(Continued from Part 5)

Once again I left Mom and Kingsley back at the motel this morning as I headed off to another skatepark. Finally I was going to check out the Bathurst Skatepark that I'd scouted many years ago.

Overall Bathurst was a fun and decent park - maybe a 6.5/10 - but I didn't care for how many times I ended up on the grass and was saddened by the redundancy of having three sets of big down ledges (aka hubbas).

I can see building a skatepark like this in Colorado, California, or Oregon where there's countless other skateparks nearby for people to get good enough to ride these hubbas, but an isolated place like Bathurst should have a more versatile park.

Now I can ride ledges like the ones here in Bathurst just fine, but there's a lot of people who would skateboard, scooter, or bike for a couple of years and never use them. And I'm not saying you need to go the other way like the skatepark in Holyrood Newfoundland, where their main goal was having entry-level slop that everyone can ride from day 1 (but will get bored with by day 30).

If it were up to me, I would have cut out one of the hubba sets and replaced it with a pyramid, spine or bank to ledge. That, or even reducing the height/angle of one or two of the hubbas.

Who knows though, maybe Bathurst is like Oregon, where they build those capsule things and random Oregon kids are then capable of going upside down by age 10. Heck maybe Windsor should have built a skatepark like this, so more of our scene grinded handrails and ledges down stairs, haha.

Today we had about five hours to drive in order to reach Halifax.

Waking up in Bathurst put us on the coastal side of New Brunswick though, where I have lots of lighthouses remaining on account of all the peninsulas jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence or the Northumberland Strait (map). We didn't have time for a big excursion like Miscou or Bouctouche Bar, but instead settled on the area around the town of Cocagne, about 30 minutes from Moncton.

In Cocagne itself there was the Cocagne River Front Lighthouse, which was deactivated along with a lot of other lighthouses along this coast in 2018. About a year later, either the town or the local marina took possession of this lighthouse and moved it to the marina grounds.

Marinas.com has a couple pictures of the lighthouse in its previous location, hilariously close to nearby houses.

The Cocagne River Front Light was refurbished following its move and man did it look good today. This is right next to the NB-134 that connects Sussex and Bouctouche and I could think of worse places to stop and picnic in the future.

Next up was the Cap des Caissie Lighthouse, where I knew the road was private from the internet, but I was hoping it wouldn't be posted or the sign would be small enough that my Mom wouldn't notice, lol.

There ended up being a small Private Lane sign, but Mom didn't seem to care.

Although, it was awkward when a nearby homeowner came out just trying to go about their day and Mom had to yell over that we knew it was private property but were just taking a quick picture.

Man, the look on buddy's face when he just accepted that he wasn't going to yell at a (redacted)-year-old woman, some lighthouse yahoo, and an elderly dog.

In Grande Digue stood what I'd later tell our friends Rob & Lorraine was the coolest thing I'd seen on the whole trip, lol.

This is the only surviving example of a lighthouse style that was once common amongst small Canadian fishing villages. The lantern was housed inside the building and raised up every evening like a flag on a flagpole, before then being lowered back into the building sometime the next morning.

Built in 1912, the Grande Digue Lighthouse was extinguished in the 1960s when larger boats couldn't use the harbour in Grande Digue and a wharf had to be constructed at another location. The lighthouse was then floated to Hervé Richard's store, where it was used to house fishing gear until being recognized as a heritage object in 2006. Subsequently moved to the Musée Des Pionniers, it now stands alongside a six-building miniature village filled with historical artifacts.

Saying goodbye to the chatty museum caretaker as it was getting late, I was held up further at a COVID checkpoint along one of the two major roads from New Brunswick into Nova Scotia.

"You need to scan this QR code and fill out the form."

"I don't pay for data on my phone."

"I don't know what to tell you, you need to fill it out."

(I grab my phone) "Look buddy, the home page isn't opening. Spinning wheel! No data!"

(Guy is visibly repelled at the sight of an iPhone 5C) "Ugh, yeah this isn't going to work on that thing. Fine let me get you a tablet to use."

In a place with a lot of seniors, I wasn't sure why he didn't have the tablet handy or why he was so stingy with handing one over. I was proud of myself though, for continuing to fight against every citizen being required to have an iPhone 23x with a 175TB data plan.

There were no buses or taxis to take to tonight's hockey game once in Halifax, as we stayed sort of near the arena at the Atlantica Hotel. I took this extra time to put my bike back together for tomorrow, while also ferrying up two loads of stuff to the 11th floor.

Thanking my Mom for watching Kingsley again and racing out the door, I instantly got turned around because of course they demolished Queen Elizabeth High back in 2011 and it wasn't there for me to base directions off. Mistakenly cutting north, there was a new skating oval that I mistook for the bleachers where I drank a Colt 45 40 back in 2008, but then I was near the armoury but I only realized it as I got closer since the armoury now has new siding?

This was all working to confuse me and get me turned around. Someone really should tell the Mayor of Halifax to keep everything as it was in 2007 during my Halifax glory days.

Eventually, through sheets of rain and a saturated grey t-shirt, I stumbled upon the Halifax Metro Centre (aka Scotiabank Centre) and it was time for QMJHL arena #17 out of 18.

I'd been inside the Halifax Metro Centre twice during my Nova Scotia days. Once was to see Cuff The Duke (opening for Blue Rodeo), and the other time sort of counted towards my goal of seeing every QMJHL barn, because I saw Slovenia take on Slovakia in the World Championships. Roachie was always bothering me about how I needed to go check out a QMJHL Mooseheads game during my time in Nova Scotia, but the Bruins guy on the Mooseheads was only a 3rd round pick - what were the odds of him having any kind of actual impact on the Bruins franchise?

Anyway, tonight was a lot different than that sparsely-attended Slovenia-Slovakia Clash Of The Titans; as tonight almost felt like attending a game at the NHL level.

Clearly I was still of a pandemic mindset here as the announced attendance was only 5800, lol. Still though, after walking in the rain and getting turned around, my mood wasn't the best as I took my seat crammed amongst people when I'm used to spreading out in other QMJHL rinks.

Maybe I should have headed back up to the horrible seats in the upper deck where I had to watch Slovakia and Slovenia.

I have to give Halifax credit for their capability to handle crowds. There had to be 25 concession stands open as I clearly wasn't in Bathurst anymore, and I waited no time at all in order to have a cold Keith's Red in my hand.

One thing I was fascinated with and totally forgot about in the 13 years since I'd last been here, was how they incorporated a historic brick facade into one side of the atrium-like concourse.

Diving in to try and learn about this brick building, it didn't really make sense that there would have been a street here at one time to provide an old brick facade.

Sure enough, thanks to an old photo from photographer Sherman Hines, we see that the Halifax World Trade Centre - built to serve as a World Trade Centre like New York...but for Atlantic Canada! - was constructed on the parcel of land behind the Halifax Metro Centre in 1983. This enclosed what was an outdoor balcony that looked down upon Halifax's City Hall and its Grand Parade.

I'm not sure if I've ever walked down Carmichael Street, but there's a great view which shows how the two buildings fit together.

The Halifax Municipal Archives has some great Flickr links showing what was taken down in order to clear the land for the Metro Centre.

Along Brunswick Street (the front road between the arena and the Citadel grounds) you had the Jost Mission, 5285 George (now Carmichael) at the corner of Brunswick & George, Romac Photo Engravers at the corner of Carmichael and Market, Halcraft Printers and Lithographers just south, and the biggest one, the Schofield Paper Company on Brunswick Street.

The whole photoset has some fantastic additional pictures of the excavation and early construction of the arena.

Enough history? Get to the important stuff you say? Okay, so the poutine was damn good.

I'm rarely a gluttonous person when it comes to food, but I actually had two of these bad boys (which ended up being too much, lol). The Mooseheads poutine was so good that it made some progress into the "Quebec territory" of the poutine rankings, landing at #7, just behind Shawinigan.

Another way I tried to spend money was buying a customary team puck as I want to get one from every QMJHL rink. The only problem was that there was some jabroni at the team concession stand, taking up both employees' time, hemming and hawing about what jersey to buy and the sizing he needed. It was actually impressive how much the guy could yammer and waffle and occupy two separate employees.

Deciding to simply get my puck after the game ended, I discovered that the Mooseheads store either closes in the third period or as soon as the game ends! No puck for me.

After the game, I went for a little stroll to check out any further changes and boy howdy did I find them. I texted my friend Geordie and he said it's a town to get a cocktail in nowadays and it's not really for us anymore.

Thankfully some of the street spots I meant to ride in 2008 are still there and waiting for me, haha.

As mentioned, the discovery of the social media account Pictures of Dives recently, had me all fired up about finding dives on this trip.

Unable to find or remember any of the dives we'd visited downtown back in the day, thankfully I found a review for Freeman's Little New York and it scratched the itch. A kitschy wood decor that looked like a TGI Fridays worked perfectly for some late night frickles.

It's here that I would message back and forth with an online acquaintance who's trying to visit all 60 Canadian Hockey League rinks and he couldn't believe I was at 17/18 QMJHL through leaving remote Val d'Or unvisited when I went up to Rouyn-Noranda.

I'll get there one day.

The next morning I again slipped out to go ride another skatepark. This time it was the Halifax Commons Skatepark, which was fun to ride once more after hitting it 5-10 times during my time in Nova Scotia. Another fun thing was seeing my Mom and Kingsley at the skatepark, as she took him for a walk and popped on over.

Afterwards we had about 10 hours to cover the 4.5-hour drive to North Sydney before the ferry cutoff of 9:45pm. Stopping for Moroccan food at another threatened building (1532 Queen St), we then hit the road.

I was up for riding some more, but I didn't want to stop at Truro's overrated park (I've since been back and revised my opinion). The New Glasgow and Trenton skateparks are horrible. Pictou has a new great park but it only opened in 2022. Stellarton and (inexplicably) Port Hawkebury don't have skateparks. In Antigonish, they're super anal about helmets. This left me hoping to ride one of the great parks around Sydney, but rain and wind would prevent that.

So we got to North Sydney super early without much of anything to do.

(Except for one last serving of Taco Bell until God knows when. Thanks, Newfoundland.)

Once we boarded the boat, the ever present rain and wind led to a worker informing us in the initial stairwell, that we wouldn't be leaving port until 7am tomorrow morning. So instead of letting us know that our dog would have to spend 18 hours in the car and maybe presenting the option of taking tomorrow's day boat instead, we were now locked in?

At least there was one small gesture of kindness, where they allowed me to go to the car and retrieve Kingsley and bring him to the passenger deck for the first time ever. So at 530 in the morning, while Kingsley was drugged and groggy, he got in the 3x3-foot cat litter relief station that's in the dog/cat crate room with numerous dogs barking like a scene out of a jailhouse movie, then confusedly looked up at me like, "wtf am I supposed to do here?"

It was ridiculous. Poor guy.

Speaking of ridiculous, the first stop sign I came to in Corner Brook - the ABSOLUTE FIRST ONE - some jagoff stopped on their 50km/hr speed limit-road where they didn't have a stop sign (see above), to wave me out from behind my stop sign.

I threw the car in reverse instantly and went backwards up Corporal Pinksen Memorial Drive while letting out language that I'd prefer Mother and Kingsley not have to hear. Summed up later, my Mom said nothing bothered me while driving the entire trip - tailgaters, slowpokes, dangerous merging, traffic volume - but as soon as I got back to Corner Brook it was, "F this, F you, F off!"

LOL. Stop driving so fucking nonsensically then Corner Brook! Just go and I'll pull out 0.5 seconds later! I'll actually pull out quicker than if you did your stupid stopping where there isn't a stop sign bullshit!

Ugh, thanks for reading as always. It was a good trip save for that Corner Brook driver.