The small town of Halifax in Novia Scotia has seen more than its share of tragedy and disaster. The Titanic went down nearby, a great deal of the town was blown up when a ship carrying nitroglycerine exploded in the harbor. Two zepellins crashed there in as many days, and most recently the town has been dealing with the crash of the Swissair jetliner. The town... and the impending disaster of the Holocaust is the backdrop for Howard Norman's new novel "The Museum Guard". It tells how a painting in a small art museum changes the lives... and the identities... of some of the people who see it. Norman told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr he can trace the novel's genesis back to a chance meeting with an elderly museum curator in the Halifax train station.