• Black Nova Scotia
  • Economy
  • Education
  • Environment
  • Health
    • COVID
  • Investigation
  • Journalism
  • Labour
  • Policing
  • Politics
    • City Hall
    • Elections
    • Province House
  • Profiles
  • Transit
  • Women
  • Morning File
  • Commentary
  • PRICED OUT
  • @Tim_Bousquet
  • Log In

Halifax Examiner

An independent, adversarial news site in Halifax, NS

  • Home
  • About
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Commenting policy
  • Archives
  • Contact us
  • Subscribe
    • Gift Subscriptions
  • Donate
  • Swag
  • Receipts
  • Manage your account: update card / change level / cancel
You are here: Home / City Hall / Accessing Africville

Accessing Africville

Decades of bad planning has historic museum and park cut off from the rest of the peninsula

July 25, 2017 By Erica Butler 7 Comments

A replica of Seaview United Baptist Church houses a museum dedicated to the history of Africville.

When my kid’s school announced its annual picnic at Africville Park in June, I was pretty excited. I would finally get to see the site of Africville, a predominantly Black community founded in the mid-1800s on the shores of the Bedford Basin, which suffered under decades of racist planning decisions culminating in the infamous demolition of the town in the late 1960s to make way for a highway interchange at the foot of the Mackay Bridge (completed in 1970).

Thanks to the perseverance and tenacity of the former residents, we not only know the story of Africville, but we can walk part of the grounds of the demolished community at Africville Park, and learn about its history at a museum in a replica of the Seaview United Baptist Church, by all accounts the focal point of the community.

It’s a beautiful spot, telling an important chapter of Halifax history. Too bad it is so damn hard to get to.

Because it is so close, I decided to bike to my kid’s school picnic at Africville. Little did I know that to get there I would find myself on a 70 km/hr stretch of Barrington Street with no sidewalks, and then on Africville Road, which doubles as a throughway for large trucks coming from the Richmond Terminals, and is also devoid of sidewalks.

 

Barrington Street looking northward to Africville Road. On bike or foot, you will need to hop the guard rail to walk along a narrow path on the side of the road.

Even though it’s on the peninsula, located a hop and a skip from some of the city’s densest residential communities, you can’t really walk or bike to Africville Park, at least not safely or comfortably. Like many other neglected places around HRM, Africville Park and the Africville Museum are cut off from the city by decades of transportation planning that valued high-speed roads over pedestrian access to the point of destroying one for the sake of the other.

“Bringing people here is kind of difficult especially if they don’t drive,” says museum interpreter Nate Adams. (Even for those going by car, the site can be nearly impossible to find due to poor signage, he says.)

Barrington Street and the 111 highway coming off the Mackay Bridge form transportation moats around both Africville Park and its neighbouring but disconnected Seaview Lookoff Park. Even though it’s about 400 metres as the crow flies from the #7 bus stop on Novelea to the Africville Museum, it’s a much longer walk through the informal pathways of Seaview Lookoff which according to a city report are “not accessible, not maintained and require crossing active rail tracks.”

Last year, a group of interpreters at the museum started a petition to ask the city to construct sidewalks and bring in bus service to the site.

In a December information report requested by council in response to the petition, city staff outlined the challenges of active transportation and transit connections to Africville.

While the report seems to rule out a bus stop at the museum (“a sufficient number of passenger trips would not be generated to meet minimum ridership standards as described in the Moving Forward Together Plan” it says), it did announce the intention to include planning for improved AT connections in this year’s budget, despite the challenges of “limited right-of-way, steep slopes, significant motor vehicle traffic, and active rail tracks to consider.”

David MacIsaac, HRM’s AT supervisor says the city is aiming to hire consultants to crack some of these problems in the fall. Options could include construction of an accessible pathway through Seaview Lookoff, sidewalks along Barrington and Africville Road, and even a path heading out to Lady Hammond Road via a former rail corridor.

It’s heartening to see a concrete step in the direction of re-connecting Africville with sidewalks and/or greenways, but the challenges involved mean that solutions, once we see them sometime in 2018, are likely going to be expensive. And when stacked up against our still puny Active Transportation budget, they may look extravagant.

For that eventuality, I would like to propose a new capital budget category for HRM council: the Urban Renewal Remediation Fund. Take a few percentages off our current road budget, and dedicate it to righting the major wrongs of public infrastructure from the past 60 years. Knock on the doors of the province and the Bridge Commission and ask them to contribute their fair share. Then spend it. Fix the access to Africville. Throw some of it at the Cogswell Interchange. Put more towards reconnecting all the communities that have been bisected or isolated by high speed, vehicle-only roads and interchanges. (I would love to hear your suggestions in the comments.)

Do it soon, and do it fast. It will be like ripping off a bandaid. Painful in the short term, but that is the price we pay for bad planning. And when we report the costs to the taxpaying public, let’s not call them “active transportation” costs. Let’s call them what they are, the latent costs of urban and suburban highway construction — a bill we’ve been racking up carelessly for decades, and in some cases, continue to.

Let’s not prolong the pain of living in a city disconnected by our own infrastructure. Let’s fix it. Re-connecting Africville will be a great place to start.

Filed Under: City Hall, Commentary, Featured Tagged With: Africville Museum, Africville Park, David MacIsaac, Nate Adams

Comments

  1. Charlene Boyce says

    July 26, 2017 at 8:28 am

    I love this idea – the Urban Renewal Remediation Fund. The only challenge will be prioritizing the long list of potential projects!! I propose Africville get a prominent place on that list though. This *should* be a gorgeous bike ride.

    Log in to Reply
  2. mfautley says

    July 26, 2017 at 11:32 am

    This is a great idea, and would offer a consistent budgetary resource for remediation and reconciliation projects.

    Log in to Reply
  3. AnnaMacD says

    July 26, 2017 at 12:23 pm

    That’s a really good idea. Those fixes should be in their own category instead of having to fight for priority in the overall spending list. And the existence of the fund might remind developers/planners to give some extra thought to how their projects affect the fabric of the community as a whole.

    Log in to Reply
  4. elladodson says

    July 26, 2017 at 2:01 pm

    Great article and great idea!

    Log in to Reply
  5. aj says

    July 27, 2017 at 10:22 am

    A really good piece by Erica Butler with a solid and practical solution. When implemented it would assist in (hopefully) mending fences and healing the disconnect that many Nova Scotians from Africville and Nova Scotians of African descent continue to feel.

    Log in to Reply
  6. Buencamino says

    July 27, 2017 at 2:50 pm

    Great piece and a great idea.

    Log in to Reply
  7. HElliott says

    July 28, 2017 at 10:55 am

    Great idea! I love the park in that area and have been to the Africville Church; even with a car it took me awhile to figure out how to get there because of the lack of signs! Thank you for bringing more attention to how inaccessible the site remains with the current infrastructure.

    I know a lack of sidewalks in Fairview is a major issue. There are only sidewalks on one side of Main Ave. & Dutch Village. In order to access bus stops, I used to have to walk part way on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the road, wait for traffic to slow down (difficult during rush hours on Main Ave.) & run across the street to wait on a tiny piece of cement. And I never biked anywhere because the cycling infrastructure (partial painted bike lane) on Lacewood/Titus/Dutch Village didn’t make me feel safe.

    Log in to Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

PRICED OUT

A collage of various housing options in HRM, including co-ops, apartment buildings, shelters, and tents
PRICED OUT is the Examiner’s investigative reporting project focused on the housing crisis.

You can learn about the project, including how we’re asking readers to direct our reporting, our published articles, and what we’re working on, on the PRICED OUT homepage.

2020 mass murders

Nine images illustrating the locations, maps, and memorials of the mass shootings

All of the Halifax Examiner’s reporting on the mass murders of April 18/19, 2020, and recent articles on the Mass Casualty Commission and newly-released documents.

Updated regularly.

Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

The Tideline, with Tara Thorne

Two young white women, one with dark hair and one blonde, smile at the camera on a sunny spring day.

Episode 79 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne, is published.

Grace McNutt and Linnea Swinimer are the Minute Women, two Haligonians who host a podcast of the same name about Canadian history as seen through a lens of Heritage Minutes (minutewomenpodcast.ca). In a lively celebration of the show’s second birthday, they stop by to reveal how curling brought them together in podcast — and now BFF — form, their favourite Minutes, that time they thought Jean Chretien was dead, and the impact their show has had. Plus music from brand-new ECMA winners Hillsburn and Zamani.

Listen to the episode here.

Check out some of the past episodes here.

Subscribe to the podcast to get episodes automatically downloaded to your device — there’s a great instructional article here. Email Suzanne for help.

You can reach Tara here.

Sign up for email notification

Sign up to receive email notification when we publish new Morning Files and Weekend Files. Note: signing up for this email is NOT the same as subscribing to the Halifax Examiner. To subscribe, click here.

Recent posts

  • ‘Next thing I know I’m getting tased:’ Nova Scotia Police Review Board hearing into 2019 arrest on Quinpool Road underway May 26, 2022
  • Halifax committee recommends in favour of plan to move, restore, and add to historic Elmwood May 26, 2022
  • Retired Judge Corrine Sparks receives honorary degree from Mount Saint Vincent University May 25, 2022
  • Victims’ families: ‘trauma informed’ inquiry has ‘further traumatized’ us May 25, 2022
  • Public importance of private woodlots May 25, 2022

Commenting policy

All comments on the Halifax Examiner are subject to our commenting policy. You can view our commenting policy here.

Copyright © 2022