Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/166

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THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

Canning by way of Port Williams and Starr's Point. The latter is a slender point of land where famous apples grow, Gravensteins and Kings and Nonpareils. Trees set out by the Normans more than two hundred years ago are still bearing. One old tree may even now be counted upon for upwards of thirty barrels a year.

The great Wellington Dyke bars the tide from the broad meadows of the Canard and Habitant Rivers. Canning was once known as Apple-tree Landing, and later as Habitant Corner,—names so suggestive as to need no explaining. Then in violent contrast the little river port took the surname of two Governors of India. Once, many ships were built here. The first one to leave the Canning yards was a brig of 200 tons which was baptised Sam Slick.

Canning is the home of Sir Frederick Borden, Ex-Minister of Militia and cousin to Sir Robert. On the public square is an awkward but patriotically intentioned memorial to a son of the family who fell in the Boer War. This little town is also the birth-place of Benjamin Rand, Ph.D., historian, economist. Professor and Librarian of Philosophy at Harvard, of whom a critic has said that the "range of his scholarship is wider than that of any living Canadian."

The Cornwallis Valley Branch of the Dominion Atlantic passes this way from Kentville to Kingsport, on the Basin shore (14 miles). The latter is an attractive summer town