Swashbuckling then . . . seafood now
Instead of privateers, Halifax waterfront now has fine restaurants and shops
By Stanton H. Patty, Globe Correspondent, 05/10/98
ALIFAX, Nova Scotia -- Enos Collins was his name. Privateering was his
game.
From the wharves of old Halifax, Collins used to send his pirate navy out
to capture enemy shipping.
The enemy? That was us during the War of 1812.
Collins, so the story goes, placed about four dozen of his toughs aboard a
British warship, HMS Shannon, for a sea battle off Boston with an American
frigate, the Chesapeake.
The fight took only about 15 minutes. Shannon was victorious.
All Halifax cheered when Shannon -- with Chesapeake in tow -- sailed into
the harbor here on June 6, 1813.
Meanwhile, Enos Collins and other Halifax-based privateers were filling
their stone warehouses along the waterfront with booty.
The swashbuckling Nova Scotian also found other ways, including banking,
to make money. By the time Collins died in 1871, at age 97, he was one of the
richest men in North America.
So how come he didn't think of opening a seafood restaurant, too?
One of the original Collins buildings, where lofts once were stuffed with
loot, is doing business these days as the Privateers' Warehouse, a popular
restaurant and pub.
Privateers' Warehouse anchors a restoration project known as Historic
Properties, one element of a reborn waterfront that is the pride of Halifax.
It's a thoroughly pleasant array for visitors, with museums, gift shops,
art galleries, harbor-tour offices, and eateries strung along more than two
miles of salt-air walkways.
Haligonians get downright emotional when they talk about their beloved
harborfront. They almost lost it to developers.
City officials were all set to demolish this slice of Halifax's historic
harbor for a freeway.
``We stopped them just in time,'' says Lou Collins, the Halifax historian
who chaired the citizens' committee that saved the waterfront.
``An expressway? Can you imagine? You would be driving along there today
at 50 miles per hour and waving to seagulls -- because there would be nothing
else left to see.
``As it is, we managed to save only remnants from the past, but they are
important remnants.''
Maclean's, Canada's weekly news magazine, describes Halifax as having a
``penetrating sense of history.''
Halifax also is a great place to be young.
``Totally cool,'' says Peggy Bowman, 20, a Dalhousie University student.
That's mainly because seven colleges and universities have campuses in the
Halifax area. Student life has sown 60 or so lively coffee houses and pubs
through the downtown core. Spring Garden Road and Argyle Street are where
visitors find most of the action.
Grateful students regularly pay homage to Alexander Keith, the
19th-century brewmaster who gave Nova Scotia its favorite beverage. There's
almost always a bottle of Keith's ale atop his resting place in Camp Hill
Cemetery.
But that ``penetrating sense of history'' still overlays this good-time
city of Atlantic Canada.
Follow the skirl of bagpipes to the crest of Citadel Hill, the
19th-century fortress above downtown Halifax -- then look back toward the
great harbor.
Down there, where travelers stroll the waterfront, is where England's
Edward Cornwallis led 2,500 soldiers and settlers ashore in 1749 to found
Halifax.
Britain's plan, and it worked, was to counter the French presence at the
Louisbourg Fortress on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island. France lost
Louisbourg and the rest of Canada a few years later.
But Cornwallis didn't stay long as governor of the colony. He was
homesick. His gull-splattered statue, down by the Westin Nova Scotian Hotel,
gazes longingly across the North Atlantic toward England.
Halifax Harbor also is where they brought ashore the bodies of more than
200 victims of the Titanic sinking in 1912. Mortuary ships had been dispatched
from Halifax to the scene of the tragedy, off the coast of neighboring
Newfoundland.
Records show that 150 of the Titanic dead are buried in three Halifax
cemeteries. Many could not be identified.
Saddest grave of all in Fairview Cemetery belongs to a lad, about age 4,
who was buried as ``The Unknown Child.'' Nobody claimed the youngster's
remains.
Look again toward the harbor.
Down there also is the site of the biggest man-made explosion the world
had known until an atomic bomb burst over Hiroshima.
The date was Dec. 6, 1917. Two vessels -- the Mont Blanc, a French ship
loaded with explosives for World War I battles, and the Imo, a Belgian relief
ship -- collided in Halifax harbor that morning. First there was a fire, then
a terrible explosion.
It's another story that won't go away.
``About 2,000 people died here that day,'' says Janet Kitz, author of
``Shattered City,'' the definitive account of the disaster.
``I still go to birthday parties for the survivors -- and to funerals,
too.''
But not all of Halifax's history is so gloomy.
Up there on Citadel Hill is the Old Town Clock, a stately tower that has
become the city's signature.
Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, ordered the clock installed in 1803 when
he was commander-in-chief of the Halifax garrison. The prince insisted
soldiers and civilians alike be punctual.
But there is a sort of royal ``deja vu'' footnote to the story. Gossips
soon learned that Edward -- later to be the father of Britain's Queen Victoria
-- had been accompanied to Halifax by his pretty French mistress, Julie St.
Laurent.
And we can blame a chap from Halifax for burning our White House.
That happened also during the War of 1812. In fact, the White House wasn't
white until General Robert Ross rode down from Halifax to lead British forces
into Washington, D.C.
Ross's troops set fire to the presidential mansion, and the badly scorched
structure was painted white to hide the damage.
Presto! The White House.
Ross was killed near Baltimore shortly afterward. He rests here, in the
Old Burying Ground, close by St. Paul's Anglican Church.
Then there is the Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, a tiny Catholic church in
the center of Holy Cross Cemetery. It's known here as ``The Church Built in a
Day.''
Irish emigrants were assigned a plot of land in downtown Halifax, and told
they could keep the property if they could build a church in a single day.
About 2,000 of the faithful turned out Aug. 31, 1843, and completed the job
before midnight.
Halifax hospitality comes with a foot-stomping beat at O'Carroll's (1860
Upper Water St.).
Come on in. There's fiddle music and there's singing.
``No chair, mate?'' asks a local.
He slides a chair my way, aiming it so that my knees buckle and I'm seated
instantly.
``How's that?''
Someone was singing a Gaelic tune from Cape Breton Island. The lyrics went
like this:
``I asked her if she loves me.
She called me a fool . . .''
``But it has a happy ending -- not to worry,'' said my new friend who
had pitched the chair.
And then he raised his glass for a traditional Cape Breton toast:
``Sociable!''
That pretty well sums up Halifax.
