My whole day was planned by the tides. I had to get up at a certain time to walk on the sea floor at low tide and I had to check high tide to come back and show the difference. When I lived in Fredericton, I never thought about it,” says Jonathan Duffy, social media and Guest Services Manager at Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park in New Brunswick. He’s one of these instantly likeable and adorable people that have you belly laughing from the moment you meet.
To the human eye, this corner of Eastern Canada seemingly fills up and drains of water daily. It’s hard to overemphasize the sheer power and pull of the Bay of Fundy. It carves a chocolate milk path through cities like Moncton, with its rippling tidal bores and makes for strange reversing falls, a kind of whirlpool, in Saint John. There’s the way it powers a system of dykes on marshland near Wolfville and beyond, vital for agriculture in this part of the country, and the way that, at its beachy borders, it washes in semi-precious stones which shimmer and tumble beneath excited feet. At Hopewell Rocks, the change is supremely dramatic – ochre outcrops with playful nicknames like Jay Leno and Lover’s Arch, serve as markers – bare one minute, they’re completely or partially submerged hours later.
The highest tides in the world are owed to the Bay’s shape, wide near the Atlantic, narrowing inland like one half of an hourglass. Or, perhaps it is Whale’s tail going back and forth, angered by Glooscap as the Mi’kmaq say. Regardless, this natural phenomenon imposes a daily rhythm through parts of two provinces.
Across the way, and a day before in Nova Scotia, Dana, a guide at Joggins Fossil Cliffs & Centre, explains that hundreds of millions of years ago, the area was rainforest, situated near the equator, later drifting to its current position. The very bedrock, if you have an eye for this sort of thing, is an unusual mix and match (my friend, a geology buff, had pointed it out the moment we landed, “can you believe that’s a sedimentary boulder, and we’ve just come from seeing volcanic rocks?”). At one point, using a diorama, Dana says that humans are so recent to earth that if all we knew of time was a clock ticking through hours of a day, we, as humans, have only been here a few seconds before midnight.
Nothing makes you feel like a minuscule upstart on this planet like nature. And, in the Maritimes, there’s ample opportunity to experience its rawness. I had begun my road trip through Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI, in the last days of summer, bathing in Queensland beach under a gregarious sun (a little chilly but then water is so healing). That the eastern seaboard could resemble the Mediterranean was a surprise. So too hushed inlets, lakes and coves, occasionally presided over by lighthouses. Inevitably, by the time I’ve circled back to Halifax, the forests are burnished in shades of sunset.
Pass through small towns, and you’ll have your pick of Loyalist architecture, Victorian mansions and main streets featuring rows of sandstone mercantile buildings. Newly constructed fish scale houses with lobster pots in the front yard in Nova Scotia give way to the faded glory of old homesteads in New Brunswick and acres upon acres of farmland surrounding gabled-roof houses in PEI.
Much of Canadian history was forged here. It makes you wonder, what is a long time ago? Indigenous people have been here for thousands of years, Acadians and English a few hundred. When asked, Duffy expresses the mix of cultures through food. “With the Acadian and English, you get Fricot with poutine dumplings and lobster omelettes.”
Round a bend in the road and the provinces reveal their personality – clothing lines with laundry flittering in the wind, old apple trees with fruit littering the ground or piled neatly in honesty boxes, mama bear and her cubs traipsing across an open field. Highways meanwhile showcase eccentricities – colourful buoys knotted in trees, carved and painted wooden figurines, covered bridges with plaques that read, “walk your horse and save a fine.” PEI brings me back to childhood as it must for many others. Though I’d thought that its red cliffs and seaside idylls would make my heart sing, it’s wholesome small talk with locals and the fiddle music drifting through that does the trick.
For decades, I’d wanted to come to the Maritimes, and I realize that it’s taken far too long. People are polite, and still make time for real conversation and genuine help. I feel myself longing for my old hometown where everything’s changed now. This is the way it once was – small, manageable, courteous. In small ways and big ways people interact and engage – the lovely lady at the Legion who adds to my friend’s charm collection, the office worker in Rogersville who helped us find our way when we made a wrong turn, the housekeeper who, days after surgery, and back at work, skipped to fulfill our requests. “We’re laid-back, not go-go-go,” explains Duffy.
At Field Guide restaurant in Halifax, our lovely waitress Shay takes our order and then pauses. “I think I know you from Vancouver Island when you were visiting,” she confesses. Astonished, because it was two years ago, I quickly recall exactly where we’d met. She, like many others have moved here recently. Cranes dot the horizon and new buildings are going up across the city. In that instant though, time evaporates replaced by synchronicity.
Once, on the insistence of my friend (“we have to get pictures there”), we drive to Pictou a little way from the ferry terminal. On every corner, there is yet another building worthy of memorializing, and my friend is on a mission to capture every single one. A lady stops us. “Do you like my building?” she asks. Tabitha offers a tour inside of her handmade leather goods store. A half an hour of talking later, she gifts us beautiful handmade tokens. There’s a familiarity here, a sense of pride too, but a friendliness that says, come in, please.
Another time, while staying at the Delta Saint John, we have a friendly banter going with waitress Tanya Leblanc. We’re surprised and elated when she hails us out in St. Andrews by-the-Sea on her day off. When we meet up again days later at the hotel, she embraces us with hugs and kisses like long lost relatives. There is no reason for her to shower us with gifts. We’ve done absolutely nothing for her to go out of her way to bring a smile to our faces. It is so touching; how can we ever forget her kindness?
Time slows down here, as if perhaps, it’s pouring forth from stillness.
This original article first appeared in the WINTER 2025 2026 issue of City Style and Living Magazine.
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