There is land east of Maine - lots of it.  For many years I would browse through the Rand McNally Road Atlas and flip to the back, where a half-dozen maps of Canada appear almost as an afterthought.  Whenever I reached the last of them, of the Atlantic Provinces - the Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, plus Newfoundland - I would wonder about those oddly shaped lands and their vast stretches of coastline.  On the map, Atlantic Canada seems accessible and remote at the same time: it’s just beyond New England, yet it extends so far beyond.  And what to make of Newfoundland, the huge island even further beyond, nearly as large as the Maritimes but with a map so small that one inch equals 75 miles?  Finally, in the summer of 2007, curiosity got the best of me and I took a few weeks to explore Atlantic Canada.  Above, a drummer at the Citadel in Halifax, Nova Scotia, my first stop.

The Halifax skyline at sunrise, viewed from Dartmouth, across Halifax Harbour.  Halifax is the largest city in Atlantic Canada, but with only a third of a million people in the metro area, it is quite modest.  The most notable event to take place in the city was a tragic one: during World War I, a munitions ship sailing in this harbor caught fire and created the largest manmade explosion in history until the atomic bomb, leveling part of the city.  Halifax looks much better today.  The green hill on the right in the distance is home to the Citadel.

The interior of the Halifax Citadel; the hillside goes right up to the top of the walls on all sides.  The large building in the distance, once the barracks, now serves as a museum.  Halifax, a British garrison town throughout much of its history, has had a fort here since its founding in 1749; this is the fourth one, completed 150 years ago.  The British left in 1906; the Citadel was never attacked, and the smoothbore cannon shown here never fired in defence.

Cannons do fire here, however.  Every day at noon, a regiment in British military garb from the 1860’s follows a very exacting set of instructions to position, load, and fire a cannon.  The blast can be heard throughout the city.  The firing of the noon gun has taken place daily throughout the Citadel’s history.

The Town Clock, an icon of the city, sits on the harbor-facing slope of Citadel Hill; in the background on the left are signal masts rising from within the Citadel itself.  Below this slope and on down to the waterfront is much of downtown Halifax, but the view to the harbor is hardly spectacular; one sees only the sides or the rooftops of office buildings.

A bagpiping exhibition in the Citadel.  The British built the first version of this fort in response to the French building a fort of their own at Louisbourg, on nearby Cape Breton Island, shown in an upcoming page.  This final version of the Citadel was built in response to American attacks during the War of 1812.

The Halifax Public Gardens, a formal Victorian garden, is just across one of the streetcorners surrounding Citadel Hill, and makes for a very pleasant summer morning walk.

One of many roses at the Public Gardens.

Griffin’s Pond, on the garden grounds.

Flowers in the Public Gardens.

This gazebo, near the center of the garden grounds, was built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, her fiftieth year of rule, in 1887.  The garden itself was started over a century earlier - it was private then - making it one of the oldest in North America, and a surprisingly good one for a city of this size.

More flowers in the Public Gardens.

The Halifax waterfront has many offerings, from Pier 21 where over a million immigrants to Canada first landed, to the Alexander Keith brewery where the most excellent Alexander Keith’s India Pale Ale was first made, to boat tours and shopping along a boardwalk.  Perhaps the best stop though - particularly on a hot day, as I discovered - is here at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.  This is a bluenose class sloop built in 1945, about 24 feet in length, one of a number of small craft on display in the museum.

One of the thousands of nautical-related items at the Maritime Museum.  The museum also includes exhibits on the Halifax Explosion and the sinking of the Titanic; many of its victims are buried in Halifax, and its only surviving deck chair is on display here.

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a lighthouse lens.  This is a first order Fresnel lens constructed a century ago and used in the Sambro Island lighthouse, at the entrance to Halifax Harbour.  It’s over nine feet tall; this shot shows perhaps half of that.

This is part of the museum as well: the CSS Acadia.  Launched in 1913 in England and retired in 1969, it was designed to survey the arctic waters of Canada.  It survived the Halifax Explosion, mapped the coastline of Newfoundland when it joined Canada in 1949, and today is itself a National Historic Site, parked right out back of the museum.

Shops and shacks along the Halifax waterfront near the Maritime Museum.

A pier along the boardwalk near the Historic Properties area of the Halifax waterfront.  Like the buildings along this pier, the restored warehouses that make up the Historic Properties have restaurants and shops in all price ranges.  They also have Cows.  That’s an ice cream chain in Canada; its little store along the waterfront provided welcome relief from the hot weather during my time here.  Cows is like Ben & Jerry’s but much more focused on merchandising, with lots of t-shirts, mugs, and so on in the store, all focused on humorous cow versions of popular movies and television shows and culture.  CSI: Cow Scene Investigation (mooooo are you, moo moo, moo moo); Hello Cowy; Desperate Housecows; iCud... browsing through the store is quite fun while enjoying a big scoop of Messy Bessie, a Rocky Road equivalent that quickly became my favorite.

Along the Halifax boardwalk, near the Historic Properties area, looking back toward the city; it looks like a motorcycling get-together was taking place.  The key building here is the red-orange one behind the tower: that is the home of NovaScotian Crystal, Canada’s only traditional glassworks; both the workshop and showroom are here.  A few days of the week they open that garage door to let people watch the craftspeople glassblowing and creating the crystal glasses and vases that eventually appear in the showroom, and it is an amazing sight.  NovaScotian Crystal is definitely the place to shop if you want to take home a very special gift.

The 200-year-old Town Clock at night, with the moon rising behind.

A smokestack rising out of Citadel Hill.

A final view of the Town Clock and downtown Halifax in the last light of day.