A Walking Tour of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia

I’ve been so pleased with taking Matey in the stroller that we decided to do it again yesterday and take a 2.5 mile walking tour of Yarmouth. We started at the waterfront, and here we let Matey walk on his own.

This building was the headquarters of the Killam Brothers shipping business for 203 years. Now it’s a museum. After the Killam Brothers building the tour was supposed to go up along Main Street, but instead of looking at the old commercial buildings we decided to continue along the waterfront.

There is a fleet of pretty big boats there.

We walked as far as the ferry dock. The ferry here goes to Portland, Maine. It might be something to look into for a future trip.

Most of the rest of the tour was big, beautiful old houses. The guide map was less than precise and between the stroller and taking pictures I had a hard time following the map. The map was on one side of the brochure and the descriptions on the other. Bud couldn’t help with the map because he didn’t have his glasses. So some of these I know are the houses in the brochure and some are just pretty houses. This is Murray Manor, built in 1845 and is the regency gothic style.

This was the newspaper publishers house, a colonial revival house built in 1897.

Bud and I loved this old tree in the yard. Apparently it lost its main trunk long ago, but it’s still growing.

And this is my favorite; it was one of two identical houses built in 1877 by Robert Eakins as gifts for his son and daughter. They were built in the gothic revival style. Unfortunately the twin to this house burned down in 1992.

This beauty was for a time the Catholic bishop’s residence. It is incredibly intricate.

My favorite detail was this owl above a stairway window.

My vote for best paint job goes to this beauty.

This Italianate house has a nice paint job also.

And I love the glass tower and the little portholes in the tower roof on this one; though the house was built in 1862 and the tower added in 1891. To me it doesn’t go with the house, but that is part of its charm.

It was nice to walk through these pretty streets…

and see a bit of charming old Yarmouth. And yes, those are gravestones in the park. Apparently it was decided in 1865 that this site was too small for the graveyard. It became a park, but the graves remain. There are also graves beneath some of the nearby streets. I guess people weren’t as careful about old cemeteries then.