Halifax on the Eve of War

In the years leading up to 1939, Halifax hung on as a gritty little seaport city, somewhat oddly perched between the old and the new. The virtual exhibit presented here shows the city's modest urban fabric and its equally modest local services as they appeared just before World War II. Halifax had its Victorian parks and green spaces, a few rather impressive public buildings, its big new hotels, the show-place Capitol Theatre, and a veneer of progress. But the city had never really recovered economically from either the departure of the British forces after 1906 or the Great Depression years of the 1930s.

The overhead transit of the German airship Hindenburg in July 1936 and the Queen Hotel fire in March 1939 were ominous indicators of what might lie ahead for the city. As Bill Naftel notes in his article elsewhere on this website, "By 1939 Halifax was tired, faded and perhaps in search of a new identity." It was soon going to get one.

Meanwhile, for just a few days in June 1939, this little world on the periphery of Atlantic Canada shimmered like a mirage.... before disappearing forever. The Royal Visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to Canada and the United States that spring lifted the entire country into temporary euphoria. Halifax was their next-to-final stop, and as the gleaming white Empress of Britain sailed away in summer sunshine, carrying the King and Queen onward to Newfoundland and home, thousands waved and sang goodbye along the shoreline. It was the last hurrah.

'The hopes and aspirations of the past have been recorded while the sun has set and twilight has gathered; but the ghostly projections of the future have become shrouded in darkness.' — D.C. Harvey, 'From the Citadel,' 1937