Roadside distractions
Nova Scotia is an obscure province on the eastern end of a low-profile country, but when it comes to erecting gargantuan, mystifying roadside attractions, we host a trio of world-beaters.
At the edge of Highway 102 between Halifax and Truro, a prehistoric monster trumpets angrily at passing motorists from his vantage point atop a green hill. He weighs 1,400 kilograms, stands 3.5 metres at the shoulder and stretches 7.5 metres from his tail to the tip of his 2-metre long tusks. It’s not enough for Stewiacke to stake contentious claim to being halfway between the equator and the North Pole: the plucky Colchester County town also boasts the world’s biggest replica mastodon.
The claim is supported by the noted authority Wikipedia and seconded by Roadsideattractions.ca, although the latter more modestly classes it under “Large Canadian Roadside Attractions.”
The great beast, which shockingly appears to have no name, is the size and shape of an actual mastodon that trod this land 79,000 years ago before dropping dead one spring day at age 22. There he lay as the uncaring earth buried him for 78,981 years. A backhoe hit his tusk 1991 as his grave was disturbed by operations at the National Gypsum Quarry near Stewiacke.
The people of Stewiacke rejoiced and rightly thought it was an event worth commemorating with an immense fiberglass and steel sculpture. They had to fudge the ears, though, as no one really knows what mastodon ears looked like.
The mammoth mastodon crowns an eclectic collection that boldly combines dinosaurs, mini golf, a wood sculpture of a nervous man having a bath and a Flintstone car.
According to the website Mastodonridge.com, there are also Photo Opportunities! And gas. And a Tim Hortons. You would be a fool not to stop here.
Further north, off Highway 104, is a globe-stopping marvel that would give Violet Beauregarde nightmares. In fact, the jewel of Oxford might well be a life-sized replica of the ill-fated visitor to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Standing proud at the entrance to a Cumberland Country gas station is the biggest blueberry in the whole wide world. Oxford can’t stop itself: it also says it has the world’s best blueberries, that it is the world’s leading exporter of frozen blueberries and that its world-famous blueberries make it the blueberry capital of the world.
But queen of them all is the smiling, open-armed girlfriend of the Pillsbury Doughboy. In researching the big berry, I heard a rumour the metal monster was born in New Brunswick before being sold down the road to Nova Scotia. Surely our provincial neighbours would not have stood idly by while such an attraction was taken from their roadside. I hesitate to even write this, lest some rowdy Sackvillians become inspired to steal back our giantess.
The beautiful blueberry is generally photographed in the day, with tourists happily returning her embrace, but I recommend a night visit, when she acquires a serene dignity in the floodlights.
The last of Nova Scotia’s titanic trio is a strangely modest monument. The World’s Biggest Fiddle sits right on Sydney harbour, but I visited the city twice without seeing it. It was only when I sailed into Sydney aboard the Mist of Avalon last summer that I finally spied it.
When it was erected in 2005, the project manager boasted it could be played, if only someone brought a big enough bow. I ask the woman who answers the visitor information phone if this is true. She laughs and says it would have to be a very big fiddler with a very big bow.
“We had Giant MacAskill here and even he probably couldn’t have played it!” she says. The Guinness Book of World Records (1981 edition) lists Cape Breton’s Angus MacAskill as the world’s largest “natural” giant at 2.36 metres, as well as the man with the largest chest measurement of any non-obese man (2.03 metres). I begin to suspect the playable fiddle is a bluff no one expects to be called on.
But then I remember another giant patrolling the land near the mastodon. He held a flame that could easily be converted into a bow. I think it’s time for Glooscap to once more stride across this land and see if the big fiddle can really sing.
Jon Tattrie is a freelance journalist and the author of Black Snow and The Hermit of Africville.