Technically, this picture was taken by Lucas, I think with one of the Mamiya twin-lens reflex cameras I was able to borrow from NSCAD at the time. I can't recall what inspired the photo shoot, other than, perhaps, my longtime love for costumes (and drag as a kind of costume) and the fact that the tuxedo was a relatively recent acquisition at that point (it was given to me by my mother as a high school graduation gift).
I moved away from Halifax in the summer of 1999, and haven't visited since maybe 2000 or so. Since then they've had a continuing infestation of some variety of tree-eating beetle (Brown Spruce Longhorn Beetle, apparently). Worse, in 2003 a hurricane laid waste to even more trees, roughly three-quarters of those in the park. A recent photo of the park brought me to tears, so shocking was the devastation caused by the storm; the setting in which I stand in the photo above has been destroyed. There was something drastic about the change that made me realise how much Halifax is "gone" for me, the Halifax I actually knew when I lived there over ten years ago--this park, one of my favourite places in a city where I never particularly wanted to be, apparently signifies something deeper that upset me only when I realised what was no longer there.
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