The US Navy ships that came to dock in the Harbour on Tuesday are reported to be the annual contingent sent to clean up Dead Man’s Island. There are Canadians who are impressed that the US has such military muscle to spare for raking–and others, well, not so much.
At some point yesterday, a different sort of Naval presence appeared: the tall ship Cuauhetemoc, operated by Mexico’s Navy. It’s huge and seems to have a huge crew: when I got to the Halifax side of the harbour last evening, Lower Water Street was teeming with sailors and officers from Mexico, dozens and dozens.
This evening, on the other hand, as my home-bound ferry left Dartmouth, what was streaming past in the harbour was a fully emerged submarine, travelling faster than your typical cargo ship or even destroyer. It’s Canada’s, although it once belonged to UK.
On the flip side of the coin where various Navies vie for attention in a single and relatively small body of water, my current suppertime book also conspired to slap me upside the head with international and unexpected familiarity. I’ve got onto an accidental jag of Slavoj Zizek, who throws Hollywood, Kant, and several cultural universes between into a single paragraph in a way that is close enough to sensible. Tonight’s chapter contained a long quote from Neil Gaiman, and that brought me right back to my personal here and now–not the falling in love so much as Mr. Gaiman’s own comments on Rory and the fact that indeed I have walked around for days now painfully aware that I won’t ever hear that surprisingly young voice on my phone saying “Howdy, stranger….”
