Halfway to Sudbury and Halfway to Heaven

As many of my friends know very well, I spend a couple of weeks every summer in the small Ontario community of Parry Sound.  What is it that draws me back to this place, and no other, year after year?

That question has both a simple answer and a more detailed one.  You can read about the simple answer in my blog Large Stage Live, in which I give reviews of the marvellous classical concerts at the Festival of the Sound (follow the link on the right side of the page).  My love affair with the Festival began when my sister Kathie moved to Parry Sound in the 1990s and quickly got drawn onto the Festival's board.  A year later, she had twisted my arm, and I came, saw, heard and was hooked!

The music draws me, but there's more to Parry Sound than that, and it's the total experience that keeps me coming back here for so much time each summer.

The headline is actually a tad misleading.  By the time you drive to Parry Sound from Toronto you are certainly past the halfway mark on the road to Sudbury, but Parry Sound is the most convenient stopping place for food and fuel anywhere near the halfway mark.  So, as you would expect, the area closest to the highway is liberally stocked with gas stations, big box stores, and chain restaurants.  To really get to know the Parry Sound area, you have to drive farther in -- or farther out.

This little map gives the basic outlines of the area.  The main 400-69 Trans-Canada Highway extending south to Toronto and north to Sudbury is clear, as are Highways 141 (east to Muskoka and Huntsville) and 124 (northeast to Sundridge and on to North Bay).  The really key feature of course is the beautiful wide basin of Parry Sound itself, a well-sheltered refuge for vessels of all sizes.  What is not shown on this map is the multitude of smaller islands, thousands of them quite literally, which dot the waters of the Sound and the outer edges along Georgian Bay.  These are known by the name Thirty Thousand Islands, and that number is said to be short of the mark.

The surrounding region of forests and lakes is well-supplied with small lodges, B&Bs, campgrounds, and a few bigger resorts.  The large deluxe resorts of the Muskoka Lakes lies to the southeast, but within an hour's drive.  A short drive to the northwest is Killbear Provincial Park.  This is a beautiful place to camp along the edges of the Sound, but it's so popular that reservations in summer --especially on weekends -- are essential!  In the town itself there are more B&Bs, plus over half a dozen small hotels and motels.

The town is located right at the innermost end of the Sound, where the Seguin River empties into the bay.  It's a unique location, with water all around in different sizes and directions, and the in-between spaces filled in with plenty of boreal forest, as this aerial fall view shows (looking southwest across Parry Island).

Although Parry Sound is served by VIA Rail's transcontinental train, that train passes through only three times a week in each direction (twice a week in winter) and always in the middle of the night -- when the train is on time!  So, for practical purposes, the public transport alternative is the Ontario Northland bus network.  In practice, most people come and go by car.

None of which alters the fact that one of the truly iconic sights of Parry Sound is the long CPR trestle spanning the wide mouth of the Seguin River valley.  Despite its oddly mixed appearance, it actually was designed by one person and built all at one go.  It crosses the river and three roads, and spans the recreation trail twice.  If you're anywhere near the waterfront you can't miss the sound of a long freight train rumbling across the trestle -- always northbound because the CP and CN routes pool their traffic now, and all southbound trains from both companies use the CN route.

Though there are now two train lines through town, at one time there were three!  The third, long since vanished, has given birth to a spectacular recreation trail which runs for several kilometres along the waterfront, crossing an old trestle over the mouth of the river, passing marinas and cruise boat docks, running through the forests past two beaches and the Coast Guard station, and finally ending at the salt dock where freighters come in summer to discharge the cargo of salt that will be spread on roads all over the region during the coming winter.  Being an old rail right-of-way, it is level, firm, and easily used by people of all ages and ability levels.

The best place to start a tour of Parry Sound is to follow signs along the road in from the highway (Bowes Street) to the Museum on Tower Hill.  This is a municipal park such as you will see in few other towns: mainly forested, with the Museum tucked unobtrusively among the trees and only a small area of landscaped garden -- which somehow maintains the aura of being more wild than civilized.

On the crest of the hill above the garden is the tower, on the site of a former watchtower for fire fighters.  Climb the stairs to the top (a little over a hundred steps) and your reward is a splendid view of the region in every direction, especially on a clear day.

The large building with the dark roof at the water's edge beyond the marina and parking lot is the Charles W. Stockey Centre.  In a typically Canadian pragmatic compromise, it houses two quite separate facilities under one roof: the 470-seat Performance Hall (under the high-angled roof) used by the Festival of the Sound, and the Bobby Orr Hockey Centre (at the near end of the building) -- since Parry Sound is Orr's home town.

Here's a picture from the Stockey Centre's website of the interior of the concert hall, where I pass so many wonderful hours each summer immersed in beautiful classical music.

In the ultimate flexibility for a small-town hall, the entire audience seating of the main level can be removed, and the structure supporting the raked seating collapsed backwards into the rear wall.  With inserts dropped into the lowered section at the front, you get a flat-floor hall suitable for banquets and other similar events.

Lest you get the wrong impressions, the Festival isn't just about classical music!  The August Civic Holiday weekend is always given over to a jazz festival within the main event, and this draws huge crowds.  Also, the Festival sponsors several cruise concerts a year on the two larger tour boats operating out of the harbour, the Chippewa and the Island Queen V -- and these often feature more popular styles of music.

On the day I took all these pictures, the sun had deserted us by the time it was 7:00pm and the Island Queen pulled away from the dock.  The entertainment was a rousing evening of lively Dixieland jazz played by a Toronto band called the "Dixie Demons" -- and it was terrific toe-tapping music.

Since the Island Queen does its full 3-hour tour circuit for these evening cruise concerts, you can combine whatever music is on tap with the gorgeous scenery of the Thirty Thousand Islands.  The Queen wends its way through wide lake-like areas and narrow needle-threading channels all the way around Parry Island, out to the edge of the open waters of the bay, and then back through the main Sound to the Town Dock.  In spite of the iffy weather, and a couple of little rain showers, I did get a few good pictures:

Along the way you pass this island restaurant, accessible only by water, and serving excellent fish and chips (or so I've been told).  You can also get here by air!  There's an air tour company on the waterfront right by the cruise boat docks which will fly you out for dinner and a tour and back again in a light float plane.

If you get lucky -- and we certainly did -- you can see one of those spectacular Georgian Bay sunsets while you are among the outer islands and rocks on the edge of the open water, and there's no place on earth where I would rather watch a sunset than right here!

Add a much better than average selection of good local restaurants and shops (with not one but two bookstores) into the mix, and I think you'll see why I love my time spent in Parry Sound every summer so much!

Into the Mists: Canada's Pacific Northwest

I'm posting an account of this trip from eight years ago (2007) because it fits in with my theme of rail travel across Canada for this summer.

The iconic VIA Rail transcontinental train, The Canadian, is well known to many people who have never been to Canada.  Its four-night run from Toronto to Vancouver gives an unequalled panoramic look at the breadth of Canada.

What many people do not know is that Vancouver is not the only port on the British Columbia coast accessible by passenger train.

Far to the northwest of Vancouver, just a few miles south of the Alaskan border, lies the port town of Prince Rupert.  This was the western terminus of the Grand Trunk Pacific, the ambitious railway project of the early twentieth century by which the powerful Grand Trunk Railway hoped to regain its ascendancy over the Canadian Pacific. 

Under Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier, Canadian entrepreneurs built not one but two new railroads stretching from east to west.  The Canadian Northern was cobbled together by its developers who bought up existing railroads and built the connecting links between them.  The Grand Trunk Pacific was the Winnipeg to the Pacific half of a peculiar hybrid railway.  The eastern half, built entirely by the Canadian government, was called the National Transcontinental.  When it was completed, it was handed to the Grand Trunk to operate.  This entire hybrid scheme was built far to the north of previously developed areas to try to stimulate further settlement and development of resources.  The Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-99 was certainly one of the inspirations for this concept. 

Alas for human ingenuity, the two new railroads across Canada suffered massive financial indigestion from their building binge.  Both went bankrupt, and had to be taken over by the Canadian government, which could ill afford to lose their cargo capacity at the height of the first great World War.  In time they were combined with the Intercolonial Railway, becoming the basis of Canadian National Railways, now known as CN.

Many stretches of the old NTR and GTP still host trains operated by VIA Rail, as they provide the only links to a number of remote settlements along those routes.  VIA Rail's thrice-weekly Jasper-Prince George-Prince Rupert train is one example.

It's an unusual train in many ways.  As a form of point-to-point travel, it is mainly of value to the residents of the major towns and cities along the route -- only about a dozen of them, all told.  Today, a large part of its bread and butter is the tourist trade.  Because of that, the train runs as a day train only -- two days travel time in fact, with an overnight stop in Prince George.  Through passengers have to make their own hotel reservations in Prince George. 

The train's consist includes a baggage car, one or more standard coach cars, and a regular "Park" car with a 24-seat scenic dome, the same kind used on The Canadian.  On certain days during the summer a "Panorama" full-length glass-topped dome car is also included, and here is offered the special "Touring Class" service which includes all meals with coffee and tea -- one cold continental breakfast, two cold plate lunches, and two hot dinners (which include wine) for those making the entire two-day journey.

When I did this trip back in 2007, it was possible to come up from Vancouver on The Canadian and connect directly to the Prince Rupert train.  The schedules have now been set in such a way that it is impossible to connect to or from the Prince Rupert train in either direction without making at least a one-night stopover in Jasper.

Mind you, there are worse places to be stuck for a night or two than Jasper!  It's a tourist town, to be sure, but it's far less overblown and overdeveloped than Banff.  Impressive mountains looming around, spectacular sights tucked in among them, a cableway to the top of a nearby peak with an amazing view -- all these elements are there, but just not as jam-packed with visitors.  I'll be writing about Jasper in more detail later in the summer.

The train leaves Jasper westbound at 12:45 pm, and soon is rolling across the summit of the Yellowhead Pass.  The Yellowhead is the lowest and by far the easiest of all the major passes in the Rocky Mountains, which helps to explain why both the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern used it -- their tracks often ran within mere feet of each other.  The scenery here is neither as rugged nor as spectacular as farther south on the CPR line -- at first.  After passing along the shores of Yellowhead Lake and Moose Lake, the line divides in two at Red Pass Junction, these being the original two separate railways.  The Fraser River spills out of the west end of Moose Lake, beginning its long journey to the Pacific at Vancouver.

The two lines both have been maintained here by CN because the old Canadian Northern line has a much gentler grade spread over a longer distance.  It is used by eastbound trains.  The somewhat steeper Grand Trunk route is used by westbound trains descending the mountains.  Below the train the Fraser river can be seen, foaming over wicked rapids in the bottom of a steep-sided canyon.

Before long, a truly spectacular sight appears on the right hand side.  Mount Robson is the tallest mountain in the Canadian portion of the Rocky Mountain range.  It towers far above its near neighbour peaks, and with its imposing bulk is perfectly capable of generating its own weather.  I had the rare privilege of seeing the entire mountain completely in the clear, an experience which is said to happen only about 20 days of the year on average.

Finally the line levels out at Tete Jaune Cache.  This is the point where The Canadian departs on its own route to Vancouver, turning off to the south towards Kamloops.  Meanwhile, our train takes the track less travelled by (with apologies to Robert Frost), and heads northwest along the valley of the Fraser River.  The rest of the journey to Prince George is through forest country, with some areas of farming or ranching.  The mountains are usually visible, close by at first but then more in the distance.  This is the northern part of the wide Rocky Mountain Trench, so no more spectacular feats of railway acrobatics are in store.

The train makes only one regular scheduled stop on this first day, at McBride, and all other stations are flag stops only.  This means that an intending passenger will stand beside the track -- but not too close -- and wave at the locomotive when it comes in sight.  It works because the running speed on this line is moderate.  We did in fact make one other stop, beside the abandoned station building at Dunster.  A small tour group which had taken the scenic ride across the mountain range was picked up here by a van to be returned to their starting point in Jasper.  At McBride there is a pause of several minutes so you can get out and stretch.

If the train is on time, it will rumble across the Fraser River bridge shortly after 7:00pm and stop a few minutes later at the station in Prince George.  It's about a 5-minute walk to the Ramada Inn which I found very comfortable and pleasant.

The second day's run is much longer -- over 12 hours -- but with more stops.  The train rolls out of the Prince George station promptly at 8:00 am and breakfast is served right away.  The countryside you see now is much more placid, even pastoral, with extensive views of the Nechako River (a tributary of the Fraser River) and Fraser Lake -- plenty of pretty pictures but no huge spectacles for a while.

In time, some low mountains begin to appear and close in again, but nothing really spectacular appears until the afternoon.  The approach to the sizable town of Smithers, shortly after 2:00 pm, is dominated by a huge glacier-laden mountain massif which towers in splendid isolation over the railway station and everything else for miles.  This huge peak is called Hudson Bay Mountain (I haven't been able to find out why), and the glacier which used to reach right down to the base is called the Kathlyn Glacier.  Our car guide told us that in former years on hot summer days the crews of steam locomotives used to hang outside the open doors to get a whiff of the naturally chilled air flowing from the glacier!

The train is now following the Bulkley River to the point where it empties into the larger Skeena River, at Hazelton.  The remainder of the route stays with the majestic Skeena south and west to the Pacific, following its guiding waters right through the Coast Range mountains.  Among the first of these to appear are the impressive Seven Sisters, on the south or left side of the track beyond Kitwanga.  The rail line keeps curving around this range of snowy, storm-crowned peaks for quite some time, giving some great angles for photographs.

On this stretch, the track is on the west or right bank of the river, and the highway on the east bank.  This little detail helps to explain the survival of this particular route, since it passes through several tiny hamlets in this region that are not otherwise accessible by land except by hiking through the bush.  The train has one last scheduled stop at the town of Terrace, and now follows the widening sweep of the river west and southwest.  It was in this area that we first became conscious of the aroma of salt in the air and knew we had reached tidewater.  The air was also increasingly shrouded with rain and mist, and with night coming on (because we were running almost 2 hours late) we had no more views beyond this one of an island in the river.

It's for this reason that I would strongly recommend that anyone planning to take this fascinating rail tour should start instead from the Prince Rupert end of the line.  That way you'll be getting all the really eye-popping mountain scenery in daylight.  As a small bonus, you'll also get to sleep in during the stopover at Prince George a bit longer, because the eastbound train doesn't have to leave there till 9:45 am!

Sun, alas, cannot be guaranteed.  This north coast is notoriously foggy, cloudy, and rainy.  Local lore claims that a clear sky is known as "blue clouds".  The easterly part of the line lies in the dry zone of the British Columbia interior, but the western end is definitely in the temperate rain forest of the west coast zone.

Prince Rupert exists only because of being built as the terminal harbour for the railway.  It's a city of around 12000 people, and has a distinct rough-edged, hard-working feel to it.  You can sense right away that you are in a place far remote from the country's major urban areas.  The harbour sees everything from fishing boats to large car ferries, with container ships and bulk freighters thrown into the mix as well.

From Prince Rupert you can proceed twice a week by the Alaska Marine Highway ferries all the way north to Juneau and Skagway, and on from there to Whittier near Anchorage.  The B. C. Ferries run every second day south to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island, and daily to Skidegate in Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands).  The Prince Rupert airport, on nearby Digby Island, handles several daily flights to Vancouver, about two hours flying time south.  There's a sizable selection of hotels available -- but don't expect to find the well-known chains represented.  If you are proceeding by ferry, and the timing is right, you can make a really direct connection: the VIA Rail station is right beside the two ferry terminals.  On the other hand, it's a fair hike to the hotels in the centre of town, so you will probably want to call for a taxi.

If you are leaving Prince Rupert by air, there is a free shuttle bus which picks up airline passengers at the high-rise Highliner Inn downtown, and takes them right through to the airport, driving aboard the Digby Island ferry enroute.  A helpful hint: hang behind at the very back of the crowd when boarding the bus.  Your checked baggage will be the last ones loaded onto the bus or its trailer, and thus at the airport will be the first ones unloaded.  It's the only way to beat the lineup to the check-in desk!  The same bus also brings arriving passengers back into town from their flights. 

The Immigrant Route

I'm on my way home from Halifax, retracing my outbound route of a few days ago.  (read about it here: Tracking Our History ).  So why the title?  In Halifax, there's a museum devoted to the immigration experience which has done so much to make Canada what it is.  The museum is housed in Pier 21, which was the official port of arrival of thousands upon thousands of immigrants throughout much of the last century.

Pier 21 is directly adjacent to the railway station, so the immigrants could simply walk to the trains that would take them to their destinations.  Many of those trains went west by the same route followed today by VIA Rail's The Ocean.

Although I've ridden The Ocean down to Halifax three times, this is the first time I have also returned westwards by the same train.  This led me into the kind of train of thought (pardon the pun) that you might expect from a historian.  It's interesting to me that I find myself trying to view this country from the perspective of a newly-arrived migrant from Europe.  Almost as soon as the train rolls away from Bedford Basin it plunges into the middle of a country of rocky hills, lakes, streams, swamps and forests which looks very familiar to anyone who knows the Canadian Shield but which must have looked frighteningly foreign to the new arrivals from the Old World. 

Later, farmlands begin to appear, but well spread out -- contrary to European tradition, the houses don't all cluster into tight-knit little villages surrounded by fields.  When the train approaches the head of the Bay of Fundy and the Tantramar salt marshes, the migrants who arrived from the Low Countries (including in that term the northern coast of France) must have felt their spirits rise -- this was a landscape they could understand and relate to.  (The low tide picture was taken just over a year ago; the high tide picture was taken this week in a location very near the same spot.)

But this was not their destination.  In the twentieth century, most immigrants were bound farther west than this -- to Montreal, to Toronto, to the Prairies, perhaps all the way to Vancouver.  The overnight journey from Halifax to Montreal was just the first stage for most of them.  And as that journey continued to unfold, they must have felt daunted by the length of time it took for the train to roll through the miles of forest in New Brunswick, a province which on the map manages to look very compact but in reality covers a lot of ground.

So as I contemplate my feeling of "enough-is-enough" following one night of less than ideal sleep on a train, I have to admire the stoicism and endurance of those who journeyed for five, six, seven, even as many as ten nights -- because the immigrant trains often had the lowest traffic priority on Canada's single tracks and had to wait on sidings even for the slowest freight trains.

There's not a lot more to say about the westbound experience that I haven't already covered.  I did spend more time in the scenic dome on the westbound trip, enjoying the attendant François and his informative, witty commentary about the history of his people, les Acadiens, a history which is shamefully little known in the rest of Canada.  I had a good time chatting with fellow passengers in the dome car, an environment that encourages this kind of socializing.  I also managed to catch a few more good pictures which had previously eluded me.  Here's a good clear shot of the entire 19-car train pulled by two locomotives rounding a bend in the Tantramar area.

Much farther north, and hours later, we had some glimpses of a spectacular sunset over the placid waters of the Bay of Chaleur, with the mountains of Quebec's Gaspe Peninsula in the background.

The next morning was bright enough, in spite of the early hour, to get a very good look at the Quebec Bridge as we crossed to Sainte Foy and back.  It was also early enough for your undaunted reporter to push the wrong button at the wrong time, and get a lovely 90-second video of the seats in the dome car, followed by putting the camera on pause for the entire crossing of that majestic bridge.  Sigh.  No question about it, I should have had the first cup of François' coffee before trying to fire up the camera!  Shortly after leaving the bridge, you get this view as the train crosses the rock-strewn Chaudiere River at Charny.

Later on, after stopping at Drummondville and Saint Hyacinthe, the train passes the imposing Mont Saint Hilaire beside the Richelieu River.

And then the train rolls across the lengthy Victoria Bridge into Montreal.  If you're lucky, the train uses the south approach where you can see the front end of the train rounding the bend onto the bridge proper ahead of you.

Even here, of course, most of those immigrants I am recalling to mind would do no more than break their journey for a few hours, until their next train was due to leave.  It's a sobering reminder of the vastness of Canada when you realize that the 22-hour journey of The Ocean hasn't done much more than complete the first one-fifth of a coast-to-coast rail trip.

The only other significant differences in the westbound journey concern meal times.  Dinner has not two but three different sitting times:  at 5:00, 6:30, and 8:30 pm.  This helps to accommodate the passengers who board at various communities in New Brunswick.  And breakfast begins, not at 7:00 am but at 6:00 and ends shortly after 8:00 to allow for final cleanup before arrival into Montreal, scheduled at 9:18.  Also, of course, you get to set your clocks back one hour as compared to having to set them ahead one hour on the eastbound trip.  Every little bit helps!  That early arrival time makes it easy to connect onto VIA trains going to either Ottawa or Toronto.

I'll close with the same observations I've made before about The Ocean.  The modern sleepers are compact but workable, and very pleasant.  The meals are very good, considering that the food is loaded aboard and then reheated and plated in the galley.  I actually had the same crew as on the eastbound trip several days earlier, but the dining room servers were now working as room attendants in the sleepers and vice versa.  One and all are friendly, efficient, and show distinct pride in giving excellent service to their customers.  For those who can't afford the full show of The Canadian running all the way to the west coast, The Ocean gives you a briefer taste of overnight life aboard VIA Rail and a truly delightful tour through some really beautiful Canadian landscapes.

City of the Sea

Although Canada's three oceanic coastlines boast dozens of harbours of all sizes, there are only two that were perfectly framed by nature to become major seaports, handling the commerce of the world in all its infinite variety and astonishing quantity.  All others must yield to Halifax and Vancouver in this respect, because the natural harbours of those two cities are of such great size.  And of the two, Halifax is far the older.

Halifax is located on a gigantic natural harbour, deep, wide, long, and beautifully sheltered.  The two entrance channels are separated by McNab's Island (1).  Coming on up the harbour, you pass Point Pleasant (2) which separates the main body of water from the narrow finger called the Northwest Arm.  Both McNab's Island and Point Pleasant were equipped by the British Army with heavy-duty gun batteries.  Beyond those, the huge guns of the Citadel (3), high up on Citadel Hill, effectively barred any enemy from entering the Narrows (4), the channel separating Halifax from Dartmouth.  Beyond all those defences, natural and human, lies the deep expanse of water called Bedford Basin (5).  It was here that huge convoys of ships assembled during both World Wars before sailing to Britain with food, fuel, weapons and ammunition.  If you had asked Mother Nature to create the perfect haven for shipping, she could hardly have done better than this!

To say that Halifax's defences were formidable is to understate the case by a wide margin.  It's no surprise that this city and harbour played a continuous and significant role in both the military and the commercial history of Canada.

When you walk through downtown Halifax, this history is all around you.  There are all the old stone warehouses, the wooden and stone churches, the cemeteries, the numerous monuments, and towering above all the massive Citadel on top of Citadel Hill.  Since I am staying right in downtown on this trip, it was a perfect excuse to skip the usual procedure of renting a car and just work with my two feet and -- where necessary -- the excellent public transit.

The historic area is all crammed into the eight narrow blocks between Brunswick Street (on the eastern edge of Citadel Hill) and Water Street (on the harbour).  On a map it looks like easy walking turf, but don't kid yourself.  The whole city slopes steeply uphill from the harbour -- and I do mean steeply.  The only parallel I've ever seen to it in Canada is St. John's, Newfoundland.  When I left my hotel on the corner of Hollis and Sackville Streets, and started uphill, I only had six blocks to go up to Brunswick, and by the time I got there I was looking down onto the roof of the 9-storey hotel! (the last white building on the left side of the street).

Turning north on Brunswick, I walked along to the corner of Carmichael, where the Halifax Town Clock has kept excellent time since 1803.  Behind the clock, that innocent looking green slope conceals the massive gun batteries and ramparts of the Halifax Citadel.

At Duke Street I turned east again and crept (rather than walked) back down the steep hill all the way down to Water Street.  Halifax has done a magnificent job of preserving its waterfront area for public use instead of shamefully letting it get eaten up by nearly solid walls of condominiums.  Not naming any names.  There's an extensive Harbour Boardwalk with restaurants, pubs, snack stands, numerous sightseeing cruises on offer, and more.  Some of the businesses are housed in genuine heritage buildings, and there are more to see throughout the city.  Halifax is definitely modern in feeling, but heritage is still big business here.  Buildings are regularly repaired -- examples in these two pictures being the City Hall and an old bank building.

Old buildings are also repurposed.  One of the most imaginative is the modern Delta Barrington hotel.  Here's the hotel's front, on Barrington Street...

...and here's the back, facing Granville Street, a block full of heritage buildings on both sides.

This block of Granville, reserved for pedestrians only, is actually the edge of the Historic Properties preservation area, a major highlight of the city.  The Historic Properties district was originally an area of numerous warehouses containing goods offloaded from ships in the harbour.  These fine old stone and wood buildings now contain numerous upscale shops (some making their merchandise on site) as well as a fine selection of eateries and drinkeries, or (as a friend of mine used to say) "swilling stations".  Here are a couple of photo highlights:

While we are in the harbour area, let's head a bit farther south for a look at the boardwalk...

...and this interesting clock tower.  The tower is plainly modern.  The clock within it is a different matter.  It was built in 1767 in London (England) and installed in a clock tower in the Halifax Naval Dockyard in 1772.  In 1941 the clock was moved to a new building within the Dockyard.  When that building in turn was demolished in the 1990s, the new tower you see here was built and the clock installed in its third home.  It still has to be wound up twice weekly, and still keeps time faithfully (accurate within a minute a week), at the ripe old age of 248 years.

Behind the clock is the ferry terminal.  The harbour ferries are an integral part of the Halifax-Dartmouth Metro Transit network, and buses interconnect with the ferries at all three terminals.  After lunch on a waterfront patio in the Historic Properties, I hopped on the ferry for my traditional harbour cruise.  Look at the prices of the commercial cruises, and then consider the $5.00 round trip cash fare for the ferries.

Previously, I've always taken the ferry northeast to Alderney Gate near downtown Dartmouth.  This time, I tried the ferry to Woodside, much farther south, and discovered that this crossing gives far better views of the city of Halifax from the water.  This was the best picture I got.  It has a little of everything: historic buildings, modern buildings, the boardwalk, and straight up the hill on Carmichael Street to the Town Clock, with the Citadel looming behind it.

The Woodside Terminal in the south end of Dartmouth is, frankly, not in a very interesting area.  It's convenient to several large industrial facilities and the Dartmouth General Hospital, but that's about it.  However, for anyone heading to the intriguing Fisherman's Cove development farther south, it's the ideal place to transfer to the # 60 bus south, and much quicker than taking the same bus all that extra distance from Alderney Gate.  Both ferries run at least every 30 minutes all day long and into the evening.

Right beside the Woodside Terminal, though, is this fascinating sight, which I have never seen before.  It's a facility for training oil-rig workers in the use of the escape pods that are now used on rigs in case of fire or explosion.  Seeing that certainly made the trip worthwhile!

Back in the city, and by now suffering from a notable case of "tourist feet", I headed back to the hotel for a well-earned afternoon siesta.  But by dinnertime, I was back out on the boardwalk again, and no wonder!  Halifax's waterfront is a simply irresistible "people place", and one of the biggest reasons why I love to visit this city again and again.