We have lived around West Paradise for over twenty years. When our son, Andrew, owned the Hunter Farm, we would walk down through the orchard to the Annapolis River (see Buddha Spring, Walk the Talk Part 1 and Guided Walk). Heading upstream towards Middleton, we entered the Lawrencetown Tree Nursery, managed by Nova Scotia Lands and Forests.
Today, you can access the Nursery from Highway #201 at Lunn’s Mill. On the banks of the river, the local fire department has a staging area for drying out their hoses, after fire prevention.
It appears that the tree nursery is not being actively managed. The forest roads are not being mowed.
Yesterday, we made the loop through the nursery, and back to Hwy #201. Once, we reached the car, we realized that it is a bad year for ticks !
The demise of the tree nursery is a lost opportunity. With the proximity to Lunn’s Mill there is an educational opportunity to teach current forestry practices and management. Instead, it is a ‘tick haven’. The ticks own the landscape. Be forewarned !
PS we moved to Middleton two years ago, to overlook the floodplain.
Saturday morning.
Market Day in Annapolis Royal. We stopped at Mare Gold bookstore and could not resist the new book by Rebecca Solnit.
This week (May 20/21) COGS hosted a symposium of student presentations (Cartography and Geovisualization, Geospatial Data Analytics, GIS and GIS:Remote Sensing.
The presentations were made with Teams in the AV Room and the Board Room.
One of the presentations was by Christian Gastmeier: “Mapping the Geography of Places: A GeoAI and Cyber-cartographic study of the Annapolis Valley. Data input included Volumes 1-10 of my blog, ernestblairexperiment.wordpress.com from 2017-2026.
ernestblairexperiment takes its name from Ernest Buckler, author of ‘The Mountain and the Valley’. The British author, Eric Blair who wrote under the name, George Orwell. Experiment because it has been an experiment in the use of online communication (blogging).
Christian has taken on the challenge of applying the tools of GIS and AI to this collection of blog posts.
While at COGS, I was talking to Andrew Hannam, Library Technician in Lawrencetown. He confirmed that all Librarians at NSCC campuses have been ‘let go’ to meet provincial budget cuts. Given the importance of the written history of these collections to the institutions and future students, this is a matter of considerable concern (see Community Engagement, Antiques Map Tour and Map Stories).
Today, while I listened to the student online presentations, I had to worry about the ‘sense of place’, and the viability of three separate campuses in the Annapolis Valley: Lawrencetown, Middleton and Kentville — especially one with a focus on the Geographic Sciences.
It seems to be a contradiction to talk about ‘a sense of place’ and yet have the students online with no, or an empty, consideration of ‘place’. What does this mean for our ‘community’?
Postscript
Yesterday, Heather and I, in order to maintain our ‘sense of place’, walked the Peter Point trail in Kejimkujik National Park.
It has been a busy week that started on Mother’s Day. Heather and I took the drive from Annapolis Royal on Highway #8 to Kejimkujik National Park. Still closed, presumably until the weekend of May 25. The trees are beautiful at this time of year: red maple, white birch and white pine.
We then crossed from Highway #8 to New Germany on Highway # 10 via #208 South Brookfield, Pleasant River and Hemford. It was lunch time. We noticed the Hummingbird Cafe. We stopped for lunch.
It was excellent food and the cafe was packed with families from the surrounding communities. Afterwards, we took Highway #10 home to Middleton.
The next day, we wanted more exercise. We started the day at the parking lot on the Hampton Mountain Road. We walked the road to the side entrance of Valley View Park. The beech hangers were coming into their Spring flora. We noted our first red trillium in flower. We completed the trail through the park then up to the fire tower.
After a good stretch, we decided to return home via West Dalhousie. At the junction of Hwy #201 and the Morse Road, at 3 pm, we were behind the school bus. It made numerous stops before reaching the T-junction in the community. Before the village centre, there was significant evidence of the burn from the Long Lake fire (see Trial by Fire), including around the cemetery.
From the community centre, it is a dirt road, past several church camps to reach Hwy #10 at New Albany. From there, down South Mountain via Nictaux Falls to Middleton.
From Sandra Barry is the link to her Dalhousie Review publication “Shipwrecks of the Soul: Elizabeth Bishop’s reading of Gerard Manley Hopkins”, 26 pp.
Somehow, this discovery seems to bode well for the collaboration between Christian and myself (see Mapping the Geography of Places) Christian Gastmeier and Bob Maher.
Postscript
While no picture of the commemoration stone from the family could be located, a description of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry was found, described in Frances Cafferata’s MA Thesis Dissertation from the University of British Columbia, “Gerard Manley Hopkins’ use of nature in his poetry“.
This weekend, I made contact with Christian Gastmeier. He is a student at COGS working under the supervision of David MacLean. He is working remotely from Sudbury, Ontario. It is a capstone project: developing an AI-driven NLP pipeline for Spatiotemporal extraction.
I have included two paragraphs from his proposal:
“ Background
Since 2013, Bob Maher has maintained an extensive digital record of geographic observations through his blog ‘The Ernest Blair Experiment’. This body of work contains over a decade of high-fidelity local knowledge regarding the Annapolis Valley. However this data is currently ‘unstructured’, existing as a narrative text rather than a spatial database. Transforming this narrative into a Geographic information System (GIS) requires Natural Language Processing (NLP) to bridge the gap between human story telling and provincial resource management.
Purpose
The purpose of this project is to develop a reproducible cloud-based AI pipeline using ArcGIS to extract geographic themes from unstructured text. Leveraging the full ArcGIS online (AGOL) suite this project will:
automate extraction
Geocode and Validate
Cloud- Native Visualization
Multi-media Integration
System Scalability
Where things stand today (Monday, May 4,2026) ?
Christian emailed his Capstone project proposal
We had telephone conversation
Bob agreed to provide hard copy ( 13 volumes of his ernestblairexperiment blog
Christian is working remotely from Sudbury, Ontario.
Deliverables:
Spatiotemporal Cloud Database
Automated Extraction Pipeline
The Ernest Blair Digital Atlas
This blog will be sent to a wide range of industry/academic partners.
If you are interested in the full project proposal, contact Christian at W0529818@nscc.ca Future blog posts will track our progress.
Edward is unavailable for a few days. He suggested that I post this blog, as is.
We arrived in Annapolis County in 1980. I had accepted a teaching position at the Nova Scotia Land Survey Institute (NSLSI). It was to teach applications of mapping software in an intensive one year program (48 weeks) in Scientific Computer Programming. Heather and I, with two young boys (Patrick and Andrew), moved from Ottawa (National Museum) to West Dalhousie. We rented what was known as the Ernest Buckler house from Bill O’Neill. He and I commuted down the Morse Road to Bridgetown, and on to NSLSI in Lawrencetown.
After a couple of years, we moved to Clarence East, neighbours to the Barteaux, Elliot and vanRoestel families. In 1988, we moved to Indonesia, California, Ontario (Peterborough) and BC (Victoria) before returning to accept the position of Senior Research Scientist with the Applied Geomatics Research Group (AGRG) at the NSCC in 2000. At that time we purchased a house in East Paradise on Highway #201. Now, in 2026, we have relocated to Middleton.
Throughout our time in Annapolis County, we explored the Bay of Fundy coast, the Annapolis Valley and, to a limited degree, North and South Mountain. Despite our familiarity with the local Geography, we had never been to East Dalhousie.
Given the forest fires last year (see Trial by Fire), I wanted to visit Lake George and Lake Paul. We started out, gassing up the car in Berwick. Moving up onto South Mountain, it is very evident why Berwick is considered the “Apple Capital” of the Valley. From Morristown, we passed through Lake George and Lake Paul reaching the Dalhousie Road, where we turned west to East Dalhousie at the Kings County/Annapolis County line. At East Dalhousie, we turned South on the Cherryfield Road. The Cherryfield community is on Highway #10. Afterwards, we headed North, back to Middleton.
Three significant observations were made on travelling the backroads of Annapolis County
Access to good maps is essential. We always have a copy of the Nova Scotia Atlas in the car. In this case, the seventh edition.
The forests of South Mountain are remote and relatively inaccessible. Given the nature of climate change, there is a high probability of forest fires by lightening strikes. This happened in 2025. The management of these forests is critical, not only for remote communities, but also the proximity to the communities along the mountain slopes — not a time to reduce the resources and capacity of NS Lands and Forests.
It is very evident from the signage on individual driveways that the public, individual land owners, are concerned about the mining of uranium. Without travelling these back roads, the average politician/ civil servant would not understand the public concern.
A final comment.
The county provides in the mail, “Explore Annapolis County: Your guide to discovery” an excellent publication – BUT NO MAPS ENCLOSED.
The drive through the back roads of Annapolis County was a revelation. And yet, we have known the geography since 1980 (approaching fifty years) on and off, and have been part of the history of the College of Geographic Sciences (COGS).
Edward visited the Annapolis County booth during the recent Saltscapes Exposition in Halifax. At the booth he did get a poster map, “Explore Annapolis County: This is where you wander”. The County marketer told him that the map promoted exploration “Choose your own adventure. Start anywhere. Go everywhere”. In essence it was thematic in nature.
A portion of the poster map is shown, above. A couple of QR codes on the back invite explorers to “Continue your journey with more itineraries and ways to wander”.
In response to my blog, Sandra Barry had referenced Mary Rose Donnelly’s ‘Great Village’. I am also aware that Sandra is a resident too of Middleton, and has written extensively on the life and times of Elizabeth Bishop (see Eccentrics in Paradise and One, Two, Three).
First and foremost, Tatamagouche and Lunenburg are very different communities. One is a university town; the other is a historic, sailing and tourism community.
Yesterday morning, we took Highway #10 across to the South Shore. The road was empty. The landscape is forested with evidence of fires and tree harvesting. Through New Germany to Bridgewater; on Highway #102 to Blockhouse and Lunenburg, our destination was Lunenburg Bound, the bookstore and the bakery/coffee shop next door.
The bookstore is excellent, both new and used books are well catalogued.
What did we find?
For Heather, Lorne Fitch ‘Conservation Confidential’. ‘A biologist investigates the clash between progress and nature’. Praise from Sid Marty(back cover)
We also took advantage of our geography — time spent in Antigonish. We had been recommended to stop at the Curious Cat Tea and Books in the mall. We found four books; three for Heather and one for me. Still looking to find the fourth for our luggage.
My knowledge of St Francis Xavier University goes back to awareness of the Coady Institute.
The book starts with an excellent quote from Rumi. “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.“
At the Highland Mall in New Glasgow, I found a copy of Donald Savoie’s biography of John Bragg, The Rural Entrepreneur. It details his efforts with Oxford Frozen Foods and EastLink. Savoie provides an excellent description of the creative rural economy in Nova Scotia.
While in Pictou, we stopped at the deCoste Arts Centre and the accompanying library. I signed out Edward MacDonald’s, The Geography of Home: Poems for a Lost Time. A different example of the creative rural economy; in this case, the setting is rural PEI.
Today, I received online, the March newsletter of Atlantic Books entitled ‘Defend Nova Scotia Books’.
“One of the biggest clouds on the horizon this month has been the looming threat of planned cuts to Arts, Culture and Tourism funding by the government of Nova Scotia”.
Yesterday, we were at the grocery store in Kingston. At the checkout, I noticed a special edition of Time magazine: The Science of Memory. The Story of our Lives. Building a Sharper Mind, Erase Bad Memories. A New Understanding.
I decided it was time to go down ‘Memory Lane’. First stop was the COGS Library. Even though it was March Break, Andrew Hannam was on duty. He allowed me to preview recent additions to the collection. I signed out.
Afterwards, we determined that it was time to go down ‘memory lane’. We parked on the Hwy #201 at the Lawrencetown Tree Nursery, opposite Peter Redden’ property. We walked through the Nursery to the Annapolis River. Down stream towards Bridgetown. At the property line of Andrew’s property (now owned by Rob and Sinead) we headed, back to Hwy #201. Checking my watch back at the car,the total loop took an hour.
We lived at #6326, Highway #201 from 2000-2024. During those years, we had a number of different dogs, inherited from our sons: Bodhi, Ukaliq and Siqsiq.
It was a pleasure to recall the flower species along the trail: orchids as well as various mosses and lichens. Not surprisingly, we were able to find the trail, even without the remnant flagging tape.
Acknowledgements
To Rob and Sinead for maintaining the land and the orchard. Andrew Hannam for maintaining the book and map collection. Edward is away in Ontario without access to the EBE site. No graphics or links this week.
References
Special Issue of Time magazine. The Science of Memory. Spring 2026
Postscript
This morning, the large hay field down on the flood plain had turned into a lake. The ducks and geese entertained us, swimmingly !
Ernest Blair Experiment 