Every summer, I make the 2,000-kilometre drive from Big TO (Toronto), where I live, to Little TO (Truro, N.S.). The Maritimes have been my ocean playground since my family moved to Truro from Cambridge, Ont., when I was in high school, and as a university student and then as a cub reporter, I travelled most highways and byways in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. But even with all of that ground covered, last summer I revisited places I hadn’t seen in more than 30 years and found some new gems to recommend along the way.

Prince Edward Island

Confederation Trail

On past trips, I’ve cycled some of the Confederation Trail near a friend’s farm in Saint Peters Bay, but I didn’t bring my bike this time. Instead, I drove to the rental shop at Brudenell Provincial Park. For $30, I get a sturdy steed for four hours, which easily covers a 13-kilometre portion of decommissioned railbed that passes through serene forest on the way to the fishing village of Georgetown.

The Confederation Trail is a series of recreational paths popular with walkers and cyclists. It spans 273km across the entire province from Tignish to Elmira, with branch trails bringing the total up to 449km. Photo: Marc Guitard/Getty Images

I stroll the boardwalk, find a stellar labradorite ring made by Peter Llewelyn at Shoreline Design and stop at a jellyfish-dotted beach to add to my sea glass collection. After a butter tart at the Maroon Pig and the ride back, I feel I deserve an ice cream cone at Scooper’s Dairy Bar in nearby Cardigan.

Photo: Kim Honey

Canada’s Smallest Library

It’s hotter than Hades in this 3.5 metre-by-3.5-metre wooden hut, and the windows are sealed shut. I last about five minutes – just long enough to check out the eclectic collection of 1,800 books. There is a copy of Canlit king Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost sandwiched between the steamy novel Twins by Palm Beach socialite Roxanne Pultizer, and a paperback of Victor Hugo’s classic, Les Misérables. It’s worth a visit, if only to sign the guestbook. For fun, you can cross the road to the Cardigan Heritage Centre and pick up a library card for $5, which comes with a lifetime membership; loans and returns are on the honour system. Browse in high summer at your own risk.

Photo: Kim Honey

New Brunswick

Briggs & Little Woolen Mills

If you’re a knitting tourist like me, a trip to tiny York Mills, about 50 kilometres southwest of Fredericton, is a detour guaranteed to add a skein or two to your yarn stash. The 100 per cent Canadian wool has been milled, carded, dyed and spun on site for almost 170 years. Originally the yarn was only available in neutrals, but now you can choose from a riot of hues, including some that evoke the province’s land and sea: a light purple called Fundy Fog, the pinky-black Red Granite and inky Quoddy Blue. Their yarn is favoured by Atlantic Canadian crafters renowned for fisherman-knit sweaters, woolen beanies and Newfoundland’s famed saltwater mitts. Shop worker Crystal Nason is a fount of information, and teaches me how to spit-splice yarn (which is exactly as it sounds!). She also told me about one of the craziest tourist questions she ever had to answer: “What do you do with the sheep’s carcass when you’re done with it?”

Photo: Yulia Grossman/Getty Images

Potato World

You can’t miss the big red barn of Potato World from the Trans-Canada Highway, but this was the first time I’d taken the exit to Florenceville, the self-proclaimed French Fry Capital of the World, where the first McCain factory opened in 1957. Come for the fries – the café dishes up concoctions like donair poutine and chipotle-mango-topped spuds – and stay to wander the grounds. There is artwork made with 30 kilograms of McCain fries, and a quirky museum that displays farm machinery, life-size dioramas with freaky mannequins and a potato disorder identification chart. (Who knew potatoes get pink eye?)

McCain and hanging, papier mache potatoes in Potato World Photos: Kim Honey

12 Neighbours

The minute you arrive at the 12 Neighbours tiny home community, Al Smith is there to greet you. Eight years ago, the 62-year-old was living in a tent in the woods with his girlfriend, Chanda Woodworth. “I remember being just so cold and nothing would stay dry,” he says. “And I thought, every day, ‘I’m not going to wake up.’”

In 2022, Smith and Woodworth were among the first residents to move into one of 96 tiny houses built by Fredericton tech entrepreneur Marcel LeBrun, the visionary behind the social enterprise. LeBrun has poured his heart – and an estimated $4.5 million – into making 12 Neighbours a place where the unhoused can rebuild their lives instead of just trying to survive. Residents are charged 30 per cent of their income, which some pay with money earned at 12 Neighbours businesses, like building more units for Neighbourly Homes, making t-shirts at The Print Shop or working at the Neighbourly Cafe.

The tiny home community, 12 Neighbours. Photo: Kim Honey

I’m looking forward to some eggs benny on a house-baked English muffin, but first I check out two model houses in the parking lot. That’s when Smith makes a beeline for me and offers a tour. “I’m the mayor,” he says, by way of introduction. When I jokingly ask if he was elected, he laughs: “People in here, if they want to campaign against me, good luck.”

Smith gets paid to be a host, tour guide and guest speaker, and he is a proud evangelist for the social project. Word is spreading, too: A nonprofit in Miramichi, N.B., hopes to order 50 tiny houses very soon, and plans are underway in Saint John for a community of 75 to 80 homes.

For Smith and Woodworth, getting a place at 12 Neighbours “was like winning a lottery.” It’s a lot of food for thought, to which Neighbours Café bakery can add a cherry-almond scone on top.

Al Smith inside the Neighbourly Café (right). Photos: Kim Honey

Nova Scotia

Bay of Fundy

The humpback whale is a show-off species, according to Matt Melanson, the Nova Scotia lobster fisherman who co-owns the whale-watching company with his wife, Casie. I’m hoping for a full-body breach as Matt’s 50-foot fishing boat leaves the Tiverton wharf on Long Island.

As the boat chugs around the Boar’s Head lighthouse and into the deep waters where the Bay of Fundy meets the Gulf of Maine, Melanson says we are allowed to get within about 100 metres of the whales.

Boars Head Lighthouse, Bay of Fundy. Photo: Dave Reede/Design Pics/Getty Images

But, he says, if he sees a whale coming toward the boat, he’ll turn the motor off to “let them come check us out.” When I ask if they’re curious, he says, “Oh yeah, you can high five them.”

I’m not so optimistic, given that I’ve taken the ferry across the Bay of Fundy from Saint John, N.B., to Digby, N.S., several times, and went whale-watching from nearby Brier Island, and didn’t even see a harbour seal (known as the raccoons of the sea!). Then we spot harbour porpoises, the first puffin of the season and a weird mola mola, an ocean sunfish often mistaken for a shark because, when it basks on the surface, its black, triangular dorsal fin sticks out. We keep scanning the horizon as marine biologist Linnea Shiell recounts the marine life she’s seen – from shearwater and gannet seabirds to minke and North Atlantic right whales, “which are just so cute and adorable and small.”

Photos: A humpback whale calf makes a splash in the Bay of Fundy. (Shaunl/Getty Images); Digby Beach art (Kim Honey)

Melanson’s in radio contact with another boat, and confirms the humpbacks are out there somewhere. When I finally spot some massive tails – humpbacks can grow to 18 metres and weigh as much as 50 tonnes – I throw my arms in the air and cheer like a maniac. The four whales we see don’t breach, but they nose through seaweed on the surface, which looks a lot like frolicking to me. The sheer size and depth of the ocean is unfathomable when you have to search for beasts the size of a bus.

Annapolis Valley

In Toronto, I used to head to Hopgood’s Foodliner for a revelatory Nova Scotia donair on a pillowy homemade pita (until it closed in 2017, that is). So, imagine my delight when I discovered that Geoff Hopgood had moved back home and opened this Main Street boîte. 

The chef and his wife, Lucy Hopgood, make even more magic here: airy focaccia dusted with Annapolis Salt from their side-hustle business; fluffy, to-die-for baked potato beignets; and a hot chicken sandwich dressed in southern-inspired “comeback sauce,” which will definitely ensure a return visit. I sit on the patio, crack open a cold can of Schooner beer and let the good times roll right into my mouth.

Geoff Hopgood and his wife, Lucy, owners of Juniper Food & Wine; The ‘Hopgood’s Hot Chicken Sandwich’ with spicy fried chicken, bread & butter pickles, slaw and comeback sauce. Photos: Courtesy of Juniper Food & Wine

Aylesford Lake Beach

In university, it was a summer rite of passage to float in an innertube, beer can in hand, down the picturesque Gaspereau River near Wolfville. Hoping to relive my wayward youth, I reserve a tube at White Rock Rentals, but my outing is cancelled due to impending thunder and lightning. I decide to go swimming instead, since the sky doesn’t look too ominous at 10 a.m. 

The tidal water in the Bay of Fundy’s Minas Basin near Wolfville is bone-chillingly cold, so I head to Aylesford Lake Beach. It has pristine sand, modern change rooms and bathrooms, a boardwalk, beach toys and a playground for the kids and – best of all – free kayaks and stand-up paddleboards. I take a kayak out but the black clouds are rolling in, and, just as I’m leaving, the sporadic raindrops turn into a downpour. Unbeknownst to me, it’s the remnants of tropical storm Beryl, and by the time I drive into Kentville, the roads are flooding and my car is swimming, too.

Kayaking at Three Sisters, Bay of Fundy. Photo: Tourism Nova Scotia/Photographer: Scott Munn

The Courier Rooms

This seaside town was at peak saturation in late July, with purply-blue hydrangeas bursting in gardens, and the wooden façades of stately homes and downtown shops freshly painted in lilac, lemon yellow, forest green, burgundy and bright orange. I gaped at the Age of Sail architecture in the Collins Heritage District, where, in the late 1800s, wealthy ship owners, captains and merchants built elaborate mansions with widow’s walks, gabled dormer windows and fanciful towers, in everything from Queen Anne revival to Gothic style. 

Main Street shops, Yartmouth. Photo: Kim Honey

I stayed in the Courier Rooms at Rennesouth Properties on Main Street, which I had seen transformed from a derelict space to a luxurious rental unit on HGTV’s 2022 show, Trading Up with Mandy Rennehan. I was thrilled to see the restoration up close, from the pine floors to the exposed brick, and the original door with “Postmaster’s Office” etched into the glass. “When you look at what Rennesouth used to look like, it would blow your mind,” Rennehan said later, over a dinner of creamed lobster on mashed potatoes and turnip prepared by her wife, Lauren Ferrraro, at their cottage in Darlings Lake, a 15-minute drive from town.

Interior of the lighthouse, restored by Mandy Rennehan (right, with her wife, Lauren Ferrraro). Photos: Kim Honey

I couldn’t have asked for more entertaining and knowledgeable hosts than Rennehan – the CEO of Freshco, a multi-million-dollar retail construction company she founded at 19, as well as a Yarmouth ambassador and hometown hero – and Ferraro, a professional public speaking coach who does communications and books speaking gigs for Rennehan. In Yarmouth’s heyday, they told me, it had a Cuban embassy, printed its own money, hosted magician Harry Houdini’s first show and was a vacation spot for renowned American aviator Amelia Earhart. 

Yartmouth sign. Photo: Kim Honey

Courier Rooms is a condo-like space with a Victorian-industrial vibe, and it’s one of four short-term rentals at the Main Street property Rennehan bought in 2013 and gutted. “The only things that we kept in those buildings were some of the structural posts, some of the ceiling joists and the brick,” said Rennehan, who goes by her nickname, Bear, because she gives ferocious hugs. “And it took two people a year to restore the brick.”

Few people, let alone hotel guests, get to see inside Rennehan’s cottage, a former windmill not far from Port Maitland that Rennesouth bought, along with 18 acres, in 2005 (she had admired it as a kid). It’s fitting that the blue-collar CEO at the top of her game has built the master bedroom at the top of the windmill, where she has a commanding view of Darlings Lake, the Bay of Fundy and Allens Lake, which she calls Bear Lake, after herself.

Mandy Rennehan, master bedroom, lighhouse view. Photo: Kim Honey

Rennehan gave me a tour of the property in a cherry red, four-seater utility vehicle, whooping and laughing as she gunned it up the wind-swept hill and gave two beeps on the horn as she passed her father’s house on the edge of the property, facing the main road. 

Over dinner, the couple regaled me with the story of how they met. Rennehan’s publicist had hired Ferraro, a public speaking coach, in 2016 to fix the CEO’s “squirrel complex,” which, as I discovered, meant Rennehan had a propensity for “yarning” – telling not-exactly-linear stories that frequently veered off topic. “We fixed it in about 20 minutes and we’ve been together ever since,” said Rennehan.

The Evangeline Hotel

I am keen to stay at the childhood home of Robert Laird Borden, where, atop a hallway table, a white bust of Canada’s eighth Prime Minister (1911-1920) greets me with a solemn gaze.

Borden’s father, a descendant of the New England Planters who settled in Grand Pré after the British or Britain England expelled some 2,200 French-speaking Acadians in 1775, built the five-bedroom, two-storey house with its grand porch in 1858. 

The Borden House, Evangeline Hotel. Photo: Courtesy of Evangeline Hotel

In the library, I thumb through Borden family textbooks and school notebooks, where Robert’s younger brother, Henry, has doodled in the margins of The History of the British Empire and Euclid’s Elements, and the boys’ mother, Eunice, has inscribed her name in a copy of A Shilling Arithmetic. 

In my room, an antique Hotpoint Empress clothes wringer holds an ice bucket and wine glasses, but the rest of the Evangeline’s 18 rooms are a vision of modernity, inspired by Scandivanian minimalism. Toronto lawyer-turned-hotelier Avram Spatz, who moved home to Halifax after he bought the Evangeline in 2021, personally sourced gems like the antique print of the fictional heroine, Evangeline, that hangs in the dining room of the restaurant he renamed Longfellow. Generations of Nova Scotians have stopped by here for a slice of the restaurant’s famed homemade pies, which are still made on the premises by local bakers. 

Evangeline’s pie case. Photo: Kim Honey

The eatery’s name is an homage to American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who wrote the epic fictional narrative, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, about two affianced Acadians separated by deportation. Just down the road, you can visit the Evangeline statue at the Grand-Pré National Historic site, drive across dykes built in the 17th century by French settlers to keep seawater from swamping their farmland, and out to North Grand Pré to walk Evangeline Beach’s mudflats when the tide is out.

I have all kinds of plans, including a Valley Ghost Walk called “Landscape of Grand Pré,” but torrential rain keeps me on the Borden House porch instead, where I watch the deluge from a comfy wicker chair. The next day, I walk the beautiful but soggy, grounds of Tangled Garden, where I taste delicious jams and jellies, stop at one of my favourite wineries, Lightfoot & Wolfville, for bottles of sparkly Brut and Blancs de Blancs, and sip a spectacular cup of joe made from freshly roasted fair trade beans at Just Us Coffee. 

Tangled Garden. Photo: Kim Honey

I also take a peek inside the Owners House, a five-bedroom hideaway on the Evangeline grounds that can accommodate 12 and costs $1,200 night, but the highlight is a hike up the hill to the hotel’s lookout. Tall grass strewn with wildflowers ripples in the wind, and I can see Cape Blomidon’s cliffs in the distance. According to Mi’kmaq legend, this is the ancestral home of Glooscap, the supernatural giant who created the Annapolis Valley and who used Nova Scotia as his bed and Prince Edward Island as his pillow. Time stands still as I survey Nova Scotia’s fertile heartland, which has sustained civilizations for thousands of years.