North End & North Street

Ground Zero, where the SS Mont-Blanc exploded, is next to where Pier 6 stood at the foot of Richmond Street. This location is now within the Halifax Shipyard, Irving Shipbuilding Inc.

The Fleet Club is a social venue for sailors in the junior ranks in the Navy. Halifax has a long history as a garrison town and navy port. Providing opportunities for sailors to socialize is part of life here during wartime and in peace. The Halifax Explosion took the lives of many sailors and soldiers who were here in the city, and those who survived helped with the rescue and recovery efforts. The new Fleet Club at this location is a reminder of the ongoing presence of the military in our city.

Just up the hill from the harbour is the Naval Museum of Halifax, in what was known as Admiralty House. It was used as a hospital during WW1, and sustained serious damage during the Halifax Explosion. Fragments from the Mont-Blanc crashed through the north east corner of the roof, and were found years later, embedded in the rafters.

The HMCS Niobe was the first ship in the Royal Canadian Navy and was tied up here on the harbourfront when the explosion happened. The anchor chain snapped in the blast, and the anchor was lost until excavations took place in October 2014. A fragment of the rusted surface of the anchor is being exhibited by NiS+TS at the NS Archives, December 2017. https://archives.novascotia.ca/chase-gallery

A CBC story about the lost anchor can be found at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/hmcs-niobe-anchor-damaged-in-halifax-explosion-found-1.2806106’

Shauntay Grant is a poet and spoken word artist who grew up in the Halifax area. She is also a great observer of contemporary urban life. In this audio excerpt, she shares some of her work about the city today. https://shauntaygrant.com/spoken-word-music.

Artist Susan Tooke has captured the spirit of the local community in her images here and on the next POI. You can see more work by both in their book, City Speaks in Drums, available from Nimbus Publishing.

North Street is often regarded as the boundary between the ‘North End’ and the ‘South End’ of Halifax. It is also marked by the ramp to the Angus L. Macdonald bridge, which did not exist at the time of the Halifax Explosion. Artist Susan Tooke has captured the spirit of the local community in her images here and on the previous point of interest. For more, see her website: www.susantooke.com

The North End of Halifax has grown significantly in the last 100 years. Some of the houses that survived the Halifax Explosion have been gentrified in the past few decades. Many artists live on these streets, which are close to a number of new small galleries, boutiques, coffee shops and restaurants.

Dr. C.C. Ligoure was the only Black doctor in Halifax at the time of the explosion. He was born in Trinidad, then lived in Brooklyn, and came to Canada after completing his medical training at Queen’s University. During his time in Halifax, he also served as Publisher and Editor of the Atlantic Advocate. Dartmouth artist and playwright David Woods is writing a play, “Extraordinary Acts”, about Ligoure’s experiences at the time of the explosion, and his contributions to the relief efforts. It will be premiered in 2018. The detail from the Atlantic Advocate gives Ligoure’s address at the time of the Explosion. Images courtesy of Nova Scotia Archives and Google maps.

This is the home of the Blackbook Collective, urban artists who have created outdoor murals in Mulgrave Park and many other locations in Halifax’s North End. They have collaborated with NiS+TS for a large Explosion-themed indoor mural at the Dalhousie Art Gallery, on exhibition October-December 2017.

The Morris House was built for Charles Morris, the first surveyor of Halifax, in 1764. It was originally located on Hollis Street near Morris, as seen in this photograph from a ‘Saving the Morris House’ social media site.

There is a historic plaque near the sidewalk here, marking the location of the School for the Deaf at the time of the explosion. The stories of the children and staff at the School have not been known until now. A new documentary film about the Deaf Experience of the Explosion premiered at the Atlantic International Film Festival (FIN) and the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in September, 2017. You can see the trailer for the film at https://vimeo.com/227107297

The Halifax North Memorial Public Library was built with funds from the Halifax Relief Commission, and opened in 1966. As part of this commemoration project, an outdoor public sculpture was commissioned. The expressionistic steel and wood sculpture, made by Quebec artist Jordi Bonet, incorporated a fragment from the Mont-Blanc. The piece deteriorated over time, and was taken down by the city in 2004 (and replaced by a new, unrelated work, called 'North is Freedom', in 2011). The fragment from the Mont-Blanc that was part of Bonet’s sculpture is now in the collection of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.

Hope Blooms is a social enterprise where local youth grow herbs and vegetables, then transform them into delicious salad dressings sold in grocery stores. Proceeds go towards post-secondary scholarships.

"Contralto opera singer Portia White entered Dalhousie University in 1929, and from the early 1930s taught in Africville, a small seaside community in Halifax.... She won a scholarship to continue her musical training at the Halifax Conservatory of Music in 1939 with noted Italian baritone Ernesto Vinci." From Wikipedia, 2017