Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

This past weekend was great for weather, with warm to hot temperatures and a good time to play tourist in the local area.

Upper Canada Village: (wikipedia)
endeavours to depict life in a rural English Canadian setting during the year 1866. Featured at the site are over 40 historical buildings, including several working mills (woollen mill, grist-mill and sawmill) and trades buildings (blacksmith, tinsmith, cabinetmaker, cooper, bakery, cheese-maker). Farming is demonstrated through the growing, harvesting of processing of heritage vegetables & livestock.

We spent three hours wandering around, looking around, asking questions, taking pictures and chatting up the locals. It was and is an authentic working village of the era. They make bread daily with techniques of the day and sell it in the gift store. The same goes for cheese… milk comes in daily and they make it by hand, package it up and store it for a couple of months.
We did not get a chance to visit every single building and exhibit but are planning on returning for an event weekend. We did the next best thing by buying some of the hours old bread and cheese for dinner that night.

On the way back from the Montreal area, we stopped off in Vankleek hill, midway to Ottawa. And there we found Beau’s Brewery:
We are a local, family-run and totally DIY company. We brew interesting, award winning, tasty beers using the highest quality, all natural ingredients like certified organic hops & malts and local spring water. We have names, not titles. We brew using equal parts art & science.

We had first heard of them at a Canadian Organic Growers Eco-Farm conference a few years back in Cornwall, and have been supporting them by buying their products when we can in our area. There are many more types of beer onsite than in the stores and it was wonderful to be able to sample among the ten offered. After that you cannot help but walk away with some of our own favourites.

The last stop was at the St. Albert Cheese Factory, still working out of temporary digs due to the devastating fire on 2013 Feb 03 that wiped out the factory completely.
Their products were also sampled and tasted and purchased and we headed home before the ice melted in the cooler.
Surprisingly, they had a full selection of goods for sale, including some very good ice cream.
Apparently production is still going on in temporary facilities nearby. They hope to reopen the new and improved facility later this year.

The next day was a trip to Carp, Ontario, just west of Ottawa. It was their annual Garlic Festival and since we had never been, we stopped in to take a look.
It was a good festival.. lots of garlic booths and enough of a few others to make it a regular Farmers Market as well.
We managed to pick up at least one new type of garlic that we don’t already have.
Also a highlight was a lot of ethnic food vendors… we never see authentic Himalyan food in our home area for instance. We settled for traditional Mexican (which was fantastic… fresh corn tortillas!) and some local poutine.
As a regular Farmers Market they also had other items which we picked up… local fresh corn and cabbage, and a bunch of dill.
It was good, but the travel distance involved says we probably will not return to this, as there are similar Festivals closer to home. On the same weekend for instance, the Perth Garlic Festival ran and on Saturday August 30th, 2014, the Verona Garlic Festival is on.

Almost next door from the Carp Garlic Festial, held at the Fairgrounds, was the Diefenbunker Museum.

From http://diefenbunker.ca/history-of-cfs-carp/
The Diefenbunker was commissioned by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1959, as part of his government’s reaction to escalating tensions in the Cold War. The purpose of the bunker was to house key members of the government and military in the event of a nuclear attack on Canada.

The site was completed and began operation in 1961, and remained in continuous operation until it was decommissioned in 1994. During those 32 years, it was also Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Carp, with a staff of 100-150 people and a 24-hour shift rotation. It was the site of some of Canada’s most top-secret communications throughout the Cold War. At all times during its operation, the cupboards and pantries were stocked with enough fresh food and rations to feed 535 people for 30 days and the building was prepared to go into lockdown at any moment.

The Diefenbunker was given National Historic Site status in 1994, and CFS Carp was closed the same year. The building remained empty until the foundation of the museum in 1997.

We took two hours to go through most of the bunker. Of special note was a lot of vintage communications gear from the 1960’s 70’s and 80’s, some of which we have actually used in the past. The bunker design, the furnishings, all were reminscent of 1950s design and lifestyles. Many rooms were refurnished in period style, while other rooms were turned into information displays.
A very unassuming entrance (much smaller than we were expecting) with a nuclear bomb just inside the front doors 🙂