Springhill Nova Scotia-August 19

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Anne Murray's music is still ringing in my head. There was a lot of her music played through out the Murray Centre in her hometown of Springhill. For those of you a bit younger than John or I, she was the first female Canadian artist to earn an American Gold Record. She has sold close to fifty million albums and has won countless awards. Her song "Snowbird" was her first song which catapulted her to fame. We were informed that she spends May through September in Springhill. Her hometown was the site of a major coal mining industry until about 1970. Over its 85 year history the mine had a couple of explosions and one bump(miniature earthquake). All total, some 442 men were killed since the 19th century. One of the explosions occurred in 1956,the bump happened in 1958, and in 1957 the town itself had a major fire! On a lighter note,the town has a couple of benches dubbed the"Liars Bench" in memory of the miners who congregated at those benches to tell their fishing stories. From Springhill we drove to Williamsdale Winery. We had a shock there because, as we drove up the path to the winery,we found it over grown in weeds. It took some heavy knocking and a dog inside ferociously barking to get the owner to come to the door. He said that he was closing the business. On the average he use to have 3-4thousand people a summer come to his winery-this summer so far John and I were his 14th and 15th customers. He especially noticed a sharp decrease of people from the USA. He did have some blueberry wine to sell to us and also gave us free samples of maple syrup. Our last stop was Oxford-the blueberry capital of Canada,second only to Maine in blueberry production. Fortunately for us,this is the time when blueberries are ripe.