American family finds 'Canadaze' on summer rail trip to Nova Scotia

MONTREAL — A family from Boston, seeking an escape from the United States, travelled by train to Nova Scotia this summer and described a feeling of profound relief they called a "Canadaze."

"The moment I set foot on Canadian soil, I felt my muscles relax. I could not stop smiling. I even got a bit weepy," the parent wrote in an account of the trip.

They described a "trance-like state where you realize that this is how things can be, how things should be. Imagine a country that looks after its citizens and its visitors, where kindness is still cool, and health care is a human right and not some kind of administrative torture chamber."

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The family, which includes sons Holt, 12, and Max, 9, began their journey in Montreal, which Holt declared "a city" while riding the subway.

They attended the Festival International Nuits d'Afrique and the Just for Laughs festival, where they saw The Culture Show, a comedy performance featuring a series of comedians of different ethnicities unpacking their upbringings.

"The comedy was fairly inappropriate for our kids, who guffawed and smirked and felt old for understanding most of the jokes," the parent wrote.

They ate at Pichai, a neo-Thai restaurant, and spent an afternoon at Jean-Doré Beach doing flips off water trampolines.

The family stayed at the Fairmont Le Reine Élizabeth, above Montreal's Gare Centrale, and took an elevator down to catch VIA Rail's the Ocean.

On the train, they had two old but serviceable sleeper cabins. Holt, an admirer of fading infrastructure, marvelled at how the bathrooms lined up. "We could drill a hole and communicate," he said. "Or just tap out Morse code."

In the dining car, they munched on salmon and bread rolls. "More rolls, please!" said Max.

The train arrived in Halifax over four hours late, at 11 p.m. The next morning, urbanist T. J. Maguire gave them a tour of the Halifax waterfront, which he had helped transform into a mixture of eateries, playgrounds, piers and amphitheatres.

He showed them the Salt Yard, a cluster of eateries in small sea shacks at odd angles.

In Halifax, the family watched Spain win the World Cup and danced with excited Haligonian-cum-Spaniards in the streets.

They then travelled to Cape Breton, stopping at Murphy's Fish & Chips in Truro, where Max gave the seafood chowder an 8 out of 10 in his informal search for the best.

Their Cape Breton base was the lakeside town of Baddeck, where they ate at the Freight Shed restaurant, which earned a chowder score of 9 out of 10, and visited the Alexander Graham Bell museum.

They attended ceilidhs, informal Gaelic fiddle jams, where they learned the difference between jigs and reels. Max was enthralled.

After the trip, Max said, "I want to live here when I grow up."

With files from The Globe and Mail