Maritime Expedition # 1: Sleeping In and Eating Out

Okay, the cat is officially out of the bag.  My first big trip of 2021 is a visit to the Maritime provinces of Canada -- those being Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.

It's less than 2 months since VIA Rail restored service on the Ocean from Montreal to Halifax, my favourite of all their intercity routes.   But for now, it's the same kind of very limited service as the Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver: one trip a week, passengers expected to remain in their rooms, and severely restricted menu of easily reheated foods.  

That made it easy for me to decide in favour of flying to the east coast, and the obvious destination is once again Halifax, the hub city of the Atlantic region, with numerous nonstop daily flights from Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.

For most of the pandemic period, Nova Scotia and the other Atlantic provinces were firmly locked down against any not-absolutely-essential travel, but they began loosening their restrictions a bit during the late spring and early summer.  I had to fill in online forms for two travel permits, one for Nova Scotia and one for Prince Edward Island, and those two processes both included uploading a digital image of my vaccine certificate.  One permit was approved instantly, the other in a space of a few hours.  On arrival, I just had to show the approval email on my phone to leave the airport.  Quarantine would be required only if a person is not vaccinated or has received only the first of two doses.

So into Halifax I flew, rented a car, and set up shop for the first three days in the Westin Nova Scotian, the grand dame of all Halifax's hotels.  It was originally a Canadian National Railways hotel, and still has the direct corridor link with the adjacent railway station used by VIA Rail.  The Nova Scotian may not quite equal the utter elegance of such more famous railway hotels as the Chateau Frontenac or the Royal York, but it has a more restrained Georgian classic air (with modern touches here and there) which suits it, and the city, perfectly.  

As the above picture plainly shows, the hotel has 2 main parts -- the original building, completed in 1930 in a Georgian style, and the newer and taller north wing (1959).  The hotel, the station, and the park across the street were conceived as a single unified project.  Here's a 1931 archival photo which shows how the complex looked, as originally built.  The ocean liner posing at the terminal behind the hotel is the RMS Olympic, sister of the ill-fated RMS Titanic.

By Richard McCully Aerial Photograph Collection - Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41238983

The statue of Edward, Lord Cornwallis in the Cornwallis Park across the street has recently been removed, and the park is now rededicated as the Peace and Friendship Park.

As to why I picked the Westin, here are my two main points: 

[1] It pays to check room rates.  For whatever reason or reasons, the Westin was just about the cheapest thing going among downtown Halifax hotels this week.  Normally, it's at or near the top of the price list.

[2] As a Westin hotel, and therefore part of the Marriott hotel family (which I patronize frequently), the Nova Scotian will give me a nice room upgrade if there's space available.  

So on this occasion, I reserved a run-of-house queen bed room (probably in the less-desirable 1959 wing), and here's what I got:

 

Not to mention the view from the private rooftop terrace with table and chairs outside the room:

 

This "junior suite: is on the top floor of the original wing, facing the park, right in between the pair of towers which you can see in the archive photo above.  I think the Royal Suite is right next door.

The Moral: 

Strong loyalty to one hotel chain pays off no less impressively than strong loyalty to one airline.

I had two full days in Halifax before carrying on to other parts.  The first was gloriously sunny and warm; the second was foggy, drizzly, and dreary -- in a word, blah.  In another word, Scottish.  It's no wonder the earliest refugees from Scotland felt so much at home when they landed here.  Obviously, the following pictures were all taken on Day 1, on a long walk along Halifax's unique and fun-loving Harbourfront Walkway.

This promenade stretches for about 1.5 kilometres (just under a mile), and takes in a huge variety of sights -- and sounds! -- in that distance.  Some parts are paved, bricked, or gravelled paths on dry land, but much of the way is built of close-fitted squared timbers, often located out over the water's edge.  And that last detail goes for some of the attractions along the way too, whether on newly-constructed walkways or atop old harbour piers.

Rather than try to take it in order, I decided to give a thematic overview.  The first and most intriguing thing is Halifax's cute, quirky approach to the omnipresent question of maintaining social distance.  Here are three good examples.

 

"Quirky" goes farther than signs on the harbourfront.  There's this delightful kids' playground right behind the Maritime Museum, complete with a big Yellow Submarine.

Nearby is "The Wave."  You can tell it's after Labour Day and school is back in.  On weekends and in the summer, this thing is covered with kids!

Public art along the harbour gets quirky too.  Consider these three lamp posts.  The one on the ground represents a fallen Saturday night drunk.  The drunk's friend is bending over with concern.  The third lamp post is bent over towards the edge of the pier, and since it's plainly been a rough Saturday night, it shouldn't be hard to guess what that one's doing -- or just about to do.

A nearby area is given over to this collection of small, brightly coloured kiosks.  They can be adapted for shops, food counters, ticket desks, you name it.  Seems that every time I go to Halifax, they've been moved to a different area of the walkway.

Then there are the numerous monuments and memorials.  I always think of Halifax as the "City of the Sea" (not just the "City on the Sea") because Halifax does so much more than just sit on the edge of the ocean.  The entire history of Halifax for the last 350 years, and all the most significant events in that history, are all tied into the life of the ocean in one way or another.  It's no surprise, then, that stories relating to the ocean, to ships, to sailors, and to ocean travel lie behind all these memorials and others besides.  

The Harbourfront Walkway begins right behind the Westin Hotel.  And right at the beginning stands this dapper, rather cocky statue of Samuel Cunard.  It's amusing to think that the Cunard Line of cruise ships is identified so closely with the classic elegance of British sea travel -- yet Cunard, the line's founder, was a Haligonian (a resident of Halifax, for those not familiar with the unique term).  

 

Samuel Cunard was the first person to operate a line of steamships carrying mail across the Atlantic Ocean -- and, for that reason, the ships of his company were known for a century and a half by the prefix RMS (Royal Mail Ship) instead of the more conventional SS (Steamship).  On the base of his monument, an explanatory plaque includes a silhouette picture of RMS Britannia, the first ship of the Cunard Line to complete a mail voyage across the Atlantic.

A short distance away stands this intriguing pair of sculptural installations.  The one in front of the benches is called The Volunteers, and pays tribute to all the work done by women and children in Canada during the world wars of the 20th century to support the war effort.  Behind the benches, the Immigrant shows a symbolic immigrant figure about to take the big step off the bow of a ship and into a new homeland (fittingly not depicted-- a leap of faith into the unknown).  I sometimes wonder why this piece, as moving as it is, wasn't positioned a few hundred metres farther south, in front of the Canadian Immigration Museum at Pier 21.

Again, a short further walk brings you to this memorial to the ships lost at sea in World War Two.  One of them, the corvette HMCS Trentonian, was the vessel on which my uncle lost his life when the ship was torpedoed a few short months before the war's end.

Near the midpoint of the walkway, you would have to detour off the main route into a shady courtyard between two modern buildings.  There, you will see another memorial to sailors who went down to the sea in ships during wartime and -- in some cases -- never returned.

 

The newest addition, since my last visit 2 years ago, is this memorial to the Grand Dérangement of les acadiens in the mid-1700s.  I hope it will be placed in a more suitable location once the work on the construction site behind it is finished.

The map on the memorial shows how les acadiens were dispatched from Nova Scotia by sea to multiple destinations around the Atlantic rim.  Definitely one of the saddest sea stories connected to this city, a long-time British (and later Canadian) naval stronghold.

On a brighter note, I simply had to take advantage of the beautiful weather for a patio lunch on my favourite patio in Halifax, perhaps my favourite patio in the world.  The sun, the water right there beside you, the view, and what still ranks as one of the finest lobster rolls I've ever had in my life, matched with a delicious spinach salad.  Salty's does it again!

The restaurants of Halifax, at least all the half dozen or so that I visited, have come up with a grand scheme to simplify the sign-in process for Covid tracking.  All you do is text the restaurant name in the format they give you, and your own name, to 11011.  Instantly you get back a confirmation to show to the host.  Since they all use the same number, it's very easy to access again once you've used it.  Smart thinking there!

 

Later that evening, I went for dinner at the Waterfront Warehouse, another long-time favourite which is especially good for oyster lovers.  There, I saw this lovable bit of good humour at the top of the drink menu.

 

On a final note, nothing makes the waterfront a people place quite so much as the various festivals and public events promoted there during good weather in all seasons.  On the particular day I took my walk, there was a fairly big open-water swim in the harbour just winding up, and numerous people in wetsuits still lingering around the finish point to congratulate each finisher loudly.  Nearby, on the pier with the lamp post sculptures, a band was playing to add to the fun.

An even more delightful sight, although I didn't get a picture because it was too dark, happened in a gazebo at another point on the waterfront as I headed back to the hotel after dinner.  This time, it was not live music, just soundtrack, but speakers were pumping out some beguiling cha-cha music and seven or eight couples were dancing happily on the waterfront.  I'll bet my parents would have joined in if they had been there!