food truck, Emily’s Tatties Take Out. It looked like a 1950’s comet camper sitting along Route 4. Pauline Cooke ran the shop that featured ‘the best clams ever eaten.’
“We get them fresh every day. We don’t over cook them and we have a secret breading,” Pauline said while sweating inside the unvented camper.
I stopped for some shade. Pauline offered me fried clams. I would have paid for shade and she said she would have, too.
A Painting of Dominion Day 1913 (above) on the side of the Days Gone By Antiques and Collectibles shop at 27 Water St in Oxford.
Dominion Day was the name of the holiday commemorating the formation of Canada as a Dominion on 1 July 1867. The holiday was renamed to Canada Day by Act of Parliament on 27 October 1982.
Sampled some of Nova Scotia’s home brew while relaxing after a hot 58-mile day.
Pastor Brad and Family
Pulled into the small community of Oxford and it only took one ‘ask’ and Pastor Brad let me stay in the youth building at the Church of the Nazarene on Main Street in Oxford.
“There are some stale chips on the counter and warm soda if you like,” he said. So sweet.
The youth building had several couches, a clean bathroom and…… thank God for air conditioning.
I met the pastor’s wife and kids. The family was leaving to go camping, as July 1 is their Canada Day holiday.
Pastor Brad asked about my jersey and the tour; as he was headed out the door he said, “I’ll say a prayer for your dad.”
So kind. He left, and then popped back, “Do you want the wi-fi password?”
Have I mentioned how nice folks are in Nova Scotia?!
