On Going Back to Halifax

This trip was sponsored by Tourism Nova Scotia. All opinions, as always, are my own.

There are two things I always hear when I tell people I used to live in Halifax.

“I love Halifax!” or, “I’ve always wanted to go to Halifax!”

When I moved to Halifax, all those years ago, I knew almost nothing about Nova Scotia. It felt like a world away, this little Atlantic province, thousands of kilometre from my hometown of Winnipeg. I grew up in the prairies, all fields of canola and huge, Manitoba skies. I knew nothing of living on the ocean, had only read about fishing villages and lighthouses and lobster traps in books.

A school counsellor recommended the East Coast to me. He knew I wanted to go to university somewhere else – anywhere else! – and I had looked at universities in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto.

“Have you considered the Maritime provinces?” he asked in one of our meetings. That was all it took for me to research the universities out east, finally narrowing it down to three: Mount Allison, King’s College at Dalhousie, and Acadia.

A few months later, my mom and I flew to Halifax and toured these universities by rental car. I had only been to the Atlantic provinces once before, when my mom took me to Prince Edward Island on a research trip for one of her books. I instantly connected with Acadia and the views of the Annapolis Valley; the small-town feel of Wolfville was what I had always pictured in my mind when I imagined going to university. I envisioned reading in the local coffeeshop and wearing chunky turtlenecks in the fall, the leaves crunching under my feet.

After a year of living in a dorm, however, I realized I couldn’t stop thinking about Halifax and being by the sea. I dreamed of having a little apartment near the ocean, about walking through downtown like a real, bonafide adult. I transferred to Dalhousie despite not knowing a soul in the city.

So there I was, 19 years old, living in Halifax by myself. I remember putting together shelves while listening to Stevie Wonder on the record player, hanging twinkly lights on my balcony, and feeling like a grown-up buying milk at the local Sobey’s.

Halifax became my home. It was the first time I felt independent, the first time I lived on my own, and the first time I felt as though I could really start to imagine who I wanted to become as an adult. I made friends. I studied. I worked. I did indeed wear chunky turtlenecks as I walked to my local coffeeshop to read. I fell in love with my community and the life I created. And perhaps most importantly, I started writing.

I credit my friend Shawna for setting up my first blog. The year was 2003; there was no Facebook or Instagram, and there were very few blogs. While I never dipped my toe into the Myspace world, I did discover Livejournal through Shawna. Back then almost everyone I knew had one; it was a way to write about what we were into, a way to connect. We shared music and comics and our views on the world around us.

I poured my heart and soul into that Livejournal. I wrote multiple times a week, treating it like my diary. Slowly but surely – I’ll still never really know how – I started getting comments and follows from strangers, people living all over the world. That Livejournal eventually morphed into this blog in 2010, but I’ll forever credit that early platform with making me realize how much I love writing, and how it’s possible to find an incredible community online. The fact that this is now my job is also mind-boggling to me, and something I could have never imagined twenty years ago as I sat writing on my couch in Halifax.

I love reading those old entries back, the ones that are still public. I talk about walking down Spring Garden Road, stopping in at my favourite used bookstore. I write about smelling the ocean when I open my windows at night, hearing the seagulls caw in the distance. I write about picnics on Citadel Hill and pints at the Split Crow and hearing my friends’ bands play at the Seahorse. I can see myself growing up in those words, see how I’m mapping out the future.

When I left Halifax in 2006, it wasn’t because I didn’t love the city. I wanted to travel for the summer – which I did, to Europe – and then I wanted to attend Ryerson University in Toronto for a certificate in publishing. That’s what I thought I’d do: work in publishing in Toronto. I never thought that those late nights spend writing in Halifax would lead to something else, that one day I’d be a professional blogger.

But Toronto didn’t work out. I didn’t connect to the city the way I had connected so instantly to Halifax, and I didn’t like the world of publishing. When I met a boy who wanted to move to Edinburgh with me, and then to Japan, I said yes.

Over the years, throughout my 20s and 30s spent living abroad and travelling, I kept resolving to go back to Halifax. Very few cities have felt like that so quickly, made me feel so warm and at home. When I moved back to Canada in 2018, it was high on my list of places to visit.

But then the pandemic happened. And then I got pregnant. And then I became a single mom. Travelling at all, anywhere, seemed impossible, at least until I felt comfortable leaving my son for a few days.

When an opportunity with Tourism Nova Scotia appeared, it seemed serendipitous. I hadn’t travelled outside of my home province of Manitoba for years. And no matter where I went, or where I planned to go, Halifax was still always in the back of my mind. Thankfully, my mom could also join for a few days.

On the airplane, I couldn’t remember what the airport looked like. It was only when I was standing at baggage claim that it all seemed to come back to me, this place I had stood many times before. My flight had been several hours delayed because of thunderstorms in Winnipeg, so as I approached Halifax by taxi, it was nearly 1 a.m., the sky beetle-black. With construction on some of the major downtown streets, we took a winding way to the hotel, and I felt my heart skip a beat whenever I recognized a street name: Duke, Argyle, Hollis.

The next day, our first full day in the city, we started with a Harbour Hopper tour of the Halifax Harbour. I was listening to the tour guide, of course, but I was also bubbling over with my own stories and anecdotes, pointing out places I remembered, pointed out places that had changed.

Over the next few days, as I explored the history of Halifax and the Halifax Defence Complex, my experience was unlike so many of my other travel experiences. Usually, when I visit a city, I’m solidly a tourist, relying on maps and research of things to do. In this case, however, I felt I was both the tourist and the local; I visited places I’d never been before – like Georges Island National Historic Site, for example – but would also instinctively know how to get to a destination without the need of a map. It was this beautiful blend of the nostalgic and the new, getting to experience a city I once knew so well, but this time as a tourist.

And perhaps that’s what stands out to me the most about my time in Halifax. Yes, the city looks a bit different and feels a bit different, but at its core, it’s still the same city I fell in love with more than twenty years ago. And couldn’t the same be said about all of us? I think back to that bright-eyed kid who was so full of excitement and wonder about what lay ahead, about which directions my life would take.

I look a little different now – OK, maybe a lot different – and I feel a little different, too. But underneath it all, I’m still that kid. I still feel that excitement and wonder on a daily basis, imagining where the next twenty or forty years might lead me, might lead my son. I often think about encouraging him to go to university in Halifax, too, that city on the sea that has meant so much to me in my life (with the hope that he would feel the same way, of course, but also that I could regularly visit).

Even though my holiday in Halifax was busy, filled with sightseeing, every evening I found myself gravitating toward the water. I spent so many hours on the waterfront in my university days: walking, meeting up with friends, writing in my journal, reading, grabbing a coffee and walking from one end of the boardwalk to the other, back again and back again.

This time, there were many new-to-me restaurants, shops, and art installations, but the air, the sounds of jazz music and people laughing, the pink sky as the sun dipped below the horizon, it all felt the same.

I’ve been lucky to have lived in many places in my life, some thousands of kilometres from where I was born and, now, a place that’s only a few blocks from where I grew up. But Halifax will forever feel like more than a place I lived. It will forever feel like home.

Have you ever been to Halifax? Do you feel this way about a place you once lived?

Many thanks to Tourism Nova Scotia for hosting me on this trip. All opinions – as always! – are completely my own.