A City Transformed? Urban Development and the Role of Canadian Railway Policy in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1900-1920

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the development of the city of Halifax in the first two decades of the twentieth century, emphasizing the themes of suburban growth, the rise of municipal boosterism, and the drive for industrial development. During this period the notions of privacy and autonomy of the traditional leadership of Halifax were challenged by Ottawa's decision to build a modern wharf and rail complex in the heart of Halifax's genteel south end. This challenge and the responses it generated within the city's business elite, civic administration, and Civic Improvement League, a group committed to the planned and orderly development of the city, provide an opportunity to explore major elements of the city building process in post Confederation Atlantic Canada.

The federal design, a massive departure from the existing course of development, was announced as a fait accompli. Fear of the project's vulnerability to political opposition compelled the booster element in the business elite to support the proposal as presented, despite the fact that the elite residential district would be destroyed. The municipal administration and the Civic Improvement League yielded to pressure and "rubber stamped" elite approval of the project. The League rose to assume the role of advocate for the city's interests, and used this position to continue its pursuit of comprehensive planning and orderly development. Its progressive goals were reduced to the enactment of protective zoning legislation for the residential area, however. The decline in national economic fortunes after 1913, and the onset of post-war economic deflation in 1921, slowed the city's growth to a halt. This decline rendered obsolete the optimistic projections behind the Ocean Terminals, and left the city of Halifax with a large, federally-controlled transportation complex in its formerly proud south end.