The graveyard that is downtown Halifax

Last year when we went to the Wooden Monkey for dinner, this was our view. The graveyard where the Chronicle Herald building used to be. This is only a fraction of the emptiness that is in the heart of downtown Halifax. Everyone is fighting over what should be done with it and as they fight, it remains a horrid eyesore for everyone in the city. They want to turn it into some kind of convention centre which would be great but who knows when decisions will finally be made and change will come.

People keep talking about the changes that are going to happen in downtown Halifax. That Barrington Street, the main drag of the downtown core, will awaken from its ghost town status and actually have stores in the storefront instead of paper plastered over the glass. That the labyrinth of concrete by the casino going in to the downtown core will be replaced by a boulevard covered with trees.



It is all talk. There is no action here. Or if there is, it is the action of stoned tortoises on vacation. No wonder they do not want to knock anything down. The bureaucratic red tape of indecision will ensure nothing is built in its place for eons.

Here you see the front of the old National Film Board of Canada building in downtown Halifax. When I took this photo, the front face of the building was all there was left. There had been a fire and the rest of the building was gone. Now a facade of what it had once been supported by beams, like a walker for a still-standing corpse. In any other city, this would have been knocked down and something new and potentially exciting would have been put up in its place. Halifax is obsessed with skeletons.

I do hope this place will embrace change, become vital. There is so much potential here, it is astounding to me that no one takes advantage of it. Maybe change will come to Halifax and give CPR to the core but I am not holding my breath.