On our way back to Halifax after an overnight in Cumberland County (thanks A & J), I mused: Sometime we need to sample Truro. Why not now, said Sheila while searching on her phone for where to eat in Truro. So we dropped in for the briefest ramble. The major attraction for me was to see the 1880s Normal College building. It has been… Read More

A few weeks ago we visited gardening friends in Lunenburg. Sitting on their back deck was a small collection of old conch shells bleached white with age. The shells had been discovered while they dug in their garden. None of us was surprised to find large Caribbean seashells in a Nova Scotian garden. Conchs in the Nova… Read More

It's like a magic trick. Tell me your street number (on the peninsula of Halifax) and I know if you live on a east/west street or a north/south street. I also have a good idea what part of town you live in. Apparently not everyone knows this miracle of municipal organization, so recently @HalifaxReTales (chronicler of the ebb and flow of our retail ocean)… Read More

Many folks enjoy looking at pictures of rich people's homes. So maybe you would be interested in a couple of photos of an opulent house interior in Yarmouth (actually Milton) taken in the late 1880s. Fir Bank was the home of lawyer Robert Caie and his wife Sophia Killam. The two photos are well known, but how we ended up… Read More

On Friday we planned an evening in Halifax to hear folks talk about social enterprise at the Pecha Kucha. Let's first check out the new Bar Stillwell location on Spring Garden Road, I suggested. The bar was packed and only later did we learn it had just opened that day. Stillwell has made clever use of an L-shaped empty lot. A big… Read More

We are very bad at saying goodbye to old buildings. I imagine farewell rituals that involve beating drums, professional mourners brought in to wail, that sort of thing. Recently Lunenburg Industrial Foundry and Engineering decided it was time to demolish their old machine shop and they came up with an appropriate and understandable ritual to… Read More

Young Avenue in south end Halifax has been much in the news lately as one of its big houses is demolished to make way for more big houses. This encouraged me to drop by and remind myself what the street looks like on the ground and notice what are, for me, character defining elements. My couple of gratuitous suggestions… Read More

Have you ever hiked Cape Split? My memory of the experience is walking through the woods for two hours to arrive at a panoramic cliff-top view of the point where the Bay of Fundy meets the Minas Basin. Below are jagged rocks, shaped by the highest tides in the world that churn past twice a day. Then you turn… Read More

Did you have a good time at Doors Open? On Saturday we sampled five sites. Our favourite was the Atlantic School of Theology on its beautiful campus beside the North West Arm. Let me show you some pictures of little and big surprises. I was looking forward to seeing inside the 1898 college building designed by… Read More

The natural world changes so quickly in May it always makes me a little panicky that I'm missing the moment. But looking at my photos for the month I realize we did get out and embrace some experiences. I've already recounted our trip to the Bramber Weir and what I learned preparing for my Jane's Walk on… Read More