Halifax is the capital city of Canada's province of Nova Scotia. According to a census taken in 1996, its population is 113,910; the Halifax regional municipality, comprising Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford, and the remainder of Halifax County, has a population of 384,613.

It is located at 44º40' north and 63º34' west, placing it along the same latitude as parts of southern Oregon and also Bordeaux, France -- remarkably southerly, as Canada goes. It sits on a peninsula, four and a half miles wide by two miles long, on Nova Scotia's coastline halfway between Canso and Yarmouth.

Halifax harbour is the centre of eastern Canadian shipping operations; McNabs Island at its mouth protects the inner harbour from winds coming in off the ocean, and hills on the remaining three sides protect it from storms. The water here is deep enough that it doesn't freeze even during the coldest parts of winter, allowing it to be used year-round; this is what allows much of the city's economy to be based on shipping, and why it was founded where it was in the first place.

Before European explorers found it in the early 17th century, the area was used by the Mi'kmaq as a summer fishing ground. Samuel de Champlain was the first explorer to arrive, in 1605; he claimed it for the French, who also used it as a fishing station. It was called Chebucto, which means "largest harbour".

The rivalry between France and Great Britain for colonial superiority was intense, and much of it was played out in the Atlantic colonies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. By 1745, Great Britain had three settlements with harbours along the Atlantic: Canso, Annapolis Royal, and the newly-captured Louisbourg, formerly a French fortified city. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, ending the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748, returned Louisbourg to France; it was necessary, then, for Britain to find another harbour, to retain her power in the colonies.

As early as 1715, Chebucto had been identified by English explorers as an ideal location for a harbour around which a town might be built. Nothing was done, however, until 1749, when Edward Cornwallis landed with twenty-five hundred colonists to establish a permanent settlement on the peninsula. The community was named Halifax in honour of the current President of the British Board of Trade. Not long afterward, another town was founded across the harbour; Dartmouth was named after the city of Dartmouth, England, and for the Earl of Dartmouth. In 1752 a ferry was established to connect the two towns. It is now the oldest continuously-running saltwater ferry system in North America.

As the town grew, helped along by an influx of settlers from Great Britain, it saw a series of firsts for British North America: the first newspaper, the Gazette, in 1752, the first post office in 1755, the first meeting of a representative assembly and the first dockyard to be completed in 1758. In 1759, Halifax served as the headquarters for the British invasion and subsequent capture of Louisbourg as the Seven Years' War moved into North America; later, during the American Revolutionary War, it was the command base for naval and overland operations.

Once the Revolutionary War had run its course, a number of United Empire Loyalists were forced to flee to British North America. Many of them settled in Halifax and Dartmouth; among them were several thousand freed slaves and Loyalists of African descent, followed by Maroons from Jamaica. Banding together, the black Haligonians formed their own small community at the northernmost tip of the peninsula; it became known as Africville. By 1784, the population of Halifax stood at about five thousand.

The 19th century saw more immigration: first those Americans who had supported the British during the War of 1812, then Irish Catholics in the 1830s. By 1851, the population had swelled to over twenty thousand, and the city was thriving. 1854's Reciprocity Treaty between Canada and the United States allowed for duty-free trade; business between the Atlantic provinces and New England was brisk and profitable.

The American Civil War caused the relationship between Canada and the US to sour; American politicians suspected that Canada had supported the rebelling Confederate states during the conflict as did Great Britain, and the Reciprocity Treaty was quietly dropped in 1866. Protective tariffs put into place by the federal government hurt the shipping industry; harbours in New England became more desirable as duties discouraged ships from docking in Halifax.

Despite the economy's decline the city continued to expand, with electric streetcars and a city hall by 1896. A decade later, the Canadian government took over control of the city's military operations from the British; despite the subsequent reduction in forces, Halifax remained an important naval base.

During the First World War, Allied ships of all types waited in the Halifax harbour for escorts to arrive and take them across the Atlantic. Disaster struck in 1917: a munitions ship collided with another ship, and the explosion that resulted killed over two thousand people and demolished much of Halifax and Dartmouth. The damage was estimated at $28 million, and the next several years were spent rebuilding. The Halifax explosion was the largest man-made explosion on record before the advent of nuclear weapons tests.

The city served much the same purpose in the Second World War, though fortunately without no corresponding catastrophes. Ever since, it has grown slowly but steadily; today it is still largely based on the shipping industry, with the main exports being fish, lumber, and grain from western Canada.

Modern-day Halifax is home to no fewer than five universities: Saint Mary's, Mount Saint Vincent, Dalhousie, King's, and TUNS. It also has the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, a leading research centre.

The city motto is "Riches from the sea", after the fishing tradition. Its official bird is the gold kingfisher; residents are called Haligonians. It is twinned with the city of Halifax in Yorkshire, England, and also with Hakodate, Japan. The city is nicknamed "The Warden of the North", from a poem written by Rudyard Kipling in his Songs of the Cities:

Into the mist my guardian prows put forth, Behind the mist my virgin ramparts lie, The Warden of the Honour of the North, Sleepless and veiled am I!

For someone from away, it is very easy to fall in love with Halifax.

It took me three days, between flying out on Air Miles to see what I was getting into and flying back home to languish until I can really leave. I wish that photographs could capture sounds: the seagulls and the breakers crashing into the shore, trying to talk into a payphone on Barrington Street with crowds rolling past. Or smells: saltwater and fish and rain, like the west coast but less subtle.

Also, I wish that I could take decent photographs. The buildings downtown are a curious mix of old and new that invites closer inspection. Some of them have stories: the Halliburton House Hotel was built in 1809 and was originally the home of Nova Scotia's first Supreme Court justice, Sir Brent Halliburton, and was also Dalhousie University's law school. Dartmouth, across the water, has several handfuls of old Quaker buildings. I found out later that they were built when this was the headquarters of a whaling company, from 1785-1792, by Quaker families who had come from Nantucket and chosen to stay, even after the industry dropped off.

The Citadel sits on top of a hill that overlooks the harbour; it was completed in 1856, the fourth and last in a series of defensive fortifications to protect the city. This particular fortress, designed to ward off land attacks from the United States, was never attacked -- but it held a regular garrison until 1909, and again during the First and Second World Wars. It is now a national historic site.

Halifax also has a magnificent downtown public garden, after the Victorian style. Much of it was damaged, if not destroyed outright, by the hurricane that swept through in 2003; the city went to great pains to reconstruct it, and it is now open to the public again. The garden is within walking distance of almost everywhere, and it is beautiful as a downtown centrepiece.

There are other parks in the city; my favourite was Seaview Park, at the north end of the peninsula, that was Africville until city planners saw a need to demolish it and move its residents to a different slum somewhere else. The view of the harbour is lovely, and the park is deserted save for ducks and seagulls, and a sundial monument dedicated to the people who lived there.

Small wonder that tourism is a major industry, behind exports and shipping; Halifax is vibrant and beautiful, and not to be missed.

Sources: Landry, Peter. The Founding of Halifax. http://www.blupete.com/Hist/NovaScotiaBk1/Part5/Ch04.htm A Brief History of HRM. Halifax Regional Municipality. http://www.region.halifax.ns.ca/community/history.html Community. Halifax Regional Municipality. http://www.region.halifax.ns.ca/community/location.html Halifax. Macalester College. http://www.macalester.edu/courses/geog61/ahannert/index.html Halifax Citadel National Historic Site of Canada. Parks Canada. http://parkscanada.pch.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/ns/halifax/natcul/index_E.asp Halifax Facts and Trivia. http://www.twrsoft.com/trivia/hist06.htm The History of Halifax: 1749-1917. Macalester College. http://www.macalester.edu/courses/geog61/ahannert/halifaxhistory1.html The Physical Landscape of Halifax. Macalester College. http://www.macalester.edu/courses/geog61/ahannert/halifaxphysical.html

In 1999, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of Halifax, the provincial archives sponsored the creation of a virtual exhibit, entitled Halifax and Its People 1749-1999. It is intended to provide a visual history of the city and therefore consists in large part of photographs and drawings of Halifax from various time periods, culled from the archives' vast collection, along with a number of firsthand accounts of city life. It can be found at http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/halifax/