(If you’re a Stan Rogers fan, you might catch the reference!)
I’m just back from a wonderful vacation to eastern Canada, the first time I’ve been in that neck of the woods since 2014.
My daughter and I both went to Dalhousie University for undergrad and grad school, although in different decades. Different centuries or millennia, if you will. That means that we lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia for some important, formative years. Last April she sent me a text suggesting a trip to visit the old haunts. I’m not sure she expected me to get on board as quickly as I did, but within a week or so we had our calendars compared, itineraries settled and tickets purchased.
I flew to Halifax via Montreal and she went via Toronto. She was supposed to arrive after me but she was able to make an earlier connection at Pearson and ended up getting there before I even took off from Montreal. This was only my second time flying since the pandemic and my first international flight in six years. Technology has made things like customs much easier, and there were no hitches for either of us getting into Canada. (I still have a Canadian passport, so that helps a little.)
It was late when we arrived, so we stayed at the airport hotel and headed off to southern New Brunswick the next morning, where we spent a couple of days visiting my sister’s and brother’s families. Then on Wednesday morning we set out for Halifax again, stopping at Masstown for fish and chips when we refueled. We reached Halifax around noon, staying right downtown, which meant we could do all our sight-seeing on foot.
And, boy, did we walk. My phone recorded 9000 steps on Wednesday, 15,000 on Thursday and almost 25,000 on Friday, for a grand total of 18 miles. The busker festival was happening on the waterfront, so that made things lively down there. We had to have breakfast at Tim Hortons at least once, and there were a number of other restaurants we wanted to revisit, including Maxwell’s Plum, which had been a pub favorite for both of us.
I’d arranged with the author of the Nova Scotia story in Not the Same Road Out to have a book signing at Block Shop Books in Lunenburg on Thursday evening. The connective fiber of the anthology is the Trans Canada Trail, which I wrote about in my story but have never been on. (Thanks to YouTube, I was able to travel the Goose River Trail several times without ever leaving Texas!) However, that morning my daughter and I decided to take the $3 CDN tour of Dartmouth by going across Halifax harbour on the ferry. Our plan was to walk from the Woodside terminal to the Alderney landing and catch the ferry back from there. Little did we know—and much to our surprise—that the path between the two terminals is part of the Trans Canada Trail. What a happy coincidence!
After a morning of walking that included an obligatory stop at King of Donair on Quinpool, we set out for Lunenburg mid-afternoon. The forecast had promised rain but there were only a few sprinkles. The last time we’d been out that way, on our 2014 trip to Chester to visit the set of Haven, it rained more. We met up with one my old college friends who I hadn’t seen since his wedding in the early 1990s and had dinner on the waterfront with him, where we saw the Bluenose II dock from Mahone Bay as we traded stories about our times at Dal. Then we went up the street for the book event, which was fairly well attended. Tricia Snell and I each read sections from our stories and then held a Q&A and signed books. An old friend from summer camp days (that would have been in the 1970s) came in from Halifax with her husband and I ran into another familiar face from northern NB afterward, so that was a real blast from the past.
We drove back to Halifax and then spent the next day walking around the Dalhousie campus and the Quinpool part of town, including the Halifax Public Gardens. We marveled at all the changes since we’d lived in the city, trying to figure out what used to be where that new building is now, etc. (There’s a joke about getting directions in eastern Canada where people say things like, “You go up the street and turn left where Richardson’s Store used to be.”) But we both agreed that the essential heart of Halifax, the part that continues to reach out and speak to us—and occasionally calls us back—is still there. Given the right circumstances, we could envision living there again. Granted, it’s been a while since we’ve been there during the winter!
And as important and nostalgic as the return to Halifax was, the best part of the trip was getting to spend so much time with my daughter. Hours together on the road between NB and NS and then walking all over the city together. It was absolutely wonderful. The only disappointment for my daughter was that she couldn’t find a single pub where anyone was playing Irish or Scottish music. The general trend was for 70s era music, which is probably a nod to the typical age of summer tourists. We heard a lot of Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. No Stan Rogers cover bands.
The return trip was a bit of an adventure. Our flight out was at 5:00 am, which meant we had to be at the airport by 3:00 am, which was surprisingly lively at that time of day/night. Clear sailing to Toronto and a breeze through customs again (this time traveling on my US passport). My daughter’s flight was scheduled for an hour or more after mine, and we reached a point where I had to go right to gate 32 and she had to go left to gate 97, so we said our goodbyes. I only got as far as gate 55 when I had to wait because the gates from that point on were still servicing domestic flights. When the doors opened nearly an hour later and I finally made it to the gate, I discovered that I was now flying out of gate 95, right next to my daughter’s gate! So I trekked (more steps, although Saturday’s total was a modest 5700) across the airport and we got to hang out a while longer until I boarded.
And sat. And sat. They had what they called a “catering incident.” Perhaps on account of the gate change, the wrong things had been loaded in. It was only supposed to take 10 minutes to rectify, but our departure time kept getting pushed back in 10 and 15 and 20 minute increments. They didn’t even have any cups to give passengers a drink of water! By the time they had everything sorted out, the weather in Houston had worsened, so the pilot decided to take on some more fuel in case they needed to circle around the storm. In the meantime, my daughter–who I’d been texting with during the whole ordeal—had already boarded her flight and departed!
They weren’t kidding about the weather, though. This is what it looked like as we approached the airport in Houston. Things got pretty bumpy for a few minutes, but we must have had a Turbulence Expert on board because we made it down to the ground safe and sound.
