Boston to Montreal, Monday, September 2, 2019

Today is Labor Day in both the U.S. and Canada. It is also our first stop in Canada, Halifax, largest city in the Province of Nova Scotia. We dock around 7:30 AM, but are delayed as the ship has to clear Canadian immigration. Previously, each passenger was required to fill out a Canadian immigration form, but there were errors on some, which necessitated delays. As an example, at around 8:00, Deb and Tim were called from their stateroom to the “interrogation room” with their passports in hand to meet the inquisitors. It seems that Deb neglected to put the date at which they were intending to depart Canada on their form. Don’t want those heathen southern immigrants staying illegally in the country and sucking up all the good paying jobs and living off the largess of the hardworking taxpayers, eh?

Finally, by 9:00 the ship was declared docked and passengers were allowed to disembark. Deb and Abigail have booked a thee hour coach tour to the destination of Peggy’s Cove, while the other three of us remain on board for a few hours to relax, read, and hang out. At 11:30, Deb Duggan and Mark venture off the ship to meet Deb and Abigail while Tim sticks on board to continue reading. Mark and Deb wander the shore side boardwalk, looking at the craft shops and taking advantage of the WI-FI to catch up on emails and such.

The tour to Peggy’s Cove and the iconic lighthouse showed Deb and Abigail some of the loveliest parts of Nova Scotia. Even though Nova Scotia is one of the smallest provinces in Canada, it has over 4000 miles of coastline with beautiful forests and the rocky granite that is only a few feet under the soil of the entire area. The tour guide pictured below (who reminded Deb of our friend Kevin,) provided detailed information on the area. For such a beautiful but small area, this has been involved in three major tragedies in the last 107 years, two which occurred in the Province.

The first was their acceptance of over 190 of the dead from the Titanic tragedy of April 15, 1912. Most were buried in three cemeteries in Halifax, one created in the form of a ship’s bow just for Titanic casualties. Many could not be identified and were buried with only their date of death and the number that they were tagged with corresponding to the order they were pulled from the water.

The worst tragedy was in 1917 when a French ship carrying armaments and fuel caught fire in Halifax Harbor. Thousands gathered in the harbor to watch the ship burn (the crew had jumped ship when the fire started), only to lose their lives when the ship exploded with the power and consequent devastation only eclipsed when Hiroshima was bombed. It changed the face of Halifax city forever. Thousands lost their lives and over 1000 people were blinded by flying glass. Boston was the first city to send medical help. Haligonians were so thankful that, to this day, they cut a large Christmas tree and send to Boston; it is installed in Boston Commons each year.

The third tragedy was again not of the making of Nova Scotia. 21 years ago, an Air France plane had a total electronic failure and nose-dived directly into St. Margaret’s Bay, near Peggy’s Cove. All aboard died but the people in the area pulled together to help with the retrieval of bodies and putting up relatives of the dead in their homes, as there were very few commercial inns at the time (this was pre AirBnB). There is a lovely monument dedicated to the people of Nova Scotia who helped comfort and aid those who had lost loved ones. It is also complete with the names of every passenger and their histories.

Abigail and Deb returned to the pier area at 12:30. They quickly made the stay-at-home troops feel remiss in skipping this tour. Halifax is a city of around 350,000 in the Nova Scotia Province of 1.1 million Canadian souls. The economy is based upon the sea: fishing, lobster fishing, shipping, military port and shipbuilding are among the largest industries.

We walked the boardwalk and shopped the craft stores open in the pier complex. Due to the Labor Day holiday, none of the stores in the Historic City area were open, hence, no yarn from Halifax!

We returned to the ship and located Tim. Then up to the 8th level Lido deck pool area for late lunch of hamburgers, hot dogs, tacos and burritos, washed down with soda and wine. A return to the staterooms for a refresh while Tim went to the duplicate bridge group meeting (amazingly not located on the ship’s bridge.) We later determined that his team won and now he has a date for Thursday afternoon for some rematch play.

At 7:15 we all met up at the Lido Market cafeteria for a late, light, dinner. If you can imagine this group of grazers eating a “light” dinner you would conjure salmon, rice pasta and roast beef sandwiches. There was one salad in sight. We then embarked on a hilarious search to find a Titanic style prow of the ship to view the stars, trouping up and down the passageways, stairs and elevators, finding dead ends and Staff Only labeled doors. We finally gave up and tried to just go out on deck. Strong winds and rain forced us laughingly back in side. We browsed the shops, found a quiet library area, and finally headed to our staterooms for the end of another vacation day off the northeast coast at sea.