Canada Days 11, 12, 13, June 18, 19, 20, 2012

On Monday the 18th, we drove the Jeep into Halifax, the Capitol of the Province of Nova Scotia, Canada.  The tourist area is on the waterfront along Lower Water Street.  Halifax harbor has always been a very busy port, because it never freezes.  Of course our first stop was the visitor center to see if there were any stops we had not previously heard of.  Then we went to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.    Of course there was more to see in this museum than we thought.  We went out for lunch, and then back to the museum for the whole afternoon.  They have a Titanic exhibit because they had ships leave harbor to give aid.  There are exhibits from the Days of Sail, Age of Steam, and ships wrecked nearby.  Before heading back to the motorhome, we walked along the harbor walk until we could get a picture of George’s Island Lighthouse.

Tuesday, the 19th, we drove back in to Halifax for more touring.  We started at the Halifax Citadel National Historic Site.  It is a fort that was designed to protect the Halifax Harbor from up on the hill overlooking the town.  Throughout the fort there are re-enactors displaying life at the Citadel in 1869 for the 78th Highland Regiment.  Private Hardy gave us a tour of the Citadel in English.  They also give tours in French.  Our tour included descriptions of the uniforms, a visit to the barracks, views of the town from the wall surrounding the fort, watching the firing of the noon gun, and listening to the pipers and drummers.  After lunch, we took a harbor tour on the Tall Ship Silva.     We then went to Province House where Nova Scotia’s legislative assembly has met since 1818.  Where we hang pictures of governors, they have beautiful oil paintings of Kings and Queens as well as portraits of governors.  And then finally we took some pictures of Theodore Too, from the Canadian television cartoon of a tugboat working in Halifax Harbor.

Then today, the 20th, we went back to Peggy’s Cove where we stopped at the Swissair Flight 111 memorial as well as another view of the lighthouse.

From Peggy’s Cove, we continued east to Terence Bay.  There we saw the Terence Bay Lighthouse.    Then we stopped at the memorial to the sinking of the SS Atlantic on the night of April 1st, 1873.  It was the most terrible sinking until the Titanic came along.  Of the almost 1,000 people aboard, 562 lost their lives, and 277 were buried in a mass grave just behind the rope in this picture.

Type at you later.