Jume 24, 2017

Halifax is a thriving city of 400,000 and has one of the world’s largest harbors, 10 miles long. It was established in 1749 and the fortress was used to protect Boston. Now over 1 million ships come here each year, 179 are cruise ships.

We arrived and experienced the Scottish influence right away.  We were greeted by a bagpiper!

Our tour today was Historic Halifax and RMS Titanic, completing our third Titanic experience.

Donna was our guide and she is a specialist in Titanic history and she was a teacher for 31 years before retiring.

We started at the fabulous Maritime museum of the Atlantic, Canada’s oldest and largest maritime museum. There are many ship models, portraits and photographs here including the world’s largest collection of wooden artifacts from the Titanic which sank 700 nautical miles from here. Halifax sent 3 ships to recover victims.  209 bodies were brought back here for burial. 59 were shipped our by train to their families. 

The museum could absorb a whole day but we didn’t have that much time.  It will definitely be in our agenda for next time.

We traveled to the Fairview Lawn Cemetery  where most of the victims are buried. The bodies were numbered for identification purposes.  If there is no name on the stone, that victim was never identified and if the name is on the front instead of the top, the victim was identified later.  I was impressed with the diligence used to try to identify victims.

One of the most poignant stories was about the child who was not identified for many years but we now know was Sidney Leslie Goodwin.

The same numbering system was used when the city was devastated by the Halifax explosion that resulted from the collision of two ships in the harbor that nearly leveled the city in December 1917.  The memorial quilt was made to commemorate the 100th anniversary of that disaster.

After lunch I went for a long walk through the town and enjoyed the galleries, craft shops and other sights. The bicycle thief sculpture is outside of a restaurant with that name.

Enjoyed our day here! Glad the fog cleared and the rain ☔ stayed away.

Canada is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year and everywhere we went, cities and towns are gearing up for the celebrations coming up on Canada day, July 1, which we will also celebrate on the ship.