Three times a week, Via Rail's "Ocean" leaves Halifax, Nova Scotia, bound for Montreal - journey time over 20 hours, from the railroad station just 'across' from the Ocean terminal where transatlantic liners used to arrive; these days replaced by cruise liners - yesterday, the Zaandam was there out from the St Lawrence, Aurora out from Southampton, and Norwegian Escape helping people escape from - well, I don't know where. A railway carriage outside the terminal buildings themselves pays homage to the rail link past. Time was limited - no time to look around the museum of immigration, but I did have could of minutes to poke my head into the station. Zero local trains, and an eerie place. Pictures - the museumed carriage, the staton frontage, the passenger hall and the platforms.
From our ship, a couple of spare (?) Via Rail coaches could be seen, beacons of colour in an unsaturated landscape of drabness.
We saw no trains moving, the only movement of the day being an arrival due some 90 minutes after our ship had left. But there was evidence of freight, both heavy haulage and container traffic off the Atlantic Ocean bound, I would suspect, for Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. Unlike many
UK▸ lines kept alive by passengers and with sparse freight, the line across Nova Scotia is kept alive by freight, with sparse passenger traffic.
Lisa and I, taking in Halifax, were "bussed" with all other passengers going ashore from Aurora, on a commercial berth, to the main cruise terminals. Surreal - on a bus labelled as route 15 to Upton Park, and bearing a remarkable resemblance to vehicles I knew as a child in London.
Once we got to (and inside) the terminal building, we found ourselves in a sales-fest haul - a gauntlet to run through towards the town. Lisa joined the long queue for tickets for the "Hop on, hop off" bus. Fortunately, the queue was long and slow and that gave me the chance to nip off to the information desk and sweet-talk one of the ladies there to reach under the counter and give me a schedule for the local bus on route 29. More anon - first - though, some pictures from the terminal building:
And ... the story (or rather more pictures!) of those Routemasters.
A truly
Canadian story, indeed! They are the only double deck buses you'll see in Halifax - and there are 15 of them, bought on retirement from London, and providing tourist hop-on hop-off services. Our ride was on a "queue-buster" soon after our arrival, taking volumes off passengers off the commercial quay; later in the day, it joined the other on going round the town. Watching and listening, in true London style you could wait up to 45 minutes for one to come along then 3 would come together.
Ah yes ... the "29". Walk out of the pier complex into the parallel street, and you'll find a nondescript bus stop sign on a poll. Of the 5 or 6 thousand passenger on today's 3 cruise ships, six have made it here. We are the only ones off "Aurora" and we are joined by 2 or 3 locals. On time, the half hourly 29 arrives.
All buses in Halifax are fitted with cycle racks on the front. That's not just from observation - it's proudly advertised in the timetables and it makes huge sense - cycle to your local bus stop (and "local" in Canada might be a distance) and take your cycle with you - just as in England you might take it on the train. We join the bus, pay our (total) of $5 Canadian and ask for a "transfer" ticket which allows us to change to another bus provided we join that second bus within 90 minutes - plenty of time to ride out to the cemetery (see yesterday), see the graves of interest, and get on the return bus.
I got chatting with a lady who lives in Halifax and she was telling me about the extreme poverty outside the tourist areas; how she originally came from the far north, went to University in Warwick (England) and was now back in Halifax; she hadn't done too badly for herself, mind – she was riding the bus to get from her Gym to her work. Wished her well, as our bus left the centre and visitor area and took in what I judge to be middle of the road inner suburbs on its way out to Fairview. That was the destination for the other visitors who had cruised in too.
After visiting the cemetery, a ride back on the bus, lunch in the City centre (really good to get some real clam chowder) and a walk back through to the cruise terminal. And views and pictures taken as we sailed.
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