It was one of those damp, bone-chilling days so common in Halifax in late December when Andy Barber first caught sight of his new posting in the harbour.
He didn’t think much about it at first. For the 20-year-old veteran signalman, the posting was in some respects just another job.
It was 1953 and his new home — the destroyer HMCS Haida, which turns 80 on Aug. 30 — was just out of refit and preparing to steam to the Pacific, where it would patrol the uneasy waters off Korea. A shaky armistice in the Korean conflict had taken hold only months earlier, silencing the guns after three years of bloody,
