The Halifax Daily News
March 20, 2005
By the end of eight days in Halifax, I’ve become fond of your city. It is, often, both beautiful and interesting.
Its greatest asset and most obnoxious feature is size. Compared to most other places known locally as “the city,” it is tiny. This is good if you have to walk anywhere, but terrible if you want to simply disappear for a while.
Becoming anonymous is not an option. My host couldn’t go anywhere without running into people she knew. Even I, a tourist, on two occasions ran into people I had met earlier in the week.
There simply aren’t enough new faces, or places to go. Halifax feels like a well-endowed small town.
Waiting for a bus to the airport, it occurs to me that eastern hospitality also has its pros and cons.
Initially, I was startled by strangers talking to me for no reason. It later became an enjoyable Haligonian quirk. After eight days, however, I’m beginning to wonder why it’s so difficult for people, like the woman waiting beside me for the bus, to stand in silence.
“Looks like snow,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “Looks like snow.”
I silently pray for the speedy arrival of the airport shuttle that’ll take me closer to home. There, the only people who begin unsolicited conversations are the insane, beggars, and lost tourists from the East Coast.
The bus finally arrives, and to ward off conversationalists I pull out my notebook and begin making a list of things I’ll need if I ever return to Halifax.
Essentials include: patience and organizational skills, since public transit arrives about as often as Halley’s Comet; a larger appetite, so I can graduate from a small donair to a medium; desire to sit in a smoke-filled room and give money to a machine specifically designed to take in more cash than it gives out; and stronger calf muscles, to walk up and down that godforsaken hill you first built your city on.
I will also need a car, for two reasons. First, to experience the best idea to come out of Halifax since Joseph Howe started freedom of the press: the drive-through liquor store.
Second, I want to feel what it’s like to do the strangest thing a driver can do: stop for pedestrians. In Toronto, if someone jaywalks, we blare our horns and don’t slow down unless we absolutely have to. In Montreal, they actually speed up. In Halifax, You stop for people who haven’t even begun crossing the street.
Let’s face it, you’re a strange bunch.
I expected to spend eight days in Halifax discovering that all the clichés are untrue. That was my plan: to debunk the myths, showing that you’re no different than the people of southern Ontario. After all, when any group of people is labeled, the label is usually an exaggeration.
In this case, it’s not. Halifax is as laid-back as people say. You are as friendly and as helpful. There is a cultural difference.
On the plane, I am filled with the relief that comes with finally going home. But there is also, with your province shrinking beneath me, a sense of loss.
It will be awhile before I meet people who are as kind as you are, who are as open and interested in the lives of strangers.
If there’s one main reason for people to visit Halifax, it’s to become comfortable with this attitude. It’s a good thing. Maybe, just maybe, I can bring some of it back to Toronto with me.
I turn my gaze from the window of the plane as it passes through the clouds.
“On your way home?” I ask the man sitting next to me.
“Yes,” he says.
“What were you doing in Halifax?”
“Business.”
He looks away and pulls a magazine out of his bag. He opens it to a random page and begins reading.
I turn back to the window.
On second thought, maybe I’ll just have to leave eastern hospitality where it belongs, with all of you.