Day 5: The Big City & Bikes

Halifax, Canada

It just occurred to me that I haven’t noted much about the history of Nova Scotia…and since we really didn’t know much about this Canadian providence located in Canada’s Maritimes until we started researching more I thought it would be helpful to touch on this; however, it’s quite complex/a lengthy story to tell as it was formulated as a result of six wars amongst the Catholic Arcadians, Mi’kmaq, French, Scottish, and British settlers. With the Scottish settlers in the early 1600’s, the name of the new settlement stuck for the providence (New Scotland), and the Gaelic influence is certainly still present. So, in effort to keep this entry a little shorter I’m going to share the Wikipedia link 🙂 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History _of_Nova_Scotia Back to our adventure in this very interesting, history rich providence… This morning we departed from Baddek, making a stop for brunch in New Glasgow and on to Halifax (our second longest day in the car). Our brunch was delightful at a small, locally owned cafe that came highly recommended on Yelp (BaKed). Bryan loved their strong coffee and banana coconut French toast (with a side of amazing almond butter and apples) , and I found their blueberry basil lemonade with a breakfast panini (egg, mushroom, spinach, peppers & onions) to be the perfect travel day fill up. We arrived into Halifax/Dartmouth just before 1PM and parked down by the waterfront to start exploring this military centric city. We decided to hop on a 2:30PM bike tour since we’re only spending one day in the city, figuring it would allow us to cover more ground. After registering for our tour we took in the harbor walk and fueled up for our two hour adventure with a fresh pressed juice/smoothie. It was fun talking to the employee about her Vitamix (sharing with her that we live around the corner from Vitamix) and her tips for the area, and both our beverages were the perfect pre-ride treat (mixed berry smoothie for Bry and a watermelon, blueberry, lime, ginger juice for me). Before our tour we wondered through the large LEED Certified Farmers Market (Halifax Seaport Farmers Market which is North Americas oldest Farmers market that has moved into this pristine new space) building and enjoyed a view of the lighthouse on George’s island just across the way. It felt like a very modern Westside Market. Amazing to spot the many large vessels and various ships in this waterfront from the market’s rooftop. There is also a pretty impressive cable bridge called the Angus L. MacDonald Bridge between Halifax and Dartmouth. This is definitely the most populated area (390,000) we’ve been in as the capital of Nova Scotia and is actually home to 6 of the 10 universities (it was previously Annapolis Royal were we saw the historic gardens, until 1749 due to a war). It was time to hop on our bikes, so we met back at the bright yellow shipping container on the other end of the boardwalk. Our tour guide, Elsa, was a recent college grad originally from the Rocky Mountains (not CO, but Alberta). She was very sweet, and full of energy to lead our small group of 4 for the afternoon. The other couple in our group was from Ireland and in town for a wedding this upcoming weekend. We enjoyed chatting with them along the way, and especially enjoyed listening to their stories with their thick accents. Our first stop was to see some uniquely shaped lamp post right in the boardwalk. Elsa shared this was originally a temporary art display that all locals grew found of, so these distorted shaped light posts were left…but, the meaning behind them is what made us laugh. In this military heavy area this display had no connection and was actually meant to resemble their large student population… and therefore, their strong bar scene. One light post is the friend that passed out, the other is wiggly looking down on the other to make sure it’s ok, and the final is standing away by the waterfront and looks like its peeing when the tide is high. We couldn’t believe that was the meaning (or we royally got hoaxed on our tour)! Across from us, Elsa also pointed out the three surrounding Islands: George’s (has a flag pole that was used to communicate to the citadel), McNabs (was known as “Hangman Beach” where the British Royal Navy would literally hang mutineers to forewarn visiting ships entering the port to behave, and Lawlor (which was used to quarantine soldiers from 1866-1938 returning from travel/war). Next, we came to the statue of the controversial founder of Halifax (Cornwallis). The British Government appointed Cornwallis as Governor of Nova Scotia with the task of establishing a new British settlement to counter France’s Fortress Louisbourg. One of Cornwallis’ first priorities was to make peace with the Wabanaki Confederacy, which included the Mi’kmaq. He was successful in getting them to renew an earlier treaty drafted in Boston, redrafted as the Treaty of 1749. However Cornwallis’s diplomatic efforts were doomed as the treaties signed at Halifax represented mostly native groups in New Brunswick. Most Mi’kmaq leaders in Nova Scotia regarded the unilateral establishment of Halifax as a violation of an earlier treaty with the Mi’kmaq people…this resulted in several wars/attacks between the British and Mi’kmag/Arcadians. To stop the Mi’kmaq attacks on the British settlers, Cornwallis issued a proclamation to separate the two populations. Cornwallis proclamation banned the Mi’kmaq from Nova Scotia. Within this proclamation was a bounty put on Mi’kmaw fighters to kill or capture them. This statue was built with Cornwallis facing back toward Britian vs looking into Halifax because it’s said he missed his true home so much, and even though he was instrumental in the providence’s history many local people distain him. A local school even had their name changed (named after him) out of respect for the Mi’kmaw/Arcadians that were killed/deported by Cornwallis orders. As we biked up and away from the waterfront, we came to a lovely street with some stunning homes. We learned this was a wealthy street (Young Street) of Nova Scotia, including the home of Nova Scotia’s first millionaire (George Wright). He was also a large promoter of women’s rights for his time. He happened to be in Europe when he heard of the Titanic’s maiden journey and decided he must get a ticket. Unfortunately he was one of the many to perish at sea during the sinking of this great ship. Interestingly enough, Nova Scotia played a large role recovering over 200 bodies of those lost at sea. It was a three day sail to the sinking sight from Halifax, and the home of Wright along with many of the waterfront restaurants were used as temporary morgues to help identify those lost, and the people of Nova Scotia created a site for families to visit those buried in Nova Scotia and memorial for those lost at sea. From here we peddled down Young Street until we dead ended into Point Pleasant Park. It was a beautiful wooded park, still groomed with trails and manicured areas that plays are routinely held in and many locals walk dogs in. This park is also home to the Prince of Wales Tower, originally built by British army engineers to protect the landward approaches to the gun batteries located along the shores of what is now the park. We learned that in 2003 a hurricane (Juan) caused much damage to this park, and although it seemed lovely to us there are still many locals that are appalled to visit. They claim despite Halifax’s attempt to restore the park, it doesn’t come close to it’s original beauty. We made our way to the heart of the city and paused for a moment to see the statue of Robert (Robbie) Burns, the writer of the world famous poem/song played on New Years Eve (Auld Lang Syne). In Nova Scotia they celebrate this Scottish poet on January 25th, and if you wear a kilt to a local ski resort that day you are given a free ski pass for the day. Sounds like the only reason we should come back in January 🙂 Across the street from here we took a stroll through the Historic Gardens that had gorgeous 16 ft gates made of wrought iron in Scotland and shipped to Nova Scotia as a gift. The gardens were beautifully up kept, and also about 17 acres (same size as gardens we saw in Annapolis Royale). We agreed we both liked this public/free garden in downtown Halifax better. Onward…we climbed the hill to the Citadel (fortified in 1749), and enjoyed the views from this peak of Halifax. This star shaped fortress with a direct view of the harbour comes as no surprise of why it made the perfect location for protecting the city. Up here Elsa also told us about the “great explosion.” I’m surprised we’ve never heard of this, as it was the largest explosion to occur before the creation of nuclear weapons. At the thin part of the Halifax waterfront in December of 1917, a Norwegian ship was over worried about the tight passing by of a French ship and over compensated his turn causing the back of his ship to crash into the French barge. Unfortunately, the French crew hadn’t marked they were carrying flammable/explosives to avoid being a target at this time of war…immediately the crew abandoned ship and started taking children and rushing them away from the waterfront in hopes they’d get the adults to follow. The Norwegian crew couldn’t believe the French left their ship due to the small fire that had started onboard and decided to hop on to help. The French ship had 300,000 tons of explosives! This shock wave was felt as far as the tip of Cape Breton Island, and was said to be a force of 1600 KM/seconds. Residents of Boston came to help the city through this disaster, and to this day the people of Nova Scotia still gift their best looking pine tree from Lunenburg as a gift to the city of Boston as a thank you near the holidays. Our final stop on the tour before heading back to the waterfront was the public library. It’s a new LEED Certified building that has been rated as a top “eye popping new building” by CNN. It was designed to look like a stack of books, has a great lookout point (the cantilevered section you can see in the photo) called the “city’s living room”, and houses a local cafe vs a Starbucks or Tim Hortons as many suspected it would. It really was a magnificent sight and incredible architecture. Following our bike tour, we checked into our hotel and took a ferry to catch another vantage point of Halifax. It was really neat to see all the naval ships amongst the yachts, and various vessels of raw materials. We decided to grab some appetizers (shrimp, mussels, and oysters) on the patio of the Waterfront Watehouse before checking out the night life of Halifax. After a short wonder, we made our way to the Bicycle Thief (a cute Italian restaurant we had spotted earlier and made a reservation for). We arrived about an hour before our 9:15PM reservation, and decided to enjoy some time at their outdoor champagne bar! This spot that had already won my heart over somehow grew on us and the bar tender, Tyler, proved to be a friendly, entertaining new friend, so we decided to hold on moving inside and eat right there. Prior to dinner we couldn’t stop snacking on their homemade Carmel corn with a hint of cayenne pepper and peanuts posted at the bar tops. However, we still found plenty of room to devour honey/pistachio glazed Atlantic salmon and Fra Diablo linguine with tiger shrimp (we shared because both were so incredible we decided we had to try both!). As we wrapped up the night, we passed on dessert, but Tyler kindly packed us a bag of their homemade Carmel corn to go as he noted how fond of it we were (I cannot tell you how big Bryan’s smile was as a result of this)! On our walk down the pier back to the ferry, Bryan was taking photos and happened to catch a great shot of a young male student playing one of the public pianos at the waterfront. We stopped to share with him, and discovered he was an Astro-physics major. We soon found ourselves chatting about the star formations overhead and took a couple photos together of the clear night sky. As an aside, the people of Canada have been simply welcoming and so very friendly. We’ve had such a nice time meeting people along our journey and love their stories, and pride of their country they have to share. The saddest part to me is that many recognize they need to leave their beautiful home of Nova Scotia to really find careers/have more opportunity. I hope they can still return home to enjoy the parts of Nova Scotia we’ve had the pleasure of seeing just briefly. Gnight, my friends!