Riding in Tribute to.....

ESTHER VRANA


NOTE: Want to pay tribute to your loved one? I'll ride a day in their honor (includes mention on blog). Click HERE to learn more.

Back on the road - in Maine

Made it to Maine ... 

Started out just after 4 a.m. Trying to make up some time after being grounded a day by Tropical Storm Arthur. A short mile into my ride I ran into my first moose warning.

Nice guy Michael gave me a lift to Bangor. Route 9 had been closed because of

the storm. 

Got back on track on Highway 2 and took a break at Route 2 Antique Mall. Galen and Sue presented me with a license plate from Maine. 

Chocolate Museum - You heard RIGHT!

St. Stephen, New Brunswick – Just before crossing the border into the states there is a wonderful distraction called The Chocolate Museum. I’m serious; the only thing that could make it better would be if there was The Gold Museum on one side and The Beer Museum on the other and Justin Timberlake would be the docent for all three.

The Chocolate Museum, or Le Musee du Chocolat for all my French Canadian friends, highlights the Ganong family and their prestigious industry of hand-dipped chocolates. Established in 1873 as the Ganong Bros. Grocery, Ganong Chocolates is the oldest and most successful candy company in Canada.

There were five generations of candy makers, including the founder’s son Arthur Ganong - who was known to eat three pounds of chocolate each day; translation: 83 pieces.

LOVES CHOCOLATE

Arthur Ganong

One of the earliest popular candies was known as the Chicken Bone; it was pink and had a cinnamon flavor; a hard candy with a bitter center. Through the years Ganong Bros. made lollipops with wooden skewers, developed a chic five-cent candy, and introduced the heart-shaped box in 1933.

The trademark of the company since 1904 was Ganong’s Evangeline. She was an Acadian heroine from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem.  

In the 1920s, following in footsteps of tobacco companies that sold collectible cards with their products, Ganong started putting trading cards inside their candy wrappers including Big Chief with Native American cards and then a series of rodeo cards. (Photo, left)

In the 1930s and 1940s Ganong made practical boxes for the candy where the boxes could be used as sewing baskets after the candy was gone. There were also patriotic boxes for wartime. (Photo, right)

The Ganong family highly praised its employees, especially the three months before Christmas which was the busiest season. Chocolate factory workers put in an extra four nights a week and Saturday afternoons to complete the orders.

This photo from 1947 shows the ‘Candy Bar Wars’ when children across Canada protested the increase in candy bar prices from 5 cents to 8 cents.  (Photo, left)

The company was specifically known for its hand-dipped product which had two to three times more chocolate, per piece, than chocolates that were mechanically coated. During its hey day as many as 130 women worked at the job dipping candy pieces into vats of chocolate. (Photo, below)

Grounded by a Hurricane

Calais, Maine - So this is what a tropical storm looks like. It's Arthur....

 .....and he's caught me; high winds and 100 percent rain, tree branches down.  It would make for a miserable/dangerous day on the road so I might as well take the day off. 

Riding in Tribute to.....

....CLIFF HALE

NOTE: Want to pay tribute to your loved one? I'll ride a day in their honor (includes mention on blog). Click HERE to learn more.

Kindness of Strangers

Norton, New Brunswick - Fatigued after conquering Cornhill, I managed to drift into a rummage sale outside Norton for a break.

"Norton??? You're in it," said Georgia, cleaning up after a day of sales. "Take a load off and sit a bit."

After a get-to-ya chat Georgia invited me to stay. She and her husband Paul had been married 51 years.

Paul and Georgia

A couple of their grandchildren came that night to see the stranger who arrived by bike including Amy, 11, who proudly showed off her painting.

Hitched a couple rides Friday to move off the coast before tropical storm Arthur arrived.  Andrew gave me a lift to St. George and then made it 32 miles to St. Stephen and crossed the border into Maine around 3 p.m.  Keeping an eye on the forecast.  

Andrew

Safe in Sackville

Spending time in Sackville, New Brunswick this morning.

Windy...and the old Carriage Factory Museum is across from Pastor Vernon's house.  Nice safe stay with the pastor and his wife, Sharon.

View outside of my window today -

Sackville, New Brunswick: Campbell Carriage Factory Museum

The Campbell Carriage Factory Museum is on Church Street in Sackville, New

Brunswick.

Liam at the Carriage House Museum

It's the only carriage manufacturing museum left in Canada. And the crazy thing is, when this company closed its doors in 1951 it wasn't reopened until the 1980s and, according to Liam, "Nothing had been touched. It was like everybody just walked off the job and left things as they were."

Liam, 23, took me on tour and pointed out some of the unique wooden wheel making

equipment. He said in the 80s antique dealers came in and bought a lot of the items. "The thing is, they didn't really even know the carriage business so they took what they knew - hammers and chisels and stuff. But what they left were the really valuable tools like this," said Liam, holding up a large metal pliers that looked like it could pull a tooth.

"This was used to help straighten the spokes and pull them into place on a wooden wheel."  I asked what it was called and Liam said he didn't know the technical name but he called it the "spoke straightener."

The carriage factory also built caskets.  Above is a collection of hardware used

to decorate the caskets.

There were two floors to the shop. Pieces of the carriage were hand-crafted on the first floor and assembled and painted on the second. "It's odd they would move the finished product a level up because then they had to get it down," said Liam. "But because they had to paint it and dust would fall to the level below they had the paint department on the second floor."

The door of the paint shop was used as a pallet to test the viscosity of the paint since only white paint was available and all colors had to be mixed by hand.  "So this raised rough glop is over 100 years of paint being thrown onto the door to see if the paint was the right consistency," said Liam.

In its heyday, the Carriage factory employed about 16 people. Liam said a single 4-horse engine ran the turbine for all the equipment. "It was so loud in this part of the building that the craftsmen had to talk to each other using a form of sign language.

The Campbell Carriage Factory Museum is now run as a museum and receives federal funding.

For a full history of the museum, click HERE.

Amherst, Nova Scotia

Amherst, Nova Scotia has a lot of cool things like free Wi-Fi in the downtown area, painted murals on buildings and sculptures made out of trees that were cut down due to Dutch Elm disease.

This mural (below) is in tribute to soldiers that went to serve in WWII. In the foreground is a tree carved into a Nova Scotia Highlander.

This tree art of a woman is located on Virginia Street in front of the Baptist Church. (Photo below)

One of the most interesting murals is on the back side of a building on Virginia and Laplanche Streets (photo below). 'The Great Amherst Mystery' is about Esther Cox, who was a bit of a whack job in 1879. She would see things in her home like matches that would light themselves on the floor and she would hear voices. Doctors came in to check her out and they confirmed they heard the things too.

The best story came from a teen in Amherst. Ben said Esther Cox once turned into a blueberry. It was such a Willy Wonka salute to Violet Beauregarde ... 

After three days on the bike I crossed into New Brunswick. It's still considered Canada; they use the same denomination of money, but there is more French spoken here and motorists have a different style of license plate.