Sherbrooke Village is located about 2.5 hours from Halifax, you can get there via 2 routes, Highway 104 to Antigonish, then down the 347 to Sherbrooke, or from Dartmouth via the number 7 highway to Sherbrooke. you can also take a few routes across the province to meet up with either the #7 or the #347 highways. We chose the number 7 from Dartmouth, this coastal highway along the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia offers a great view of the Atlantic Ocean from the many small towns and villages along the way. Places like Tangier, Spry Bay, Ecum Secum, and many others.
Arriving at the village there is a good size parking lot with picnic tables, this is where you pay your entrance fee and can check out the gift shop, we chose to check out the gift shop after we toured the village. We were there for a few hours and realized later that we had not even visited every building. As you walk the streets you will notice that some houses and building have signs on then saying “Private”, we were surprised to hear that some of these building are not part of the museum village, but are in fact still private homes or summer homes.
Our first stop was the Blacksmith workshop called the Joe McLane Blacksmith there you can see how iron is worked into many useful tools and household goods. Blacksmithing is an age old trade that is making a comeback with a few new shops opening in Nova Scotia in the past few years. There were moments when walking down the streets in the village that all you saw were period scenes, a quite village street with a lady in a long dress walking along and in the distance a horse and wagon making its way through the village, we were there in June so it was a fairly quiet day.
Stopping by the Sherbrooke Drug Store one gets to see many items that were used in the day to treat people for various ailments, Yellow Dock, Blackberry – Bark of Root, Tansy Leaves and Tops. and with staff on hand to explain what some of them were used for, we were shown how a pill of the day was made in the back room of the drug store, all the while feeling relieved to have the medical system we have today. As you walk from building to building you get to see gardens and small fields in the middle of town with hay growing outlined with pole fencing to either keep farm animals in or people out. In the Post Office is where you can get a demonstration of the old phone system from the later years which is still working, and notices on the walls warning of the fines for letting your farm animals roam the streets, a .50 cent fine is levied for letting your sheep or geese free in the streets and 1 dollar for the second offence, but letting your horse free the fine is double at 1 dollar and 2 dollars for additional offences. These notices were most likely printed at the shop next door, St Mary’s Printery.
As we left the village we stopped in at the gift shop where many of the items made by the shops in the village are for sale, from chairs to iron hooks for the kitchen, as well as t-shirts and snacks. The Coffee was great!
On your drive home, save time to stop at Taylor Head Provincial Park, the water is cold, but it’s a great beach.
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