All True New Scotsman (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

The locals acted like it was London or Paris, and at that time it was barely Mississauga.

Do you mean that Parisians or Londoners would be entitled to act as arrogant pricks? I beg to disagree.

I can remember, there's been some kind of campaign here in Paris to encourage locals not to act as rude assholes some years ago.
It was a bit like - tourists show up over here to spend some of their money, that partly fuels our local economy. So make a little effort to be kind to them, you idiots.
Lol, that makes sense in my opinion.

You're often unlucky with weather, aren't you? But there's good side of the coin to cold climate.
At least, you're spared from a whole load of aggressive bugs and bacteria.
Tropical places like Florida can't claim the same.

[Driver8]

Thoroughly enjoyed this tour of Halifax! I think this is the first time I've seen extensive pics of this city, so you've expanded my horizons a bit. The fog definitely added atmosphere to some of the scenes. Gotta dig those narrow brick pedestrian streets, and the mix of Victorian and modern architecture. And it looks like a good time can be had in this city! I wouldn't mind visiting some day.

[kool maudit]

That was... cathartic. I remember how you would post about how people were rude and condescending what you last visited Halifax.

I knew the old Halifax, too, although I never experienced that side of it. I guess for adolescent me, Halifax was the small town to which I had been exiled, and to which I favourably compared other places. But I remember how inward-looking the city used to be, and how it felt in the 1990s.

I haven't spend time there in quite a while, but it looks a lot different than the place I knew. Definitely bigger and brighter, but maybe less itself as well. I don't know... I guess there is a part of me that looks fondly on how much more different people and places were from each other back then. I feel like I didn't appreciate enough Halifax when I was there.

[Wigs]

great photo tour, b'y!

[Architype]

I lived there as a student; I can say from the pics it hasn't changed much in the core, they've just added more glass towers. As a city I also felt it was inward looking, rather self contained, detached, apart from the rest of the region. Being at the end of a highway, it's not somewhere you normally pass through to go anywhere else if you are travelling from outside the vicinity, more like Victoria (or even St. John's) in that way. It appears they don't have heritage regulations like St. John's; the older streetscapes have a more utilitarian weathered & gritty look, and much of the heritage is somewhat severe in spite of the historic style & embellishments.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Architype

I lived there as a student; I can say from the pics it hasn't changed much in the core, they've just added more glass towers. As a city I also felt it was inward looking, rather self contained, detached, apart from the rest of the region. Being at the end of a highway, it's not somewhere you normally pass through to go anywhere else if you are travelling from outside the vicinity, more like Victoria (or even St. John's) in that way. It appears they don't have heritage regulations like St. John's; the older streetscapes have a more utilitarian weathered & gritty look, and much of the heritage is somewhat severe in spite of the historic style & embellishments.

Yes that's very true, and so is the idea of us thinking we're London or Paris. We almost think of ourselves as being the head of our own little empire. All roads, both pavement and rail, lead to us. We have the largest of everything for hours around - hospitals, shopping centres, universities, etc. and at a whole day's drive, we're just too far from any larger city to fall within anyone else's sphere of influence. And we're the farthest capital from the US after Edmonton and St. John's. It feels so strange to me visiting Toronto to be so close to the US and for the largest highway to be just passing straight through. It's inevitable that a city's culture and mindset are shaped by its circumstances.

[geomorph]

Thank you for this delightful trip report, the city is quite a bit more dynamic than I had thought!

[boden]

Enjoyable exhibit.

[SignalHillHiker]

Thank you b’ys!

Originally Posted by kool maudit

That was... cathartic. I remember how you would post about how people were rude and condescending what you last visited Halifax.

I knew the old Halifax, too, although I never experienced that side of it. I guess for adolescent me, Halifax was the small town to which I had been exiled, and to which I favourably compared other places. But I remember how inward-looking the city used to be, and how it felt in the 1990s.

I haven't spend time there in quite a while, but it looks a lot different than the place I knew. Definitely bigger and brighter, but maybe less itself as well. I don't know... I guess there is a part of me that looks fondly on how much more different people and places were from each other back then. I feel like I didn't appreciate enough Halifax when I was there.

It’s definitely worth appreciating.

And yes this time was completely different. The only thing I encountered were maybe a half dozen unsolicited messages like this on Grindr (I didn’t screenshot the ruder ones, sorry!):



So there’s only two points to make…

1. Grindr can be a mean place. When you look like me, you’ll sometimes get “Eww, bald!” etc. just randomly, from people whose profiles you haven’t viewed, haven’t messaged. Just unprovoked. So getting this type of thing isn’t unusual or distinctly Haligonian.
2. However, the fact every message of this type used my being from NL as the basis for rejecting an advance I didn’t make lol. They’re still clearly working through some prejudice.

But, as you can imagine, this is sssooo fucking minor and not impactful. I could not care less. So I can say without caveat the people there are nice to us now and treat us normally haha.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I guess for adolescent me, Halifax was the small town to which I had been exiled, and to which I favourably compared other places.

Everyone I knew looked at it this way, viewed the rest of the region as more or less potential tourism destinations or not at all, and viewed Montreal/Toronto or maybe Quebec City as the "adjacent" cities with Halifax being very remote (probably more remote than it objectively is/was) and sort of limiting but okay from a lifestyle perspective.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Architype

It appears they don't have heritage regulations like St. John's; the older streetscapes have a more utilitarian weathered & gritty look, and much of the heritage is somewhat severe in spite of the historic style & embellishments.

As you know St. John's was largely rebuilt in the 1890's which was the height of the ornate Victorian style. Many of the heritage buildings in Halifax are older. Halifax was a Protestant garrison town and the old Georgian buildings had a big impact on local architects, so beyond there just being more restrained older buildings the new ones (like Andrew Cobb, who worked around the early 1900's but borrowed from the 1700's) imitated them. Some are stripped down and in a bad state. There are more ornate Victorian ones toward the part of the South End that dates to around that late 1800's period which I don't think is covered.

[BnaBreaker]

Wow, what an extensive tour! Thanks for sharing! Both Halifax and St. John's look like really interesting and unique cities to me... kind of like North Americanized versions of Belfast or Glasgow. Hopefully I get to make it up there one of these days.

[xzmattzx]

I'm flying to Halifax in August on Porter myself, from Toronto on a direct flight (I avoided connections in Ottawa, Montreal, or both).

How do people normally get from the airport to Downtown if they don't have a car? Is a bus line the only thing? That may be a question for everyone in general, or your friend in particular. Maybe it's just my circumstances, but Canadian cities don't do a good job connecting airports to the outside world via public transportation. Even your average Joe who isn't into public transportation or anything would be likely to use it when traveling solo for a quick weekend or for work, even if they don't use it around town like an enthusiast or someone by necessity because they are poor. For instance, there was no public transportation that liked to the airport at all in Quebec City when I was there in 2017 (although they were going to start a bus line to/from the airport in the near future), so everyone needed to take a taxi or rent a car; Halifax's airport is so far away from town, which is good for future growth, but it looks like there's one bus line to and from, and I bet service isn't express or more frequent than other bus lines; and even in Montreal, I was surprised to find out there was no regional rail link from the airport to Downtown, so I had to take a bus, which actually made 3-4 stops before reaching Downtown, and then had to connect on a subway after that. Contrast that with Philadelphia, which has a regional rail stop within walking distance of the airport, and BWI Airport, which also has a regional rail stop connecting to Balitmore and Washington, and free shuttle buses between the airport and rail station.

What was that street that they closed down for the bars?

I'm guessing you don't look up historic or important buildings to see before you go. I started getting into that habit because I once walked past somewhere important and didn't know until weeks after I had gotten home, and kicked myself for missing. Even just looking up things like province houses (I'm guessing the equivalent of state houses in the US) means just seeing a picture on Wikipedia and looking up the street corner.

Do you happen to recognize that license plate on the red SUV in the 7th picture of post #17? It looked like a Montana one at first, since Montana puts their state outline on the plates, but I wonder if it's some special Nova Scotia plate.

The Scotiabank Centre is one of the more unique arenas in Canada, since it's on a slope, so you enter on the uphill side and are in the upper bowl, and have to go down to the lower bowl, as opposed to most other arenas. It's not unique to Canada, though, since the arena in St. Catharines is also like that.

Did you go to the Alexander Keith brewery at all? That is one of my stops when I go there, since my grandfather liked getting cases of AK when crossing into Canada from Buffalo.

What is it with Canada and three-lane bridges? That one in Halifax, the Peace Bridge, I think the Ambassador Bridge, etc. Am I just seeing the handful that are around in the country?

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

I'm flying to Halifax in August on Porter myself, from Toronto on a direct flight (I avoided connections in Ottawa, Montreal, or both).

How do people normally get from the airport to Downtown if they don't have a car? Is a bus line the only thing? That may be a question for everyone in general, or your friend in particular. Maybe it's just my circumstances, but Canadian cities don't do a good job connecting airports to the outside world via public transportation. Even your average Joe who isn't into public transportation or anything would be likely to use it when traveling solo for a quick weekend or for work, even if they don't use it around town like an enthusiast or someone by necessity because they are poor. For instance, there was no public transportation that liked to the airport at all in Quebec City when I was there in 2017 (although they were going to start a bus line to/from the airport in the near future), so everyone needed to take a taxi or rent a car; Halifax's airport is so far away from town, which is good for future growth, but it looks like there's one bus line to and from, and I bet service isn't express or more frequent than other bus lines; and even in Montreal, I was surprised to find out there was no regional rail link from the airport to Downtown, so I had to take a bus, which actually made 3-4 stops before reaching Downtown, and then had to connect on a subway after that. Contrast that with Philadelphia, which has a regional rail stop within walking distance of the airport, and BWI Airport, which also has a regional rail stop connecting to Balitmore and Washington, and free shuttle buses between the airport and rail station.

The bus is very much express with only two stops in town and another at an outer exurb, but it isn't very frequent since it's so far and mostly through sparse areas. It runs every 1/2 hr at busier times and drops to hourly at other times. Frequency was reduced due to the pandemic. A taxi tends to cost about $50 to get downtown while the bus is just under $5 so it depends on how cost sensitive you are. Car rental rates are also obscenely high right now due to the car shortage but the airport never seems to be fully booked like the outlets in town usually are. Last time I rented a car around a couple weeks ago I actually had to take the bus to the airport since I couldn't find anything in town that wasn't booked out. And it cost me over $100/day even with my corporate discount when I was used to around $30/day pre-pandemic.

But maybe things will have changed by August.

[SignalHillHiker]

Matt, you definitely won’t be stuck. The city bus runs frequently enough - we just had one traveller who didn’t have the heart for an hour-long bus ride to downtown, and the “must have exact change” warning made us assume it didn’t have tap and none of us felt like going through the trouble of getting/breaking cash. We went with an Uber. It was $35 to downtown and $60 back. Split across three of us, that was no big deal. The guy was telling us with gas prices so high most drivers who drop someone off at the airport will wait there however long it takes to get a new customer heading back to the city. He waited four hours at the airport for us, had a nap, etc. I think that’s why it was so much cheaper to downtown for us haha.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

Matt, you definitely won’t be stuck. The city bus runs frequently enough - we just had one traveller who didn’t have the heart for an hour-long bus ride to downtown, and the “must have exact change” warning made us assume it didn’t have tap and none of us felt like going through the trouble of getting/breaking cash. We went with an Uber. It was $35 to downtown and $60 back. Split across three of us, that was no big deal. The guy was telling us with gas prices so high most drivers who drop someone off at the airport will wait there however long it takes to get a new customer heading back to the city. He waited four hours at the airport for us, had a nap, etc. I think that’s why it was so much cheaper to downtown for us haha.

It was $5 Canadian, exact change?

I forgot to ask, did you have a donair there? I heard that's the local food, although it sounds like a gyro.

[Nouvellecosse]

The fare is something like $4.25 or so but when they say "exact change" they just mean the drivers don't give anything back if you put in more. But if you put in $5 they certainly don't care.

[SignalHillHiker]

It is basically a gyro. We had donair sauce with a veggie pizza (requested hot sauce but I guess they really wanted us to try it haha). We ordered pizza as soon as we got to our hotel - the restaurant in it only serves breakfast and supper. Unusually, the Skip the Dishes driver brought it right to our room door. Caught us off guard. They’re never allowed to do that in St. John’s, the guest has to go to the front desk to pick it up. Right to the door is much better. Anyhow, rambling… donair sauce in HFX is similar to donair sauce in Newfoundland, just theirs is less sweet and more watery. I’ve had a full-on donair in the past, yes. They’re common at pizzerias here. But I didn’t this trip - I’ve been off meat for ages now.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

It is basically a gyro. We had donair sauce with a veggie pizza (requested hot sauce but I guess they really wanted us to try it haha). We ordered pizza as soon as we got to our hotel - the restaurant in it only serves breakfast and supper. Unusually, the Skip the Dishes driver brought it right to our room door. Caught us off guard. They’re never allowed to do that in St. John’s, the guest has to go to the front desk to pick it up. Right to the door is much better. Anyhow, rambling… donair sauce in HFX is similar to donair sauce in Newfoundland, just theirs is less sweet and more watery. I’ve had a full-on donair in the past, yes. They’re common at pizzerias here. But I didn’t this trip - I’ve been off meat for ages now.

I am just curious - are you saying that every restaurant in SJs is the same, and the Halifax ones are also all the same, and there is no variation in either city but the regional difference is consistent? That's an interesting regional concept, and I wonder if it is true? AFAIK, donairs were essentially invented in Halifax (i.e. a novelty when I lived there), and the sauce was made to be sweeter than the traditional gyro - the meat was lamb, not beef. In Vancouver we have both gyros & donairs; the ones I usually get are called donairs (and my choice is usually Hawaiian chicken lol). Gyros, which are similar and less sweet, are Greek; but I honestly cannot tell that much difference unless I was to compare side by side. One thing I have noticed about food in general between here and the east coast, is that on the east coast it seems to be made in a more processed way, as in easier for chewing.

[SignalHillHiker]

No idea what type of meat it is. It's brown and spicy and spins on a stick.

Last donair I had in Halifax was 20 years ago. In St. John's... to be honest, probably near the same. I've been a pescatarian for a while now and a foodie before that (I still eat lots of cheap, dirty food, of course, just donair has never been a pleasurable fave of mine). I have, however, had donair sauce in both cities quite recently (we get it with cheese bread here, and you can buy it if you're so inclined at the grocery in squeeze bottles like ketchup, mayo, etc.). The HFX one was like a garlic salad dressing, ours is like donut glaze icing with a hint of garlic. It's sickly sweet. I have no idea if that's restaurant-based or regional beyond ours always being very sweet definitely being universal at restaurants here. Whether what we got in HFX is universal at their restaurants, I don't know, but you'd never get that here if you ordered donair sauce.

Our understanding of it here is that it's just Lebanese. To the extent anyone associates it with Halifax here, it would just be in terms of popularizing/liking it. It's similar to "kitchen party". Very few people here would be aware the Maritimes even claim it, fewer still would ever use the term "kitchen party", we just do it. That's how it is with donair here. It's at pizzerias, throughout the province, in rural malls and urban strip malls, with pictures of Lebanon on the walls. And you can get a less-tasty version at all the big pizza chains.