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Pint-sized WINDSOR , sloping along the shore of an inlet of the Minas Basin 25km from Wolfville, was originally settled by Acadians and it was here in 1750 that the British built a fort to overawe them. The stockade was subsequently used to hold Acadians during the deportations, but all that remains today is a sorry-looking timber blockhouse conserved as the Fort Edward National Historic Site (mid-June to Aug daily 9am-5pm; free), which, complete with musket loopholes and cannon portholes, perches on a grassy, treeless hill overlooking Hwy 101 and the tidal mud flats that stretch out towards the basin. On the other side of town, set in its own leafy grounds on a hillside 1km west of the centre, is the Haliburton House Museum (June to mid-Oct Mon-Sat 9.30am-5.30pm, Sun 1-5.30pm; donation), one-time home of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, a mid-nineteenth-century judge and humorist. The house has been returned to something akin to its appearance when Haliburton lived here, writing the short stories that made him famous - cuttingly sarcastic tales whose protagonist, the itinerant Yankee clock pedlar, Sam Slick of Slickville , travels Nova Scotia meanly defrauding its gullible, unenterprising inhabitants. Immensely popular at the time, the stories are interesting as literary history, but leave a nasty High-Tory taste, although it was through Slick that Haliburton coined a bucketload of epigrams that remain in use: "six of one and half a dozen of the other"; "facts are stranger than fiction"; "raining cats and dogs"; "the early bird gets the worm"; and "as quick as a wink" - and many more - all came from his pen. Most of Haliburton's work is out of print, but the museum has a small supply and, if you're keen to sample his stories, begin with The Clockmaker ($7.50).
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