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If you retrace your steps past the Clock Tower and head down George Street, you'll hit the tree-lined, elongated square known as the Grand Parade , the social centre of the nineteenth-century town. For the officer corps, this was the place to be seen walking on a Sunday, when, as one obsequious observer wrote, "their society generally [was] sought, frequently courted, and themselves esteemed" - a judgement rather different from that of the radical journalist Joseph Howe, who hated their "habits of idleness, dissipation and expense". The southern edge of the parade borders the handsome St Paul's Church (Mon-Fri 9am-4.30pm; free), whose chunky cupola and simple timber frame date from 1750, making it both the oldest building in town and the first Protestant church in Canada. Inside, the church's simple symmetry - with balcony and sturdy pillars - is engaging, an unpretentious garrison church enlisting God to the British interest; look out, too, for the piece of wood embedded in the plaster above the inner entrance doors, a remnant of the 1917 Halifax Explosion . Following the disaster, the vestry was used as an emergency hospital and the bodies of hundreds of victims were laid in tiers around the walls. Charles Dickens, visiting in 1842, described the graceful sandstone Province House , a couple of minutes' walk from Grand Parade down George Street at Hollis (July & Aug Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat & Sun 10am-4pm; Sept-June Mon-Fri 9am-4pm; free), as "a gem of Georgian architecture" whose proceedings were "like looking at Westminster through the wrong end of a telescope". Highlights of the free guided tour include a peek into the old upper chamber, with its ornate plasterwork and matching portraits of Queen Caroline and her father-in-law, George I. She should have been pictured with her husband, George II, of course, rather than her father-in-law, but no one has ever bothered to rectify this costly decorative error. The present legislature meet in the Assembly Room, a cosy chamber that partly resembles a Georgian bedroom rather than Nova Scotia's seat of government. Across the road from the Province House, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia , 1741 Hollis St (Tues-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat & Sun noon-5pm, plus July-Aug Mon noon-5pm; $5, free on Tues), occupies two adjacent buildings - one a stern Art Deco structure, the other an embellished Victorian edifice that has previously served as a courthouse, police headquarters and post office. The gallery is attractively laid out and although there is some rotation of the exhibits most of the pieces described here should be on view. Pick up a free gallery plan at the entrance in the more southerly of the two buildings, Gallery South. The Courtyard Level - the ground floor - contains a delightful section devoted to the Nova Scotian artist Maud Lewis (1903-70). The daughter of a Yarmouth harness maker, Lewis overcame several disabilities, including rheumatoid arthritis, to become a painter of some regional renown, creating naive, brightly coloured works of local scenes. Lewis's tiny cabin - awash with her bright paintwork - has been moved here intact from the outskirts of Digby. In Gallery North, the two lower levels - the Lower Lobby and Level 1 - hold temporary exhibitions of modern sculpture and painting and a small but enjoyable selection of the work of modern Canadians drawn from the permanent collection: the egg tempera on masonite Island in the Ice by the Nova Scotian artist Tom Forrestall is perhaps the most striking painting here (in Gallery 7), its sharp, deep-hued colours and threatening ice- and seascape enhanced by a tight control of space. Level 2 features local folk art, largely naive and boldly painted woodcarvings and panel paintings comparable to the work of Maud Lewis, as well as a small sample of Inuit work. On Level 3, there's an excellent collection of Canadian Art , whose earlier canvases are distinguished by four intriguing views of Halifax in the 1760s produced by Dominique Serres in the minutely observed Dutch land- and seascape tradition (Gallery 15). Surprisingly, Serres never actually visited Canada, but painted Halifax while in Europe, from drawings produced by a camera obscura. In the same gallery, there's Joshua Reynolds' flattering Portrait of George Montagu Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax . As the man responsible for colonial trade, Dunk permitted his recently acquired title to be used in the naming of "Halifax" - what would have happened but for his timely ennoblement (Dunk Town?) is anyone's guess. On the same floor, Gallery 19 holds several canvases by Cornelius Krieghoff and outstanding contributions by members of the Group of Seven . In particular, look out for Lawren Harris's haunting Algoma landscape and A.Y. Jackson's dinky Houses of Prospect , typical of Jackson's later (post-Group) style of softly coloured landscapes. Next door, Gallery 20 is devoted to modern Atlantic Canadian painters. Forrestall makes another appearance here, but it's his mentor, Alex Colville , who takes pride of place, with several characteristically disconcerting works, a sort of Magic Realism of passive, precisely juxtaposed figures caught, cinema-like, in mid-shot. Finally, on Level 4 (Room 28), there's a tiny selection of British and European paintings, and - a real surprise - an assortment of ribald Hogarth engravings.
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