Drawing along the edge of Halifax Harbour is always exciting. The shear size of everything is overwhelming, everything is massive. The scale reminds me of some lost prehistoric world where everything is extra large. People are very rarely seen in this landscape only appearing from inside the cabins of ships and equipment on rare occasions.
The harbour has also been called the "Big Harbour" and I came to recognize it gets this name for good reason. Watching a large ship at rest anchored and taking on fuel I made a drawing as is usual and watched the ship move with the tide. I was on the Dartmouth side looking across to Halifax.
The Halifax cityscape is under construction with new towers rising over the streets. Unfortunately the view from here shows the famous historic citadel being blocked from view but the distance and scale are hard to figure from so far away. Everything is so large.
So, there I am making a drawing of the ship at anchor against the backdrop of rising towers just trying to record a feeling of the day and the goings on of the harbour. Today the ship seems so large it appears to stretch across the surface to the opposite side blocking passage into the inner harbour and Bedford Basin.
The illusion disappeared in front of my eyes as on the opposite shore as I watched another giant ship move up the harbour from the ocean seeming to be tiny in the distance clearing the ship I was drawing by a mile. It really is a very big harbour.
