Maritime Vacation Post 1

Random Musings

29th-Jul-2009 04:36 pm

Warning: Many vacation pics ahead

Edit: Added info about Terry Fox and Magnetic Hill.

Ottawa - Parliament Building

Centennial Flame with shields of the 10 provinces and 2 territories

Terry Fox statue. Terry Fox was famous for the Marathon of Hope, a cross-Canada run to raise money for cancer research, which Fox ran with one prosthetic leg.

Montreal - Olympic Stadium

Inside Olympic Pool

Horsedrawn carriage in Montreal

Lobster sandwtich at MacDonalds

Home away from home for 7 days - The tour bus

Grand Falls in our first Maritime province, New Brunswick

Grand Falls

New Brunswick - Grand Falls - mushroom (no idea what it is)

Grand Falls - Recycling container

Beautiful Sunset just as we arrived at the hotel in New Brunswick

Legistlature for the province of New Brunswick

Magnetic Hill

Instructions for Magnetic Hills

What you see from the top of the hill. Our tour bus went down the slope, stopped at the bottom and the driver put the bus in neutral. The magnetic force of the hill, pulled us back to the top.

The secret to Magnetic Hill

Stories about a strange road where the wagon would run up on the horses heels when going uphill go back to the 1880's. In 1933 stories of cars rolling uphill without power peaked the curiosity of three newspaper reporters from the Saint John Telegraph Journal.

In August of 1933 they traveled to Moncton and spent hours trying every hill they came to in hopes of unraveling the mystery. After 5 hours of no success they stopped to stretch their legs on the way home and you guessed it. . . the car started to roll uphill. Slowly at first and then with gathering momentum the car climbed uphill without power. They spent a couple of hours retrying the hill and using all the equipment they had brought to discover the secret. They noticed the water on the side of the road also running uphill. That ruled out magnetic properties. They decided it must be an optical illusion, but how and why they didn't know.

Shortly after they published their article, people started to come out in droves to the site and test it for themselves. A young local girl had started a business at the top of the road selling ice cream. She soon saw the potential of Magnetic Hill and over the course of 20 years, Muriel Lutes began to develop it to become a major tourist attraction.

Magnetic Hill has been a top attraction in New Brunswick for over 100 years. Originally part of a provincial highway, Magnetic Hill was eventually sold to the City of Moncton and preserved as a tourist attraction while a bypass highway was built around it.

Tags:vacation 2009

kalinda001

Comments

29th-Jul-2009 10:14 pm (UTC)

ultrapsychobrat

Great pictures! Is that real lobster at McDonalds?

29th-Jul-2009 11:07 pm (UTC)

kalinda001

It's real lobster but mainly the tip from the claws.

29th-Jul-2009 10:37 pm (UTC)

entropy_house

Lovely! The pony has a pink dyed forelock and an ankle bracelet! My Little Pony. *giggle*

29th-Jul-2009 11:13 pm (UTC)

kalinda001

*grins*

30th-Jul-2009 04:19 am (UTC)

vilakins

I thought it was some sort of optical illusion. Cool!

How did you manage in French in Montreal? :-)

Edited at 2009-07-30 04:19 am (UTC)

30th-Jul-2009 10:45 am (UTC)

kalinda001

Yes, the illusion is very effective. You could swear that you were going uphill. It even feels like it and we did it twice. Shows you the power that the sense of sight has.

Most people in Montreal spoke English as well, at least in the tourist areas where we were. It's a bit more difficult in Quebec City which we went to on our way back. I did manage a few, barely remembered lines of grade school French to use. In Canada, all kids are required to French in school, though most of us forget it ;)

30th-Jul-2009 08:56 pm (UTC)

vilakins

We did French at school too, as the default foreign language (inherited from the British) but I also did Latin, German (easy because I already knew some), and Japanese, even though I ended up doing a science course. My liking of science and languages didn't make it easy for scheduling.

I can still read French fine, but I'm not that good at spoken; it's too fast!

30th-Jul-2009 08:24 am (UTC)

reapermum

Architecture, lovely stuff. I hadn't heard of Terry Fox before, that was an amazing run that he did. Wooshy rivers are great. And I think the mushroom is an agaric, but which one I don't know.

30th-Jul-2009 10:46 am (UTC)

kalinda001

I guess I should have explained who Terry Fox was.

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