8.12.11

ocean


Although I often talk about home being Calgary, I'm actually from the far east coast of Canada (not the farthest, mind you). My hometown is Halifax, Nova Scotia, and recently I've been able to make it back more often than in the past. It helps that my sister lives there now, as does my dad, and my 92 year old grandmother that I've written about before also lives in there on a farm she's been at since she was about two years old. So the draw of close family is strong.

Halifax is also an amazing little city. It has a whole bunch of universities and with thousands of students living there it's got a pretty great arts and culture scene, some decent restaurants, and perhaps best of all, practically nowhere to buy expensive things. I love that!

So, though I grew up in Calgary during junior high and high school, Halifax, slumping down to the Atlantic Ocean, is still home. And while I lived in Calgary, my dad lived in Mississippi or England, so I've had bedrooms next to both sides of the Atlantic and along the Gulf of Mexico.

I would love to go back to Mississippi, as my sister has been lucky enough to do a few times, but I know that everything has changed since I was last there. We lived right on the coast in a little place called Pass Christian, and nothing was left in the wake of Katrina. Well, some cement ("see-ment"?) pads and pool copings, but that's about it. My dad had already moved to England years before, so the foundations that are left were no longer ours when Katrina hit, outside of the memories that all of the images of the devastated coast brought back.

And now I live by the Pacific, which is not at all like the Atlantic. In Vancouver we're protected by Vancouver Island, which means we rarely see waves. The ocean laps the beaches here, at best, but I still appreciate the way it changes every day. You'd never know that the two images of the ocean from this post and one a couple of days ago were taken at almost the same spot. Today was warm-ish and bright and sunny and I discovered a beach by my office that I never knew about before. It's for dogs, but I still like it.

I think it might be hard to ever go back to living land-locked...but then again, the Rockies are pretty spectacular. What kind of natural places do you visit in your part of the world?

6 comments:

  1. i'm a calgarian living in ottawa for school... and compared, nothing beats the rockies. in ottawa we have a canal, although it is not natural. i feel like i'm missing something when i'm away from home!

    i'd love to live on vancouver island, though.

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  2. What a lucky lady to have so many fantastic places to call home -- next to wonderful bodies of water. I live near a river, and we really enjoy going for walks along the riverbanks, but unless I go North, to the lakes, or West, to the ocean, that's about all the water I ever get :)

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  3. i wish to live on the east coast one day! I hear it's beautiful over there. Halifax sounds like my kind of city.

    I'm pretty lucky, I live 45 minutes away from the ocean even though my house is tucked up at the foothills of the mountains. In the winter, everyone always jokes about how we can go to the beach and the snow all in one day!

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  4. Gabriella: The canal is kind of amazing though! Ice skating to work?!? I would love to commute that way...

    ElleSee: Well, lucky in some ways, but also moved around a lot! Rivers are great things to spend time by, too.

    Katie: It's so different from the West Coast. I think I'm a born East Coaster with a West Coast heart. Mountains and ocean together are the best combo!

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  5. I grew up in Southern California where they have "real" waves. Having Vancouver Island off the coast makes the ocean feel more like a giant lake. I do like the lush forests here in Vancouver. We'd have to drive pretty far in California to get anywhere near like the forests here. Now if only Vancouver had a desert... :-)

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  6. Alice: Or giant sequoias! Like, really giant ones, not just Cambie boulevard giant!

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