Glimpses of a Lost Halifax

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In 1749 Halifax was a rough settlement of wood-frame buildings hastily thrown together behind a palisade that stretched between Citadel Hill and the harbour. These early structures gradually gave way to a Victorian downtown, constructed largely of brick and stone: commercial establishments, shops, government and private offices, churches, small manufacturing concerns — and an inner community of wooden structures, home to seamen, longshoremen, labourers, shop assistants, tradesmen and their families. The face of downtown Halifax began to change again, drastically, especially after the city's bicentenary — and continues to change today, as large numbers of surviving Victorian buildings, and even entire streetscapes, are demolished and replaced by the glass-and-steel office towers and high-rise apartment buildings that are the trademarks of the late twentieth century.

Other areas of the present Halifax Regional Municipality, beyond the old downtown core, have also experienced complete transformations over time. North End Halifax was totally redeveloped after the Explosion of 1917. The Mi'kmaq community at rocky Turtle Grove, just outside the old town of Dartmouth, was a landmark on the harbour until it, too, was devastated by the Explosion. And the old established Black community of Africville, on the south shore of Bedford Basin, survived the Explosion — only to fall victim to city officialdom, who decreed its destruction and the relocation of its residents to modern public housing in the 1960s.

As the city continues to grow and evolve in an age of rapid change, a cursory glance at our colourful past quickly reveals that the horse and wagon have given way to the automobile, the horse-drawn streetcar to Metro Transit, the telegraph to the cellular phone, and the typewriter to the computer. For better or worse, time continues to march on, the one constant being the faces of the people who make up our collective identity as Haligonians, those people who live in a city by the sea called Halifax.