SATURDAY, JUNE 1st:

     Skype buzzed at 4.05am when a friend in the UK didn't know we were here and was thinking we were back home! Still we managed to get back to sleep and didn't rush to get up. We went across the road to the cafeteria and had porridge - a bowl that was certainly not small. 

    We packed and went out and had a walk around near the Governor's residence and St Paul's Church, which was sadly closed to visitors on a Saturday. Outside we met two priests who turned out to be Roman Catholics and chatted with them. They pointed out their bishop across the road and they were all in Halifax to discuss the formation, of a new diocese. 

     We chose then to spend the bulk of our time in the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. Of greatest interest was the Titanic exhibition with artifacts from the ship and many stories of human interest from that dreadful night. Equally poignant was an exhibition layout the Halifax Explosion that took place on December 6th 1917 when two ships collided in the Narrows and the subsequent explosion of munitions on one of them flattened much of Halifax leading to the deaths of two thousand people and leaving nine thousand people injured. The event and the number of people and buildings destroyed ranks second only to Hiroshima in devastations caused by explosion.

     We had lunch in the middle of our visit at a nearby cafe which several of our group were patronising. 

      Then it was a case of wiling away the hours until 8pm when the bus came to take us to the airport. Bit by bit the group gathered in the hotel foyer and duly on time the bus arrived and drove first to the Holiday Inn to deposit Iain who is staying there overnight and flying to Glasgow tomorrow on his way back to Orkney.