Weekend in Halifax/In Celebration of Our Ramona, Dr. Lumpkin

Somehow I’ve been unable to find time and will to write over the past three days, but we’ve been busy as we made our way into and out of Halifax and back down to Bangor, Maine, where we’re up before the sun this morning.

Saint John Sunrise

Saturday morning we were up early in Saint John, New Brunswick, to catch the ferry that would take us across the Bay of Fundy to Nova Scotia. The Princess of Acadia was our ship for the crossing. She’s a massive ship with none of the grace or delicacy of a fairy-tale princess. We drove into her cavernous belly along with many other cars and several huge tractor-trailer trucks.

Up a couple of steep flights of stairs we went into the lounge in the ship’s bow and found a spot near a window to enjoy the voyage. The ship included a place for breakfast, so we went there and found something to eat. It’s best that I not describe the fare too explicitly as I don’t cherish the memory.

Princess Deck

Back upstairs, I settled in with my book about Halifax, Burden of Desire by Robert MacNeil. It’s a novel structured around the horrible explosion that occurred in Halifax’s harbor in December, 1917. It was initially my intention to read awhile and then go outside to enjoy the crossing with my face in the cold wind. Mike did go out to take some pictures.

Since I became engrossed in the book (and I recommend it heartily) I didn’t go out right away and by the time I might have done so, the crossing had turned rather rough and I could hardly walk inside the ship, must less venture outside. When I looked up from my reading I could see the movement of the ship through the windows as first just the waves, then just the sky. The ship was really wallowing in high seas along the route to Nova Scotia.

I chatted with a young man who was traveling with his family to Yarmouth. They have made this ferry trip many times, but he said they had never experienced a crossing as rough as this one. His sister was having a tough time with it, spending most of the crossing either lying down or in the restroom. Fortunately, I don’t suffer motion sickness, so managed the ups and downs comfortably and settled back into my book.

Digby NS

Our three-hour journey ended quietly enough in the harbor at Digby. We stopped at the Nova Scotia Information Centre to get a map, then headed north and east across the island toward Halifax on the other coast. The countryside is beautiful. Our route took us along what is called the “Harvest Highway” through agricultural areas in the middle of the island before we turned east toward the Atlantic Ocean.

We stopped in Bridgetown and found lunch at the End of the Line pub. It’s located in an old railway depot building. We were welcomed and treated to pretty good pub food, getting there just in time to get our food before a huge group of parents and teenaged girls arrived. We discovered that Bridgetown was hosting a soccer tournament. Our waiter described the pub’s business for the weekend as “hungry teams and families coming in waves through the day.”

Back on the road, we completed our three-hour drive to Halifax, finding that the Mapquest directions took us easily to our destination. We arrived at the Blackburn-Lumpkin residence to find a houseful of family and friends who had come, as we did, to celebrate Mike’s eldest sibling’s installation as the twelfth president of Mount Saint Vincent University. The honoree herself, Ramona, was at a tea in her honor, but we were happy to see her husband, Bill, and Mike’s mother and sister, Linda, and Linda’s husband, Robert. In addition several of Ramona’s friends from her previous post (Huron University College in London, Ontario), as well as longer-term friends from New York City and Lexington, Kentucky, had come to Halifax.

In the two weeks or so Bill and Ramona have been in Halifax, they have settled into their new home. Bill has painted walls and hung paintings. They had unpacked boxes, shelved books and arranged furnishings. They offered a house full of guests an inviting “inn” for the occasion.

The rest of the evening was a chance to catch up with those we’ve not seen in awhile and make new friends of others. Ramona and Linda and a few others went to a poetry reading to honor the incoming president.

Sunday morning was a flurry of activity. Everyone had to get ready for the installation ceremony which was held as part of the morning’s fall convocation on campus. Those of us staying with Ramona and Bill got ourselves ready at home and helped transport guests staying at a nearby hotel to the event. The day was chilly, but pleasant.

Mount President

It was a very proud moment for everyone to witness the pomp and ceremony of the occasion. There was beautiful music from both a quintet and a bagpiper. Ramona was welcomed with speeches, greetings from many other universities and from faculty, staff and students of “the Mount.” Then we saw the conferring of graduate degrees on over a hundred educators, sharing their accomplishment with proud families and friends. It was truly an emotionally stirring occasion with its combination of robed academics, the beautiful music and the reading of a moving poem commissioned to celebrate Ramona’s new position in this place rich with history. It was a long morning, but never tedious.

After a nice luncheon, we guests left Ramona to officiate at the afternoon convocation. We headed home first and then some of us ventured into Halifax to explore a little before the special evening dinner to come. Mike and I stopped at an old graveyard where we were told some of the Titanic victims had been buried. As it turned out, we weren’t in the right one, but did see some heart-rending memorials to those who died in the Halifax explosion of 1917 that I had been reading about.

In one single decade of the early 20th century, Halifax experienced two tragedies. It was the port to which many of the ill-fated Titanic passengers came after that ship’s sinking in the North Atlantic, both survivors and victims. Those who lived were taken into the homes and hospitals of Halifax. Many of those who died were buried in Halifax cemeteries in that sad April of 1912.

1917 Victims

In December, 1917, two ships collided in the Narrows, so named because it divides the outer reach of Halifax Harbor from the inner Bedford Basin. The S.S. Mont Blanc was entering the harbor on a highly secret wartime mission, loaded with ammunition headed for France, stopping at Halifax as many ships did before making the Atlantic crossing. The S.S. Imo was leaving Halifax on its way to New York to pick up relief supplies for delivery to Belgium. Through a series of mishaps and miscommunication, the two collided and the Mont Blanc exploded with tremendous force, so extraordinary that an entire section of Halifax was leveled.

More than 2000 people were killed and many thousands more were injured. It was so horrific that it’s been written that the scientists who made the first atom bomb studied the effects of the Halifax explosion as they did their work.

The Citadel

Halifax today is still a busy port city, as well as home to a number of universities in addition to Mount Saint Vincent. It is hilly and at its highest point sits the Citadel, an historic fort completed in 1856 to defend against land attack from the United States. It was the fourth such military installation at the site, the first built there in 1749. Now a Canadian National Historic Site, it commemorates the city’s long history as a British naval fortification.

Halifax is also, like all of Nova Scotia, a tourist destination. It has shops and restaurants galore, many along the harbor wharves. The city’s signature tall ship, the Bluenose II, is remembered in a replica of the same name, built from the plans of the original ship. Although it is now in dry dock for this year, it is usually a working vessel, giving public cruises and sailing to other harbors as an ambassador for the city.

We were guests of Mount Saint Vincent’s chancellor, Sister Donna, at a really nice dinner on campus Sunday night. It ended a day in which it became ever more obvious that Dr. Ramona Lumpkin will be a great and fitting leader for the Mount.

(Photos by Mike Lumpkin, the photo of Ramona a replica from the installation brochure--original photographer's name unknown.)