listen to the talk

The fourth of April is Parinirvana Day, the day Chögyam Trungpa died in 1987. It has become a day to honor and celebrate his life. This year for Parinirvana Day, the Chronicles would like to offer an excerpt from a talk that Chögyam Trungpa gave in December 1975 at Karmê Chöling about his early life and training. This is the last talk of a seven-talk seminar on the Line of the Trungpas.

These seven talks and some accompanying translations are being edited for publication by Vajradhatu Publications in 2007, the 20th anniversary of Trungpa Rinpoche's death. Carolyn Gimian is editing the talks, and the Nalanda Translation Committee will contribute several short translations about the Trungpa lineage.

This audio file is copyrighted material.
© 2005 Diana J. Mukpo and the Shambhala Archives. Used by permission of Mrs. Mukpo and the Archives.

We would like to thank the Shambhala Archives and Kalapa Recordings for preserving this recording and making it available.

To hear the talk, please click on the photo at the top if the page.

Please send
your poems, thoughts, or reflections from then (nineteen years ago) or now to chronicles@chronicleproject.com.

The offerings we receive are posted here.

When ice clogged Halifax Harbour

Thank you to Ken Wallace
for bringing this story
to our attention.

View newspaper clippings
Please note the photograph of
Richard and David Vogler on April 3rd,
that coincidentally appears on the
same page as an article about ice
in the harbour.

About 10 days before Rinpoche's death in Halifax, the harbour began to fill up with ice from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The ice flowed southwest along the coast of Nova Scotia, and into Halifax Harbour where it was held in place by prevailing winds.

By March 28th, the harbour was completely clogged by ice that was two to 2.5 meters thick. Ferries stopped running, commerical shipping came to a near standstill, and groups of people could be seen walking out onto the harbour.

On April 4th, the day Rinpoche died, the winds shifted and the ice began to dissipate. By April 6th, the harbour was once again free of ice.

Had it ever happened
before?

How unusual were these ice conditions? Several of the newspaper clippings, say it was the first time in 27 years that ice filled the harbour. To find out what happened 27 years earlier (1960), we talked to retired harbour pilot, Don MacAlpine.

Don told us that the conditions in 1960 were almost certainly due to local freezing, which was fairly common in the early to mid-1900s, before recent warming trends. But this locally frozen ice was never very thick and never posed any serious challenges to harbour traffic.

The arctic ice floe that clogged the harbour in 1987, was a very different kind of phenomena. As far as Don MacAlpine knows, it had never happened prior to 1987; and we know for certain that it has not happened since.