Not Very Meritimes

There are few things that can really put a downer on a holiday: fog obscuring the view, heavy rain so you want to do indoors activities, indoor activities being shut when you’ve purposely woken early and scaffolding covering the historic site that you can just see through the rain and fog. The day didn’t start well. We began the morning with a walk around the Historic Properties but a lot of the shops were closed. We noticed that Halifax has lots of brightly painted lobsters around town. It’s a nice novelty and we found we were on the look out for more lobsters.

The miserable weather continued and when we found that there was scaffolding on the town clock too we decided to cheer ourselves up and went to the Atlantic Museum to see exhibits on the Halifax Explosion (6 Dec 1917) and the sinking of the Titantic (12 April 1912). The Halifax explosion was caused by a Norwegian ship running into a French munitions ship that was packed full of explosives and nasty acids to make more explosives. The ships collided in Halifax harbour and when the sparks caused by the collision started a fire on the French ship, the crew jumped over board as soon as they could and swam for the distant shore as the pilotless ship headed for downtown Halifax. The Haligonians didn’t know what the big boat coming towards them was carrying and lots of them ran to the port side to get a better look at the commotion. The resulting explosion when the boat did go up was the largest man-made explosion in history until that day (prior to the development of the atomic bomb). The sound was heard hundreds of miles away in New Brunswick and destroyed most of Halifax. A 500lb piece of the hull of the French ship was found 5km from the explosion site and the anchor was found 3km in the other direction. The call for help went out straight away and lots of cities sent medical aid. Boston in particular sent a lot of help and by way of thanks Halifax continues to send the city of Boston a large Christmas tree every year.

The Titanic exhibit was just as informative and sad. There were some artefacts from the ship, like deckchairs and some of the passengers’ jewellery. It was interesting to look through the passenger and crew lists. The lists had been added to, to show survivors. Something like 90% of the women and children survived and only 10% of the men. So much for everyman for himself. Some people could learn from this example.

There was a break in the clouds so we headed up to the citadel for the firing of the noon day gun (it wasn’t noonday and it wasn’t a gun). Right on queue, it rained heavily from 11.58 – 12.02, making it difficult to take pictures and the canon misfired at the first attempt. Wet and windswept we decided we might as well take the tour of the Citadel. It was built in 1856 and is the forth citadel on this site built by the English, partly to counter the French fort at Louisbourg up the coast and party to protect against an invasion by the yanks. Just like the previous three forts, this fort has never been attacked. Maybe the rain put invaders off. The fort had masts and flag poles which were used for communication purposes. In the 19th century these and masts at similar forts made it possible to send messages from Halifax to Fredericton, New Brunswick in 24 hours. They should have tried harnessing the power as lightening, I hear that’s very quick (sorry couldn’t think of a better adjective).

We had lunch at Salty’s back in the historic properties port area. We’d picked this restaurant as they had sweet potato chips on the menu. They were delicious! Afterwards we looked round the Cows shop. They sell ice-cream and cow-pun merchandise throughout the Maritimes. Sarah liked the little Elmoo T-shirt but they didn’t have her size. We picked up the hire car and were given a free upgrade. My stinginess got the better of me here; I heard the word free and immediately took it, but I didn’t stop to think that the massive jeep we were given would cost a fortune in petrol. It was fun to drive, for about five minutes and then I found it really sluggish to drive and because the seat couldn’t be lowered I got really bad neck and back-ache. Cars like this are no good for everyday driving and really should be restricted to the school run. I’ve decided that I will never buy a North American car and if I have the choice I won’t have one for a hire car either. Generalising like this makes my life easier as I don’t have to remember which types of American cars are rubbish.

We had a rainy but scenic 3.5 hour drive to Whycocomagh on Cape Breton Island. It was 7pm by the time we found our hotel and we had tickets to a Celtic Colours concert at 7.30pm so we quickly dropped off our bags and rushed to the venue. We expected a small gathering as the venue was a school hall but there was a huge crowd in the school gym. People were having to stand round the walls and in the doorways. I managed to beat an elderly couple to two seats (everyman for himself, remember) so at least we could comfortably tap our feet to the music. Three bands played. We particularly liked the first artist, David Francey and bought his CD in the interval and got it signed. The second band were ok, but I’m a bit of a traditionalist with my Celtic music and I didn’t like their efforts to incorporate an electronic keyboard, though they did do some Riverdancing, so they win points for that. The final band were from Quebec and were really entertaining. They got the audience involved and one band member came down off the stage and started a line dance, which went through and around the first two rows of seating. One guy played a really odd looking instrument. We had a great time, well where else can you hear the Imperial March from Star Wars played on a Hurdie Gurdie (look it up)? Canada has a small town feel to it sometimes and this was reinforced by the Queen’s representative in Nova Scotia being at the concert. Not only was she there but danced on stage and was joined by the 70 year old compere. The whole audience laughed when he was doing his jig on stage and almost lost his kilt. Twice! This was during the finale when all 3 bands played together on stage. The concert ended at around 10pm but we were told about the nightly jamming session at St Anne’s Gaelic College, a 30 minute drive away, so we headed there. It involves all the performers from all the concerts around Cape Breton that night and lasts until the wee hours. It wasn’t quite the unrehearsed mix of acts that we expected but we did share a table with a group from Newcastle. We’ve had 8 months of Canadians wishing us a nice day, so it was nice to hear some cutting British comments. I overheard one guy comment that a performer on stage “looks like he’s having a stroke”.