Halifax's Freshwater Brook

https://halifaxbloggers.ca/noticedinnovasco//not-so-fresh/

https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/handle/10222/15535

https://www.halifaxtoday.ca//flooding-in-halifax-shouldnt-

Above Freshwater. https://www.tiktok.com/@haligonia/video/6880166659185757441

What If A River Runs Through It? The Nova Scotia government is planning to build a new 7-storey parking garage and a power plant on parts of the Halifax Common ...around the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History. The project is part of a significant redevelopment of the nearby Halifax Infirmary. While investments in health care are welcome, legitimate questions are being raised about the process leading to this design, which took place without meaningful public input. Among other concerns we've heard, the Friends of the Halifax Common state on their website: "The proposed parking garage would go against the Halifax Common Plan, negatively impact the Bengal Lancers, the Halifax Wanderers Grounds, the Halifax Lawn Bowlers and disrupt the 99-year old right-of-way between Summer Street and Bell Road." Unilaterally deleting significant portions of the Halifax Common is ethically problematic (and hopefully logistically problematic as well, as 40% of the proposed parkade's footprint occupies municipally owned land). The province's messaging has attempted to cast their process as transparent and the decision as necessary, but these are only assertions. Citizens have had no meaningful access or input to the planning process, and therefore no way to assess (or contribute to) design options. As environmental historian Claire Campbell recently pointed out, low-lying green space typically correlates to buried groundwater, "SO much better for leaving as green space." This is a significant point that has not been made very often in this debate. Much of the Halifax Common was formerly wetland, and through the Victorians may have stuffed most of the rivers and brooks into pipes, that water is still moving around down there and the green space above (that stuff we seem so eager to pave over), functions like a great sponge and conduit for rainfall and melt water. I wonder if the province's design process has taken this phenomenon into account, or does the water shed by these new structures, which will no longer be absorbed by green space, just get externalized to municipal storm drains? Are planners aware that the footprint of the planned parkade and power plant rests on top of an ancient river? Halifax's early inhabitants called it Freshwater River, and it drains much of the peninsula before emptying into the harbour near the bottom of Inglis Street. The only parts of this system still visible are in the nearby Public Gardens. The Nova Scotia Museum likewise straddles this old watercourse, and I have heard over the years many stories about how the excess water below grade has impacted the building. It would be interesting to hear more about this subject. The accompanying maps offer some sense of the proposed project's principal structures. They also plot the course of Freshwater River through three time periods: 1878, 1808, and 1784. We all welcome investments in health care, but it is not clear that the province's current plans embody our best collective effort. They should pump the breaks on this project before they have to pump Freshwater River out of the basement. ---------- The Friends of the Halifax Common have launched a petition to encourage the province and the city to reconsider this plan. Details here if you are interested: https://www.halifaxcommon.ca/petition-to-protect-the-halif/

GIS overlap of part of the the 1878 Hopkins City Atlas of Halifax with modern 1:10,000 road data. This process allows us to georeference features from the histo...rical mapping. Note the skating rink on the east side of the Public Gardens, facing South Park Street. You can explore the Hopkins maps here and here: https://novascotia.ca/archives/maps/hopkins.asp https://www.davidrumsey.com/