A Short History of Halifax by Dan Soucoup

Author:Dan Soucoup
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing
Published: 2014-06-03T17:04:01+00:00

Academy of Music, Barrington Street, c.1908. The academy opened in 1877 and was one of the first public buildings in the city to be lighted by electricity.

—Courtesy Dan Soucoup

The 1880s became a significant decade for the city’s arts community. In addition to the art school, Zwicker’s Gallery, Canada’s oldest commercial art gallery, was established in the North End by Judson A. Zwicker. The Academy of Music had opened on Barrington Street and would be the city’s major theatre and music centre with its own repertory company until it was torn down in 1929 to make way for a motion picture theatre.

The city had already opened a free library and continued to expand its horizons. The decade was also significant for the advancement of women’s rights, as Margaret Florence Newcombe became the first woman to graduate from Dalhousie University, with a BA in 1885, and Maria Angwin became the first woman to be licensed to practice medicine in the province.

In 1890 a new city hall opened on the Grand Parade. Six years later an electric trolley service offered citizens transportation up and down Spring Garden Road and Barrington Street, as well as out to Willow Park. Electric street lights were installed and the upper streets below the Citadel were slowly being cleaned up as the brothels and drinking dens were torn down to make way for three-storey brick structures. The new Victorian morality and the politically powerful temperance societies were demanding change: old Barrack Street was renamed Brunswick while fine new homes were erected on the street north of the hill.

As the Dartmouth side of the harbour began to expand, the need to secure rail connections became apparent. In 1885 the Intercolonial Railway built a steel-swing railway bridge across the harbour at The Narrows, but it was destroyed by a storm. A second harbour bridge was erected, although it, too, collapsed, making it necessary to build a spur rail line from Windsor Junction into Dartmouth. Almost sixty years would pass before another bridge would finally span the harbour.

The first Jewish synagogue was opened on Starr Street in 1894, and immigration to Canada began to accelerate again in the late 1800s. While Halifax and the Maritimes were not the final destination of many of these immigrants seeking a new life in western Canada, Pier 2 was the entry point for welcoming the would-be citizens coming mainly from Europe. In 1929 a new immigrant structure called Pier 21 would open on the waterfront and continued to accept hundreds of thousands of new Canadians before closing out in the 1970s as air travel became the preferred choice for immigrants entering the country.

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