Day 4 - Old Homes

Day 4 – June 18, 2008
Windsor, N.S is where we parked for the night. Another cool and cloudy day with light drizzle and rain off and on, however that didn’t dampen our spirits for seeing all things old! We are still trying to tell ourselves to sleep at 10:00 pm ( 6:00 pm Kelowna time) so some nights are a challenge, but we are slowly getting accustomed to it. No Starbucks in this region, so we sojourn on without the caffeine boost! Not to difficult in this area. We are in a little town called Windsor. Everywhere you look could be a picture postcard. Really! Today we toured some old house museums. In this part of the country, there is no shortage of old houses, and the grander ones and the estates are now museums. First the Haliburton House and, on to the Shand House, and then to my favorite so far: the Uniacke Estate.

Originally the estate was comprised of more than

2000 acres, which included 11 lakes. The house was completed by 1709. Mr. Uniacke was a lawyer, and married a 12 year old girl! The marriage was happy, and lasted 28 years until she died, and then he married gain. The house is completely furnished with the original furniture, décor and personal items. One of the surviving ancestors (a woman who never married) realized its heritage value and importance, so arranged that upon her death the whole kit and caboodle was to be sold to the Province . The colors in the home are really similar to our time. Buttery yellows, darker greens, blues and pinks. Very beautiful. They also had clothing displayed. There were beautiful dresses from the mid 1700’s that are still beautiful today! Clocks all around the house all still work today – these are 200 years old – wonder if our watches or clocks of today will last that long? I think I know the answer to that one! We also sent to Grand Pre – this is home to some of the first Acadians. They have an interpretive centre, theatre for their video ( beautifully built to look like the inside of a ship) and a beautiful church built as a memorial to their expulsion from this land and their struggles as a people. Didn’t get to see all of it so plan to visit again tomorrow.

Cool facts we learned:
1) Haliburton was a lawyer, and mined gypsum on his estate. Sometimes after death, they wanted one last picture so they propped up the deceased in their favorite chair or desk. They think Mr. Haliburton was propped up for his last picture.
2) Shand house they had a wreath made of - no, not pine cones… or shells… but of hair! They often did this for loved ones and family members who would were overseas or far away.
3) Uniake Estate – when someone passes on, they would take locks of their hair and sometimes weave it, or put the curls in lockets and trinkets. They also made jewelry out of the hair – rings and broaches! This creeped me out but I could kind of understand the sentimental intent.
4) Boys wore dresses, had long hair (ringlets) and had pink colored bedrooms until they were 6 or 7 in the 17-1800s. This creeped Lucas out!
5) They put holes in their closets big enough for cats go crawl in – to catch the mice.
6) The Acadians were forced into exile by the British because they wouldn’t swear allegiance to the British monarchy. More than 1\2 of their population were children and many died on the journeys.
7) The Acadian language is still spoken in some areas and is a mixture of ancient French, modern French and English. To our non-bilingual ears it sounds much different then the French we are used to hearing and every sentence seems to have a smattering of English words.

Lucas’ statement: Did you know that…Haliburton wrote stories about an unethical “Yankee” salesmen named Sam Slick who sold shoddy goods to Canadians. The books became very popular in Britain because they were quite funny and put down Americans.