We celebrated Canada Day in the Birthplace of Confederation. Then, we stopped in Canso at the Stan Rogers Folk Festival for a rousing rendition of the Northwest Passage. A slight detour took us southwest to visit Halifax, one of the economic centres of the maritimes and home to the largest naval base in the country. Then, we headed back towards Cape Breton Island before crossing the Cabot Strait towards ‘the Rock’, where the birds, cliffs and hundreds of millions of years-old fossils awaited.