Camera Obscura

We opted for a slow drive home today from Wolfville, starting with breakfast at the Wolfville Farmers’ Market and then heading east toward home around noon.

Rather than a straight shot across to Brookfield, or the reportedly-faster dip down to Halifax and slingshot back out the 102, we opted to hug the coast, spending most of the day on Rte. 215 along the Bay of Fundy. Autumn foliage was at the peak of its peak, and we could not have picked a better day to drive through the Nova Scotia hinterland.

The highlight of the day was coming across a camera obscura perched on a hill in Cheverie. You’d think such a wondrous attraction would deserve a sign, but there was none, and most drivers, I suspect, speed by unaware.

It’s a fascinating construction of three interlocking brick cathedrals, entered through wooden doors into a darkened room above which is a system of lenses that reflects the scene of the shore, and the Bay of Fundy beyond, onto the floor.

If you are in the Annapolis Valley, and are traveling east toward Truro, it doesn’t take much to detour up to Cheverie.

(Just up the road from Chevrerie lies Walton, which I recalled was the birthplace of my old friend Stephen Southall, something I confirmed with a phone call from the car. His late father George ministered to five United Churches in the area in the 1960s; apparently there is a plaque on the wall in the United Church in Cheverie, which is enough to inspire me to return on our next trip that way).