Halifax, Nova Scotia (former city)

Halifax skyline at night

Halifax neighbourhoods and boundaries of former city in relation to Halifax Regional Municipality

This article is about the history and the present day community of the former city of Halifax . For more information about the Halifax Regional Municipality see Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia, or Halifax (disambiguation) for other articles.

Halifax, founded in 1749, is a community and former city in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Halifax was the shire town of Halifax County and the provincial capital.

In 1996 the provincial government amalgamated all the governments of the municipalities within the boundaries of Halifax County into a single-tier regional government named Halifax Regional Municipality, commonly referred to as HRM. While Halifax and its neighbouring city of Dartmouth and the town of Bedford were disincorporated at this time, the former city forms part of the urban core of the larger HRM and is labelled the "capital district."Rudyard Kipling paid homage to Halifax in his poem The Song of Cities:

Into the mist my guardian prows put forth,:Behind the mist my virgin ramparts lie,:The Warden of the Honour of the North,:Sleepless and veiled am I!

Halifax was established by the British to counter-balance the French presence in Québec and Acadia, which at the time included present-day New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton Island and the Gaspe Peninsula. For most of its early history, Halifax was the primary North Atlantic base for the Royal Navy, it prospered during times conflict and languished during times of peace. Despite Halifax's status as the regional centre and colonial capital, the city rarely saw commercial or economic success in its early years.

Halifax only began to benefit from a process of increased rural depopulation and corresponding urban growth in Atlantic Canada during the late 20th century — a demographic shift that was delayed several decades in the region compared with other parts of North America. Today the former city is the centre of HRM's urban core and is benefitting from increased cultural and economic diversity.

Geography

The original settlement of Halifax occupied a small stretch of land inside a palisade at the foot of Citadel Hill on the Halifax Peninsula, a sub-peninsula of the much larger Chebucto Peninsula that extends into Halifax Harbour. Halifax subsequently grew to incorporate all of the north, south, and west ends of the peninsula with a central business district concentrated in the southeastern end along "The Narrows".

In 1969, the City of Halifax grew westward of the peninsula by amalgamating several communities from the surrounding Halifax County; namely Fairview, Rockingham, Spryfield, Purcell's Cove, and Armdale. These communities saw a number of modern subdivision developments during the late 1960s through to the 1990s, one of the earliest being the Clayton Park development at the southwestern edge of Rockingham.

Since amalgamation into HRM, the name "Halifax" is increasingly used to refer to neighbourhoods on the Halifax Peninsula, (i.e., the pre-1969 city boundary), and to a much lesser extent, the post-1969 amalgamated parts of the county . Many of the communities that were amalgamated during the 1960s have reasserted their identities and have become for the most part part of the "Western" service delivery districts of HRM known as Mainland West or Mainland North. Some of these communities names are still used for mail delievery . The peninsula, in addition to being referred to as "Halifax," is officially referred to as the "Central" or "Capital District."

Main article: Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia

Present Day Neighbourhoods

* Downtown Halifax
* Historic Properties
* North End Halifax
* Quinpool district
* South End Halifax
* Spring Garden
* Armdale
* Fairmount
* Clayton Park
* Rockingham
* Fairview
* Herring Cove
* Purcell's Cove
* Spryfield
* The Hydrostone

Historic Neighbourhoods

* Africville
* Richmond
* Dutch Village

Please see main article on the History of Halifax for the history of Halifax. For current information, see the Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia article, or the Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Bedford, Nova Scotia and Halifax County, Nova Scotia and for in-depth information about HRM's other constituent communities.

External links

*Apartments for Rent in Halifax, Nova Scotia
*Halifax Online Community
*Halifax Webcam