The tour guide wore a kilt. Never mind that it was March and the weather was nippy. Dennis Campbell wanted to show the visitor something more than the sights.
By wearing the Campbell family tartan, he aimed to explain the people of Nova Scotia, which is Latin for ”New Scotland.” His kilt, created from 8 yards of plaid, made the point.
Halifax, the capital of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, was founded in 1749 by Col. Edward Cornwallis, an English aristocrat who claimed the area for George Montagu Dunk, Earl of Halifax, director of Trade and Plantations for Great Britain.
Locals here say they`re forever grateful to Cornwallis for naming the city after his patron`s title rather than his last name.
Cornwallis brought with him 2,500 colonists from Britain, crammed aboard 13 ships. Within a few years, the English, Scots and Irish displaced the Micmac Indians and expelled the French Acadians, claiming the port city and the verdant land around it for Britain. (Acadia was the former French colony
(1604-1713) on the northeast coast of North America. It included what are now the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, plus parts of Quebec and Maine.)
Just as Quebec City is regarded as the cradle of French culture in Canada, Halifax is considered the birthplace of the nation`s English heritage. The British legacy still prevails. The Union Jack still flies in Halifax. A cannon still fires at noon every day from the Citadel, a British-built fortress smack downtown. And a graceful clock tower given to the city in 1803 by Prince Edward, fourth son of King George III and father of Queen Victoria, who found that Haligonians, as they refer to themselves, were habitually tardy during his six-year stint as military commander-in-chief, still is the town timepiece.
There also is more contemporary evidence of the British influence. A towering statue of a standing and pondering Sir Winston Churchill dominates the square in front of the public library. Along the waterfront, restored stone-and-wood warehouses built by the British in the 1800s now house shops, theaters and restaurants. English pubs blanket the city, and every weekday afternoon in summer, Halifax mayor Ron Wallace invites tourists to the grand ballroom in City Hall for tea.
A walking town
That`s a gracious gesture for a busy mayor (”I get an opportunity to meet a lot of people,” Wallace says), but Halifax (population 120,000) is more like a big town than a bustling city. As such, it is easily toured on foot, though there are 800 taxis at your service.
The Citadel might be the best place to start discovering Halifax. The colossal fort, fascinating even for non-military types, underscores the strategic purpose for which the city was founded. Though never attacked, the fort was manned by the British army until 1906 and by Canadian forces through World War II, when troops bivouacked there before crossing the Atlantic.
Cross a narrow footbridge to enter the Citadel and leap back nearly two centuries. Four hundred men helped raise its thick stone walls, which took 25 years to complete instead of the planned six. Most of the fortress has been preserved, and one can climb to the top and gaze down on the city and the harbor.
Within the Citadel is an excellent 50-minute multimedia presentation in four small theaters that traces the city`s past, at one point describing how much New Englanders influenced history here. Anxious about the French presence directly north of them, New Englanders urged Britain to wrest the area from France.
New Englanders move in
New Englanders then bolstered the British, replenishing the work force when colonists who sailed with Cornwallis died during the bitter first winter. And when the Acadians were expelled from Nova Scotia in 1755, folks from Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire trooped north to grab the vacant farmland.
During the American Revolution, thousands more of the New Englanders loyal to Britain sought sanctuary in Nova Scotia. Among them was New Hampshire Gov. John Wentworth, who resigned the governorship and moved to Halifax, where he built Government House, the grand stone mansion on Barrington Street that is older than the White House and today shelters Nova Scotia`s lieutenant-governor, the provincial liaison to the Queen of England.
Another ardent Loyalist was Dr. John Halliburton, a Rhode Island surgeon who spied for the British. Fearing he would be discovered, Halliburton fled to Halifax. Like other Loyalists, he was welcomed.
His son, Brenton, became chief justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court. In 1816, Brenton built an elegant townhouse on Morris Street, around the corner from Wentworth`s mansion. Today it`s the enchanting Halliburton House, lovingly resurrected from near ruin and transformed into a small hotel and superb dining spot.
While wealth grew on the fabulous south end, the much poorer north end would know only more hardship. On Dec. 6, 1917, the largest manmade explosion before Hiroshima took place in Halifax harbor. The blast was heard 200 miles away, and it devastated 2 square miles of the north end.
The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic documents the collision of the French freighter Mont Blanc, which was carrying 2,500 tons of TNT, and the Belgian ship Imo. The intensity of the explosion caused a tidal wave. To add to the misery, a blizzard hit that night. Two thousand people died in the disaster, 6,000 were injured and 1,600 buildings were leveled.
Blending video, news clips, photos, interviews with survivors and the mementos of 60 children killed at an elementary school, the museum documents the worst day in Halifax`s history.
Dedicated to Haligonian Samuel Cunard, founder of the steamship line bearing his name, the Maritime Museum also holds memorabilia from another sea disaster. A deck chair from the SS Titanic, which sank off Newfoundland in 1912, is part of the collection, retrieved during the relief effort. More than 150 victims of the Titanic are buried in Halifax cemeteries.
A 50-cent bargain
Just steps from the Maritime Museum is perhaps the best bargain in the city: 50 cents buys a ferry ride to Dartmouth. The 14-minute boat trip to Halifax`s sister city provides a terrific view of the second-largest natural harbor in the world (after Sydney, Australia) and terminates at an unusual shopping arcade, where a public library exists amid a bevy of shops.
If you`re seeking more than a snack in Dartmouth, try La Perla, a lovely Italian restaurant across the street from the ferry terminal. Fresh flowers, linen tablecloths and a refined atmosphere complement the pasta, veal, chicken and fish selections at what Haligonians grudgingly concede is one of the best restaurants in the area (even though it`s in rival Dartmouth).
Two quarters, and you`re back in Halifax. Head for the Nova Scotia Museum and delve even deeper into the city`s roots. The Micmac Indians occupied Nova Scotia first, and the museum houses a few Micmac treasures, including a fabulous costume made around 1840 for Henry O`Halloran, an English army officer who befriended the Micmacs.
Fashioned of wool and adorned with silk ribbon applique and 30 pounds of tiny glass beads strung on horsehair, the costume includes a headdress embroidered with two Union Jacks. O`Halloran took the costume back to England, where it sat atop a wardrobe for more than 100 years before the Canadian museum system acquired it at auction in 1977. It took two years to restore.
Fishing is big time
The Micmacs relied on the abundant waters of the Atlantic for sustenance, and even today fishing is big business in Nova Scotia. Dozens of fishing villages dot an astounding 4,626 miles of provincial coastline.
Peggy`s Cove is the most famous and also the most visited tourist attraction in Nova Scotia; it`s only 25 miles from Halifax. Even though it`s minuscule (population 50), Peggy`s Cove offers some of the most photographed landscape in Canada.
Artist-in-residence William de Garthe spent the last six years of his life carving a huge granite slab at the cove, releasing 32 figures he said had been sleeping in the rock for more than 10 million years. He dedicated the sculpture to those who harvest the ocean.
A stately lighthouse sits at the tip of Peggy`s Cove, and visitors are warned that the granite rocks leading to it are dangerously slick when weather is blustery.
Whatever the weather, one can take refuge in the Sou`wester Boutique and Restaurant, where proprietor Jack Campbell serves unforgettable cider and homemade gingerbread buried under vanilla ice cream.
Tour guide Dennis Campbell and other Haligonians urged the visitor to return in summer, when nature breathes life into public gardens, parks, beaches, coves, capes, points, caves, basins, sand dunes, inlets and channels. Summer, they said, is when you`ll see ”our true colors.” Colors, one assumes, that are patterned in plaid.
