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Clutching his 1899 copy of Appleton鈥檚 Guide to Canada, Michael Portillo travels on the Ocean train from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick. Along the way, he investigates the world鈥檚 biggest tide at Hopewell Rocks and admires its dramatic rock formations and caves.

Michael apparently defies gravity on a magnetic hill in a 1965 Pontiac Bonneville. North of Moncton in Miramichi, he joins the Elsipogtog First Nation in a pow wow, where he learns about quilting and traditional dress. In Amherst, Michael investigates the history of an ambitious ship railway designed to ferry ships by rail over the isthmus between the Bay of Fundy and the Northumberland Strait. He quarries highly-prized Wallace sandstone for a 150-year-old family firm.

In the Acadian fishing village of Neguac, New Brunswick, Michael discovers sea farmers are producing up to 15 million oysters a year. Michael takes to the water to investigate how it is done and is rewarded with a taste of the freshest mollusc he has ever sampled.

Michael's guidebook leads him to Miramichi, where he reads that French-speaking Acadians settled after they were expelled by the British from lands they had occupied further south. Intrigued by a tale of 18th-century ethnic cleansing, Michael visits an historic village to find out about these people and why Britain took such drastic action against them.

Boarding the night sleeper for the next 400 miles of his journey, Michael heads for Quebec City, where old Europe survives in the New World. With its narrow streets and flights of steps and a hotel modelled on a 16th-century chateau, Quebec City was the heart of New France and reminds Michael of Paris - yet the Quebecois national dish leaves him cold.