We discovered a few new historical areas on our drive yesterday – old towns where nothing is left but the road sign, giving some sort of remembrance to all the people who carved their livings out of the forest in decades past.

My favourite scene was this old church that caught our eye:

This old church is in Lower Caledonia. We didn’t see any other house on that section of the road so I imagine all the old homesteads have been reabsorbed by the forest. I did a little research online and I believe it was Presbyterian church. I found an older photo of it in its prime on this site: http://www.geocities.com/smithfieldnovascotia/index.html The photo on that page shows that it used to have a more of a steeple on the front.

Further down the road we reached the old village of Caledonia. There are 3 old family cemeteries there of the families that called the area ‘home’.

We drove for 4 hours. There are a mind-boggling amount of houses that are vacant. Nova Scotia has been losing its population numbers for decades. There are so many old farms, and homesteads, and houses, and barns, and sheds that are not lived it. You can realize the extent of it during winter when you can plainly see that no one has driven to the house and no footprints are anywhere to be found. Some of them are used in the summer.

I can’t wait until we get our new camera. We’ve settled on the Nikon D90 but want to save a few more dollars before we make the plunge so we don’t have to carry anything on our credit card. I want to photograph more of these old homesteads before they are also swallowed by the forests.