Can a small town, New England gal find happiness in the big Maritime City? Follow me as I discover my new environs: the places and the people I run into!

I am 48 years old. I recently left a husband and a tenured teaching position to come here to Halifax, where I know no one. Why? Although there are times when I still ask myself this same question, I made this major change because of signs in the past year. Some signs are subtle;  some are great big wanking hit-you-over-the-head signs. I had all of these, and you really can’t keep ignoring them, I found.

So I was six months in a quandary (that’s what I almost called this blog–Six Months in a Quandary and How They Grew) when I took the big, but not yet irrevocable step of arranging to spend the summer in Halifax and at the Seaside Cottage, sharing both domiciles with a British woman and her dog. I arrived just after the Queen Victoria weekend.

This blog is a way of documenting my adventures here as I try to turn a midlife crisis into an opportunity for discovery. As the poet Matthew Arnold said:

“But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us—to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.”