Halifax!

We are still trying to recover a bit from the long night and day we had yesterday travelling from Newfoundland. With the winds associated with Hurricane Irene last night on top of the several days of high winds we had in the St. John’s area it’s been quite a few days since we had a good nights sleep. So, we slept in a bit this morning and took it easy all morning. After lunch, as the winds from the storm were starting to die down, we took off for the aptly named Point Pleasant Park in downtown Halifax.

Despite the name of the park, it’s history is not so pleasant. The point sits at the end of the Halifax harbour and has been the site of cannons protecting the harbour since the 1700’s and was still in use until the end of WWII. 

This is the Prince of Wales tower,  the oldest tower of it’s type in North America. While the roof has been removed you can still picture the 22 to 36 cannons they had there at various times. The ground floor was a powder magazine for all the other gun emplacements in the park area, and the second floor was a barracks. It must have been interesting to sleep above 1800 barrels of gunpowder.

There are several locations in the park where the foundations of the gun batteries and military forts in the area are still visible, but they just make things more interesting. There are no roads into the park, and we parked right at the edge of the city and walked for a couple of hours around and through the area. At the end of the park they have monuments to those who gave their lives in the Canadian Navy and Merchant Marine during the wars, as well as the anchor from the HMCS Bonaventure which was the last aircraft carrier Canada ever had (we’ve only had 3 over the years and they were all quite small compared to today’s behemoths).

The park it quite an oasis of solitude, and we really enjoyed the peaceful environment.

Halifax itself has a pretty congested downtown area, and it took a while to get anywhere. All of the roads are quite narrow and none too straight. Driving around the area really reminds me of Victoria; You can be on the same piece of road for 5 km, but its name will change 3 times. It made it challenging to follow on the map we were using, but we managed to get where we wanted to go without getting too lost.