By the time we had finished touring the Citadel, it was going on 1:30 and we were starving. Not knowing of many places in Halifax to eat, we decided to go back to an area we are at least a little familiar with...the downtown harbour.
We had passed a cool brewery yesterday that was between where we parked the truck and the waterfront boardwalk...and knowing that we'd have a parking spot big enough for Buster, that is where we headed.
Turned out that the
Garrison Brewing Company doesn't serve food...
So after a tasty pizza next door at Tomavinos Ristorante...
We went back to the brewery to have a taste of one of their brews...
Steve had a beer while I tried one of their ciders on tap...
After our food and refreshment, it was time to find the last site on our agenda for today...the Fairview Cemetery...best known as the final resting place for over one hundred victims of the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
As we followed Serena's (GPS) directions, we passed Alexander Keith's Brewery...would love to have taken a tour! But not only did we run out of time, it was also pretty costly at $26.95 each! Besides we toured the Heineken Brewery in Amsterdam...
Founded in 1820, Alexander Keith's is a brewery in Halifax, Canada. It is among the oldest commercial breweries in North America. Keith's was founded by Alexander Keith who emigrated from Scotland in 1817.
The bridge that goes over to Dartmouth...
HMCS Harry DeWolf, named after a Nova Scotia native who was one of Canada's most distinguished sailors during the Second World War. The first of the Arctic offshore patrol ships to be built in Halifax at Irving Shipbuilding launched a couple of weeks after we passed by...
There is no way that we were going to drive Buster into the cemetery with such narrow treed roads (besides the signs says "Automobiles Only") so we found a parking spot further up the road and walked back...
It was a long walk...
One hundred and twenty-one victims of the RMS Titanic sinking are interred at Fairview, more than any other cemetery in the world. Most of them are memorialized with small gray granite markers with the name and date of death. Some families paid for larger markers with more inscriptions. The occupants of a third of the graves, however, have never been identified and their markers contain just the date of death and marker number. Surveyor E. W. Christie laid out three long lines of graves in gentle curves following the contours of the sloping site. By co-incidence, the curved shape suggests the outline of the bow of a ship.
One of the better-known Titanic markers is for an unidentified child victim, known for decades as The Unknown Child. No one claimed the body, so he was buried with funds provided by sailors of the CS Mackay-Bennett, the cable ship that recovered his body. The marker bears the inscription 'Erected to the memory of an unknown child whose remains were recovered after the disaster of the "Titanic" April 15, 1912'. In November 2002, the child was initially identified as 13-month-old Eino Viljami Panula of Finland. Eino, his mother, and four brothers all died in the Titanic disaster. After additional forensic testing, the unknown child was re-identified as 19-month-old Sidney Leslie Goodwin, an English child who perished with his entire family.
As a side note, Fairview cemetery also contains 29 war graves of Commonwealth service personnel, 20 from World War I and 9 from World War II.
Immediately adjacent to Fairview is The Baron de Hirsch Cemetery, also known as the Beth Israel Synagogue Cemetery, is a Jewish cemetery. Although we didn't go into it, Steve managed to take a picture over the fence of the other Titanic grave markers near the back.
Of the 209 bodies recovered after the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912, 150 were buried in Halifax cemeteries. Ten victims were buried at Baron de Hirsch Cemetery, eight of whom unidentified. The others were the Titanic's saloon steward Frederick William Wormald and the passenger Michel Navratil. While the intent was for Jewish victims to be buried in the cemetery based on initial body identification, it later turned out that the only two identified victims from Titanic in the cemetery were not Jewish. Wormald was Church of England and Navratil, who had boarded the ship under the name "Louis M. Hoffman", was Catholic.
And that concludes a very busy day...so much to see and do in Halifax! We're certainly making the best of the few days we have here!
It was after 4:30 by the time we got home...time to sit and relax with a cold one...
They sure take good care of the headstones in that cemetary. Amazing that the names are all so clear to read.
ReplyDeleteI would imagine it’s the most visited area of the cemetery.
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