Halifax

Summer patio hopping

/ Greg / Leave a comment

My three week summer vacation last year in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia meant there would be ample opportunity to sample liberally from some of the finest craft beers those two provinces have. As the pandemic was still swirling and my comfort with eating or drinking indoors was still at a low point, this craft beer exploration became something of a patio hopping experience. That’s usually difficult to pull off in rainy Atlantic Canada, but we got almost a completely perfect three weeks of weather. I wasted no time visiting an old favourite in Nackawic, my wife’s hometown. This is a taproom that just feels comfortable to me. Big Axe Brewery is located in a beautiful log constructed building just down the street from the world’s largest axe (hence, the brewery’s name).

Big Axe Brewery, Nackawic NB
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A long overdue visit, part 2

/ Greg / 1 Comment

After a wonderful visit with my mom and dad in northern New Brunswick, we pointed our car south, marvelled at the fact there was a pandemic-related random selection border checkpoint on the way into Nova Scotia, and a few hours later arrived in a city that means a great deal to both of us.

Halifax. Home sweet home.

This part of our Atlantic Canadian tour was about visiting family and also taking a couple of days to reconnect with some of our favourite things.

Halifax
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The old stomping grounds

/ Greg / 1 Comment

When I traveled to Halifax in June, it was for an almost absurdly short amount of time. Fly in on a Friday, meetings on Saturday, fly back home before the sun was up on Sunday morning. With so little time, I knew this was going to be a “greatest hits” type of trip. With precious little personal time on this visit, I charted a precise course through a city I know very well… but one that is changing rapidly, and becoming a touch more unfamiliar on each and every return visit.

My flight touched down at 4:30pm on a Friday afternoon, and at 5:30 I was sitting at the bar of my hotel’s restaurant, which fortunately for me, is known for its oyster happy hour. A dozen delicious oysters to reacquaint me with the taste of the ocean… this is the way you kick off a visit to Halifax.

Oysters in Halifax

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Foreign and familiar

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It snuck up on me.

On a trip to Halifax in April, there was no visit to see my mom and dad as they had just packed up and moved to New Brunswick days before my arrival. The trip also marked a full two years since I moved away from my old hometown. Lots changes in that amount of time and I couldn’t shake it that Halifax had started to feel a bit foreign.

Not that foreign is a bad thing. In one respect, it gave me an opportunity to sample from Atlantic Canadian breweries that weren’t even in existence when I last called the city home. Sober Island, Roof Hound Brewing, Saltbox Brewing, Trailway Brewing… these were all recommendations from Jason at Bishop’s Cellar (who made me feel at home and like I had never moved away… oh, how I miss my old wine and beer store on the waterfront), and were all worth my time. The Hu Jon Hops by Trailway (green can) and the session IPA by Roof Hound (far right) were my personal favourites.

Assortment of Atlantic Canadian beers

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A long way for one day

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Two years is both an eternity and a period that can pass in a blink of an eye. It is an almost unfathomable dichotomy of time, save for the fact that we’ve all felt it at some point in our lives. In the two years since I left Halifax for Saskatoon, my parents have moved away, my niece and nephew are growing up at what seems like a lightening pace, and the city that I used to find so familiar, while in many ways remains so to me, is also becoming increasingly foreign as time has marched on for it, much like it has for me.

Being back in Halifax to attend and present at a conference was simultaneously disorienting and welcoming. Between landing in the city and my conference activities kicking off, my wife joined me for a ridiculously short and fun one day visit to hang out with what is left of our family in Halifax. Before that day with family, after a long day of travel, our only plan for a Friday night was a seafood feast at The Five Fishermen just around the corner from our hotel. Mussels, lobster, scallops, salmon, clams, swordfish… we enjoyed all the creatures of the sea we are not afforded in our life on the prairies.

Seafood feed at the Five Fishermen

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A good time, not a long time

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“Close” is relative. Life on the prairies has me about 4,200km away from where I grew up and where my parents continue to live, in Lower Sackville, NS. When work took me to Boston in November for a few days, that was close enough to loop in a quick visit back home to visit with my folks. And for November, I was treated to some beautiful late fall weather to take in a very familiar view from the back deck of my parent’s place.

Lower Sackville

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The beer from back east

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I’ve written here a few times how much I miss the craft beer scene back in Nova Scotia. I don’t drink a huge quantity of beer, but when I do have a pint or two, I like to try “new to me” beers and while I was living in Nova Scotia I never ran out of something new to sample. Fast forward about a year and a half, and when I got back to Halifax, I had a lot of catching up to do.

Not only was I excited in trying some new beers, but I was also thrilled to get a beautiful spring day to visit a place that had materialized since my move. The Stillwell Beergarden on Spring Garden Road is something that I wish someone here in Saskatoon would replicate just off Broadway. A very simple menu of grilled food, ten taps of Atlantic Canadian beer, and what I can imagine would be a lovely evening spot with the overhead patio lanterns – this is my kind of place. I sampled two beers on my lunchtime visit – the “Malternate Reality” from North Brewing (probably my favourite Halifax brewery) and “Dunder” an Australian pale ale from Trailway Brewing in Fredericton.

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The meaning of “home”

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Home. A simple concept. Or it least it was until I moved to Saskatoon.

I’ve purposely resisted saying “back home”, choosing to say “back east” when referring to Halifax, or Nova Scotia, or really anywhere in the Maritimes since moving to Saskatchewan. I try to live a principle-based existence and one of the principles at the core of how I want to live is “home is where my feet are.” While that started out as mind over matter in the early days in Saskatoon, as the days turned to months, it became much less of a mindset and became a matter of the heart. And like all matters of the heart, it’s complicated.

My heart’s position on home got tested in June. Heading back to Nova Scotia for my sister’s wedding, it was the first time my wife and I had been back there together since we moved away in the spring of 2016. My heart at times ached. Like when I played the role of a magician and made my niece and nephew “disappear” to everyone at my wife’s brother’s house (the kids still don’t know how I pulled that one off). Or just hanging out with my mom and dad and catching up. An afternoon visit to play with the kids, a cup of tea with my mom or a pint and a hockey game with my dad were things I took for granted a couple of years ago. Now, they’re treasured, and at times like tonight in Saskatoon as I write this, missed.

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