Halifax Harbour Sea Music Festival: September 4-5, 2010

For all intents and purposes Halifax is and always has been about the sea. It was therefore not a surprise when I read that there would be a sea music festival on the Waterfront this weekend.

I was a little worried that the festival might have been cancelled because of Hurricane Earl's untimely appearance on September 4, but with the calm weather following the day afterward I walked down to the harbour to enjoy a few hours of "sea chanteys, fo'c'sle songs (a fo'c'sle is short for forecastle, which is where the crew of a merchant ship stays while on board), stories and fun", as the festival's website advertises.

One of the Festival's main sponsors is the excellent Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which is committed to preserving all things sea and ship related. I visited the Museum back in May during my cross-Canada travels and thoroughly enjoyed my experience there, so it was nice to be able to come back again. Come autumn I will attempt to make a more official Ea-pea posting on the MMA (what an unfortunate acronym, for the Museum that is), but for now I will get back to my thoughts on the Festival.

Of course if you like sea music then you would have certainly enjoyed the performances. However, the most interesting part in my opinion was not songs themselves, but rather the explanation of what the songs meant and/or how they came about or why the performer chose to perform them. The explanations made the event not only entertaining but educational as well. Here at the Ea-pea Dave series of blogs (more are coming after I move to other provinces) we're (and by "we're" I mean I'm) all about education, so I liked that.

(Costumed period re-enactors knit a shirt and a scarf/sweater [?], respectively. I wasn't aware that orange plastic balls were around in 1749 though.)

Nova Scotia National Historic Site #5: CSS Acadia

CSS Acadia is a former hydrographic surveying and oceanographic research ship once used by Canada to map its coastal waters. Launched in 1913 and named after the original name for Nova Scotia under French colonial rule, Acadia provided landmark surveys of Sable Island, the Bay of Fundy, and provided information instrumental in the establishment of the port of Churchill, Manitoba.

Later, the prefix CSS was changed to HMCS when Acadia spent two years from 1917 to 1919 on anti-submarine patrol in the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of St. Lawrence. During WWII, HMCS Acadia patrolled the waters at the entrance to Halifax Harbour, and also saw extensive action as a training ship. After the war, Acadia resumed work as a survey vessel for the third time, and in 1962 rescued hundreds of people from forest fires in Newfoundland. By the end of its career, CSS Acadia had charted nearly every metre of water in Atlantic Canada as well as a great percentage of the Eastern Arctic Coast.

Currently CSS Acadia belongs to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax where it is moored, and is open to the public every year from May to October. CSS Acadia is the only known ship still afloat to have survived the Halifax Explosion, and is also the only ship still afloat to have served the Royal Canadian Navy in both World Wars.