In this week's reader postcard Norman Edwards catches the high tide in the Bay of Fundy.
It was the huge tides in the Bay of Fundy that attracted us to Nova Scotia.
Having landed in the regional capital of Halifax we headed for the small town of Parrsboro, a trip that surprised for its very bad roads, a result of the harsh winters and the sparseness of the population.
Our task was to catch the high tide at a nearby bay.
We were a little disappointed as it did not rush in at the rate we expected but it sure came in a long way and I made a point to be at the same spot the next morning for the low.
It was good to see but we were not able to be in the right place at the right time for the tidal bore that occurs when river meets tide.
The figures are interesting.
The movement of water in the bay more than equals the output of all the freshwater rivers on Earth.
At its peak, the average rise is more than 15m.
Aside from the normal tidal influences of Sun and moon and Earth spin, it seems the size and shape of the bay, and its bottom gradient work to create an oscillation effect not unlike bathwater sloshing from one end to the other, so that there is a kind of doubling up effect as the tide comes in.
We tracked down some of the famed Nova Scotia lobster at a friendly café on the foreshore and it was good.
Maybe not quite as good as our New Zealand crayfish but pretty good.
Just out of Parrsboro, in an old shed, we came across Ethan George, an amazing man of 70 years or so who astounded the palaeontology world in 1971 by discovering the fossil of the world's smallest dinosaur.
Hitherto it had been thought dinosaurs had not inhabited Nova Scotia.
Ethan is a self-taught palaeontologist with an admirable collection and he still goes out and discovers species as yet unknown, having recently found a fossilised insect, similar to a dragonfly, that had not been identified before.
We made our way to the other side of the bay, some six hours drive, to the better known town of Digby, where we could watch the fishing boats drop way below the jetty with the tide, then rise again.
And of course to savour the Digby scallops, which almost equalled those of Nelson.
Back in Halifax, we met a distant relative, Auntie Joan, an austere no-nonsense emeritus professor of health sciences, who took us to Peggy's Cove.
It is named, so the story goes after Elizabeth, the sole survivor of a shipwreck who came ashore at the cove and stayed there.
We were lucky enough to see it on a misty day, which gave it a magical eeriness.
Huge Atlantic swells crashed with great drama on to granite rocks, casting spray high into the air, thunderous and awesome.
Then, just 150m away, there was a tiny cove so calm a saucer would float undisturbed.
Add to this the colourful and picturesque New England-style homes and equally colourful fishing boats and their sheds nestled in the calm, and you have Peggy's Cove. - Norman Edwards.
