Maritimes Merriment

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After our trip to Alberta and British Columbia last year, I mentioned in a WhatsApp group that I wanted to do a roadtrip in the Atlantic Provinces.  DWM's Canadian husband, CWD, first let me know that there were no such things as the Atlantic Provinces, so we could not roadtrip there, but Canada did have lovely Maritime Provinces, and we could roadtrip there.  In June, and only June.  When we realised that World Pride was in June in New York to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, our next Brexscape holiday was born, and in June Rachel Klem, DWM, CWD, Sushil and I convened in Halifax to kick off our adventure through Nova Scotia and Newfoundland & Labrador.

Halifax is the official capital of Nova Scotia, and the unofficial capital of the Maritimes.  It is a medium-sized city, but by some measure the largest in the region.  It's well-formed and compact, snug on a peninsula nestled in a working harbour (whose claim to fame is the deadliest manmade explosion until Hiroshima).  The city is small enough to be eminently manageable, but big enough to have all the trappings of modern urbanity: a growing flat-white economy, sufficient immigration for a full range of quality foodie destinations, plenty of exposed-brick redevelopment, gay bars and, of course, independent coffee shops.  The city has a very midcentury feel to it, and while it is thriving, it's enough out-of-the-way that it seems at little risk of being gentrified or overtouristed out of recognition.  I liked it immensely.

We arrived on a gorgeous, cool misty evening to a tree-lined street, which very much had the feeling of being up in the mountains.  The city West of downtown is block after walkable block of well-maintained (and well-priced, per London) Victorian-Americana (continental use of the word) houses bookended by the type of commercial strips that have been Walmarted South of the border.  You can tell there was some suburban-flight decay here as well, but the neighbourhood bones are still there and the Millennial return to urban living is bringing new life and variety to the streets.

The North End is Halifax's hipster haven and served as the centre of gravity for our stay.  Like seemingly everywhere else, it was a short walk from our gorgeous house, and is just the sort of neighbourhood that is catnip to the urban set, with a bit of grit still sprouting up through the organic eateries, wine winebars and galleries showcasing local artists.

Not to be outdone, across the harbour is Dartmouth, Halifax's answer to Brooklyn.  Reached by ferry, Dartmouth was once its own city, but is now a part of greater Halifax (aka the "Halifax Regional Municipality"), which was formed New York boroughs-style by the amalgamation of Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford, and Halifax County.  Downtown has a small, but dense, collection of bars, breweries and restaurants.

On our penultimate day in Halifax, we got out of town and drove South for lunch in Lunenburg, a too-cute-for-words old fishing town that is now an old artists' haven that is now more of a tourist destination.  The town is snug and colourful, and the downtown is a rotation of cafe, restaurant, gallery, repeat, but it's the kind of place where we quickened our pace to get a table at our chosen waterside restaurant before the tour bus could park and unload its swarm.  We drove up the coast, which was dotted with small villages of varying levels of tourist draw and authenticity, to Peggy's Cove, home of the most famous lighthouse in the Maritimes.

After Halifax, we drove along the coast of Nova Scotia, through Cape Breton, and onto a ferry for our overnight ride to Newfoundland, the island half of the province of Newfoundland & Labrador.  We learned that rural Newfoundland is a terrible place for coffee, but an amazing one for scenic drives.  In the middle of our long day's journey was Gros Morne, a rather exceptional bit of a rather stunning landscape.  What took me back the most was the lack of people throughout.  This is one of Canada's biggest and most well-known national parks, and were it anywhere else, it would be swarming with tourists like Banff.  Such is the remoteness of Newfoundland that only a small trickle of other pleased-looking visitors shared the roads and trails with us.

  

Our next stop in Newfoundland was Twillingate, a small fishing village on an island off (the island) of Newfoundland, where we hoped to see whales and icebergs.  Like in much of the world, the fishing industry has long been mostly absent from town, replaced by tourism - done well, from what we saw.  Though there were plenty of options for paid diversions, the town didn't feel overrun or much outwardly changed.  It felt a bit like an Alaskan village, with unkempt roads and utilitarian (but brightly-coloured) houses, and we did not have to elbow for space amongst the masses.  We managed to see a couple of minkes and one humpback whale on our boat tour.

Sushil out back of our totally adorable house.

Twillingate has a cafe that must have one of the most stunning views of any cafe in the world.  And - though you can't see it in the pic - just on the horizon we saw an iceberg.

En route to St. John's, is the famous(ly-named) town of Dildo (thought to possibly be the anglicisation of d'île d'eau).  If you go all the way from London to Newfoundland, you have to go the extra 15km to get the money shot.

A couple of hours past Dildo, after some standard North American suburban sprawl, we rounded a corner on the highway and saw unfold in front of us the most perfect little city on the tiniest of bays, with ships in the dock, hills of ticky-tacky jellybean houses ringing the few towers of downtown, and fog starting to roll in at the mouth of the harbour.  It was totally unexpected, and totally charming; I was instantly smitten.

My warmth towards St. John's, capital of Newfoundland and Labrador, only improved walking its streets.  The city is impossibly cute, but not inauthentically.  Which could be surprising, as the town only started painting its jellybeans, as the brightly-hued buildings are known, in the 1970s as a way to bring life into the dying central city.  Again, I think NL's remoteness is its saviour from the overtouristing hordes as we seemed to be largely sharing the city only with its residents.  Though I'd have to be there on a cruise-ship day to really get a fair measure, and I expect George Street would be a bit of a horror on a peak weekend.

Besides being adorable and walkable, St. John's has an oddly high concentration of chic and hip bars and eateries.  My foodie/professional chef/adventure eater Mike McGirr and his husband, Travers, rendez-voused with us in both Halifax and St. John's and helped guide our palates to some superb and completely unexpected venues.  I was very open and adventurous on this trip, breaking my pescatarian ways, having my first oysters, mussels, lobster, duck and moose.  When in the Maritimes...

"Newfoundland is an island of austere, washed-out beauty and vast unpopulated wilderness. Yet here, in its capital and largest city, one finds scads of homes coloured like tropical fruit, plus bustling street life and a dim urban (yet small-town friendly) buzz. For all that, North America's oldest city doesn't just contrast the province it dominates. St John's exudes wry wit, stoicism and lust for life, and to this end embodies some of Newfoundland's best values."

-Lonely Planet

After our Maritime adventure was over, we had a quick weekend hop through New York to celebrate Stonewall 50.  New York fully embraced its place in the rainbow; everything was decked out and bedazzled in the colours of Pride.

And a perfect ending to a fantastic trip - we were upgraded to business class on our flight home, our first flat-bed flying experience.  So nice, I didn't even need an Ambien.  I could get used to that...

[The Life of Shaun #565] The human spark

The print subheadline to this article read "It is not wrong to care more about a building than about people" - perhaps a bit too caustic, and The Economist updated the online article, but I understand the sentiment.  Like many people, I felt terribly saddened seeing Notre Dame in flames, and watching the spire fall immediately brought me back to watching the Twin Towers collapse.

Even with 9/11, a tragedy that took nearly 3,000 lives, much of the talk afterwards was of the loss of the buildings, the hole in the centre of Lower Manhattan.  It's much easier to feel attached to a building you've had a connection with than an unknown person half a world away, however tragic their situation.  Hundreds of millions of people have their own personal story about Notre Dame, and each felt a little private pain when they saw it burn. 

This doesn't mean we shouldn't question what someone donating €200m to Notre Dame's construction is also doing to help those less fortunate.  But that's a question that should be asked regardless of which buildings are or aren't aflame. 

So mourn Notre Dame, and don't feel guilty.  Donate a tenner.  But maybe also set up a monthly donation to your local homeless charity; you don't have to have a spare €200m to make an impact. 

Cheers,

Shaun

The human spark 
Why people care about ancient buildings
The world's reaction to the flames licking around Notre Dame is profoundly human

 Print edition | Leaders

Apr 17th 2019

"What is civilisation?" asked Kenneth Clark 50 years ago in the seminal BBC series on the subject. "I don't know, and I can't define it in abstract terms, yet. But I think I can recognise it when I see it, and I'm looking at it now." And he turned to gesture behind him, at the soaring Gothic towers and flying buttresses of Notre Dame.

It seems inhuman to care more about a building than about people. That the sight of Notre Dame going up in flames (see article) has attracted so much more attention than floods in southern Africa which killed over 1,000 arouses understandable feelings of guilt. Yet the widespread, intense grief at the sight of the cathedral's collapsing steeple is in fact profoundly human—and in a particularly 21st-century way.

It is not just the economy that is global today, it is culture too. People wander the world in search not just of jobs and security but also of beauty and history. Familiarity breeds affection. A building on whose sunny steps you have rested, in front of which you have taken a selfie with your loved one, becomes a warm part of your memories and thus of yourself. That helps explain why China is in mourning—WeChat, young China's principal means of talking to itself, has been throbbing with the story, and Xi Jinping, the country's president, sent a message of condolence to Emmanuel Macron, his French counterpart—while India was largely indifferent. Tourism from India to the West is a trickle compared with the flood from China.

This visual age has endowed beauty with new power, and social media have turned great works of art into superstars. Only a few, though, have achieved this status. Just as there is only ever a handful of world-famous actors, so the pantheon of globally recognisable cultural symbols is tiny: the Mona Lisa (see article), Michelangelo's David, the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramid—and Notre Dame. Disaster, too, is visual. In the 24 hours after the fire started videos on social media of the burning cathedral were viewed nearly a quarter of a billion times.

Yet the emotions the sight aroused were less about the building itself than about what losing it might mean. Notre Dame is an expression of humanity at its collective best. Nobody could look up into that vaulted ceiling without wondering at the cumulative genius of the thousands of anonymous craftsmen who, over a century and a half, realised a vision so grand in its structural ambition and so delicate in its hand-chiselled detail. Its survival through 850 years of political turbulence—through war, revolution and Nazi occupation—binds the present to the past.

The fire also binds people to each other. The outpouring of emotion it has brought forth is proof that, despite the dark forces of division now abroad, we are all in it together. When nationalism is a rising threat, shared sadness makes borders suddenly irrelevant. When politics is polarised, a love of culture has the power to unite. When extremism divides Muslim from Christian and religious people from atheists, those of all faiths and none are mourning together. An edifice built for the glory of God also represents the unity of the human spirit.

And it will be rebuilt. The morning after the fire, the many Parisians who went to the cathedral to mourn its destruction found comfort instead. Although the spire is gone, the towers are still standing and it seems likely that the whole building can be revived. The effort to rebuild it, like the fire, will bring people together. Within 24 hours, €600m ($677m) had been raised from businesses and rich people, and a rash of crowdfunding campaigns started. A high-resolution laser scan of the building, carried out recently, should help.

It will never be the same, but that is as it should be. As Victor Hugo wrote in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", a three-volume love-letter to the cathedral: "Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries. Art is often transformed as it is being made...Time is the architect, the nation is the builder."

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