THE MERRILL INN, ONTARIO, CANADA -- PICTON VICTORIANA

Please note: Photos and text © Gary Crallé 2008. All rights reserved.

To view the entire blog, click ‘2008’ on the right side of your screen, and you are set to go! For my initial blog, click on ‘Older Posts’ at the bottom of this page, then ‘2007’.

Prince Edward County is a peninsula and lovely spit of land stepping into Lake Ontario south of Belleville, my birthplace. What goes around comes around, and it was in the isolated spot called Cressy on the east side of the peninsula that I wintered two consecutive years in a modest renovated farmhouse, courtesy of my good friends Larry and Avery.

That was nearly a decade ago. The county is changing dramatically, with Toronto boomers retiring to the bucolic countryside, wineries gaining fame, and nouvelle cuisine rising with real estate prices.

The Merrill Inn, on the main street of Picton one block from the worn downtown shops and designated a significant architectural structure, is a step back to provincial Victorian elegance. Back to a time when agriculture nourished the economy, canneries were plentiful and ships would take produce from Picton over to New York state. Tourism is the new economy these days, and innkeepers Amy and Edward Shubert are keeping pace.

Amy is a good cook in her own right, with county fair ribbons for her fruit pies, but now she and Edward have lured talented Michael Sullivan from Toronto to run their restaurant. The menu accurately describes his style as “elemental French cuisine with North American sensibilities”. My wife, Lis, and I were overnighting between St. Patrick’s Day and Easter.

Particularly during the colder months, evening dinners are a highlight. March 17 was our anniversary of sorts, that being the date Lis and I had first met -- as I tell everyone -- in the dark, in the back of a bus, in Ecuador. (Explanation: We were both on a cruise to the Galapagos, and met our group in a minivan upon arriving at the airport in Quito.).

I began with a ‘Merrill Inn County Cider Cocktail’ – sparkling cider, Calvados, Triple Sec, cranberry pomegranate juice and apple slices.

First course was ‘skillet fried blue crab cakes’, followed by ‘herb crusted rack of Ontario lamb’ which I placed on a center table after asking the couple seated nearby if they would mind my taking a photograph. They didn’t, and loved the result. Dessert was a smooth bourbon chocolate cake.

We selected a bottle of Waupoos baco noir to accompany. Waupoos (aboriginal for rabbit) is a local winery. For a photo, I placed the cork with the rabbit diving into the bottle, recalling the Lewis Caroll story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. With its eclectic wine list The Merrill Inn boasts the only restaurant between Ottawa and Toronto which has received The Wine Spectator award of excellence three times in a row.

From our bedroom window at the back of the mansion the snow covered patio and chairs reminded me of the Embankment in London, England on drizzly nights when I was a young film student in that city

Breakfast was precisely prepared by Edward. Although served in the dining room, to our host’s amusement I whisked each dish into the front drawing room to utilize the surrounding décor in my photos.

Following breakfast, we explored the inn, and couldn’t help notice the many Easter-theme rabbits dotting the rooms. www.merrillinn.com

A WEE TASTE OF NOVA SCOTIA

Belgian chocolate lobster by Rosemary's Chocolates, Halifax NS

Photos and text © Gary Crallé 2008. All rights reserved.

Note: To view the entire blog, click ‘2008’ on the right side of your screen. It will turn yellow, and you are set to go!

The average mean temperature in Canada’s ‘down east’ maritime provinces during winter months can be, well, mean. But weather should never dampen your sense of adventure. The Travel Media Association of Canada (TMAC), of which I am a member, was holding its annual conference in Nova Scotia, February, 2008, and I was looking forward to it. The salient point of any trip, I’ve learned from long experience, is exactly that: the experience. And when you are anywhere with a group of friends and kindred souls, it will always be an experience to savour. Particularly in a place of small communities like Nova Scotia, the many warm welcomes easily trump climate.

Overnighting at the Prince George Hotel in downtown Halifax, I awoke refreshed and ready for a quick swim in a pool mercifully separated by glass from the snowy outside deck. Breakfast is provided ensuite for executive guest rooms, with ample time for the morning newspaper. As I sipped my coffee, traditional red brick buildings and a rooftop pub across the street caught the sun’s first rays. Hidden from view to the right was the historic Citadel guarding the old town. Foregoing a brisk walk up the hill, I readied my cameras for a scheduled trip to the Annapolis Valley on the Bay of Fundy. ‘Taste of Annapolis’ was the description given the conference pre-trip I had signed on to. www.princegeorgehotel.com/

While collecting a colleague at the nearby Haliburton, a boutique hotel smaller than mine, I poked my head into the renovated rooms just long enough to confirm that I must stay there sometime. www.thehalliburton.com

Arriving in the village of Windsor, we circled a wooden statue of local legend Howard Dill. Howard grows enormous pumpkins on his seed farm, famous for a pumpkin weigh-in each October. "Dill's Atlantic Giant" is the seed variety he recommends.

Little Windsor also proudly claims title to being “The birthplace of hockey” at Dill Farm’s Long Pond. This is a patch of ice on which hockey evolved during games between two boys’ schools as early as 1800. Canadian kids’ street play, the National Hockey League and winter Olympic competitions have become our heritage. And Paul Henderson’s winning goal in the last game of the fiercely contested 1972 Canada-Russia hockey series was arguably the defining moment in Canadian sports. www.town.windsor.ns.ca

Uninspiring food used to be a Canadian mainstay, but today’s chefs are energizing the culinary scene from coast to coast. Within the bright mustard exterior of the Woodshire Inn I enjoyed a fine bistro lunch of hearty corn soup followed with spicy ribs, accompanied surprisingly by local red and white wines.

We stopped into Just Us Café on Highway 1, core coffee shop for a small chain which puts ‘people and the planet before profits’. Head barrista Doug MacInnes whipped up lattes and expressos with such exuberance that he felt apologetic. He makes a mean brew. My choice was an aromatic and robust Mexican coffee infused with snappy jalapenos. www.justuscafe.com

With time on our tails, we headed for the National Historic Site of Grand Pre, inspiration for poet Henry Wordsworth Longfellow’s ‘Evangeline”. The epic ‘Tale of Acadie’ traces love lost when a young couple become separated during the Acadian deportation by the British in 1755. Our visit to the chapel and museum honouring this tragedy was on a late winter afternoon. Crunching through deep snow looking for photo vantage points, I silently applauded the survival of this micro culture, so evident in the tri-coloured Acadian flags and symbols along modern touristic routes such as the Evangeline Trail. www.grand-pre.com

Beth Patillo met us in the store for a tour of the Noggins farm. Her husband, Andrew Bishop, and his brother Stirling are descendants of a planter family given land in 1760 following the Acadian expulsion. Noggins Corner Farm is a year-round hive of farming, family visits and educational programs. A federal government research station just down the road in Kempville maintains an experimental “mother orchard” of varietals. Noggins offers 30 different types of apples in the fall. Beth has strong opinions about her favourites, with cortlands and gravensteins near the top of her list. http://www.nogginsfarm.ca/

In a large barn at Noggins, Melissa Vaughn bags ida reds which have been washed, sorted and treated with Ultra Low Oxygen (ULO) to retain their crisp, fresh taste. Several of her co-workers are from the local Mennonite community, a group long recognized for their own expertise in traditional agriculture.

“What’s a Swiss guy doing here in Nova Scotia?” The question was posed by Domaine de Grand Pré owner Hanspeter Stutz. An entrepreneur with expansive plans for his winery and for Nova Scotia tourism, Swiss émigré Hanspeter is a robust proponent of his products. Quality is the key, he says, foreseeing great potential for domestic wine appreciation and regional economic growth.

His goal is making Grand Pré the leader for wineries and slow food cuisine. His aroma comparison chart, for example, facilitates the identification of wines for visitors whose oenological memories are just developing. With an eye to world markets, Hanspeter has begun producing cider with a ‘tough stuff’ label of a teddy bear in a leather jacket: Stutz cider. http://www.grandprewines.com/

Cape-Breton born winemaker Gina Haverstock followed her passion for oenology through a degree at Brock U., Ste. Catharines, Ontario, then post-graduate studies in Germany, finally mixing chemistry with professional enthusiasm at Gaspereau Vineyards. Constantly experimenting, she loves to share her wine findings with visitors. It was difficult for us to stop sampling various wines, including a unique icewine, with locally made Acadian chocolates. http://www.gaspereauwine.com/

Owner/chef Michael Howlett of Tempest Restaurant chose the right name for our visit. It was a stormy night indeed when we trooped into his open concept dining room of cool elegance in Wolfville. Truth be told, the name is multi-inspired, he said: he lived through hurricane Flloyd when working in the Caribbean, and has a love of Shakespeare. So the name comes honestly.

"...There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple: Good things will strive to dwell within it..." Shakespeare, The Tempest.

Michael proudly sources local ingredients, believes in sustainable choices, and is closely involved with a school program teaching healthy eating. On the menu: Malpeque oysters with champagne jelly; breast of duck with Grand Marnier/orange glaze, wild rice, barley & cranberry pilaf; chocolate bourbon torte with raspberry coulis; Bahamian-style key lime pie. http://www.tempest.ca/