Halifax, Nova Scotia

History

Halifax is located within the traditional ancestral lands of the Mi'kmaq indigenous peoples, known as Mi'kma'ki.^[5] The Mi'kmaq have resided in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island since prior to European landings in North America in the 1400s and 1500s to set up fisheries. The Mi'kmaq name for Halifax is K'jipuktuk, pronounced "che-book-took".^[6]

Wooden palisade erected along Dartmouth in response to the raid on Dartmouth, opposite side of the harbour from the Great Pontack, during Father Le Loutre's War, 1759.

The first permanent European settlement in the region was on the Halifax Peninsula. The establishment of the Town of Halifax, named after the 2nd Earl of Halifax, in 1749 led to the colonial capital being transferred from Annapolis Royal.

The establishment of Halifax marked the beginning of Father Le Loutre's War. The war began when Edward Cornwallis arrived to establish Halifax with 13 transports and a sloop of war on June 21, 1749.^[7] By unilaterally establishing Halifax, the British were violating earlier treaties with the Mi'kmaq (1726), which were signed after Father Rale's War.^[8] Cornwallis brought along 1,176 settlers and their families. To guard against Mi'kmaq, Acadian and French attacks on the new Protestant settlements, British fortifications were erected in Halifax (Citadel Hill) (1749), Bedford (Fort Sackville) (1749), Dartmouth (1750), and Lawrencetown (1754), all areas within the modern-day Regional Municipality. St. Margaret's Bay was first settled by French-speaking Foreign Protestants at French Village, Nova Scotia who migrated from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia during the American Revolution.

December 1917 saw one of the greatest disasters in Canadian history, when the SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship carrying munitions, collided with the Belgian Relief vessel SS Imo in "The Narrows" between upper Halifax Harbour and Bedford Basin. The resulting explosion, the Halifax Explosion, devastated the Richmond District of Halifax, killing approximately 2,000 people and injuring nearly 9,000 others.^[9] The blast was the largest artificial explosion before the development of nuclear weapons.^[10] Significant aid came from Boston, strengthening the bond between the two coastal cities.

Aftermath of the Halifax Explosion, a maritime disaster that devastated the city in 1917.

The four municipalities in the Halifax urban area had been coordinating service delivery through the Metropolitan Authority since the late 1970s, but remained independent towns and cities until April 1, 1996, when the provincial government amalgamated all municipal governments within Halifax County to create the Halifax Regional Municipality. The municipal boundary thus now includes all of Halifax County except for several First Nation reserves.^[11]

Since amalgamation, the region has officially been known as the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), although "Halifax" has remained in common usage for brevity. On April 15, 2014, the regional council approved the implementation of a new branding campaign for the region developed by the local firm Revolve Marketing. The campaign would see the region referred to in promotional materials simply as "Halifax", although "Halifax Regional Municipality" would remain the region's official name. The proposed rebranding was met with mixed reaction from residents, some of whom felt that the change would alienate other communities in the municipality through a perception that the marketing scheme would focus on Metropolitan Halifax only, while others expressed relief that the longer formal name would no longer be primary. Mayor Mike Savage defended the decision, stating: "I'm a Westphal guy, I'm a Dartmouth man, but Halifax is my city, we’re all part of Halifax. Why does that matter? Because when I go and travel on behalf of this municipality, there isn’t a person out there who really cares what HRM means."^[12][13][14]