(A) Happy Juneteenth! Happy Father’s Day! Happy last full day in Halifax for us! Tomorrow night we board another plane for (more) foreign lands. More on that to come.
Today we visited three great places. First was the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. They’ve got lots of boats and ships, large and small and in-between. They’ve also got artifacts from the Titanic, including the only piece of furniture known to have survived fully intact. It’s a cabinet, about the size of a large microwave, made of mahogany. There’s also an exhibit dedicated to the Halifax Explosion of 1917. If you’ve never heard of that, you should look it up. It’s remarkable. The most striking piece in that collection, if you ask me, was the actual telegraph button that was used to transmit news of the impending disaster. The telegraph operator (Vince Coleman) could have run away with his co-workers, and maybe then he would have survived. But he sacrificed himself to save the lives of hundreds of people who would otherwise have been near the harbor. His final message read: “Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye boys.”
After the museum, it felt like time to visit the Old Triangle Irish Alehouse. Attentive readers of this blog series will recall that Ella, Mia, and I went there a couple of days ago. It was as excellent today as it was then. The highlight might have been the Guinness gingerbread cake we had for dessert. If it wasn’t that, then it was the honor of sitting on the throne…
Once we’d had our fill, we walked over to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. I don’t know about you, but I’m never sure how much I’m going to enjoy an art gallery. Well, this gallery had such a variety of interesting pieces that I enjoyed it thoroughly. Some of it was quaint, some was intriguing, and some was disturbing. It all made the visit worthwhile.
(The last image wasn’t in the museum, worthy though it is. It’s a portrait of me that Mia drew. She was generous with the hair, and I’m thankful for it.)
Who knows what we’ll do tomorrow? I don’t.