Telecom in Halifax

Canada, to a casual, occasional, and ultra short term visitor like me, is a country finding itself between bits of Britain, France and undoubtedly US. I felt transplanted when the locals in Halifax spoke (in English and French) of Royalists, of growing up in Dartmouth and New Brunswick or of the car dealership in the Chester county. Also, something about the weird geography we learn as kids (you grow up in country X and continue to see the world map as this multicolored object centered on X, no matter what X, because that is what school books show you), I had a feeling I was on an edge of the world when I was in Halifax. And what was reassuring was that there was a large community of researchers there in communications and computing, that the Canadian government supported research there through innovation funds and would send ministry representatives to support the conference, and that the participants would all speak our cult language of problems, proofs and experiments.