eaport in the
North of England plus a Canadian accent.

There is the same packed mass movement of a lively polyglot people
through the streets. There is the same keen appetite for living that
sends people out of doors to walk in contact with their fellows under
the light of the many-globed electric standards that line the sidewalk.

There is the same air of bright prosperity in the glowing and vivacious
light of the fine and tasteful shops. They are good shops, and their
windows are displayed with an artistry that one finds is characteristic
throughout Canada. They offer the latest and smartest ideas in blouses
and gowns, jewellery and boots and cameras--I should like to find out
what percentage of the population of the American Continent does not
use a camera--and men's shirtings, shirtings that one views with awe,
shirtings of silk with emotional stripes and futuristic designs, and
collars to match the shirts, the sort of shirts that Solomon in all his
glory seems to have designed for festival days.

At night, certainly, the streets of Halifax are bright and vivid, and
the people in them good-humoured, laughing and sturdy, with that
contempt of affectation that is characteristic of the English north.

The bustle and vividness as well as the greyness of Halifax lets one
into the open secret that it is a great industrial port of Canada, and
an all-the-year-round port at that, yet it is the greyness and
narrowness of the streets that tells you that Halifax is also history.
In the old buildings, and their straggled frontage, is written the fact
that the city grew up before modernity set its mark on Canada in the
spacious and broad planning of townships.

It was, for years, the garrison of Britain in the Americas. Since the
day when Cornwallis landed in 1749 with his group of settlers to secure
the key harbour on the Eastern seaboard of America until the Canadians
themselves took over its garrisoning, it was the military and naval
base of our forces. And in that capacity it has formed part of the
stage setting for every phase of the Western historical drama.

It was the rendezvous of Wolfe before Quebec; it played a part in the
American War of Independence; it was a refuge for the United Empire
Loyalists; British ships used it as a base in the war of 1812; from its
anchorage the bold and crafty blockade runners slipped south in the
American Civil War, and its citizens grew fat through those adventurous
voyages.