Does this make me a paparazzo or does it just make me creepy?

Almost immediately after I awoke this morning Neil asked me if I was interested in going to see Steven Harper, Canada's Prime Minister. It seems that Neil had learned that Harper was to be making some kind of announcement with Darrell Dexter at the Pier 21 Museum. It turns out that the announcement was about the Pier 21 museum becoming the a national museum, like the Museum of Civilization or the National Gallery. If you are interested the announcement has been covered by CBC and CTV.



Given my inclination to see politicians in the flesh I decided to join him on the trip.

Shortly after we arrived at Pier 21 we learned that the actual announcement session was not open to the public. We decided to camp out across from the vehicles associated with Harper's entourage. I assumed that staying by his security personnel would give us indications about when he was likely to exit the building, an (obvious) assumption that turned out to be pretty on the money.

Unfortunately, it seems that we arrived long before people began to exit the building. We also seem to have arrived long before any of the others hoping to get a glimpse of Harper.

Eventually, after maybe an hour, we talked to a security guard who said something about seeing Peter MacKay, Newfoundland's voice in Cabinet, someone we never did end up seeing. At about the same time our local MHA/MLA, Leonard Preyra, came out and ended up walking right past us, making us feel a little awkward as we had just been taking photos of him. Presumably he was there because the museum is in his district.



A few minutes later we saw Peter Kelly, Halifax's mayor, and Darrell Dexter, the newly elected Premier of Nova Scotia, exit together. Unfortunately it was hard to get a picture of them together as Kelly was literally running towards his car. We only managed to get a snap of the back of his head, at least I presume it is his head.



Eventually things began to pick up and the motorcade vehicles moved into position near the door. The best part about this was that once they were in position they completely blocked the Lieutenant Governor's exit. She had to make her way through the motorcade to her limo, which then had a few issues with the curb. All in all, it was rather undignified and I felt that she somehow drew the short end of the stick when it came to car access. I really would have imagined that the two groups would have managed to coordinate so that everyone could make a successful exit from the building.



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Shortly thereafter Harper came out, waved, and got in his car. Within about a minute of his exit from the building he had taken off and almost all signs of the Prime Minister's visit were gone.



After the Primer Minister had taken off just about the only things that remained to indicate that something had happened were the two TV trucks that were still hanging around.



CTV's was a little smaller. We were wondering if they were sensitive about this.



The other car that we saw that was a little strange appears to be a military car, though we don't know who the guest of honour was. What we do know is that the thing above the license plate with two stars was covered until just before it picked up its passenger.



On our way home I stopped to pick up a coffee. As we were heading back to the apartment, with coffee in hand, I noticed that Mr. Lahey was standing across the street talking to some guys. As we had our cameras handy I snapped a pic of this local Halifax celebrity in his local environment.



If you can count spotting famous or influential people as being productive, today has been a pretty productive day so far.