Halifax, Nova Scotia

Our last port of call before we got back to the states was Halifax, Nova Scotia. Halifax is capital and largest municipality in Nova Scotia, and is the largest municipality in all of the Canadian maritime provinces.

Halifax lighthouse

It is also one of the fastest growing municipalities with a metropolitan population of just over 480,000 individuals. It is a major economic center in Eastern Canada with a large concentration of government services and private sector companies. It is also a major cultural center within the Atlantic provinces.

Clock tower at the Citadel

Our shore excursion options for Halifax were limited, and we ended up with an “Art and Architecture” tour (a Pam Carlson special!) that would take us to see some of Halifax’s cultural highlights. When it was time for our tour to begin, we boarded a bus and headed off for the city’s central library. Expectations were building as we got off the bus to go into the library, but these were quickly doused by locked doors and the hours-of-operation schedule indicating that the library didn’t open until noon on Sundays.

Art gallery entrance

oud of devastation started to descend upon our group, but we were saved from total despair when our guide, Lynn, announced that we would just do the tour in reverse!

Maud Lewis' works

We rode to our next stop, Citadel Hill, a Canadian National Historic Site. Founded by the English in 1749, the site was home to four different fortifications, with the last being built between 1794-1800. Referred to currently as the Halifax Citadel, it has long been the keystone to the defense of the strategically important Halifax harbor and its Royal Navy Dockyard, even though it has never been attacked.

Arctic mitten exhibit in museum

We didn’t get off the bus to walk the grounds, but instead drove around before a couple of times while Lynn provided the details.

Our next stop was the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, a public provincial art museum established in 1908 as the Nova Scotia Museum of Fine Arts, and renamed in 1975.

Fairview Lawn Cemetery

The museum’s permanent collection has over 18,000 works by Nova Scotia and, Canadian, and international artists and has hosted a number of traveling art exhibitions. We were given free time to explore the galleries and were drawn to the museum’s collection of works by Maud Lewis, a Canadian folk artist from Nova Scotia. Noted for her cheerful paintings of landscapes, animals, and flowers offering a nostalgic and optimistic vision of Nova Scotia, she achieved national recognition in the mid-1960s.

St. Mary's Basilica

The museum even has her small home on display in its exhibit, the most visited exhibition space in the museum. We made our way to some other museum exhibits before our time ran out.

As we headed towards our next stop, St. Mary’s Basilica, we passed by Halifax’s Fairview Lawn Cemetery. This nondenominational cemetery is perhaps best known as the final resting place for over 100 victims of the Titanic sinking, because Halifax was one of the first communities to respond to the ship’s distress calls.

Inside St. Mary's

Lynn told some personal stories about some of the victims and noted that the mass grave is probably the most visited site in the cemetery. We were lucky to be arriving at St. Mary’s Cathedral Basilica and little bit after noon, as Sunday mass was just ending and we would be able to go inside to view the church. St. Mary’s is a Gothic revival Catholic cathedral of the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth.

Inside the library

The largest cathedral in the Archdiocese, it was consecrated in 1899, made a basilica in 1950, and was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1997. The church boasts the tallest granite spire North America. Halifax’s oldest cemetery, St. Peter’s Cemetery, is located across the street from the Basilica. We viewed the church and its cemetery and then walked with our guide to our starting place, the Central Library, located one block away.

Library wall art

We had a very limited amount of time in the library and there wasn’t really very much to see except books! According to Lynn, the library has won awards for its design and architecture. We went to the top floor to see the rooftop patio overlooking the city. Concluding our tour, we were taken back to our ship where we enjoyed a fresh seafood dinner, compliments of the chef’s shopping at some of Halifax’s seafood markets.

 

 

St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador

We awoke the next morning to find our ship still sailing for the capital and largest city of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John’s.

Welcome to St. John's

Founded by Basque fishermen at the beginning of the 16^th century, it is one of the oldest cities in North America and was officially incorporated in 1888. Today, the St. John’s metropolitan area has a population of around 220,000 inhabitants.

Basilica of St. John the Baptist

Up until its collapse in the 1990s, the cod fishing industry was the economic mainstay in Newfoundland and Labrador. Today the ocean still has a major economic importance, but it is due to the oil and gas that lies beneath it. There are currently four major offshore oil developments off the coast of the city.

Our ship finally docked just before noon and was given immediate clearance for disembarkation.

Old Cape Spear Lighthouse

We had a shore excursion book for 1230, so we stayed on board until it was time for our group to meet. When it was time for our tour to begin, we boarded a bus and started to weave its way through the downtown St. John’s area, while our guide provided some background history about the area, its people, the different cultures, and the landmarks that we were seeing. Because St. John’s serves as the capital of the Newfoundland and Labrador province, there are numerous government buildings housing departments that provide administrative services which our guide pointed out as we passed them.

New lighthouse

Of course, no city tour would be complete without a photo-op or discussion of its major religious institution, and the Basilica of St. John the Baptist fulfilled this requirement for St. John’s. The church is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. John’s and is the largest religious institution in the city.

We left the downtown area and drove through the countryside on our way to Cape Spear Lighthouse National Historic Site. Located on the Avalon Peninsula about 12 miles from downtown St. John’s, but still within the municipal boundary, the Cape Spear lighthouse has been important to maritime navigation since 1836.

Easternmost point

There are actually two lighthouses on the headland, the original and a new one built in 1955 with updated technology. The Cape is also the easternmost point in North America, excluding Greenland. Because of its proximity to convoy routes during World War II, a manned gun battery was installed on the Cape to defend the entrance to St. John’s harbor.

One of the big guns

In 1942, a U.S. Army Ground Radar Early Warning Station was established on the site and operated until 1945.

We walked to the easternmost point and had our picture taken, then we explored the gun battery’s bunkers, tunnels, and remnants of gun emplacements. It was quite a hike up to the old and new lighthouses, so we decided to just take some long-distance photos and call it good. Back at the visitor center gift shop, Jane purchased a Cape Spear T-shirt and a shot glass. We left Cape Spear and headed back toward St. John’s by way of Petty Harbor, a quaint little fishing village with a snug harbor.

Water tunnel

It looked like an ideal place to come back to and spend some time. On the outskirts of the village we saw a water tunnel—a large diameter pipeline—that brings freshwater from a reservoir several miles away to the villages that line the coast. We also passed several farm fields that our guide told us were not abundantly productive due to the thin layer of topsoil covering the rocky subsurface, and the very short growing season.

Back in the city we made our way to another historic site, Signal Hill. At a height of 548 feet, Signal Hill overlooks the city and the harbor.

Cabot Tower on Signal Hill

Due to its strategic placement overlooking the only entrance to the harbor, defensive fortifications date back to the mid-17^th century. Sitting atop the hill is Cabot Tower which was used for flag mast signaling and a Marconi wireless station. Historically, the hill is important as the site of the final battle of the Seven Years War in North America which was fought in 1762.

Signal Hill fortification

In more modern times, the first transatlantic wireless transmission was received there by Guglielmo Marconi on December 12, 1901.

We exited our bus and walked around the grounds. Given the very narrow width of the entrance to St. John’s harbor, it was easy to see why this location was important to the defense of the city and harbor. The hill’s height provided some great vistas of the surrounding landscape. We took our pictures then boarded our bus for a ride back to the ship.

Channel to St. John's harbor

Along the way, we passed through “Jellybean Row,” so named for the brightly colored houses that line the street. Back on board we had dinner and another team-winning session of “Brainteasers” to finish off the day.

Jellybean Row

 

 

St. Anthony, Newfoundland, Day Drinking, and Jane's Birthday

After our port of call in Nuuk was canceled, and even after cruising the Arsuk Fjord, we still had about 1½ sea days of cruising before we landed in Qaqortoq.

Feeling like the Flying Dutchman!

But it wasn’t until we left Qaqortoq that we could see the ship’s track and the zigzag pattern the ship took to kill the time. We always knew that the cruise ships would slow walk the route when two ports of call work relatively close together, but we had never seen this work for more than an overnight cruise.

So after our stormy departure from Qaqortoq, we had another full day at sea until we would arrive in St. Anthony, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Hope it's not Wilbur!

After a leisurely breakfast, we spent the morning reading and working on the blog until it was lunchtime. Lunch presented a rather unique protein alternative in the form of a roasted suckling pig. The problem was, it seemed that people were more interested in taking pictures of the animal and they were in requesting a serving!

The afternoon produced another interesting diversion.

Jane showing her jewels

The ship’s gem expert was putting on a jewelry fashion show that featured his $1 million plus gem collection modeled by ladies he had recruited among the passengers. And of course, if it involved jewels, Jane would be involved! She had been recruited to be one of the nine models in the show. Jane had met Christian, the gem expert, when we were in Russia cruising the Baltic Sea on the Viking cruise line back in 2018.

The show began with Capt. Larry in attendance (the mandatory appearance to take pictures!).

All the jewelry models

Each model was introduced with a little background information about her shared with the audience. She then would walk around the lounge displaying the pieces that she wore. Each model wore pieces that were collectively valued at over $100,000, which pretty much suppressed any knee-jerk reaction by the gentleman in the audience to go ripping out their wallets!

Jane's jewels

Capt. Larry had his fun when a lady model from Columbus, Ohio, with a stated interest in college football, approached him to show her jewels. He whispered in her ear: “O-H!” And she retorted: “I-O! My God you’re the second person that’s done that to me!” So you just never know when or where you might run into another Buckeye. After the models had made their rounds, they posed for a group photo to end the show.

Jane and Christian

 

Our ship anchored in the harbor of St. Anthony, a town on the very northern part of the Great Northern Peninsula of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

St. Anthony

St. Anthony has a population of just under 2200 (2021), the largest population center on the peninsula, but the population has been declining for the past couple of decades.

The town’s history of European settlement dates back to the early 16^th century when French and Basque fishermen used the well-sheltered harbor as a seasonal fishing station.

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Happy Birthday, Jane!

While fishing for years was the economic mainstay of St. Anthony, tourism has become an important industry as fishing stocks dwindled.

Welcome!

Tourists today come to see the nearby Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, a UNESCO heritage site, or to see natural attractions such as icebergs and whales.

Although St. Anthony has a long history as a fishing outpost, its history is not complete without a discussion of the town’s most influential historic figure, Dr. Wilfred Grenfell.

Dr. Wilfred Grenfell

After graduating from the London Hospital Medical School in 1883, Grenfell was sent to investigate the conditions of fishermen in the Labrador region in 1892, and was said to be the first doctor to reach the region. Realizing that conditions in the area needed to be improved, he established a number of hospitals, cooperatives, and schools for people in remote Newfoundland and Labrador towns.

View of the lake

In 1900 Grenfell chose St. Anthony as headquarters for the Grenfell Mission and acquired the first hospital ship, Strathcona 1. He also established orphanages to care for parentless children in 1905. After his death in 1940, his contributions to the region are honored by Grenfell Historic Properties, which comprises the Grenfell Interpretation Center, the Grenfell House Museum, and the Grenfell Handicraft Store.

Ready for a Canadian winter

We tendered over to St. Anthony’s dock and went into the Grenfell Handicraft Store. Jane started looking for some souvenirs to purchase, while Capt. Larry went upstairs to the Grenfell Interpretation Center to get some more information about Dr. Grenfell’s life and mission. After Jane made her purchases, we left the center to find a small strip mall that we were told was very close by. We followed a road that took us along the edge of a very scenic lake.

Beers and a pub band!

We came upon a local, after walking a fair distance, and asked him for directions to the mall. He told us to go up a hill to the main street and go right to the mall. We got to the top of the hill and it was obvious that any mall that the locals were talking about was not going to be close by. So we abandoned our mall hunt and headed back towards the dock. Back at the Interpretation Center, we came across some fellow passengers that were coming from the direction opposite ours.

Playing the ugly stick

We asked if there was anything worthwhile to see and were told that the building with the clock steeple had a pub with a live band.

We arrived at the pub and found the band and the audience to be in full swing. We got a table and ordered a couple of locally made craft beers and listened to the band. The duo primarily played Irish ballads and sailor drinking songs, and encouraged a lot of audience participation. And it wasn’t long before the audience started to become very raucous.

Jane's birthday necklace

They encouraged audience members to come up one stage and play a unique, percussive instrument traditionally used by Newfoundlanders—the “ugly stick.” The instrument can be a mop handle or tree branch with loose flat washers attached that is beat against the floor in time to the music and produces a percussive sound probably most similar to that of a tambourine.

Jane's cake

And if one doesn’t want to play it, there is always the option to dance with it! We finished our beers and listened to a couple more songs, before leaving so someone else could enjoy our table.

Back aboard the ship, we got ready for Jane’s birthday dinner at the steak and seafood specialty restaurant. She went to the jewelry boutique to borrow one of the expensive jewelry pieces (a $45,000 pink diamond necklace) for the evening to celebrate her birthday. We had a very enjoyable meal that was capped off by the presentation of a birthday cake and the singing of “Happy Birthday” by the staff.

The celebration continues!

We returned to our room and were met in the hallway by our maid who told Jane that she had a surprise in our room.

Happy birthday!

Jane opened the door to find pink balloons covering the ceiling and a towel turtle on the bed! It was a perfect gesture to finish off a perfect evening.