Farewell to Nova Scotia

Many people recommended that we cycle around Cape Breton Island, and the scenery delivered.

In the last week we went to Halifax, spent several days there, then cycled around a bit of Cape Breton towards the ferry to Newfoundland. 

In Halifax, Karen was eager to spend an afternoon at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. I was impressed by the museum. Seeing people’s stories of resilience, acceptance, and belonging made me proud to be Canadian. The museum also didn’t ignore Canada’s attempts to push certain groups away to keep them out of Canada.

A few days after leaving Halifax we stopped at the Peace By Chocolate shop in Antigonish. The store’s owners were Syrian refugees who came to Canada in 2015, and their journey of overcoming hardships and building a new life in Canada is featured in a book and movie. 

The Pier 21 museum also has an “Immigrant Journey” room with staff dedicated to helping museum-goers search their family’s immigration history. I told the staff the approximate year my dad’s parents came to Canada and accidentally gave them an incorrectly spelled name. Even with that limited information, in less than a minute the staff person was able to find the boat my grandparents travelled on as well as their immigration records. It was fascinating to see how efficient she was with so little information, and nice to see a piece of history directly connected to my own story. 

Learning a bit about my grandparents’ story was especially poignant given the Special Exhibit in the adjacent room on the M.S. St. Louis transatlantic liner. In 1939, the ship carried 937 Jewish refugees who came to Canada from Europe, were denied entry, and were forced to return to Europe, where many died. I’m happy sentiments towards Jews were beginning to change by 1950 when my grandparents arrived. It’s also a good reminder that Whiteness is relative, as I compare the unimaginable hate my grandparents faced versus me having never faced discrimination only two generations on.


These gears are part of the M.S. St. Louis exhibit When Canada’s Director of Immigration from 1936-1943 was asked how many Jews should be admitted to Canada, he infamously replied “None is too many.”

Not all our time in Halifax was sobering; we also did a brewery tour at Alexander Keith’s historic building. The charming tour included live music while drinking their specialty pours in the “Stag’s Head Tavern,” which is the brewery’s old brick beer-aging cavern. The one issue with the tour was that it was late morning, the tasting pours were healthy, and Karen and I don’t know how to say ‘no’ to free samples. This led to a very fun and goofy afternoon, followed by a slow and sluggish evening.  


Somehow, this isn’t the first time we’ve gotten ourselves into a situation like this, as we had a very similar experience on a morning tour of the Asahi brewery in Japan in 2015.

Today, we’re boarding the ferry from North Sydney to Argentia, Newfoundland. This morning we also booked our flight back to Vancouver for August 15. It’s beginning to feel like we’re entering the final stretch of our journey.

Karen’s Nova Scotia book of the week: Blood in the Water: A True Story of Revenge in the Maritimes 

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