A FREE LUNCH

We had been in Halifax once before in our lives, the summer of 1971 but spent most of our time in Dartmouth at a church conference. We could not really remember much of Halifax at all and like all cities it has changed dramatically in the last 36 years. Walking down the main street, Barrington Street one day we noticed a sign in front of an old Anglican Church. It read, "There is such a thing as a free lunch. Meet with the Rector for lunch at 12.00 noon on Wednesday; no sermon; no strings attached." The next day our bus arrived in the city at 1215 and Bonnie said, "Today is Wednesday, I wonder if we are still in time for the free lunch. We almost ran into the church as any yachtie offered a free meal would do. We were welcomed warmly and fed well on freshly made sandwiches and tea. One of the parishioners asked polite questions like, "Where are you from?", "Is this your first visit to Halifax?" Bruce replied vaguely, "I think I've been here before; as a matter of fact I think I was the guest preacher at this church in July 1971." One of them disappeared into the church archives and returned with an ancient looking vestry book. We turned the yellowing pages gently to July 1971 but there was no record of Bruce as preacher. We turned the page again to August 1971 and there on the second Sunday in August at the 11am service of Morning Prayer was the unmistakable scrawl of one K.B. Marriott as preacher. We were flabbergasted. Bruce said, "The building seems right but I was sure it had a road in front of it". "It did",came the reply, "The road was closed a few years ago to create a park between the church and the City Hall." The church was St Paul's; the oldest Anglican Church in Canada built in 1750. We now knew that we were part of history so we decided it should be our spiritual home for the short time we were to remain in Halifax.
Halifax has been the centre of several of the world's greatest civilian disasters (not including Bruce's preaching). It was the rescue centre and morgue for the Titanic disaster and the centre of the biggest man made explosion prior to the atomic bomb. Both are movingly recorded in the Maritime Museum. We knew very little about the Halifax explosion which occurred in 1917 when two ships collided in the harbour. One was a French ship heavily laden with the most powerful explosives then known and heading for the war in Europe. A fire started and she drifted towards the dock before she exploded. More than 2000 people were killed and many thousand more injured. St Paul's church became a morgue with dead bodies literally stacked everywhere.

After a few more touristy things we were ready to leave for the Bras D'Or lakes in Cape Breton Island, when we received an urgent phone call. Bruce's sister Dorothy was fading quickly. We now knew why we had felt compelled to make a rush trip to Newfoundland and were still in Halifax. It was possible for Bruce to fly home leaving Bonnie on the boat securely moored at the Armdale Yacht Cub with great support from some of the club and church members. The nightmare of 10 flights, 12 security checks, preparing and delivering a funeral eulogy for Dorothy and handing over her affairs to her executors; all in 7 days will hopefully fade into a lost file one day. It was all a bit much for the old man and on his return, after standing in line for 2 hours to check in to a hotel at JFK and over 2 hours lined up the airport, he missed his flight from New York to Boston. Fortunately he was able to get on later flights the same day. A few days of recovery and we were sailing into a cruisers heaven; Bras D'Or lakes, Cape Breton Island.