In truth, there is no more fitting superhero for this place. Here is where the first talk of confederating the British North American colonies into present-day Canada began. In Province House, a lovely neoclassical building, we watch A Great Dream, a video about how this all came about. It seems there was a conference, and a lunch, and a ball, and some more talking. Just as I remember from my own Canadian childhood, our history is almost parodically uneventful. Then again, a country born of conversation might make for some dull classroom hours but seems a fair exchange for fewer burial grounds filled with 18-year-old boys.

In a nearby outdoor amphitheater, we watch a more exciting, musical-theater version of How We Got Here. First up: the natives, played by cute, muscular dancer boys — all Caucasian — in fringed chaps (with what look to be fetching suede Speedos underneath). They jump through feathered hoops with acrobatic grace, punctuating each routine with a very un-Ojibway-sounding "Oy!" Suddenly! — through the audience he comes. A drifter, drifting. He wears full-body buckskin, the traditional costume of a trapper, those fur traders who settled the New World. He sings an anthem to all souls who have ever left their homes in search of a better place — like a Broadway theater, for example. "What will I find in this newfound land?" he wonders. Time marches — and jetés — on, and here come the resolute men of the railroad "living on stew and drinkin' bad whiskey." Now a barn-raising dance, à la "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" (minus the uncomfortable associations to "The Rape of the Sabine Women"). It is all energetic and well-danced and sweet. There are towheaded children in the audience waving little Canadian flags! Like I said, 1952.

"Each man stood at his post / while all the weaker ones went by, / and showed once more to all the world / how Englishmen should die," reads the headstone for Everett Edward Elliott, age 24. At Philippe's insistence, our first stop in Halifax, before we even get to our hotel, is the Fairview Lawn Cemetery. It is here where 121 of the roughly 1,500 victims of the Titanic disaster are buried. The very modest black granite stones were provided by the White Star Line. The word Titanic was only carved onto the stones after the success of the movie, but the sinking of the great liner has always been one of the nautical disasters imbedded in the collective memory of Halifax. The other was an explosion in the harbor in 1917, when a munitions ship crashed into another vessel and blew up, killing 2,000 people and destroying much of what is now the north end of the city. I know a couple who were flying back to New York from Paris on 9/11. Their flight was rerouted to Halifax, where they were put up by a volunteer family for days. When one of my friends wondered aloud at the extraordinary and unquestioning kindness they were being shown, their hosts mentioned how it was the very least they could do considering how helpful the Americans had apparently been.

That a Haligonian would regard events which had taken place nine decades earlier as a potent pretext to do someone else a good turn doesn't seem surprising after spending as little as 24 hours in the Maritimes. I cannot say this too emphatically: The people of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island — or everyone I encountered over 11 days, at any rate — are among the kindest and friendliest I have ever met. Forget the achingly pretty towns, the ocean vistas or the oysters and mussels so fat and briny you want to marry the shucker or cry, or both; it is the people who are reason enough to go there on holiday. Every interaction, whether getting my morning coffee or searching for children's car sickness lozenges, is like having my heart massaged.

And Halifax is lovely! The streets slope steeply down to the water. The worn cobbles of the Historic Properties — an area of 18th- and 19th-century buildings that now house the Granville campus of the world-class Nova Scotia College of Art and Design — suggest Paris. We walk along the waterfront, passing runty, muscular tugboats, those most anthropomorphic and sympathetic of vessels. There is a small island in the harbor, a rolling green hill with a lighthouse and two smaller buildings. Like many a prospect in the Maritimes, it seems toy-scale. We look at the sea stars collected near the pilings of the pier, we gorge ourselves on the free samples of rum cake in a shop and look in waterfront store windows. There are some very snazzy condominiums nearby with what must be astonishing views. Walking up the hill past the stately stone building where the farmers' market happens each Saturday, Philippe observes, "It's quite gentrified here."

"What's gentrified?" asks 11-year-old Leo.

"Poshed up," his dad explains.

Leo thinks about it for a moment. "Oh. I like things that are gentrified, apparently."

In "The Children," the Edith Wharton novel I have coincidentally been reading on the trip, Martin Boyne, a single traveler in Europe who becomes the unwitting guardian of a roistering bunch of kids, finds himself to have "been gradually penetrated by the warm animal life which proceeds from a troop of happy healthy children." That's exactly right. It is with great reluctance that I say good-bye to Natalia, Philippe, and the kids the next morning. But I have decided to spend some time alone in Halifax before heading off elsewhere in Nova Scotia, including — finally — to the place that brought me here: Peggy's Cove. That, at least, is a thought that pleases.

Tara Donne North Rustico is one of P.E.I.'s best spots for sunning, swimming and kayaking.

And a bonus: I will not be bereft of youthful energy for very long either. I have booked two days with Salty Bear Adventure Travel, an outfit that organizes driving tours through the province. Trolling its Web site, I see that I am a good deal older than its average customer. Indeed, this will turn out to be very, very true. There are 13 of us on board the Salty Bear van. There are young men and women, early twenties, from Scotland, Ireland, Australia, England, Germany and Canada. Plus Chris Penton, 32, our driver and until recently the co-owner of Salty Bear. Originally from Ottawa, Chris has something of the blue-eyed, verbal quickness of the actor Matthew Perry about him. He kicks things off with an icebreaker: Who are you? Where are you from? And whom would you like to see naked? I haven't heard of easily half of the physical paragons the others invoke. I beg off. I have to spend two days with these striplings, and I am loath to scare them by responding with the only logical answer, really, given their taut poreless skin and the keening Doppler of their racing, turbocharged metabolisms virtually ringing in my ears: "Every single one of you."

In truth, over the course of the trip, they will seem less a monolithic storehouse of collagen and will separate out into a disparate group of some very charming individuals. But in this initial blush, I feel old, old, old. One of them passes around her iPod, inviting the rest of us to bestow upon its storehouse any of our own particular MP3 favorites. She hooks it up to the van's sound system. Scissor Sisters pours out of the speakers, and we are off. Quite an acceleration, from 1952 to the present in under four seconds.

Tara Donne / Condé Nast Traveler / Tara Donne P.E.I.'s Basin Head, one of the province's 14 day parks.

The landscape of my childhood postcard starts only about 300 yards from Peggy's Cove itself. It is an abrupt change from forest to gently rolling earth with low ground cover, scattered with boulders that seem as though they've been dropped from the sky. The fishing village is ridiculously picturesque, with clapboard houses nestled among the famous rocks. There are signs advising us not to stray too close to the water's edge or onto any darker (read: wet) rocks. Someone gets swept out to sea every year, we are told. But the water is placid today. The lighthouse glows against the clear blue of the sky. Even with the hundred or so tourists here at this moment, it doesn't feel crowded. The bare, rocky expanse is big and austere, affording each of us our contemplative space. We amble over the boulders, each lost in our isolation, a musical version of that last extended sequence in Antonioni's L'Avventura. It is everything I'd hoped for, if not a tad upbeat.

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