Halifax is having a cosmopolitan moment. The world hockey championships have brought regiments–to say nothing of enormous satellite dishes–from a variety of places. While every other banner along Lower Water Street seems to be dedicated to the Slovenian faithful, the Latvians are garnering printer’s ink by calling the Economy Shoe Shop home base and arriving in numbers that serve to remind everyone that Latvia has a significant population size.
If hockey isn’t how one wants to the world here today, however, there are some other options. For Holocaust Remembrance, three hours were spent in the public reading of names in Victoria Park. On my way to that, I got dumped into a live band moment on the Grand Parade, during a loud and pretty faithful rendition of Folsom Prison Blues. Thinking on that contrast in the time/space continuum caused me more than a small mental hiccup.
By day’s end, I was ready to retreat to Momoya for my version of soul food. Fittingly, at the neighbouring table in this little Japanese restaurant, two young women were talking a mile a minute in French….
