The autumn of 1866 ended yesterday, and we have once more entered upon winter, —if a cloudless sky and warm sunshine, tempered by the balmy breath of gentle Zephyr, can be associated with that usually unwelcome visitor. So favorable a season as the one through which we have just passed, is almost unprecedented in this Province. Old people, both in town and country, assert that a more open autumn has not been experienced in these parts since the year of the great gale, 1813. It is a blessing to the poor when autumn thus “lingers in the lap of winter”.
An inspection of the Scottish, Chebucto and Dartmouth companies, H.V.B., took place in the drill room, last evening, by Colonel Commandant Chearnley. This completes the inspection of the Halifax Volunteer Battalion for the current year. The officers and men of the whole were highly complemented by their Colonel.
Yesterday evening five companies of the Halifax Volunteer Battalion drilled on the Grand Parade, the “Scottish”, the “Greys”, the Halifax, Mayflower, and Dartmouth Rifles. They drill again tomorrow evening, marching from the Drill room to the Parade to the music of the Volunteer Band.
The Granville street, and North Baptist Church Sabbath Schools will hold their picnic at the ground of the Hon. Judge Johnson , at Dartmouth on Wednesday next. Visitors tickets can be obtained from Mr. Selden, the Superintendents of the Schools, at the boat or on the ground.
The steamer will leave the Market Wharf at 9 ½ o’clock, and the North Ferry at ¼ to 10, will then proceed round the Admiral’s ship, down the Eastern Passage and back to Mott’s Wharf.
“Escaped: From the watering place at Dartmouth, yesterday, the undernamed Prisoners of War. John Smith, about 28 years of age, 5 feet 10 inches high, stout made, fair complexion, broad faced. Joshua Johnson, (a man of colour) 5 feet 8 inches high, stout made. A reward of one Guinea each, will be given for the apprehension of each; they are supposed to have taken the road to Windsor. J. Cochet, Capt. and Agent. Transport Office, 12th Oct. 1814. The subscriber having been robbed by the above Men, will pay Forty Shillings, in addition to the Reward offered by government, for their apprehension. Charles Reeves.”
By MARGARET BARNARD DARTMOUTH. N.S. (CP) – A town only seven years ago, this is a city of young people going places in a hurry. In five years 25 or 30 new small and medium-sized industries have located here, and in the last year another dozen industries moved in. A $2,700.000 urban-renewal scheme is expected to become self-supporting in two years instead of the projected three. The scheme, encompassing 60 acres in the old downtown. business district, already has attracted a proposal from industry for a $3,000,000 apartment development of 280 units. that will provide a built-in market for the area’s commercial outlets. The city has lined up sites for public housing and plans to provide 150 units of row housing scattered through the downtown section. It will be Dartmouth’s first venture into public housing.
PLAN VILLAGE SETTING MacCulloch and Co. Ltd., a private development firm, is embarked on a $30.000.000 15- year project to develop a planned community that will eventually accommodate 8.000 people in the heart of the city. Micmac Village, as the pro- ject is called, will have a light industrial park, a shopping centre and sites for schools and churches. A new YMCA is being built there, on three acres donated by the developer. Dartmouth, with a population of 61,500, now is the second largest city in Nova Scotia, outpaced only by Halifax, the neighboring city across Halifax harbor, with a population of 86,792. Dartmouth’s population is increasing at the rate of about five per cent a year and is expected to reach 100,000 in 1985. Young families predominate, with one in three members of the population of school age. In five years $15.000.000 has been spent on construction of schools, additions to existing ones and purchase of four parochial schools. School enrollment totals 17,382. The city is planning a 200-bed general hospital and additional park and recreation areas. Dartmouth started to grow when the first harbor bridge was built linking it with Hall- fax in 1955. It began to boom when it annexed seven suburbs, an area eight times the size of the old town, and became a city in 1961. It now occupies an area of 25 square miles. I. W. Akerley, mayor when the town became a city, said amalgamation of the suburbs brought in new industries and created enthusiasm, and a feeling of pride in its citizens. A new four-lane second harbor bridge is scheduled to be completed in December, 1969. The new bridge leads into Dartmouth’s north industrial park which is partly city- owned. The industrial park is fully serviced, and has railway and highway connections leading to all major routes in the province. All it lacks is harbor facilities, but a detailed plan for providing general cargo piers in the area is under study by the city and national harbors board.
Dartmouth has built a new city hall as part of its urban renewal scheme and soon will call for tenders for an office building and combined ferry and bus terminal that will form a civic centre in the old downtown district. The city will also call for tenders for a new roadway system that will take through traffic away from the shop, ping district and provide parking and a pedestrian mall for shoppers. “Dartmouth is determined to be the future city of the Maritimes,” says James Meredith, president of the Chamber of Commerce. “We think now this is the place to live, We have every thing-an excellent educational system, a golf course in the middle of the city, two lakes within the city limits, salt water beaches within four miles, and hunting and fishing nearby.”
Maritimes Report A New City Takes Form By Jark Golding Citizen Special Correspondent
HALIFAX The township of Dartmouth, across the harbor from Halifax, is on the point of becoming a city. Such an event will amalgamate the interests of about 23,000 inhabitants of Dartmouth and roughly the same number of citizens in fringe areas which have been growing rapidly since the end of World War II. This town is, generally accepted as a Royal Canadian Navy town, for HMCS Shearwater, largest navy flying base in Canada, is located there, and many service families live in the district.
First, property owners were petitioned by public-spirited citizens and obtained the necessary percentage for amalgamation. Then the town council passed a bylaw agreeing to the request. Now the final decision rests with the provincial government. It is hoped the answer may be known before Christmas.
This pioneering effort in old-fashioned Nova Scotia is an exciting incident. Dartmouth was born in 1749. one year after Halifax. It contained a sawmill and a few market gardeners. People crossed the harbor by small boat to the bigger settlement where the British army held sway. Dartmouth has been a poor relation for many years but in the past decade a new spirit of adventure has prevailed and a civic pride that, if anything, surpasses the esprit in Halifax.
Influential One of the major reasons for this new spirit has been the birth of the Dartmouth Free Press, run by Mr. Ralph Morton and his wife, Ruth. They had this inky baby five years ago and recently moved into a new building. The Free Press is one of the five largest weeklies in Canada and certainly the most influential east of Montreal.
Mr. Morton could see the possibilities of Dartmouth and soon became a leading citizen, agitating for better administration, fresh projects, Improved schools and public services. While people naturally buy the Halifax Chronicle-Herald and the Mall-Star owned by one firm and the only dailies in the metropolitan area, they regard the Free Press as “their” newspaper.
There has been a warm rivalry between Halifax and Dartmouth but, in fact, the city has rather looked down its traditional nose at the little town across the harbor. Now the “little town” has a shopping center at its end of the Angus L. MacDonald Bridge (one mile in length) which makes the Halifax side look anaemic. Dartmouth still has a long way to proceed to match Halifax in size but its pulsating fringe area packed with young families and fresh, new homes is rearing with enthusiasm.
The fringe area people have been dissatisfied, in the main, with administration of the County of Halifax. They have built good homes and now they want better services in the form of police, fire department, paved streets and sewage. A strong element among the “fringers” has been acidly critical of the manner in which county funds have been spent. Naturally county officials oppose amalgamation for their role has been rural for many years and it still is in a considerable degree. The young families want urban treatment and have taken giant steps to obtain it.
Taxes If the provincial government lends its blessing to the marriage of the fringe areas and the town. of Dartmouth, the move will drop roughly $1,000,000 in taxes into the town’s coffers. This amount will not be sufficient to effect the development expected but it is a beginning.
Strident but sound in the fashioning of the amalgamation proceedings have been families from the Royal Canadian Navy. They come from many parts of Canada, including Nova Scotia, and they have done the entire community a great service. A few months back a navy officer, LL Cdr. John Jordan, presented a beef to a Royal Commission on rentals that was a key factor in a report being made recently that a rental control authority should be established in the Halifax-Dartmouth area. To many people, business and political, this suggestion of the commission Is not welcome. To the “little” man in uniform, and out of uniform for that matter, it could be a blessing. Without doubt many service people now living in Ottawa will understand this difficulty.
So while one could delve into the detail of events leading to the fashioning of Dartmouth and its fringe areas into a city of nearly 50,000 people, the main point is that such a happening is near reality. It is unlikely the provincial government, in the person of Hon. Leyton Fergusson, minister of municipal affairs, will say “no” to the request.
DARTMOUTH, N.S. (CP)- Six years ago the Angus L. Macdonald bridge across Hali- fax Harbor took you to the Halifax suburb of Dartmouth, population 15,000. Now it takes you to the Maritime’s newest and third-largest city, population 50,000. Officially this is still a town until the Nova Scotia legislature grants a city charter, expected soon. Meanwhile civic boosters boast that Dartmouth is Canada’s largest town. A war and the bridge made it such. 9,000 BEFORE WAR Before the Second World War only 9,000 people lived here. The war expanded defence establishments and brought people to man them. Over-crowding in Halifax sent newcomers flocking aboard the ferries to find living space in Dartmouth. When they started building the bridge in 1951 census-takers counted 15,037 Dartmouth noses. The bridge, one mile long, cost $11.000,000 and was finished in 1955. In the next five years the town averaged almost 2.000 new residents a year. By 1960 the population was 24,600.
DOUBLED SIZE On Jan. 1, 1961, Dartmouth doubled that figure by absorbing seven fast-growing suburbs. This amalgamation swelled its land area to 16.000 acres from a mere 1,700. By contrast, Halifax with 109.000 people is confined to a 4,400-acre peninsula. Dartmouthians, a majority of whom work in Halifax, used to consider themselves suburbanites. Now they have taken to calling their town one of “the twin cities of the East.” The old label, “a bedroom for Halifax,” doesn’t fit as well as it did. Industrial growth has made Halifax a bedroom for many who work in Dartmouth. You hear a lot these days. about Maritime economic problems. Often overlooked is the fact that except for Edmonton and Calgary, Metropolitan Halifax, which includes Dartmouth. has been the fastest-growing metropolitan area in Canada, percentage-wise, even outstrip- ping Toronto. NAVY HELPED GROWTH Census figures show that between 1951 and 1956 the Halifax fringe areas, Dartmouth among them, gained 47 per cent in population. This growth was not just a Halifax overflow. Contributing to the Dartmouth boom are a navy air station, armament depot, naval research establishment, munitions magazine, oil refinery, shipyards, aircraft repair plant, new electronic, aluminum, cable and steel fabricating plants, and gypsum and petroleum shipping terminals. Coming is a federal oceanographic institute now under construction. Communities of new houses and apartment blocks have spread in an expanding ring around Dartmouth. The face of the old town has changed too- a 19-store shopping centre just off the bridge, another going up in the north end, new downtown stores and remodelled old ones. Mayor I. W. Akerley, who fathered amalgamation, admits it created plenty of headaches for town officials. The town took over 11 suburban schools with 200 teachers, more than doubling its education staff. It must maintain an additional 60 miles of streets. The 27-man police force will have to be doubled, the fire department bolstered with more men and equipment. Dartmouth also assumed a $5,600,000 Halifax county debt, most of it for schools, water and sewer lines in the former suburbs. However, the newly acquired territory will boost property assessment to $121,000,000 from $80,322,000. Charles Vaughan, who retired as mayor of Halifax last fall, predicts that by the end of the century Dartmouth will have more people than Halifax today. Mayor Akerley is even more optimistic. “We hope within the next decade to become the largest city in the Maritime provinces.” Only Halifax and Saint John, N.B., are bigger now. Perhaps the planners of the Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company, trying to cope with the town’s demand for phones, are more impartial prophets. They estimate Dartmouth will have 90,000 residents within 10 years. As for the bridge, more than 19,000 vehicles cross it on peak days now. They’re planning to build a second one before 1970.
Funerals held for two slain in Dartmouth DARTMOUTH. N.S. (CP) About 1,000 police men were joined by political leaders and hundreds of citizens in a overflow crowd which gathered here yesterday to pay tribute to Cpl. Eric Spicer, the Dartmouth policeman who was gunned down along with taxi driver Keith McCallum on Monday.
Cpl. Spicer’s widow and members of his family. i along with representatives of the province led by Premier Gerald Regan took up the 400-seat main floor of the nearby Port Wallis United Church. Mayor Eileen Stubbs of Dartmouth, dressed in blue cloak and gold chain of office. and Mayor Edmund Morris of Halifax. headed civic delegations. Among those attending were representatives of police forces in Winnipeg, Toronto. Saint John and Moncton, N.B. Halifax. Dartmouth, and members of the RCMP. About 400 members of the public sat in a church auditorium, where the service was carried over loud-speakers. STAND IN SNOW About 100 members of the Canadian Forces, a delegation of penitentiary guards, lands and forests officers and RCMP lined the road fronting the church for about 100 yards. Hundreds of citizens stood outside with them in the blowing snow listening to the service over loud-speakers. In contrast only a small group of friends and relatives attended funeral services at Truro, N.S., for McCallum. a 23-year-old Dartmouth taxi driver. McCallum, who lived in the Truro area before moving to Dartmouth earlier this year, was shot to death about 150 feet away from where Cpl. Spicer’s body was found Meanwhile Dartmouth police confirmed they have a witness who has supplied them with a detailed description of a second man sought in connection with the double slaying. Earlier police revealed Allan Craig MacDonald. 22, an Elmsdale, N.S., construction worker. had been charged with murder punish- able by death in connection with the slayings. While the search for the second man is underway. MacDonald is being held at the Halifax Country Correctional Institute awaiting an appearance in magistrate court Monday.
Tale of two cities Amalgamation far off By BRUCE LITTLE
HALIFAX Most urban Canadians get only one chance every few years to tell their local politicians just what they want to see done by government in the city. That chance comes at election time and it’s a pretty crude way of communicating a lot of hard detail about your feelings. You pick the person you like best or dislike least and vote; that’s it. But politicians in Halifax and neighboring Dartmouth now have in their hands a sophisticated measure that tells them, among other things. just how much their constituents trust them and just what those people want them to do. The report was produced by the Metropolitan Area Planning Committee, which spent nearly three years drawing up a development plan for the region.
Citizens polled MAPC sent out a team of pollsters to ask people in the two cities and parts of surrounding Halifax County what they think about a wide range of urban issues. What should we spend more money on? What should get less money? Do you trust local politicians? Is local government getting better or worse? Those are the kind of questions they asked. And the answers in the survey provide a fascinating profile of the priorities of about one-third of the Population of Nova Scotia. The results have delighted and amazed urban planners in the area. Both cities share many of the same concerns. The big problem, according to most people, revolves around youth; they want more money spent on helping kids who are on drugs and on providing more recreational facilities for teenagers. They are also concerned to about the same degree with pollution. education, parks, help for the unemployed, homeless children. mentally ill and ex-convicts, and police patrolling.
Commons interests They have roughly the same interest in local politics and they trust their politicians about the same amount.
With as many common interests as that. you might expect people in the region to be fairly open to the idea of amalgamating the two cities, a proposal that has been bouncing around for several years now. They are separated only by a narrow stretch of water. Instead, their views differed sharply. In Halifax, about 60 per cent favored amalgamated: in Dartmouth, the same proportion opposed it strongly. The difference appears to be based on the complacent almost smug view that people in Dartmouth have of their lot in the city of 75.000. Forty per cent of them think their local government has gotten better over the last five or 10 years: only 25 per cent of Haligonians feel that way about their city. One quarter of Dartmouthians rate their government as excellent or very good: in Halifax, only one-tenth of the people are quite so enthusiastic.
More trust Dartmouth people trust their politicians more and they have a higher regard for their politicians’ competence than do residents of Halifax. One planner feels that Dartmouth residents are more afraid of coming under the domination of Halifax city hall than they are of amalgamation; he says it’s a feeling that “goes back a long-long way.” But the mood is clear. Dartmouth people are quite happy with their local government, thank you, and they don’t want any changes. If you look for some reasons for the apparent dissatisfaction in Halifax, you find that many of the city’s people favor changes that make the city look like a classic small- liberal community. Public housing for the poor? Spend more money on it, say more than 60 per cent of the Haligonians. Less than half the Dartmouth people feel that way. Store money for social welfare programs? Go ahead, say one quarter of Halifax people. In Dartmouth, only one-tenth say the same thing. Some of those differences can probably be accounted for by the profiles of the two communities. In Halifax, for example, just over half the people earn more than $8.000 a year. In Dartmouth, nearly 75 per cent are above that income level.
Own homes Dartmouth’s wealth is reflected in the fact that three-quarters of the people surveyed owned their own homes. In Halifax, 00 per cent of the people are tenants and the survey found tenants much more willing to spend money to solve social problems. But the planners and politicians who have to interpret the survey still have to figure out what they should make of some of the apparent contradictions of the people in the area. Why do they agree about so many basic priorities and yet still look so different on a few crucial points? It’s a question they’ll have to come to grips with if they have any idea of forcing a marriage of the two communities.
