Friday was the main purpose for this trip - Alex’s graduation from Dalhousie Law School! We are so proud of her and very honoured to be invited to celebrate this incredible achievement with her and her family. We had an amazing day, one we will not soon forget!
The site of the day’s celebration.
We were exhausted after our big first day, so we ended up having a good night sleep on our first night in Halifax. Our AirBnb was pretty great and really was all we needed for this trip. It’s a cool little place with a loft bedroom and a small common area, but like I said, it really suit our needs we end up sleeping in and not giving ourselves a ton of time to get ready for the days events.
We ended up taking an Uber over to the university for the graduation ceremonies. We met them relatively early as there were a number of parts to the day’s celebrations. The first one was in the law school library where they were handing out the awards for the graduating students. Alex received an award and we got to witness the ceremony around that along with them doing a photo of the class. There were about 175 students graduating, which was really too many for the small space that they had set aside for this part of the event.
After that, we had a little bit of time before the proper convocation ceremony was scheduled to start. We walked up to the clock tower portion of the original buildings from Dalhousie, only 10 minutes up the road. These building date back to the early 1800s and are just spectacularly beautiful. I had no idea how old Dal was until we started walking around and exploring.
I’m not sure why we seem to be the only ones to have this idea, but I meant we could take some nice photos of Alex and her parents on the lawn in front of these beautiful buildings. We pretty much had the place to ourselves, which was surprising.
Proud parents on the big day.
We were also very honoured to be part of this amazing day.
And my favourite of the bunch.
They had scattered these signs, with a number of different sayings on them, around the building. It made for good props!
After our little photoshoot, we had some time to wander around the buildings. The day was a bit overcast (at least it wasn’t raining!), but it was warm and pleasant, and we got to explore a little bit. Eventually, Alex had to go get ready for her ceremony and we had a quick bite to eat for lunch before meeting Matt, Graham and Carolynne in the auditorium for the commencement ceremony.
Justine and I had not properly appreciated how much of a premium there was going to be on the seats in the lower level of the theatre! While we were taking our time getting over, Graham and Carolynne were on the ball and in line early. They managed to grab us seats on the main level of the auditorium.
The ceremony itself was really good. They had a nice mix of ceremony and to a certain degree kept it relatively casual. With 175 graduates it was long but not overwhelming and there were some great speeches given during the ceremony. The best by far was by a Supreme Court judge who gave the commencement address at the end and while her speech was disturbing it really put a very fine point on some of the challenges facing new law students entering the workforce in today’s environment. It was well thought out well articulated but a little disturbing and Frightening
After the ceremony, Alex had a few things to do and so Matt, Justine, Carolynne, Graham and I drove over to a local brewery where we had the opportunity to sit on the patio in the sunshine and enjoy a drink and some appies before dinner. We had a lovely time sitting on the patio until it was time for dinner. Justine and I walked over to the restaurant, while the rest of them drove on ahead.
Alex and Matt had picked a local restaurant that is one of their favourites from their time in Halifax and we had a lovely meal. The food was good. We had some bubbly to celebrate and generally had a very very nice time. It was really good to catch up with all of them and spend some time celebrating Alex‘s big accomplishment.
After dinner, we all went our separate ways. We were going to be spending the day with them all tomorrow before the four of them headed back to their respective homes. Justine and I went back to our apartment, but were not quite ready to call it a night. We decided to walk over to one of the local breweries, Propeller Brewing, which was only a few blocks away. Unfortunately when we got there, they were closed for a private event! Never fails… but their off sales was still open so we were able to pick up a few things to bring back to the place and we had a relaxing evening in.