Sweet Home Halifax

As I start gearing up for this year's CALL (Canadian Association of Law Libraries) conference,* my thoughts turn fondly to last year's CALL conference. Or rather, more precisely, the location of last year's conference, which was in Halifax.



As most of you know, while I wasn't born there, I grew up just outside Halifax, in a now-thriving suburb of Dartmouth (itself a suburb of Halifax, or rather, more accurately, now amalgamated into the Halifax-Dartmouth moniker) called Cole Harbour. Yes, that Cole Harbour.**

We moved there when I was about 2 1/2, and we left a few months before my 12th birthday, from 1979 to 1988. Consequently, I did all my grade school there. I have very fond memories of growing up at the edge of Cole Harbour (we were almost at the boundary line for Lawrencetown).

I returned to Halifax for my graduate studies, doing both my Law degree and my Master in Library and Information Studies*** at Dalhousie from 1999-2003. I was last in Halifax in May 2003 for my graduation ceremonies,**** so it was a real treat to be able to go back last spring, in May 2009.

I took lots of pictures, which you can view on my Flickr site here. You will also perhaps remember me blogging about the first half of the trip here, here, here, here and here. But if you were basing it on the photos alone, you would almost not know I was at a conference, since all the photos are very decidedly of the tourist variety. In a nutshell:

1) I wandered the waterfront and downtown.


2) I went on the Harbour Hopper.


3) I meandered through the Public Gardens.


4) I took the ferry to Dartmouth and visited ye ol' homestead in Cole Harbour.


5) I got chilled to the bone by wind and rain at Peggy's Cove.


6) I was further drenched by wind and rain in Mahone Bay.


7) I refused to let the wind and rain dampen my spirits at the enchanting village of Blue Rocks.


8) I cheered the slight lifting of the fog***** at Lunenberg.


What the photographic record fails to confirm, however, is that in addition to water and ships and fishing villages and quaint buildings, copious amounts of martinis were also consumed in the company of good friends. My bad - I will have to make sure that the next time I travel, I bring along my camera-which-photographs-friends.



* It's in just under 3 weeks. However, even more pressing, I am doing a short presentation at CALL this year, and my slides and presentation notes are due on Friday. This means I had better start them. Like, now. This year it is in Windsor, Ontario. I can't promise 150 photos, however.

** And no, I didn't know Crosby growing up. Not everyone out East knows everyone else out East. That, and he was a year old when we moved away from Cole Harbour. He wasn't playing hockey yet. A friend of mine whose ex-boyfriend used to coach peewee hockey out there did, however, see him play numerous times, and yes, the rumours are true - he really was as good back then as we all hear now.

*** None of this IM nonsense for me.

**** And my grandmother had just passed away the day before the ceremony, so I wasn't feeling entirely festive.

***** It's the freakin' Maritimes. We'll take whatever we can get to pass for "good" weather.