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HALIFAX, N.S. —

The fate of Halifax’s old library on Spring Garden Road could well depend upon the estimated 20,000 former city residents buried beneath its grounds, adjacent parking lots, streets and sidewalks.

Since being replaced five years ago by its architecturally recognized counterpart across the street, the unheated, two-storey, stone-facade structure has remained vacant as regional councillors and local preservationists debate its future.

“The city does not want to pay for anything and it doesn’t want to have to maintain historic buildings,” said William Breckenridge, a director for the Halifax Military Heritage Preservation Society.

“It’s almost as if they are ashamed of our past. They’re pitting heritage against development.

“There are thousands of bodies buried beneath the old library grounds and the government doesn’t want to deal with it.”

“They just want to dump the building on a private developer,” Breckenridge charged.

Councillors seem reluctant to even acknowledge that people are buried there in mass graves for fear of hindering the city’s ability to divest itself of the building, he added.

Breckenridge and society board chairman Chris Marriott speculate councillors would rather let the building deteriorate to the point where there’s no other option but to tear it down.

“The only reason we are having this discussion is because those people buried there were too poor to have headstones,” Marriott said. “If that graveyard had headstones, a library would never have been built there in the first place.”

Heritage groups want the old library building retained for public use and are pushing to have it designated as a municipal heritage property and those buried there recognized with a cairn or plaque.

At a recent meeting, council voted in favour of holding a public hearing on an application to do just that. A hearing date has yet to be set.

Meanwhile, councillors have asked municipal staff to come up with a proposal – in partnership with the provincial government and Dalhousie University – for a major redeveloping and repurposing of the structure that may include a public atrium, municipal premises or educational, commercial and retail space.

But preservationists contend some of those options contravene a covenant the province placed on the former paupers’ graveyard when it turned the land over to the city in 1883, in perpetuity, for a public park.

That agreement was modified in 1947 when the city decided to construct a library on the site as a war memorial. Opened in 1951, the Halifax Memorial Library was dedicated to the more than 2,200 local residents killed in the First and Second World Wars.

The old Halifax Memorial Library.

Downtown District 7 Coun. Waye Mason views the old library building and the graves of those buried around it as two totally separate and conflicting issues.

While Mason believes the library grounds and the remains of those interred there should be recognized and not disturbed, he doesn’t share the same opinion for the structure itself.

“It’s very difficult to repurpose that building without substantially changing it. And it’s very hard to substantially change it without disturbing the graves. We’re kind of handicapped by the circumstances.”

Mason said the large number of bodies believed buried on library grounds prevent foundations from being dug for newer buildings, and do not allow the footprint of the existing structure to be expanded.

He also ruled out enlarging or adding more floors because heavy equipment needed to do the work would only chew up the area where city workers are still finding human bone fragments once the frost leaves the ground.

Mason questioned whether anyone would want to spend millions of dollars refurbishing the deteriorating library building reported to be plagued with asbestos, lead paint and moisture problems.

“It’s a tragedy on a lot of levels that the library was built on the old burial ground in the first place,” he said.

“As soon as we figure out what to do with it, we need to research the area and recognize that a poorhouse burial ground is located there.

“There’s a lot of history there that needs to be recognized.”

“It’s almost as if they are ashamed of our past. They’re pitting heritage against development.” - William Breckenridge, a director for the Halifax Military Heritage Preservation Society

Mason noted city council voted in 2013 to tear the building down if an alternative use can’t be found. “It was during a public meeting. There was no secret about it.”

But he said that decision has been delayed because of several ideas expressed for an alternative use of the building, including one from Dalhousie University.

“Dalhousie is very interested in the future of the site,” said Brian Leadbetter, the university’s director of communications and public relations.

“We are committed to enhancing the vibrancy and quality of places in and around our Sexton Campus in the heart of downtown Halifax.”

For the past year, the city and Dal’s architecture and planning department have reportedly been discussing a joint vision of turning the building into a planning hub for civic innovation and engagement.

“If someone can use the building as it is right now, that’s great,” Mason said. If not, he said the area should be turned back into a park by tearing it down and its foundation covered with dirt.

Jonathan Fowler, an associate professor of anthropology who also teaches a course on archeology of Halifax at Saint Mary’s University, terms the library grounds and area surrounding it as “the Halifax Necropolis.”

In October 2018, Fowler and a team of former and current university students conducted ground-penetrating radar, electrical conductivity and magnetic susceptibility surveys of the nearby Old Burying Ground on Barrington Street.

About 1,300 headstones were counted, but Fowler said his research revealed there could be as many as 12,000 bodies in the cemetery, mostly in unmarked graves.

Although he didn’t survey the area, he said archeologists believe just as many are buried in a mass grave across the street.

They include 4,500 bodies interred on the library grounds and another 3,500 beneath the sidewalks and pavement of Grafton Street, Spring Garden Road and under the Grafton Street parking lot next to St. Mary’s Basilica.

St. Mary’s Basilica in Halifax in January 2019. - Eric Wynne

Five old cemeteries for various faiths have also been documented, Fowler said.

He advocates the need for an archeology management plan for Halifax’s downtown core.

During a society-hosted public consultation earlier this year attended by about 100 interested Haligonians, Breckenridge painted a sordid picture of what some have described as “Halifax’s dirty little secret.”

The former Halifax Poor House and adjacent Bridewell prison on Spring Garden Road near the recently constructed Doyle Street retail-condominium building housed criminals and treated the city’s long-forgotten destitute, blind, insane and diseased-stricken residents.

They included infants and the elderly, the rich and poor, orphans and the unwanted, all cared for by local churches funded through donations from private citizens.

For more than 100 years, from 1758 until its closing in 1869, Breckenridge said the bodies of thousands of poorhouse residents and prison inmates were unceremoniously buried in shallow graves on the library grounds. Fellow occupants of the two institutions made the coffins, research indicates.

Poorhouse records reveal Halifax residents Elizabeth Brown, 29, Robert Grant, 50, and Mary Johnson, 70, all near death when admitted to the facility in the early 1800s, may have been among them.

As were Indigenous Mi’kmaqs such as Thomas Paul, 35, suffering from cold and intemperance, fever-ridden Nancy Carter, 60, of Halifax’s black community and British soldiers who fought in the American War of Independence.

The old records also indicate 247 poorhouse inhabitants died from a smallpox epidemic in 1827 and that an average of 100 deaths annually were counted at the prison, Breckenridge told the group.

Even hanged pirates from the barque Saladin, a ship loaded with valuable cargo made famous for a mutiny that inspired a song, are thought to be buried under the sidewalk of Spring Garden Road.

While the city is seeking public input on what should be done with the old library building, there has been no shortage of ideas from those in the heritage preservation community.

Other suggestions include converting the building into a museum or interpretation centre detailing the city and its history, conveying the property to the province’s Indigenous Peoples, using it for the performing arts or even creating a venue to display the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia’s Annie Leibovitz photographic collection.

“We think it would be very disrespectful if they tore it down and replaced it with another structure,” said Andrew Murphy, president of the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia.

Because it is a memorial building and built on a graveyard, Murphy said his group would not support “a commercial use for that building.”

“We’re concerned about the building, and we are concerned about those buried there.”

But should the structure be unsalvageable, Heritage Trust has won the support of several other heritage groups for its proposal to maintain its façade with seating in a park-like setting honouring the city’s war dead.

However, preservationists are adamant those buried there should not be disturbed and should be allowed to rest in peace.

Halifax parish spent $1.2 million to move graves elsewhere

Grave markers can be seen on the grounds of Saint David's church with the new building in the back of the church on Brunswick Street. - Ryan Taplin



HALIFAX — It cost members of the Presbyterian Church of Saint David in downtown Halifax about $1.2 million to reinter the remains of more than 200 bodies buried beneath part of its property leased to a local developer for an apartment building.

Before construction began on the seven-storey structure about two years ago, a consultant was called in to survey the site once occupied by the attached church hall before its demolition, church historian Mac MacKay said.

"As is customary with any excavation downtown, archeologists stood by in case anything turned up that had been missed.”

Provincial regulations require proper permits for any downtown excavations, that qualified people do the work and that any found remains be reinterred with due reverence, he said.

The provincial Cemeteries and Monuments Protection Act also says it is an offence to desecrate, damage or destroy a cemetery or monument, and that no one should interfere with human remains.

An excavating contractor uncovered human remains in the area where it is known that thousands of former city residents are buried in at least five documented cemeteries and a mass paupers’ gravesite dating back to the early 1800s, MacKay said.

“It certainly wasn’t a surprise remains were found. We spent almost a year preparing the site for excavation by going through an extensive archeological operation.”

By the time the developer began construction of the building, 244 bodies had already been removed and reinterred with due reverence in a crypt beneath the floor of the church basement, he said.

“It was a mass grave, so it was probably not possible to identify the exact number. But archeologists believe it is a good approximation.”

Funding from the 99-year-lease will enable Saint David’s to continue functioning in the face of mounting maintenance costs and a declining membership, he said.

A stone wall is being restored in front of the historic church and new steps are being added extending from Grafton Street to its front entrance.

But MacKay said the wall is only going down to the frost line and it is unlikely any more remains will be found.

Built in 1868-69, the former Grafton Street Methodist Church is a registered Halifax Regional Municipality heritage property. The Presbyterians purchased the building in 1925.

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