Sitting here at the kitchen counter in the hostel where I’ve been staying for four days in Halifax, Nova Scotia, entrusted with a phone belonging to a man from Austria that I just met 10 minutes ago, while watching people from all over the world make breakfast for themselves - including a banana and peanut butter sandwich assembled by a 30-year-old man who just cycled from Vancouver, BC to Halifax, NS (you do the math), while waiting for my German friend Amelie to come down and join me for a long hike to the Fairview Lawn Cemetery where the Titanic gravesite is located, I am filled with renewed hope and love for the world. To experience this rare 2025 phenomenon for yourself, you must get out of the house, out of your comfort zone, and optimally into a hostel or any similar shared cooking domain situation.
Drawing from a similar inspiration motivating a previous post (read below if you missed it) from a month or so ago when I woke up one day realizing I should probably go and get my SIN card (social insurance number), I woke up one morning and thought, “While I’m in Canada, I should visit my mother’s home province of Nova Scotia.”
Get in Here
Whenever I am standing still in Scotland and the Scots hear my American accent, someone (always a guy) will approach me and fill me in on the (awful) fact that the president of the USA’s mother is from Scotland. Stornoway, in fact (where I am usually standing still at a bus stop with my American accent). Oh - and just in case…
Be assured that one does not drive to Nova Scotia unless you are driving from Cape Breton (which is part of Nova Scotia) or from New Brunswick - the province next door. Kevin (the peanut butter and banana sandwich guy) will cycle there from Alaska, but the rest of us - we fly to Nova Scotia. You do not drive.
After a short two-hour flight from Toronto where I was strapped to the back of the plane, I chased after the number 320-bus waving and screaming from the airport terminal drive. He didn’t see me (that’s my theory, anyway). An hour later, the next one picked us up and took us into the city.
The hostel where I stayed and met my Australian, German, Austrian, and Canadian friends was clean and comfortable. The kitchen was well appointed for cooking and baking, with lots of refrigeration space and individual bins for your food, as well as communal condiments and spices. There are always people coming and going, and new faces to say hello to every morning over coffee.
The waterfront boardwalk in Halifax is one of the longest in the world that spans the length of a waterfront - at 2.5 miles from one end to the other. Unlike other places I’ve visited near the water, there are a plethora of chairs everywhere. Halifax begs you to sit down and look out at the water.
There were three boats commissioned to pull bodies out of the water at the Titanic disaster site - and two of them were from Halifax. The 121 graves there are a reminder of the sinking disaster on April 15th, 1912. Many are unmarked graves, but the two-year-old unidentified child has been identified in recent years, thanks to DNA testing.
My only complaint about Halifax is that there should be a scheduled bus every half hour from the airport instead of once every hour.
Blessings & Love,
