“A change has come over the Imperial aspect of the Province since the Dominion Government took over the naval and military defenses of Halifax from the Mother Country. I found Halifax, with its Citadel crowned slopes, its wooden houses, its tree lined avenues bathed in glowing summer sunshine, but Haligonian society with no sunshine in its heart. “Where are the tars of yester-year?” the belles of Halifax seemed to be saying. “Where are the gallant captains, commanders, lieutenants, sub-lieutenants, and middies whom we waltzed, and flirted, and played tennis, and acted and boated within the Northwest arm?” I was prepared for this, but not for a similar complaint with regard to the British Army. For on parade, at church, at the Halifax Club, were not the regulation uniforms denoting the British officer as much in evidence as ever? “Oh, those!” was the supercilious rejoinder of one fair damsel, lying back in a canoe on the shores of Bedford Basin; “they don’t count. They’re Canadians.” … “I’m sorry the fellow was offended; but nobody interests me who reaches Nova Scotia by land.”
Willson, Beckles, 1869-1942. Nova Scotia: the Province That Has Been Passed By,. London: Constable & Co., Ltd., 1911. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/yale.39002009522237