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 History of Halifax

Halifax, founded in 1749, ranks amongst one of the oldest communities in Canada. First known as Chebucto Harbour leading to Bedford Torrington Bay, the name came from the French Chibouctou which in turn came from the Mi’kmaq word, Chebookt meaning chief harbour.
On May 14^th, 1749 George Hick and 2500 settlers in a fleet of 14 ships left England. The first to drop anchor was the Sphinx on July 2, 1749. Most of the settlers arrived in excellent condition having had a fair, swift passage. Colonel Edward Cornwallis, aged 37, was assigned to command the colony.
The first settlement area was Point Pleasant, later shifting to a more protected area further into the harbour on the eastern slopes of Citadel Hill. The town was named after George Dunk, Lord Halifax.
In 1755 the English government endorsed Governor Lawrence’s decision in Halifax to expel the Acadians. This caused a considerable depopulation of the interior of Nova Scotia, so by 1756 when the Seven Years War broke out between England and France,
Halifax was able to turn to supplying the needs of the garrison and navy again. Finally the Crown sent funding and His Majesty’s Naval Yard was built and the fort on Citadel Hill received renovations to more effectively handle the defence of the town. Much of this was done to garrison the troops who were to be sent to colonial battlefields to the south.
After the war ended significant events had occurred, Louisbourg had fallen, likewise Montreal and Quebec. However, with peace the fortunes of Halifax ebbed. The population which had risen considerably to service the needs of the navy and garrison dwindled.
Most of the garrison in Halifax was diverted south running up to the American Revolution to try and keep control in Boston. However, the large, ice free harbour drew the attention of the Royal Navy as a great mustering point lying within a few days of Boston. Once more the fortunes of Halifax started to rise.
After the Revolution, Halifax still enjoyed a surge in population as Loyalists arrived. Most however did not stay long; they moved on in search of better prospects. The influx of Loyalists also brought a significant number of black people who variously moved to the outskirts of the town but by the 1790’s there was a large exodus that left for Sierra Leone. Once again Halifax settled back into a fairly mean existence for the majority of its people.
1793 brought war between England and France once more and again Halifax started to thrive and bustle supplying both military and naval forces.
In 1794, Prince Edward (fourth in line of succession to the throne of England) arrived to stay in Halifax for nearly six years. He immersed himself in the task of improving the fortifications, building towers for communication by semaphore and doing further renovations to the Citadel. Princes Lodge, along the shores of what is now the Bedford Basin, was built as a retreat for his mistress Julie St. Laurent. He gave the town its clock which stands at the foot of Citadel Hill displaying the time for those in the city below.
War continued on into 1800 and had its effect on the Caribbean trade. French privateers harassed the ships plying their trade to the sugar islands but in spite of that by 1810 Halifax was fast emerging as a commercial port.
In 1812 with Washington declaring war on the British Empire, Halifax found itself in an invidious position. With the protection of the Royal Navy not faring well, Halifax had reason to fear invasion and/or embargo by the Republic. The Lt. Governor of Nova Scotia issued licenses authorizing continued trade between the New England states and Nova Scotia – in the pursuit of profit merchants continued to trade and the threat was diverted. The Crown also licensed privateers to set sail and seize American vessels. These vessels and their cargoes were then brought into local ports, including Halifax.
By 1815 Halifax was once again a thriving community, even if somewhat depraved. There was much brawling, drinking, prostitution and robbery. This was somewhat offset by a small contingent of gentility. Now Halifax faced peace again and had to try and ensure that the usual decline did not take place. England was persuaded to spend money on Halifax again and by 1819 Province House was built and opened, plus Alexander Keith had opened his brewery. Acknowledging the strategic position of Halifax once again the fort on Citadel Hill received extensive improvements and was named Fort George in honour of the King. In the end it was a fort that never had to come to the defence of Halifax.
By 1825 the first bank had opened. Then in 1826 a huge project was started, the building of
The Shubenacadie Canal; the intention was to form a link between Dartmouth, through inner Nova Scotia, right to the Bay of Fundy. Canals were considered to be the way of the future but it took nearly thirty years before the Shubenacadie Canal was finished and by then, rail was king. However, construction of the canal brought a migration of craftsmen into Dartmouth where the canal met the harbour. Several industries sprang up, mills, foundries, tanneries and shipyards. The lakes in Dartmouth provided ice in winter which was hewn in great blocks by men using enormous saws and shipped as far away as ports in the Caribbean for refrigeration purposes.
By 1830 the first ferry to ply the harbour went into service. It could carry coaches thus shortening considerably a trip from Halifax to Truro and on in to New Brunswick. 1831 saw a steam vessel service between Halifax and ports on the St. Lawrence River.
Social life expanded revolving around Government House – elegant functions attended by military officers, bureaucratic dignitaries, not to mention decorative ladies. Not everyone lived at that level and overcrowding of houses and slum dwellings led to many outbreaks of disease. The summer of 1834 saw a brutal cholera outbreak arrive which only dissipated with the arrival of cold winter weather.
Halifax became incorporated as a City in 1841 with an elected Mayor and Council. This was a vast improvement over the previous system of appointed Magistrates who held their office “at the pleasure of the Crown”, even though the electors were only the wealthiest of the property owners.
At this time Halifax had reached a population of over 14,000 and the houses were spreading out. Notables moved towards the south end of the City and the middle class tended to move towards the north. With the new mayoralty system plenty was accomplished, construction of a water works, laying down gas lines and public cemeteries to name a few. The construction was paid for by taxes levied on property owners which caused some dissention.
So much building and improvement stirred a move to more intellectual ends, bookstores, libraries and reading rooms soon popped up.
By 1838 Halifax felt sufficiently established to launch celebrations to commemorate the arrival of Cornwallis at Chebucto.
1840 and Samuel Cunard inaugurated a scheduled steam packet service from Liverpool, England to Boston – via Halifax.
1849 brought electric telegraph communication followed by the transatlantic service in 1857.
Three major celebrations were held – the 100^th Anniversary of the founding of Halifax in 1849,
the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1860 and Confederation with Canada in 1867.
During 1863 the celebrations for the Prince of Wales marriage turned into a three day riot which forced the reformation of policing services. Where previously there had been a twelve man volunteer night watch, combined with a twelve constable paid daytime watch, both became merged to form the first regular police force. Also in 1863 Dalhousie College arrived with the Medical faculty being established later in 1868 in conjunction with the City hospital.
1867 the railway now ran from Halifax to Windsor, Truro and then on to Pictou. In the same year, the Public Gardens in Halifax opened, the first in North America.
1886 brought a horse drawn street railway which ran through the City from the south end to Richmond in the north end. The docks thrived with major shipping companies bringing and taking on both freight and passengers. The shipping companies also brought a large influx of immigrants to Canada from Europe. Most of the immigrants were en route to larger cities within Canada or west to the prairies to farm. Their migration through Halifax did much to boost the economy of the City with all the facilities needed for their support.
While Halifax frequently received little to no assistance from up country the English did maintain their garrison. The military population varied from 2-4,000 year round and used local purveyors for their stores and supplies. There was some strife between the City and the military as military land holdings (which were large) were not taxable and this was at a time when the City was struggling to install and build infrastructure.
The educational side of Halifax zoomed on with the Victoria School of Art and Design in 1887 – todays Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Dalhousie College added a Law faculty in 1883. Many of the young people graduating from these colleges moved away to practice their professions but at least it had the effect of bringing attention to Halifax. In 1897, Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee Year, an ornate bandstand was built in the Public Gardens to commemorate the event.
By the end of the century Halifax had many divergent cultures. The black population, which had been there from the beginning, was large and thriving. By 1894 there were at least 20 Jewish families with a synagogue on Starr Street. Chinese came east and opened several laundries in the City.
By 1901 the civilian population was growing in strength and reached just under 41,000. The military still owned much of the land on the peninsula and this served to push the population out to suburbs in the south, west and north. In 1905 the English navy withdrew its forces; closed the naval yard and reduced it’s squadron for North America and the West Indies. A replacement dockyard was built in 1906 and with an old English cruiser, now HMCS Niobe in 1910; Halifax had the status of the only Canadian naval base. At the same time with the English troops gone, Halifax became the centre of the Canadian Army too. The army fared better, inheriting the latest English weaponry.
A quote from the Acadian Recorder on the 13 February 1909 made note that Halifax “had more saloons than any other city in Canada for its size:.
The Duke of Connaught, Governor General of Canada in 1912 inaugurated a campanile tower on the banks of the North West Arm in The Dingle, a hundred acres of land donated to the city by Sir Sandford Fleming, a fine Scot, who built the Intercolonial Railway and was instrumental in building most of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Known as The Dingle Tower, built of granite and ironstone it was erected to commemorate the first Legislative Assembly in Halifax in 1758.
The Great War – 1914 brought a quick patriotic response from Halifax. Being a military city, Halifax was the embarkation port for Europe- it’s estimated some 284,455 persons passed through. Halifax, emptied of its young male population allowed many women to work in occupations they would normally have been denied.
In 1917 a terrible collision which came to be known as the Halifax Explosion, occurred in the narrows of the harbour when the inbound Mont Blanc – a munitions ship – and the outbound Imo collided and rammed each other creating the largest ever man made explosion before Hiroshima. It rattled windows sixty miles away in Truro and the sound travelled for more than a hundred miles. The smoke rose more than 12,000 feet according to the calculations of Captain Campbell, skipper of the Acadian who was heading towards Halifax some fifteen miles out.
The surge of water from the explosion broke the moorings of ships and snapped the lines of those at wharves. The only recognisable piece of the Imo that was found was a mostly melted cannon in Albro Lake, Dartmouth and an anchor shank weighing half a ton which fell in some woods on the banks of the North West Arm, over two miles away.
It levelled nearly all the buildings on both sides facing the harbour. The official total 1,963 deaths in Halifax/Dartmouth and harbour, 9,000 injured and 6,000 homeless. The explosion was quickly followed by an outbreak of fires from overturned stoves, the weather played into it producing a blizzard which hampered rescue efforts and was followed the next day by bitter cold. Aiding the wounded and dying was complicated by lack of medical personnel and facilities. Public and private buildings were hastily set up to act as hospitals and dressing stations. Medical personnel were recruited from as far away as Massachusetts and finally began to arrive. A memorial now stands on the top of Fort Needham Park, incorporating a carillon of bells given in 1920 by one Barbara Orr who had been orphaned in the explosion.
The explosion, which had decimated many major industries, brought unemployment just at a time that many men were returning from Europe and the War and on to the job market. Coupled with the trauma and suffering of the Explosion the post-war years did not look too hopeful.
Twenty years of depression and discontent were in store for the City. Immigrants continued to arrive and pass on to greener pastures and many Haligonians also left searching for work and a better life. Many went to the USA until a halt was called with legislation passed in Congress to prevent more coming. The City population fluctuated around the 60,000 mark.
In the 1920’s a suburb of ten blocks (that had been flattened in the explosion) was designed by the architect George Ross. It came to be known as the Hydrostone which was the name of the locally made cement blocks from which they were built. The area still stands and flourishes today; at that time it was one of the first sorties into public housing and was modelled on the garden suburbs of England.
One bright note in the Halifax economy was the resumption of work on the Ocean Terminals which had stopped with the war. A Halifax Port Commission was established in 1928 and federal money was used to develop the new terminals. This at least brought the usual waterfront work for many men and helped some families manage to get by.
Pier 21 was developed specifically for the processing of immigrants, as many as 130,000 arriving per year.
World War II turned much of the City’s land over to the military. The navy also commandeered its share of buildings and what was then the airport on Chebucto Road became circled with army huts.
Halifax already had a housing shortage before the war which was now exacerbated. Naval personnel competed head on with civilians for any available housing. The federal government did build 1000 prefab bungalows (near where the Halifax Shopping Centre now stands) but they were not specifically for naval personnel.
Very few of the City streets were paved and those water mains that were in place were sadly lacking and barely able to cope.
Halifax became home to three navies, Canadian, British and American. There was a huge mix of Merchant Marine with Bedford Basin being a holding place for gathering convoys. A great opportunity was lost to Halifax when the federal government insisted on building ship repair yards in the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes – ice bound during the winter months rather than in ice free Halifax. As Halifax could not cope with all the repairs coming in the work was lost to the eastern seaboard of America.
While the bustle of the war years certainly made money for Halifax in supplying all the ships with their vittels and necessities, it was not building up industries, employment and development for the inevitable end of the war.
May 8, 1945 was VE Day and the City erupted. Starting on the Monday morning of May 7 when the first incident happened as naval passengers threw a tramcar driver out of his vehicle and then set fire to it. Crowds surged along Barrington and two liquor stores were raided and looting began in earnest. At a later point, as the looting and surging crowds continued on through the night, Olands Brewery was overcome and more fuel was added to the fire and the rioting did not end until Tuesday night after the Shore Patrol trucks announced all leave was cancelled and service personnel must return to barracks. The rioters were not solely naval personnel; plenty of civilians joined in the action and were just as eager.
The blame was shared. The City for not being generous and hospitable towards the services and the services for not having a plan in place to circumvent the riots as word of trashing the City at the wars end was well known and expected.
July 18, 1945 brought yet another explosion to both cities when the Halifax Magazine on the shores of the Bedford Basin went up. The fire and successive explosions delivered a spectacular show for crowds gathered on the opposite shore.
Halifax, which came in to the War years from the Depression ill equipped to handle such an influx, received little to no federal government support or funding to cope with it. In its struggle to try and cope it did not derive much benefit from what might have been a boom. The Riots gave Halifax a bad reputation right across the country. Two major explosions on top of everything also served to restrain any major progress. It seemed the move forward was always held back.
In June 1946 the City Council adopted a plan for postwar reconstruction and work was started. This continued on at a good pace for the next twenty years. The look of the City slowly changed to the City that is more as we know it today.
1949 brought major 200 year celebrations with all sorts of entertainment from fireworks, concerts, parades and visiting navies in port. Notwithstanding the 200 year festivities, the City had not actually much improved its drab and dreary appearance at this point.
In the 1950s with a Cold War running finally John Diefenbaker was persuaded to fund a series of regional development programmes which greatly benefited the economy of Halifax. In 1960 the then Mayor, John Lloyd formed a Citizens Planning Committee to make definite plans for the progress of Halifax over the next twenty years.
Hospital Insurance in 1958 followed by Medicare in 1969 caused the medical establishment to expand. Schools were rapidly being built to accommodate the post war baby boom. Halifax was spreading out, off the peninsula and in 1969 the City annexed several outlying areas. The amalgamation raised the City population overnight to 123,000.
December 1954 saw CBC Television broadcasting from Halifax. Housing was going up fast in the suburbs and when malls sprung up in those areas a gentle decline of the downtown area commenced.
The Angus L. MacDonald Bridge came into service in 1955 connecting Halifax to Dartmouth by road where previously it was a trip by ferry. Public transportation changed, trolleys pushing out the old tramcars and in 1970 a fleet of diesel busses took to the roads. Construction on a new airport 50km from the City was underway, the old airport at Chebucto Road had been closed, and civilian flights temporarily used the naval airport at Shearwater until 1960 when Halifax International Airport was completed.
The first container pier came into use in the late 1960s close to Point Pleasant Park. It was built on land purchased from the Royal Yacht Squadron which had to be moved to its current location in the North West Arm. Container shipping rendered a boost to rail transport to accommodate shipping the containers inland.
So long a City with very narrow liquor control Halifax finally relaxed and allowed the sale of spirits and in 1964 women were permitted to enter bars and taverns.
First recommended in 1954 by the City Manager it was in 1962 that the City Council agreed to the ‘relocation’ of Africville. Relocation meant all the houses in Africville were bull dozed and the residents relocated to other areas. The people were not moved as a community to another place but dispersed randomly to several areas. Both CBC and MacLeans Magazine were highly critical of the relocation but none the less, it went ahead.
A large tract of land and all the old streets and houses was cleared to produce a sprawling concrete complex called Scotia Square and the Cogswell Street Interchange.
Women’s Issues came to the fore in the early 70’s fighting for better wages, credit, access to occupations that had formerly been considered for males only, pensions, to name a few. Women wanted access to better medical services such as abortion and birth control. Still at this point Halifax doctors would not prescribe birth control pills to unmarried women. The strong movement lobbied hard for daycare facilities and other benefits. 1975 and the Nova Scotia
Task Force on the Status of Women confirmed all of the above grievances and recommended change. This Force gave way to the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women in 1980.
In 1996 the then Liberal Provincial Premier John Savage created and forced through the Halifax Regional Municipality. This amalgamated area took in four different municipal governments, a vast area of land from pure city to rural outposts not to mention very diverse cultural and economic attitudes. . It required the election of an unweildy 23 member Council. Though promoted as a financially sensible arrangement, administrative costs were far beyond anything that had been estimated.
Today Halifax is trying to appeal with its cultural side in music, film and television production. A greatly rebuilt Neptune Theatre and a unique Shakespeare-by-the-Sea Company performing in the open air. Tall Ships, International Buskers Festival and many other entertainments constantly draw crowds to the waterfront area. The City hosts the Nova Scotia Tattoo each July, the only Tattoo in Canada, which is hugely successful and attracts entrants from all over the world. Many companies pick Halifax as their convention centre and there are now several major hotels in the downtown core, plus a casino. Cruise ships putting into port are a daily occurrence. Experiments with industry historically have not worked well for Halifax as a whole and today its port facilities, off shore gas and oil related services and the ever present military and navy are where it does best.
Suggested Reading Matter
Halifax Warden of the North – Thomas H. Raddall ISBN 1-55109-060-0
Halifax The First 250 Years – Fingard, Guildford and Sutherland ISBN 0-88780-490-X
The Dark Side of Life in Victorian Halifax – Judith Fingard ISBN 0-919001-58-0
The Town That Died – Michael J. Bird ISBN 0-7700-6015-3