# 20  

  .  .  .  and beyond  


Halifax

Mike's family moved to Canada when he was just 5 years old.  He can remember some of the experience, but not a lot, so we decided to visit Pier 21 in Halifax.  The drive from Moncton to Halifax was just over 2 1/2 hours and getting to the pier went well.  It was Saturday and traffic was a bit heavy at times, but not horrific, and even better, we found parking right in front. Lucky!  Mike was looking forward to seeing some of the sights that he remembered.

The building was the ocean liner terminal and clearing house for over a million immigrants coming here from 1928 to 1971.  It now houses the Canadian Museum of Immigration, part of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design as well as various retail and studio tenants.  This was a MAJOR tourist attraction with interactive areas, helpful staff, period displays and booths full of souvenirs and trinkets to buy.  Yes, we both bought fleece sweaters with Nova Scotia embroidered on the front.

We spent the better part of the day examining the displays, watching a short movie and examining the recreations that had been done.  They had set up a cabin as it would have been for a family of immigrants crossing the Atlantic.  They had period dishes all set up on a dining table for the first class passengers, and then another one for the steerage folk.  They had even set up a train car as it would have been in the early years.



Mike found a wall of photos of the ships that had made all the voyages.  He had come over on the Queen Frederica.  We also found a picture of the Montrose, the ship that had brought over my mother and her family when she was just 6 months old.




The one big disappointment was that everything had changed so much that Mike didn't really recognize much..  He had hoped to see the actual pier, but the Queen Elizabeth II was docked that day and we couldn't even get near that part of the complex.  Oh well, it was still a pretty amazing day.