History comes alive at popular tourist spots

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia -- Standing atop a grassy embankment inside the thick granite walls of the Citadel, we were treated to an astounding panorama of the city's downtown area and, beyond it, Halifax Harbor -- the second-largest natural deep-water harbor in the world. (For fans of "Jeopardy!," Sydney, Australia, has the largest.)

The huge fortress, which sits on a hill, took three decades to build in the mid-1800s and once served as the heart of this port city's fortifications. It was built to deter assaults on the city in the event of war with a number of would-be foes -- including a certain neighboring country to the south.

Outside its walls is a deep ditch, and cannon openings spaced along the wall would allow gunners to fire down on anyone foolhardy enough to get too close.

"And one reason for the fort's star shape is that troops could catch any attackers in a nice crossfire down below," explained our young tour guide.

The Citadel, a national historic site, is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Canada.

Our guide, a college student, was a living-history re-enactor portraying a member of the 78th Highland Regiment, a famous Scottish unit of the British Army, which was stationed at the Citadel in the late 1860s. He cut quite the dashing figure in his MacKenzie tartan kilt and bright red doublet.

When not showing visitors around the fort, the Highlanders perform precision drills in the Citadel's gravel courtyard, while the unit's bagpipers and drummers, dressed in contrasting green uniforms, parade around periodically, entertaining visitors with martial marching tunes.

Across the way, on another part of the fort's ramparts, re- enactors dressed in what looked like blue bellhop uniforms were busy with their own ceremony -- preparing to fire the noon cannon, a daily tradition that's been continued 364 days a year (all but Christmas Day) for nearly 150 years. Though no cannon balls are used, the concussion from the daily blast was occasionally known to shatter windows in town, so a few years ago the explosive charge was cut back. But there's still enough noise to make adults wince and small children cry when the cannon is fired.

Halifax was one of two Canadian ports of call during a four-day summer cruise out of New York City on Carnival Cruise Lines' MS Victory. The other stop was at Saint John, New Brunswick.

The 2,800-passenger Victory, which normally sails seven-day cruises to the Caribbean out of Miami, will continue a schedule of four- and five-day cruises to Canada out of New York until Sept. 6. After that will be a month of New England cruises out of New York, then trips out of Charleston, S.C., and Norfolk, Va., before the Victory heads back to Miami to resume its Caribbean routes.

Our next stop in Halifax was the waterfront, where many of the seaport's old mercantile buildings have been transformed into shops, cafes and bars.

After a short break at a little place called John Shippey's Brewing Company, where we shared french fries with seagulls on a patio overlooking the harbor, we walked over to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.

Among the museum's dozens of exhibits is one devoted to a tragic chapter of local history, the massive Halifax Explosion of 1917. Some claimed it was the handiwork of World War I-era German spies, while others said it was an accident. Either way, more than 1,600 people were killed and another 9,000 injured when a munitions ship exploded in the harbor after colliding with another ship.

The museum's highlight is its permanent exhibit of artifacts from the Titanic. Halifax has a strong connection to the 1912 sinking of the luxury liner. As the closest major seaport to the scene, several ships were dispatched from Halifax to recover victims. More than 150 of them are buried in local cemeteries.

One of the tombstones marks the grave of a "J Dawson," which some tourists like to think is Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Jack Dawson, from the movie "Titanic." It's actually the grave of James Dawson, a laborer in Titanic's boiler room.)

Recovery ships also plucked from the icy Atlantic several items from the sunken liner that are displayed at the museum, including one of the only wooden deck chairs from the ship known to exist.

Later, we passed through Pier 21, Canada's version of New York's Ellis Island. Between 1928 and 1971, more than 1 million immigrants arrived in Canada by way of the facility. Today it's a museum commemorating the immigrant experience.

Our other port of call on the cruise was Saint John, New Brunswick. Located at the mouth of the Saint John River, on the Bay of Fundy, it's a lot smaller than Halifax (120,000 vs. 360,000 residents), but every bit as interesting. The oldest city in New Brunswick and the first incorporated city in Canada (1785), Saint John was once a major seaport and one of the largest shipbuilding centers in the world.

And like Halifax, it also has its own local story of tragedy. A fierce fire in 1877 destroyed the business and residential heart of the city, and though only 18 people were killed, 13,000 others were left homeless. In rebuilding Saint John, wealthy residents used brick and stone instead of wood, and many of the picturesque, turn-of-the- 20th-century buildings that remain today feature elaborate brickwork, gargoyles and intricate scrollwork.

One building that survived the fire and is still standing is the Loyalist House, the oldest structure in the city. Built in 1817, the Georgian-style mansion is a reminder of Saint John's British heritage. It was built by an American who came here from New York to escape persecution for his loyalty to the British crown.

Today it's a national historical site full of period furnishings.

Saint John was a popular spot for Americans who remained loyal to England; even the notorious Benedict Arnold lived here for six years with his family following the American Revolution.

Saint John's most popular tourist attraction is its famous Reversing Falls, an unusual natural phenomenon that occurs daily near the point where the St. John River empties into the Bay of Fundy. At low tide, the river flows into the bay through a narrow, rocky gorge, which produces a boiling series of rapids and whirlpools.

But as the bay tides begin to rise, they slow the course of the river and finally stop its flow completely. They continue rising, becoming higher than the river level, and slowly at first, the river begins to flow upstream. As the tides keep rising -- a total of 28 feet in all, the biggest tide change in the world -- and the reverse flow of the river gets stronger, beginning to form rapids heading upstream.

To really appreciate the falls, you'd have to see it twice in the same day, at high and low tides, and to help visitors do that, there are signs posted all over town listing the times of the tides for that day. Unfortunately, we didn't have time for that during our all- too-brief visit to Saint John.

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