Tag Archives: History

Not Bored Walker

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Saturday 1 October 2022 – Warning – lots of photos for you to wade through today!

Pinch, punch, first of the munch. (I hate assonance.) One week to go before we head back to the UK and we start our penultimate adventure, our time in Nova Scotia. As expected, yesterday, spent as it was in travelling two time zones eastwards from Winnipeg to Halifax, was entirely devoid of anything worth telling you about with the possible exception of the taxi ride from Halifax airport to our hotel. The (somewhat elderly) taxi driver started out being courteous and interesting and ended up ranting about the incompetence of government and the unfairness of taxes. He also delivered us to the wrong hotel, but was good enough to apologise and drive us to the right one.

So, today we found ourselves in the capital city of Nova Scotia with reasonable weather in prospect, so there was only one thing for it, which was to go for a walk. Obviously.

We had a chat with a very nice chap at the concierge desk, Tim. One thing we wanted to understand was whether there was a tall building which would give us a view over the city. Our thought was that it would be nice to be able to look down over the Citadel, which is a star-shaped fortress, to appreciate its shape. Tim suggested we go with him; he took us to the top floor of the hotel and unlocked the banqueting suite there, proudly telling us that this was the banqueting facility with the best view in the city. To be fair, it was not at all bad.

It didn’t however, give us the view over the citadel that we’d really have liked, but it did have an interesting ceiling with some great chandeliers.

The other nugget that we learned from Tim was that Halifax has its own (modest) equivalent of Toronto’s underground city, although here it’s overhead rather than underground. It’s called the Pedway, and you can see one of its aerial corridors crossing the road in the second of the view photos above. Of course we had to go and explore it. As with Toronto and Montreal, it’s linkways between halls, with some stores and eateries,

but is still in development – there are many hoardings promising a bright future with more stores to be opened.

It also gave us a view back to our hotel – you can see the inward-sloping windows of the banqueting suite at the top of it.

We also had a chat with Tim about the hotel, which is a curious mix of modern and dowdy, more old-fashioned areas (e.g. the wing where we have our room). It turns out that a complex set of circumstances involving mergers, takeovers, divestitures and pandemics means that planned improvements have not yet started.

Anyhow, we had more of the city to explore, so we headed out to wander about according to the plan that Jane had formulated. We passed City Hall

which overlooks the Grand Parade.

As you might infer from the picture above, an event was brewing in the Grand Parade, involving people of African-Canadian extraction, dressed in their finery and setting up a sound deck. Their mood was jolly and we hope they had a good time, but we had a city to explore so had to move on. Before we did, though, I took a picture of a mural that overlooked a building site

and the City Clock.

Behind the clock above, you can see a hill, atop which is the historic Halifax Citadel (climbing it also gives a nice view over the city’s impressive – but closed for maintenance – Angus L. Macdonald Bridge and the Clock).

We decided to visit the Citadel, as they offered a decently low entry price for us two old people, and so began to appreciate that Halifax has a great historical richness. The Citadel was first established in 1749, and the present citadel, built starting in 1828, is actually the fourth fortification built on the site.

The citadel’s fortifications were built and rebuilt to defend the town from various enemies – the indigenous Mi’kmaq and Acadians, for example, raided the capital region (Halifax and Dartmouth) 12 times, four times against Halifax itself. While never attacked, the Citadel was long the keystone to defence of the strategically important Halifax Harbour and its Royal Navy Dockyard.

The present citadel took thirty years to build and the general introduction of rifled artillery (with greater range and accuracy than earlier guns) shortly after its completion rendered the costly installation obsolescent. It was partially rearmed in the 1860s and 1870s, and continued in use as a barracks into the 20th century.

It is easy to understand its superb strategic location, overlooking the original town and harbour. It’s a very well-maintained institution, staffed with people dressed in period costumes who can tell you about various facets of life there in the 18th Century.

The central courtyard

is littered with cannons

as are the ramparts,

including a 12-pounder

which is still active and which is fired every day at noon – apparently a really loud bang.
After our visit, we walked along to the Public Gardens, a very pleasant environment.

Items of interest included a weeping beech tree

and a beautifully-coloured Blue Jay.

After the gardens, we passed the statue of Winston Churchill

were checked out by a starling

and then visited St. Mary’s Basilica,

a cathedral with a very handsome interior.

I was particularly struck by the stained glass half-dome above the altar. It being in the competitive nature of these things, the cathedral has, close by, the Anglican Church of St. David and

St. Matthew’s United Church.

Our rambling then took us in the general direction of the harbour, but en route we noticed that among all the modern high-rise constructions there are plenty of handsome old buildings in the city.

The downtown area has some interesting buildings, too;

and we were pleased to note that there is street art among the attempts to make the city look attractive.

We reached the harbour clock

which marks the start of a boardwalk stretching a couple of kilometres south, from the ferry terminal to the seaport. A lot of effort has gone into making this an attractive and pleasant area to walk, with artworks both mysterious and quirky along its length

(the tower structure is covered with plastic flaps, which flutter in the breeze – it’s rather lovely)

(the above street-light diptych is called “Get Drunk, Fall Down”)

as well as eating and drinking establishments. One of them, the BG (Halifax Beer Garden), was obviously paying its local tribute to Germany’s Oktoberfest, it being October first and that.

There is a life-size replica of the flagship of Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage of circumnavigation, 1519-1522 – the Trinidad

which in its day would have had 45 crew on board. I know people were smaller in those days, but I reckon it would still have been pretty cosy.

The rest of the walk down to the seaport passes many items of statuary – The Émigré, A tribute to Women in History, Samuel Cunard and three of the many examples of what might be figureheads that line the boardwalk here.

One significant statue is of Ruth Goldbloom, who fought for Pier 21 in the seaport to be restored and commemorated in recognition of the nearly one million immigrants who were processed through it between 1928 and 1971.

The plan was to get to Pier 22 which we thought might have some nice eateries and/or drinkeries. We were wrong. It turns out to be a tourist tat haven only open on cruise ship days intended, I imagine, to attract people who are boarding and who need to find just that one more special something for a special someone. Since there was a cruise ship in, only slightly larger than the substantial buildings of Pier 22,

it was open.

By this time, we were feeling somewhat sharp set, so we made our way back along the boardwalk with the idea of eating at a place that we’d seen earlier on, called Sea Smoke. There was a diversion en route in the form of a 1968 Routemaster London Bus,

used for hop-on-hop-off tours and, unsurprisingly, somewhat modified from the original,

because getting off the way we UK folk might consider would probably precipitate a traffic accident and lot of attendant paperwork. So an alternative exit is needed for the passengers

and an alternative entry for the driver.

As we ate our (very fine) meal at Sea Smoke, the cruise ship which had been at Pier 22 came by on its way out;

I’ve never seen so many radar aerials on a boat before.

We watched the ship do a graceful pirouette before exiting the harbour and then we ourselves exited the restaurant, which is distinguished by having many fire tables outside – very pleasant as the evening was chilly.

By this time, the light was fading (possibly matching your interest level in this post).

We passed a final, mystery piece of art

and then, as the evening light flared and then died,

we made our way back to the hotel.

Again, sorry for a long post with lots of photos, but I hope you found the read worthwhile. We had a really enjoyable day discovering the historical, arty and eat-y sides of Halifax, which comes across as being a very pleasant place to be.

Tomorrow has a planned excursion, if all goes well – a 10 mile hike. If we survive, I will be sure to document our progress here, but for now it’s time for bed. See you tomorrow!

Going to the Dogs

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Thursday 29 September 2022 – Until we finally boarded our flight out of Churchill, the schedule for the day was in a more or less perpetual state of flux, as in no-one knowing what the flux going on. The first spanner in the works was that our flight would now be at midday, much earlier than originally planned. So Mark had to make some last-minute changes, involving finding our group some packed lunches and squeezing today’s excursions into a smaller window.  Later on, we found out that the midday flight had been cancelled and we were now going to fly out at (the original time of) 17.45. This meant that Mark, having crammed everything in, now had to find other diversions for us.  He managed all of this with aplomb and many phone calls.

Our first port of call was something that I hadn’t very high expectations of – very wrongly, as it turned out.  It was a visit to a dog yard.  Dogs have long been used to haul sleds and since there was no snow on the ground I couldn’t quite see how it could be made interesting. I hadn’t reckoned with the passion, energy and sheer charisma of “Big Dog” Dave Daley, the owner of the yard

who was accompanied by two of his sled dogs.

Where I had expected a routine presentation about dog sledding, he treated us to a brilliant, impassioned and amusing exposition about the relationship between man and dog, between dog and dog and between man, dog and the race he created and runs every year he can, the Hudson Bay Quest, a 220-mile wilderness race which knocks the more-widely-known 80-mile Iditarod into a cocked hat. In the HBQ, one man, 10 dogs and a sled have to complete the race unsupported except for a half-way stop for a compulsory 6-hour rest (for the dogs, not the men) and a reload of the hay that is needed to create rest dens for the dogs en route.  Extraordinarily, this distance can be covered in 40 hours, by someone who knows what he’s doing.

Much of the substance of Dave’s presentation consisted of underlining what “knowing what you’re doing” means when it comes to running a dog team, and this involves having a deep relationship with every dog, knowing its strengths, weaknesses, health and preferences.  Some dogs make good lead dogs, but would be no good as “wheel dogs”, the raw muscle power that runs just ahead of the sled, for example. (There are also point dogs and swing dogs, each with a role in the team, and “knowing what you’re doing” involves understanding and exploiting this.) Some dogs prefer to run on the left, some on the right. Some prefer sprints, some are better at marathons.  “Knowing what you’re doing” involves being a planner, physiotherapist, psychotherapist, nutritionist, physician, breeder, salesman and trainer.  Dave currently has 47 dogs in his yard and every single one of them seemed to be bursting with energy and enthusiasm when it became clear that they would be working that morning,

because after talking about the theory behind running a dog team, we actually got the chance to get a tiny insight into the practice.  There was no snow on the ground, but the dogs still need to work to keep them healthy and happy, so outside winter they pull carts; we got the chance to ride the carts whilst they were being pulled – two guests and a driver per cart, with the dogs in teams of five, rather than 10.

The energy and enthusiasm that was bursting out of the dogs increased, if anything, when they were hitched up to a cart – which had to be anchored to a huge boulder to stop them immediately rocketing off into the forest.  Jane and I were lucky – Dave picked on us as his passengers, and his team had seemingly impossible amounts of energy waiting to be harnessed.

As you can see from the video, there was a choice of track, but each ride was about 1½km, and so Dave calls the outing on the carts the “Ididamile”, which is rather lovely.  It was huge fun being carted along by these bundles of energy – and because Big Dog was our driver, we went faster than the others which necessitated veering off onto a forest path, rather than staying on the main drag, so we didn’t run into the other teams!  All in all, it was an absorbing, entertaining and thought-provoking couple of hours.

The next item on the agenda was a visit to Churchill’s museum, but before we did that we called in at the Churchill Post Office to get our passports stamped.

On the door of the Post Office building is, erm, posted a summary of encounters with bears.

So even though we’d had to search high and low for a bear, it seems as though bears are finding people, even this early in Bear Season.

The museum we visited is called the Itsanitaq Museum and is dedicated to Inuit culture, with wonderful collections of carvings and artefacts which are among the finest and oldest in the world, dating from 1700 B.C.

It used to be called the Eskimo Museum, but Eskimo is a term which has fallen out of favour; itsanitaq is an Inuit word meaning “things from the past”. This was explained to us by Lorraine, the lady in charge, who gave us a short introductory spiel,

and included further information about the principal peoples of the area.

Among the exhibits in the museum was an explanation of the script that we found on the Calm Air aeroplane safety leaflet.

It turns out that the symbols weren’t in themselves a language, but rather a phonetic code enabling the various indigenous languages to be written down.  So our safety leaflet was probably in the Cree language, that being the largest of the populations in the area.

We had a lunch stop at the Churchill Northern Studies Center, a non-profit facility that promotes and facilitates research and education about many issues that affect the northern regions, with an emphasis on sustainability and climate change. They provide accommodation and facilities for visiting researchers as well as carrying out their own research and educational programmes.

They allowed us to have our (clearly rather hastily-assembled) packed lunches in their canteen, and also hosted a tour of the place, which is sustainably designed and ecologically and environmentally secured so as not to affect the area around it.

After this, having discovered that the rescheduling of the rescheduled flight left us with time on our hands, Joe drove us slowly around the back roads whilst we searched again for bears.  Unfortunately the bloody bears had buggered off again, so all we saw was another Arctic Hare

who was reasonably close and so a bit easier to spot among the rocks than our elusive ursines. The sun came out and so this one perked up a bit

before it started raining again, with a stiff and cold wind blowing, so it hunkered down again, looking distinctly unimpressed with the weather.

Mark gave us a final chance to get images of the town, starting at the Churchill sign

and we managed to catch a couple of grab shots of artwork we hadn’t recorded before

and also an Interesting Church (see our Iceland pages).

And, barring visits to a couple of gift shops, that was that for Churchill.  We went to the airport and bade farewell to the guys who had made the last three days so interesting and varied.

We duly arrived into Winnipeg just in time to crash into the hotel’s Sports Bar where the group got together for a final time to consume (in some cases rather inadvisable) quantities of drink.  It was a good way to end this section of our holiday which was great fun, excellently guided and shared with some nice people.

Tomorrow is just a travel day – Winnipeg to Halifax, Nova Scotia via Toronto.  It’s unlikely that I’ll have anything interesting to report about two flights, so the story is To Be Continued in a couple of days.  I hope to see you then; bye for now.

Québec Quests

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Wednesday 21 September 2022 – Our second and final day in Québec dawned fine and sunny (according to the UK Met Office) or at least not raining (according to looking out of the hotel window). Given that it’s such a historic, individual and photogenic city, we felt we had to get out and explore; Jane had some specific sights she wanted to see as part of any wanderings on our part. To aid us in our quest to find out more about the place, we joined another “free” walking tour, this one led by Sam

who described himself as having a beard and a sense of humour – accurate in both cases, as it turns out. He was full of knowledge and amusing ways of putting stories across, often referring to the city’s official motto – “Je me souviens” – I remember.

To start with, we had to find Sam. The appointed meeting place was the fountain by the national assembly building

to reach which we walked up Rue St-Louis, which is an attractive street

containing the city’s oldest house

and its own city gate.

(not the original one – Sam explained that originally there was a much narrower opening, as befits a gate designed to restrict city access. After the British defeated the French here in 1759, they bolstered the defences in order (successfully) to resist the subsequent French siege. The city walls were saved from destruction in the late 19th century by the then Governor General of Canada, Lord Dufferin, who was enough of a visionary to realise the value of future tourism and so had the walls preserved and the gates widened to open the city to visitors). The fortifications, along with the rest of Old Québec, were designated an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985 and remain the only intact fortified colonial settlement in North America north of Mexico.

The National Assembly building has several statues in niches all over its façade. Sam identified two of them.

On the left – General Wolfe, the winner of the British fight for Quebec; on the right, the Marquis de Montcalm. History is written by the victors, and it’s unusual, and rather refreshing, to see any recognition on historic buildings of the people who came second. I think this is possibly a reflection of the thoughtful approach that Canadians seem to take to many aspects of life.

Sam is obviously a film buff, as he referred to a couple of films during his tour. One of them was “Catch Me If You Can“, a caper in which Tom Hanks tries to nab Leonardo DiCaprio as he blags his way across the world. The other was an Alfred Hitchcock thriller called “I confess“, about the dilemma facing a priest who receives confession from a murderer. Sam showed us the actual house where the “murder” was committed, something other guided tours don’t cover.

The current occupant of the house is clearly familiar with Sam leading tours past his house, as he came to the window and waved to us all.

Our tour then passed between two libraries – a modern one housed in an old French church and an old one housed in a more modern building which was originally a gaol.

Passing the Clarendon hotel, a building on a site with history that goes back as far as 1685, and is thus far older than the ancient-looking Chateau Frontenac

our next stop was at the Town Hall.

It’s a very imposing building, and doubtless Sam dispensed some interesting nuggets about it; but I became fascinated by its fountains.

After this, we headed (past a building with a very bizarre artwork attached to it)

towards Old Québec,

which is (a) historic, (b) photogenic and (c) contains many of the things Jane wanted to see. These included the “Breakneck Steps”, the city’s oldest steps, so called because they were once rather rickety as well as steep;

then round the corner to this:

which, presented as above (with some photoshoppery), looks like a city scene, but is actually the Québec city mural, telling the story of Québec;

indigenous artwork in a street off Place Royale;

and another wonderful building-side mural

(again, here, with image manipulated – it really looks as below).

The whole area is desperately photogenic

and gives what Sam asserts is the best view of the Chateau Frontenac – and who am I to argue?

Trees in the above photo actually hide the Funicular, which people can use to travel up to the hotel square if they are prepared to pay the 4 CAD fare.

The Place Royal features the outline of where the first building in Québec stood

and Sam pointed out that this was where Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio actually stood during the filming of “Catch Me If You Can“. Just round the corner is the ultimate Selfie Spot,

where one can ruin a perfectly decent city scene by appearing in it, on the Old City Centre Swing. There are any number of photo opportunities around this part, and the place really, really feels like Paris.

It isn’t, of course, but is often used in films to portray France. In the above, the piano accordion is actually an electronic instrument and you can’t move far without the smell of popcorn pervading the air – giveaways that you’re not in France after all. (Another one is the ubiquity of tin roofs; in France, lead is more commonly used.)

That ended Sam’s entertaining and informative tour, so we headed back up to the hotel up the

172 steps you need to climb.

For once, instead of eating at the hotel, good as its meals are, we had booked an early dinner outside, at a place recommended by Ian Burley called Le Hobbit. The restaurant is in Rue St-Jean, which gave us an opportunity to walk to it past the Observatoire de la Capitale, which is on the 31st floor of a building next to the National Assembly. So once again we headed up Rue St-Louis, pausing to take a photo of Churchill and Roosevelt

(these sculptures celebrating their meeting here in 1943 to plan the D-Day Landings) and found our way to the top of the Observatoire building. One needs to book, and, helpfully, there’s a QR code on the ground floor for paying one’s entrance. But we didn’t have internet access, and it needed help from a sympa young chap who was guarding the Observatoire on the top floor to help us pay our entrance fees. That achieved, we had a few minutes to wander the four sides of the Observatoire, looking at the views of the city around us.

Then we crossed to Rue St-Jean, which is jolly picturesque,

includes the Church of St. John the Baptist which gives the street its name

and has some interesting shop windows.

We had a very good meal at Le Hobbit (thanks, Ian). Then we wandered back to the hotel in the gathering gloom, via the Old Town, to see if it was as picturesque at night as it is during the day.

This signalled the end of our time in Québec, as we had to be ready to catch an earlyish train to Montréal the next morning. It would have been nice to have had more time to explore – a lesson learned for future holidays of the pith and moment of this one – but it was lovely to have seen what we did. Jane thought that maybe it was just a little bit too picture perfect, but I loved the place. Maybe we’ll be back; who knows? But tomorrow is onward! to Montréal, so please come back to see what we made of things there.