Time travel online

My Halifax City Tour, expertly narrated by Woody Allen Mackenzie, a passionate Haligonian in a kilt, had provided me with a great overview of this city, and my visit to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic had added to my knowledge of Halifax, particularly of its connexion to the Titanic and the 1917 Explosion. Still mulling over the historical significance of this city, the largest population Centre on Canada's East Coast, I sat down fold to the waterfront to finally have got luncheon and beef up myself after an intense introduction to the city.

On this sunny, fairly warm twenty-four hours I had a place on the out-of-door terrace of Stayner's Wharf, one of the eating houses on the Waterfront, located right next to the Halifax – Dartmouth Ferry Terminal. I was finally able to catch a rest, loosen up in the fall sun and get ready for my lunch. I ordered the "Captain's Brunch", a pan-seared brunch-size part of Atlantic salmon with one lightly deep-fried egg, creamy whipped potatoes topped with a spot of Hollandaise sauce, served with a piece of tomato and cucumber. It was a very appreciated lunch, looking out onto Halifax' waterfront, with a position of the Theodore Too, Halifax' celebrated TV-show inspired tugboat.

I took about one-half an hr before I got up and made my manner southwards on the Harbourwalk, Halifax's 3.8 kilometer boardwalk that stretches all the manner from Casino Nova Scotia in the North to the Pier 21 National Historic Site in the south. More than 2.5 million visitants walk the Harbourwalk annually. $31 million were invested in order to purchase and rejuvenate places and to regenerate infrastructure. The Harbourwalk is composed of a series of public parks, wharves and places all affiliated by a boardwalk system that is primarily wooden to reflect the historical Marine fictional character of Halifax's waterfront which is now easily accessible to the public. People were out in full force, enjoying the pleasant weather. Respective street comics were performing right next to the waterfront, drawing huge crowds of onlookers.

The Halifax Seaport actually is one of the world's best natural seaports as it widens almost 20 kilometer inland into the Bedford Basin. Respective islands are located in the harbour. The closest to the seaport entranceway is George's Island which have been designated a National Historic Site although it is not currently accessible to the public. This island have long played an of import function in the harbour's defense system.

McNabs Island is located farther out in the seaport and is accessible via a ferryboat from the Eastern Passage or via a charter boat from Cable Wharf. This island was settled in the past although the homesteads are now abandoned. A lighthouse, ruined fortress and batteries as well as sand beaches can be establish on McNabs Island. One more than island, Lawlor's Island, is located stopping point to the mainland. It never had any military installings and today is a secure nature area.

The Halifax seaport also have a exile cross, evocative of the celebrated exile cross at the Grand Pré, the original exile site of the Acadian Expulsion. And being Canada's major haven on the east coast, it have always had a strategic military function and even today characteristics cardinal military installations.

As I was walking along Harbourwalk, I saw assorted ships passing in and out of the narrow passage, but the most interesting 1 was a military submarine, with all the crewmen standing on deck, often waving to the fascinated audience on land. I was wondering when the crewmen would vanish below deck, but I lost sight of them as I walked southwards towards the wharf buildings.

Halifax is a true Centre of ocean transport owed to being blessed with one of the world's deepest and largest natural harbours. The harbour's Waters stay ice-free and experience minimum tides and the port generally is the first arriving and the last outbound port to North America from Europe, the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal. It is also a major sail ship centre: in 2005 108 sail vas with over 188,000 visitants docked in Halifax, causing a major economical extract for the city.

In line with the ocean transportation theme, a memorial to a celebrated Halifax occupant is located just south of the entranceway gate to the Halifax Port area: Samuel Cunard (1787 to 1865) , a indigen boy of Halifax, is forever commemorated in a bronze statue that prominently presides over the Port of Halifax. Cunard became a Nova Scotia transportation magnate, whose Cunard Steamer Line would run many of the celebrated transatlantic ocean line drives in the 1800s. His primary rival was the White Person Star Line, whose ill-fated ocean line drive Titanic sank 750 kilometer off the seashore of Nova Scotia in 1912. After this disaster, Cunard dominated the transatlantic passenger transportation and his company became one of the most of import companies in the world. The Cunard line's fortune began to worsen in the 1950s when air travel became popular, but over the last few old age have experienced a major resurgence with the world renowned Queen Virgin Mary 2, the first ocean line drive to be built in 30 years, and the largest passenger line drive ever built. In 1998 Cunard was taken over by Carnival Corporation, but the Cunard name can still be seen on the side of the Queen Virgin Virgin Mary 2.

I was in luck, because as I strolled closer to the wharf edifices in the Halifax Port area, I saw that the Queen Mary 2 was indeed in town. An impressive ship, it looks to be about 8 to 10 narratives tall and towers over the port buildings. Right here, with the Queen Virgin Mary 2 as a backdrop, I had reached my adjacent destination: Pier 21, Canada's in-migration museum.

Upon reaching I connected with Stefani Angelopoulos, Communications Manager for the museum who was so sort to give me a personalized tour through this alone facility. Pier 21 is the Canadian equivalent to Ellis Island: more than than a million immigrants came through its doors between 1928 and 1971. Until its gap in the late 1990s, the edifice sat empty as a storage warehouse and was finally turned into a museum in 1999 and designated as a National Historic Site. It was also the boarding point for about 500,000 soldiers who were transported from here to struggle in the Second World War. Halifax' strategic importance in linking Canada with Europe became apparent once again.

Stefani informed me that between 1942 and 1948, more than than 48,000 War Brides came to Canada from United Kingdom and other states in Europe and they brought 22,000 children with them. They had fallen in love with Canadian soldiers and were ready to start their new life in Canada. The huge bulk arrived in 1946, 60 old age ago, and made their first connexion with their new homeland right here in Halifax, at Pier 21. Many then took a railroad train from here to start their new lives in other parts of the country.

I learned that to commemorate the 60 twelvemonth anniversary, Via Railing came up with a particular event in jubilation of this occasion: the 2006 War Bride Train which is scheduled to convey 100s of Canadian War Brides back to Pier 21 where their lives in Canada began. On November 6 the railroad train will go in Montreal and get on November 7 in Halifax where there will be great chances for jubilation and reminiscing for 100s of War Brides. Stefani commented that Pier 21 is linked to so many moving person narratives that sometimes it is hard to maintain a dry eye.

We started our tour at the Research Centre downstairs which have a aggregation of photos of over 90% of the ships that transported immigrants to Halifax from 1928 to 1971. Images and newspaper photos state the diverse narratives of immigrants, mostly from Horse Opera Europe and the Mediterranean Sea area. Many images also associate to the almost half a million Canadian military personnel that departed from Pier 21 in Halifax to fall in the warfare attempt in Europe during the Second World War.

The Research Centre also supplies public mention for all ocean
in-migration records from 1925 to 1935 and many Canadians specifically
come up to Pier 21 to research their parent's or grandparent's arrival
records in Canada. Four computing machine terminals supply access to the website, to the narratives database, the ship database and other electronic resources related to immigration. Microfilm records incorporate the responses to 28 inquiries that a prospective immigrant would have got to reply anterior to being allowed to come in Canada. These microfilms are some of the most popular records in the Research Centre.

Although I have got no personal connexion to Pier 21, having arrived by myself in Toronto without household in 1986, Carrie-Ann Smith, Pier 21's Manager of Research, provided me with a transcript of the full chapter on German and Austrian immigration, taken from the Encyclopedia of Canada's People's, edited by Alice Paul R. Magocsi, and published in 1999 by University of Toronto Press. I establish out that about 31,000 Austrian immigrants came through Pier 21 from 1928 to 1971, compared to 1,152,400 immigrants from the United Kingdom and 527,000 immigrants from the United States. In improver to 48,000 War Brides and their children, many refugees and displaced people also came to Canada during these years, including about 69,700 Judaic immigrants, many of whom were victims of the Holocaust. In addition, Canada also welcomed about 3,000 Evacuee Children from the United Kingdom who were evacuated during WWII owed to the heavy bombardment forays and the perceived menace of invasion. More than 250,000 children were supposed to be evacuated, but one of the ships transporting children was sunk by enemy ships so the programme was cut short.

Another class of immigrant were the Home Children: more than than 100,000 left Great United Kingdom between the late 1860s and the mid 1930s owed to the utmost poorness in their home country. These children would typically be employed either as domestic aid or farm labourers, and the pattern was already dwindling when Pier 21 opened in 1928. Stories representing the almost half a million WWII veteran soldiers who embarked for military service in Europe from Pier 21 during the Second World War, can also be establish here. The human narratives of so many different types of people supply absorbing penetrations into one of the most disruptive times of human history and Canada's function in it.

Pier 21 is certainly one of Canada's most alone museums, testimony to the cardinal function that in-migration have played and goes on to play in this country. You come in the museum and get in a large exhibition hall, the Kenneth C. Rowe Heritage Hall, a multi-purpose country that tin also be rented out for private mathematical functions which holds up to 600 guests. Up the lifts you get in the chief exhibit country which have a broad assortment of exhibits illustrating the in-migration experience. The Rudolph Simon Peter Batty Exhibition Hallway allows you to retrace the stairway of an immigrant who just arrived at the Halifax Harbour, complete with wooden waiting benches and an in-migration officer's desk. The Wall of Ships characteristics images of many of the ocean line drives that used to transport thousands of immigrants to their new home country. A replication of a Canadian National Railway car conjures up memories of the railroad train journeyings that so many immigrants took across Canada to their new homes in different parts of the country.

Six video booths supply access to video cartridge holders featuring the story of immigrants from different places. As a Canadian immigrant from Austria, I sat down in the first video booth where an Austrian video testimony was being played and I saw the story of an Austrian immigrant , a adult male who had come up to do his life in Canada in the 1950s. His emotion and gratefulness to his new country were clearly visible.

The Andrea and Prince Charles Bronfman In-Transit Theater at the far stop of the exhibition space characteristics a 24 minute practical projection presentation that portrays the emotional narratives of those who passed through these historical halls. Stefani pointed out that the military volunteer guide who was supervising the presentation was a very particular person: Henry Martin Robert Vandekieft is an 89 twelvemonth old person who military volunteers at Pier 21 three years a week. But not only makes Henry Martin Henry Martin Robert give his personal time to this alone museum, he actually came through the doors of Pier 21 as an immigrant himself in 1954 to start his new life in Canada.

Robert originally is from Haarlem, a town in northern Netherlands and decided to do his new life in Canada. Three calendar months after his reaching in 1954 his married woman and children followed. Henry Martin Robert fondly remembers a story of his family's arrival: he had bought a teddy bear bear for his aged male child and upon reaching tossed it up to the top degree of the ship where the boy successfully caught it. He had also bought some plastercene for his younger boy as a present which he tossed up towards his younger child.

Unfortunately his throw was off and the plastercene drop into the water, but thanks to the kindness of the longshoremen of the Halifax Port, they fished it out of the H2O and brought it back to Henry Martin Henry Martin Robert so he would be able to give his younger boy a proper welcome gift.

Robert had originally travelled to Winnipeg where he was hired as a pelt dyer, his original occupation. But he did not like his occupation there very much, so after a few hebdomads he travelled back to Nova Scotia where he was offered a occupation on a farm. After his family's reaching Henry Martin Robert establish out that his married woman was not at all acute on agriculture so he looked for another job. He started working for Canada Packers in the storage warehouse and would regularly raise sides of beef cattle with a weight of up to 62 pounds.

After 8 calendar months he applied for a occupation as a stagehand with the complete blood count (Canadian Broadcast Media Corporation), then he moved up in the ranks to crew heading and later to go the supervisor of the designing department. As his career progressed, Henry Martin Robert Vandekieft became a manufacturer and director at the complete blood count and his career ended with senior functions in educational television. One of Robert's last shows before his retirement was a 5-part series on the Mi'kmaq First Nations People filmed in their native language. What a Canadian success story!

Obviously this adult male at almost 90 old age of age is able to look back on a long and interesting life of which he have spent 52 old age in Canada. I asked Henry Martin Henry Martin Robert what he thought about Canada and his face lit up with a huge smile: "I love this country!"

Robert have been honoured as the "Maritimer of the Week" and he smiles when he states that his granddaughter nominated him. He loves volunteering for Pier 21 and have been doing it for almost five old age now.

Although my visit at Pier 21 was cut short because of my tight agenda (I still needed to see Dartmouth on my last afternoon in Nova Scotia), I was touched by all the human narratives of Pier 21, represented first and first by the life testimony of Henry Martin Robert Vandekieft, who, like thousands of others, turned his reaching at Pier 21 into the first measure of a long and successful life in Canada.

It's always exciting to arrive in a new city. I like arriving at night, so the suspense of this new place stretches into the next morning. After a late arrival via Westjet at about 11:30 last night at the Halifax Airport, I picked up my rental car at the Thrifty Counter from a very friendly customer service representative on duty who inquired whether he was going to be mentioned in my Nova Scotia travel experiences – so here you go, this is a little shout-out to the friendly young man working the late shift at Thrifty's who gave me my first welcome in Nova Scotia.

I then checked into the nearby Hilton Garden Inn for a brief, but hopefully effective night of rest. Early this morning I got into my rental car and on my way to my first destination: the Grand Pré National Historic Site which commemorates the lifestyle and expulsion of the Acadians, original French settlers that came to this area in the 1600s. I first drove south from the airport to locate Highway 101 and after several unsuccessful attempts to find the right exit I finally linked up with the big highway that connects Halifax with Nova Scotia's western shore. The interior of the peninsula is made up of gently rolling forested hills and as you reach the northern shoreline, the land flattens out into tidal mudflats. Windsor, Hantsport and Wolfville are the major local settlements and the main body of water, the Minas Basin, features the highest tides on earth.

Less than an hour and a half after my departure I reached the Grand Pré, French for "large meadow" where I met Victor Tétrault, Executive Director of the Société Promotion Grand-Pré, who filled me in on the history of this site. The Grand Pré is an ancient settlement of the Acadians, descendants of the original French settlers in north-eastern North America. Acadians originally settled the areas around Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island in the 1600s and are culturally distinct from the French immigrants that settled in Quebec. The earliest Acadian settlement took place in Port Royal, less than two hours west of the Grand Pré, in 1604.

Acadians were astute farmers and through an ingenious system of dykes they managed to reclaim large tracts of land from the ocean. Victor explained that studies have shown that many farming communities of this era were really based on subsistence farming, where the average wealth base was "one unit of livestock" per person . The Acadians were rather wealthy since their average wealth per person was estimated at 8 to 9 units of livestock. They generated more agricultural products than they needed for their own consumption and started trading their surpluses with surrounding communities.

The Acadian settlers were also a peaceful group and got along well with the local Mi'kmaq Indians, even learning their time-honoured fishing and hunting techniques. The Mi'kmaq had developed a fishing technique that involved a network of criss-crossed stakes that would be set up in the tidal flats during low tide and when the water levels rose, this mesh of wooden sticks would simply trap fish and all that was necessary was just to go out there and pick up the fish.

Territories in north-eastern North America changed hands numerous times between the English and the French in the 1600 and 1700s and the Acadians decided to remain neutral, refusing to take either side. In the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 France ceded Acadia as a British procession, at which point the area became known as Nova Scotia. During the following years, the British Governor Richard Phillips tried to coerce the Acadians to swear an oath of allegiance to the British Crown, but the Acadians steadfastly refused. Consequently, the decision was made that the "French Neutrals" needed to be removed and deported from their territories. Thus the Great Expulsion, the "Grand Dérangement", a brutal act of ethnic cleansing, began.

Between 1755 and 1763 about 10,000 Acadians were rounded up and deported to locations in New England, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia, even as far awa as Martinique and St. Domingue. Some Acadians were deported back to France, while others tried to hide in the woods, often sheltered by their friends, the Mi'kmaq. Some Acadian settlers made their way to relative safety in Quebec. Many families were torn apart, their houses were burnt, their livestock killed and fields destroyed. A great many Acadian settlers ended up in the former French territory of Louisiana where the Acadians became known as the "Cajuns". Some families were expelled five or more times from different locations they were deported to.

Although there were numerous deportations of different groups during these turbulent historic times, the deportation of the Acadians was unusual because so many were not sent back to France, their country of origin, or another French colony. Instead they were deported to British territories where Anti-Catholicism was rampant, and in the southern colonies it was feared that the Acadians would join slaves in a general uprising.

Once peace returned in 1763, some Acadians started to migrate back but they never settled in their original settlement areas again. Instead, many Nova Scotia Acadians moved into the area around Baie Ste-Marie or St. Mary's Bay between Digby and Yarmouth where they took up fishing as a livelihood. Today hundreds of thousands of people across all of North America and beyond can trace their origins to the Acadian Diaspora.

After giving me a brief introduction to Acadian history Victor took me on a tour of the facilities. The Grand Pré National Historic Site is actually a large piece of land that was donated about 100 years ago by a local businessman by the name of John Frederick Herbin who was an Acadian descendant. He gave the land to the Dominion Atlantic Railway with the condition that it be made accessible to Acadians forever. The company later gave the site to Parks Canada which turned it into a National Historic Site.

The New Visitors and Interpretation Centre houses a multimedia theatre, an exhibit hall, a gift shop, a multipurpose room and administration area along with other visitors' facilities such as restrooms, public phones, etc. The entire facility is run jointly by Parks Canada and the Société Promotion Grand Pré, which represents the Acadian community. The grounds around the Centre are made up of flat farmland, a winding river and railway tracks that still serve for freight transportation.

We walked outside the Centre and Victor pointed out to me a metal sculpture on the side of a long, low-lying hill that consists of 4 life-sized individuals, representing an Acadian family that is being torn apart by the deportation. This sculpture was unveiled just a few weeks ago, on September 3, 2006. Victor mentioned that the sculptor was looking for an appropriate place to position the sculpture once it had been transported to the Grand Pré site from Montreal. The sculptor was unable to find a proper location for his masterpiece, pacing for hours through the entire property. Finally he found a spot, right there on the hillside. He just knew that this was where the sculpture would have to go. Through archeological research it had been discovered earlier, unbeknownst to the sculptor, that an Acadian house had been located right next to the sculpture and the foundation of this house is now outlined by wooden stakes. Hearing about this psychic connection between Acadian history and a present day sculptor gave me the goose bumps, and this example just underscores the spiritual and historic significance of the Grand Pré National Historic Site.

Victor also enlightened me that the Grand Pré is a location of reconciliation. During the 2004 celebrations to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Acadians, tens of thousands of Acadian descendants congregated in the Grand Pré area for a reunion. The local Shaw family, a Planter family who was assigned to settle the area after the expulsion of the Acadians, invited the descendants of the Thibodeau family, who had come from all over North America, to stay on their property. Only two families had ever lived on this stretch of land: the Thibodeaus and the Shaws. The Shaws as a matter of fact, had coined a phrase "Be careful of the tippie-toes", which really meant "Be careful of the Thibodeaus". Both groups of families celebrated together and the Shaws stated that they were not the owners, but rather the keepers of this land, and that their home would always be open to the Thibodeaus.

The celebrations proceeded with exuberance until one man, a Thibodeau family member from Quebec stated in front of everyone "I only have one thing to say: we Thibodeaus are going to come back and take this land". The entire crowd gasped at the thought of implied conflict until he continued "I am going to marry Sarah". Sarah was a member of the Shaw family. The audience breathed a collective sigh of relief. This vignette is just one of many stories of reconciliation and forgiveness that have taken place here in the Grand Pré area.

Victor and I crossed the railway tracks and approached the Memorial Church, built in 1922. In front of the church is a statue of Evangeline, heroine of an 1847 poem by American author Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. "Evangeline" tells the story of a young Acadian woman who dedicates her entire life to searching for the man she loves from whom she was separated at the time of deportation. The tragic story concludes with Evangeline finding Gabriel, her true love, on his death bed in Philadelphia.

Beside the church Victor pointed out some archeological excavations to me. The Grand Pré site is a significant historic site and ongoing archeological research has turned up more clues about early Acadian life in the Grand Pré area. When Victor had to say goodbye to me as he was on duty at the Memorial Church, I went back inside the Visitors Centre and watched a brief yet extremely informative video about the history of the Acadians which effectively tied it all together for me.

After leaving the Visitor Centre I decided to drive a few kilometers east to the actual deportation site in the Minas Basin. The Deportation Cross was erected in 1924 to commemorate the deportation of 2000 Acadians who were deported from this very site.

As I started to make my way westwards towards Annapolis Royal, another originally Acadian settlement, I reflected on the significance of this site for one of the founding cultures of Nova Scotia. I was amazed at the perseverance and the power of the human spirit displayed by hundreds of thousands of Acadian descendants who have lived in diaspora all over the world and for centuries have managed to survive and hold on to their cultural heritage despite much adversity that they have experienced. Despite all this human tragedy and upheaval, the stories of reconciliation and forgiveness found here at the Grand Pré National Historic Site are a sign of hope for all us.