The USA and Canada are almost magical; like Hong Kong, it was built by immigrants and refugees who arrived with nothing and faced with an uncertain future. With determination and grit, they resolved to make this a meritocracy where anyone can make it in life – or so they believed. Read more…
The last remaining blockhouse in Nova Scotia is in Windsor, NS at Fort Edward National Historic Site. New Brunswick also has its own last blockhouse at St. Andrews, so there are very few of these left. Major Charles Lawrence ordered it built in 1750. In 1779, Flora MacDonald spent a Read more…
Pier 21 in Halifax is what Staten Island was to New York—the first port of entry for many migrants in the 19th and early 20th century. The special exhibition on German-Canadian relations was told through a series of photographs depicting German immigrants to eastern Canada and Canadians occupying West Germany Read more…
Instead of being a giant Greek Revival building full of dead exhibits, Halifax‘s Museum of Natural History comes alive with staff introducing visitors to live specimens of non-native animals. I also appreciated the prehistoric exhibit told through the lens of Nova Scotia’s indigenous people. Reptiles are cheap to buy and Read more…
There are two lounges in Winnipeg and there is only a main terminal area. There’s no separate terminal space for transborder flights. Plaza Premium Lounge Eligible Priority Pass and Dragon Pass members and some credit card have the $59 access fee waived. There is a full service bar where basic Read more…
The Lehigh Valley Heritage Center is the history museum and artifact archive of the coal mining, steel smelting, and war loving region in the Great Appalachian Valley. The coal was used to power ships, the steel used to build ships, and men sent to operate the ships. The ships were Read more…
Human ingenuity led to the industrial revolution but it was powered by coal. Long hours and low pay, coal miners fed the machines in Detroit that built Ford Model T’s on a production line, the locomotives that shipped them all over the world, and cooked the food of the people Read more…
Allentown in the Lehigh Valley was named after its founder William Allen. His son, James Allen, built Trout Hall that stands as the site of the county’s historical museum. Its baseball team is called the Iron Pigs, named after the city’s early steel industry that began in the 1850s, the Read more…
Scranton had a trolley system from 1896 to 1954, the first economically sustainable system in America. The Lackawanna valley was rich in anthracite, top-notch coal, and the trolleys were powered from the nearby coal-fired power plant via a third rail, unusual for interurbans. But one line, the Northern Electric Railway, Read more…
The stench of diesel wafts through the air of the industrial centre of the Pocono Mountains. Diesel locomotives transit through carrying hundreds of cars of assorted goods and commodities, they idle and stink. But not all of the trains in Scranton ran on diesel, it’s electric trolleys that were ripped Read more…
I have never been so disappointed in a new city in my life. The place was foggy from dawn to dusk and then it got dark when the fog cleared. I was told that Saint John is always foggy from the Atlantic mist, but I’ve seen clearer pictures of the Read more…