We woke up in a bed with blankets, in a room with curtains, in a house with foundations - very strange. We made ourselves at home - Paul and Nancy basically said, here's the key, we've got things to do, make yourself welcome - the perfect hosts.
So I spent the morning putting through four loads of laundry, while looking over the Harvard Course Catalogue online, blogging and reading a proper newspaper (the Globe and Mail). Tom had a morning of LEGO. And Richard had the small task of lying flat on his back under Harvey, covering himself with oil and sweat while replacing dodgy joints and axles.
And we had a bonus afternoon in Halifax, which does seem to be a very good size for a city. It's walkable, green, historic, and somewhat funky round the edges. Our unexpected visit has coincided with the International Buskers Festival, so there's free entertainment on the waterfront (juggling, gymnastics, Houdini-like escapes, and a lot of student banter).
Plus we got to visit the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic - which is packed full of exhibits from full size sailboats to Cunard memorabilia (Samuel Cunard being a Nova Scotia native). There are two stand out exhibitions, which make you realise that this is a city which went through hell a century ago.
First - April 1912. When the Titanic went down on its maiden voyage from southampton to New York, Halifax was the nearest city able to send out ships to find the survivors. And to pick up the hundreds of bodies floating on the water, and bring them back to land for Christian burial. The exhibition is small, but poignant. The first thing you see is a deckchair, sitting behind glass, one of the few surviving originals. Tucked into a corner, there's a big book which logs all the passengers by class, and notes who survived, and you realise that of course it was largely First Class passengers who made it to the lifeboats.
As if it wasn't enough for Halifax to take on the grim task of burying the bodies ("the church bells rang for days"), then came December 1917, when two ships collided in the harbour, one carrying tons of TNT, and the truly massive explosion wiped out much of the city in an instant. 1700 people died. That night, a ferocious blizzard came over, and many who'd survived the blast then froze. It's all brought home in a short film (made 1991 I think) with the frail voices of a few of the survivors. And I was really moved by a cabinet that displayed two little leather satchels. They were the book bags of two brothers. There were three, and a few moments latter, there were only two - the surviving boys think they were protected from the blast by the padding of their satchels on their backs.
Terribly sobering I know, but the museum also did a great job of illuminating all sorts of maritime themes - in quite a small space we had a sentimental look at the history of the great cruiseliners (memories of the QEII and QMII), a tour of shipwreck archeology, and a thoroughly gruesome rendition of What They Did to Pirates as well...
Oh, and Tom thoroughly enjoyed being attacked by a giant Kraken.
Back outside in the blazing heat (must have been 90 degrees), we saw more busking (man somersaults off ladders, leaps through ring of fire etc), and then Nancy came down to join us for a jolly supper at Saltys bistro on the harbour.
The Listers were all pretty much ready for bed after that, and Nancy persuaded us to take a final tour around the Halifax docks. Which revealed to us the Friday night Classic Car Club rendezvous (Corvettes! Mustangs! Hotrods!) right by all the shipping-and-loading activity... and a movie scene being filmed in a very posh street where we caught a glimpse of a grand house covered top to toe in Christmas lights, and about a dozen attendant trailers.... all somewhat surreal, in keeping with our entire existence in Halifax.
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