… “shame” – ed … but I remembered just in time.
So here in the comfort and privacy of a cheap ($60) but comfortable motel in Truro where I smuggled in my slow cooker and coffee machine, I can bring things up to date.
And I’m whacked. I’ve been on my feet from 9:30 until 17:00 and I’ve tramped everywhere all around Halifax and Dartmouth and the only time that I sat down was on the ferry across the Strait between the two cities.
And I’m still in love with the city
Today I tramped around the two towns and saw much more than I have ever seen before, and the more I see of the place the more I like it. I could really settle in a place such as this. Mind you, the weather has been astonishingly good – probably the best day since I’ve been in Canada and I deserve it too – the two other times I’ve been here, they have both been in snowstorms.
And if you are wandering why there are no photos, the answer is that they have all been moved. In the intervening time, I’ve completely written up my notes about my visit to Halifax and you can read them at your leisure.
I finished my visit on a poignant note – to track down the site of the legendary Pier 6. Back in 1917 the convoys to the battlefields of France assembled here. And the harbour was a busy place so a one-way system was operated similar to what is operated in the English Channel today. And as a small convoy was leaving port a ship came steaming in down the wrong channel. A collision was inevitable and sparks from the grating metal set fire to the errant ship.
Because the ship was not flying the special red pennant that it was supposed to fly, no-one knew that it was an ammunition ship, loaded with over 5,000 tons of explosive. And the crew, instead of opening the sea cocks to sink the ship as they are obliged to do when an ammunition ship catches fire – they simply abandoned ship, which then slowly drifted into the harbour, blazing away furiously.
Puzzled by this bizarre behaviour, crowds of people flocked to the shoreline to see the spectacle, and as the ship collided with pier 6, it exploded.
2,000 people were killed and many many thousands were injured in what is the largest non-nuclear explosion the world has ever seen. A primary school behind the pier was obliterated and no-one there survived, and they picked up bits of Halifax from gardens 60 miles away.
So armed with a little information and a couple of useful pointers I managed to track down the site. It’s now covered by the Halifax Shipbuilding Yard so there isn’t anything to see (mind you, after an explosion of that magnitide there wouldn’t be anything to see anyway) but it was something I had to do.
And tomorrow I’m going for my third attempt to take a photo of Amherst and also to look for the oldest steam locomotive in Canada.
