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SITE OF THE WEEK

I think I'm Canadian. Some family from Nova Scotia must have left me in a basket on the doorstep of my American parents fifty-odd years ago. That's the only way I can explain my feelings toward this gentler, wiser, more organized nation to the North.

VISIT the NOVA SCOTIA web site

The wife and I are just back from a 10-day 1,100 mile honeymoon trek across the province of Nova Scotia. We hopped the 11- hour Scotia Prince ferry out of nearby Portland, Maine. There’s also a new high-speed ferry from Bar Harbor that makes the trip in less than three hours – for those who are in a hurry to relax. Nova Scotia feels like Northern New England, although the pace is slower, the land less populated, the attitude mellower, the water and sky bluer, and the nights quieter. Radio stations play old soft rock, country tunes and fiddle music. Talk show callers ramble on for hours about hummingbirds, genealogy records and garden fertilizer.

Kids, even in the rural highlands wear helmets while biking and skateboarding. The nightlife, if you can find it, is often a DJ or a Celtic band in a local bar that closes early. Even Halifax, the cultural heart, has one major theater and the waterfront boardwalk is tame after dark. There are no tacky amusement centers, no giant theme parks. I swear, in the entire vacation, I never heard a single curse word spoken.

Everybody is friendly, even to tourists. With the coal and fishing industries waning, Nova Scotians know their future depends on visitors. 35,000 locals work in the tourism industry there, promoting "Canada's Seacoast" as a Mecca for golfers, hikers, birders, cyclists, campers, small boat enthusiasts and history lovers.

Everything – including arts, healthcare, retirement, history and tourism -- is government supported. That's why middle-class Canadians, according to a Toronto family we breakfasted with in Lunenburg, pay 49% income tax. Then they pay taxes on just about everything else. American visitors get much of that money back thanks to a tourist rebate program. I love watching each US dollar turn magically into a buck and a half-worth of colorful Canadian cash.

Even Canadian cities are great. I always enjoy Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City and Toronto. But there's a familiar anxious edge, even to Canadian cities, that is absent from Nova Scotia. Much of the province runs at an island pace. Nothing here is far from the woods and lakes. Nothing is more than 35 miles from the sea.

THE WEB SITE MAKERS

The whole long province seems designed for driving and day-tripping. The Canadian Tourism Department has divided the region into neatly color-coded sections, each with its own logo. You can follow along by going to the official government web site -- NovaScotia.com. Ask, and they'll send you the 400-page printed guide and the matching fold-out map. Signage in the real world corresponds to the guides. It’s perfectly dumbed down for us tourists, but doesn’t detract from the natural wildness of this coastal turf.

There's the Evangeline and Gloosecap trails along the Bay of Fundy with its dramatic tides and stunning scenery. To the south are the Lighthouse and Marine trails that flank Metro Halifax. Cape Breton Island, to the East is divided into four sub-trails. The Sunrise Trail leads back to Prince Edward Island, which is a destination increasingly attractive to American tourists.

The Nova Scotians I met were all Web savvy. People live so far apart that the Internet has become their new lifeline. You can see the cables linking them as you drive the narrow roads. Knowing this, the government provides free Internet access at tourist stops, schools, libraries and town buildings everywhere. Pull in, check your email, get back on the road. No need to drag around your laptop.

I couldn’t get anyone at the Division of Tourism that runs NovaScotia.com to call me back by the deadline for this article. Like I said – they run on island time up there. But for a government web site, it functions with impressive ease. The introductory information is pretty basic, but there are plenty of photos and lots of depth to the database. You won’t hear a negative word or find any secret spots on this web site, but that’s less important in a destination where most venues voluntarily sign up for the official guide. First time visitors who want a more visual orientation can click on the maps at a nice commercial site called Destination Nova Scotia.

THE UP SHOT

The printed Nova Scotia guide and web site look very much like our official New Hampshire counterpart (VisitNH.gov ). If anything, our state's free tourist materials are crisper, slicker and more artistically designed. New Hampshire too is divided into neat regional tourist areas -- mountain, metro, Monadnock, lakes, and seacoast -- all color-coded and mapped.

But here’s the critical difference. Canada BELIEVES in tourism, so they invest in infrastructure unimaginable here. Tourist Information centers are located all over the map. Nova Scotia visitors look for the familiar question mark icon – and find it – even in small villages. Each center has alert, personable, trained, paid staff members who know, not only about their own city, but about the entire province and the vast country. Each tourist center has clean bathrooms, abundant brochures, detailed maps, Web access, and toll free booking services for overnight accommodations. It’s tourist heaven.

New Hampshire has come a long way in recent years, don’t get me wrong. The volunteer Granite State Ambassadors program, state visitor centers, the whole process is improving. But we’re still territorial capitalists at heart. Try pulling into a chamber of commerce in the White Mountains to book a bed and breakfast in Portsmouth. Now imagine you are from a foreign country and there are 30 people lined up behind you.

Wherever you go in Nova Scotia, provincial travel and museum guides ask where you’re from. All that data goes into a giant computer system so the marketing people can track the efficiency of their services. Americans, according to the latest stats, are discovering Canada in record numbers. Nova Scotia is especially popular.

It’s one heck of a system. Not bad for a province with fewer than a million residents. Sure they have 4,625 miles of coastline compared with 17 here in New Hampshire. Our mountains are highter, but they’ve got 5,400 pristine lakes, 25 provincial museums, scads of beaches. I got all that info from the government web site.

We lucked into eight days of sunny Nova Scotia weather, a phenomenon residents told us is rare indeed. So bring your raincoat. Bring a sweater. Bring all the bug spray you can carry if you plan on camping. But leave your American tensions behind, or they will be confiscated at the border.