Halifax has a lot to see and do but I didn’t do much of it, this time.  Fortunately, we were there on vacation a few years ago.  On that trip I got caught in probably the largest non-urban traffic jam imaginable in Peggy’s Cove.  We to the Citadel and enjoyed pubs and live music.

This time I got stuck in the Canadian Museum of Immigration on Pier 21, right next to our ship’s berth at Pier 22, and aside from a short stroll didn’t get much further.  The museum has excellent archives on computer and a friendly group of docents who are willing to help you find immigration records and print them out for you.  That was our first stop at the museum, and it made my day.

My Grandfather Brew, the one who took me with him on trips far and wide, and who introduced me to the joys of ocean travel as a kid, told me he made first landfall in North America at Halifax working on a ship.  The immigration museum does not keep crew manifests but based on a few hints I learned that my grandfather landed as an immigrant in the United States twice.  Once in 1907 and again in 1909.  I also got a better idea of his age.  He presented himself as younger than he was to keep from being forced to retire as a loadmaster at the Brooklyn Army Maritime Terminal.  I also learned more about where he stayed in Glasgow between trips to sea.  I knew it was with “Uncle Eddie” But I didn’t know on which side of the family.  Eddie his mother’s brother.  I also got a printout about the ship he arrived on as an immigrant.  This is probably more interesting to me than to you.  Sorry.

We spent a lot of time at the museum going through its exhibits.  One that captured both Suzi and me was about the evolution of Canadian Cuisine through the mix of indigenous ingredients and different immigrant recipes and customs.  They had fortune cookies. When we were students in Taiwan in 1969, fortune cookies were unknown. There were “Fortunate Cakes” with symbols for long life, prosperity and many children mixed into molded sticky rice, but not the rolled and folded almond paste we were familiar with.  Turns out they were a product of a Japanese entrepreneur who opened a Chinese restaurant. 

We were invited to choose our fortunes from cookies and my fortune read: 

“Try a recipe from a country you know little about.” 

That’s good advice for this whole crise. The museum has an exhibit on the trains that took immigrants west from Halifax.

Trains will always capture my interest and exhibits on Canada’s role in taking in refugees from the two world wars up to the current day, including their problems in settling in and the contributions they made to Canadian culture and cuisine.

We had time for a short stroll outside the museum confines and enjoyed the murals along the waterfront.  We also got some in some last minute shopping.  Suzi for Christmas presents, I bought a book.

The sail out party was disappointing.  The wind was too high for us to be outside on the aft pool deck, so it was moved under the retractable dome at the midship pool.  There the volume and reverberation from the band makes everything impossible for me to understand.  Without my hearing aids it is an unintelligible cacophony and with them it’s an aural blowout.  I’m acoustically isolated unless the dome is open.  With the wind, that would not have been a good idea.  So, Suzi and I retreated to a quieter place and enjoyed our final views of Halifax Harbor.

 I had the old folksong:

“Farewell to Nova Scotia, your sea-bound coast.”

Running through my head.  Suzi says it was not just running through my head.  Sometimes I don’t realize that I am singing.  Sometimes I can’t keep from singing.