First Day Away: Agricola Adventures

We landed in Halifax on Saturday at around 3:00, greeted by Kathleen’s mom and brother. The flight went entirely as expected, the only thing lingering in our minds was the looming possibility of a strike by Air Canada flight attendants.

After getting settled in, I texted my mom to let her know we’ve arrived safely and asked if she would join us the next day for a little adventure on the Halifax side. She was just working through a particularly nasty case of the flu, so declined, saying that she should be well enough by Tuesday.

With our Sunday for two, we decided to pick up where we left off when in Toronto and Hamilton in the spring: books! And as someone in need of clothes, we’d also make sure to stop into shops that caught our eye.

It was a gorgeous Sunday morning and we boarded a bus from where we were staying in Cole Harbour to get downtown to take a leisurely walk along Agricola.

Our fist stop was Lost & Found, a second-hand clothing store with a nice selection. I did not find anything and while Kathleen did find a pair of eye-catching bright yellow shorts, after trying them on, decided they were not for her.

The next stop we made was into the Halifax Vintage Co-op, which was a mix of clothing, housewares, and other vintage goods like vinyl, cameras, and video game consoles. We began browsing the ground floor, where I took note of the cameras (Brownies and Polaroids, mainly), but soon climbed the stairs to the second floor, where the clothing was.

Browsing the racks, I soon found a lovely sort of prairie-style skirt in blue and white, with red trim. While it looked like it might be a little small, I wandered over to the fitting room (formerly the washroom in the converted home) to confirm. It fit perfectly! And, oh yes, it would be mine.

Bag in hand, we then continued further north toward Agricola Street Books. We had passed it last time we were in town and wanted to rectify that.

Walking in, the scent of books was tangled with the scent of the custom carpentry that made for the shelving and open-concept back-split layout of the store.

The small space almost had a sort of Escherlike quality but smelled of my own childhood, as my father and maternal grandfather both spent a good portion of the 1980s and 1990s being very into woodworking. The smell of white pine sawdust, stain and, varnish never fails to cast my mind back — for all that was good and all that was not.

While I did not find any books that interested me, Kathleen found one on the history of queer organizing in Halifax.

From there, we headed back south, for a stop in at Patch, a very lovely fabric store at their new Agricola location, having moved recently-ish from a smaller building on Robie. While we didn’t buy anything, Kathleen happened upon the loveliest linen (and another cause for bubbling memories), but with no specific project in mind and $85 per meter, it was unable to accompany us back to Ottawa.

Our final shopping stop was Egghead Books, a small and highly-curated basement book shop on Roberts, just off Agricola. I had never heard of this one before, which makes sense, because it seems to have opened in the last year. The selection was outstanding and they really mastered the cozy feels any small bookstore ought to have. While no books followed me home, Kathleen walked out with three more!

Now out of shopping steam, we decided to take a little break and enjoy tea lattes and a snack down the street at Café Lara, a cute little spot at Agricola and Woodill. In a little taste of home, I noticed a poster for an upcoming-since-past Jim Bryson show at the entrance.

Not quite ready to return to Cole Harbour, I loaded a new roll of Ultramax into my camera, and we slowly zig-zagged back toward the downtown.