Category Archives: IN THE MEDIA

FHC in the news, in magazines, on TV, articles published about FHC. (not by FHC)

Letter To The Coast – Roundabouts – Wrong Priority for the Common

total cost estimate $31 million (2011)

Letters to the editor, July 31, 2014, Sidewalk Closed Use Other Side – Julat like spending millions of dollars to widen Robie St. at Cunard or millions to widen Chebucto Road itself, blowing $12.9 million on the North Park roundabouts project is out of sync with a big-picture integrated transportation strategy. The money will do nothing to reduce heavy reliance on cars by improving public transit (buses and trains), land use planning (better ways to access public transportation and active transportation) or moving people in and out of the downtown, not just cars. Continue reading →

North Common Roundabout – The Big Picture, News 95.7 Rick Howe Show

Listen to News 95.7 The Rick Howe Show Interview with Peggy Cameron

On July 7/14 Rick Howe interviewed Peggy Cameron (representing Friends of the Halifax Common) about The Big Picture and the $12.9 million dollars spent on the North Park Roundabouts. Peggy questions how this expenditure meets HRM’s stated long term goals.

North Common Roundabout Design (birdseye)

Trees, Traffic & Roundabouts

FHC isn’t wading into the pro or anti roundabout on North Park Street debate but instead asks…

North Park Street

1. How does this $12.9 million expenditure fit into an integrated transportation strategy* that is about moving people, not just cars into and out of the downtown? Should the cost $12.9 million be a spending priority when HRM’s 5-year Active Transportation budget is only $42.5 ( ~ $8 million/year); the bikelane budget for the peninsula the next 5 years is only ~$100,000 and there’s no money for supporting auto-ownership-alternatives such as CarShare?
2. Why are these roundabouts being installed in advance of…. Continue reading →

Disappearing Green Space, News 95.7 Interview With Rick Howe – 2014/07/07

Banksy says: every day is Park(ing) Day. Photo via BeautifulTrouble.org.

Rick Howe discusses the disappearing green space on the Halifax Common with FHC’s Peggy Cameron. We have been losing more than an acre per year and City Counselors show no hurry to protect the remaining green space.

Chronicle Herald Op-Ed – Running Circles Around Common Plan

Published June 27th, 2014
This week marked the 251st anniversary of the signing of the 1763 land grant of 240 acres “for the use of the inhabitants of the Town of Halifax as Common forever.”

This year also marks 20 years since the City of Halifax approved the 1994 Halifax Common Plan, a document that was developed after a thorough public consultation because of concern about the increasing number of changes and demands for use and the need for additional protection for the Halifax Common. Continue reading →

Writing The Common – The Coast Reviews Poetry Book Published By Gaspereau Press

Whitney Morgan’s Review for The Coast

Writing the Common: Being An Anthology of Poetry Commemorating the 250th
Anniversary Of the Halifax Common
Published by Gaspereau Press

This spring the Friends of Halifax Common released a collection of all-new poetry inspired by and in tribute to the 250th anniversary of Halifax’s iconic green space(s). With a detailed introduction of “the common” as a concept born in 11th-centruy Britain through to the modern, local iteration, the collection speaks to its “enclosed poets” ability to “share a common of the mind.”
Here the Common is both muse and misused, the site of rhododendrons in defiance of urban sprawl….but at its very core this book is a collective ode: 31 reasons why the Common should continue to be enjoyed by future generations, be they poets, pets or pedestrians. With contributions from well-loved potes as situated in our landscape as the space itself…Sue Goyette, George Elliot Clarke, Tanya Davis…as well as local historians, artists, and naturalists, Writing the Common is a tribute to the wild green heart of our city.
Contributors include: Continue reading →

The Tragedy of the Common – Coast Magazine

The Tragedy of the Common: If the Common is so common, why can’t common people decide how to use it?

The Coast Magazine, Opinion – Sustainable City, by Chris Benjamin

Tragedy-of-the-Common_THECOAST – PDF

from: https://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/tragedy-of-the common/Content?oid=1503404
“Picture a pasture open to all.” So wrote Garrett Hardin in his 1968 Science article, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” His thesis was that a shared natural resource, in self-interested human hands, could only be destroyed. It was a thought-provoking article that is still invoked to advocate and justify private ownership.

The history of our own Halifax Common at times veers toward destruction, but it has survived shared ownership by the people, either because or in spite of municipal government intervention. The Common was once a shared Hardinesque pasture. It has also been a campground, a dump and a race track twice—once for horses and once for cars. It used to be much bigger, but pavement, steel and glass ate the grass. Continue reading →

Drawing Green Parallels – Chronicle Herald

Drawing Green Parallels
Commons supporters, climate change activists join forces to highlight need to protect nature
By MICHAEL LIGHTSTONE Staff Reporter, The Chronicle Herald

’Our vanishing Halifax Common(s) is a metaphor for the disappearance of our global Common, most urgently our atmosphere and climate’ SHEILAGH HUNT – Friends of the Halifax Common

Michael Stuttard takes a chalk along the South Common (Robie Street near Camphill Cemetery).

Remnants of the original Halifax Commons are representative of the “disappearance of our global Common,” park lovers and climate change fighters say.

An event promoting today’s International Day of Climate Action and bemoaning the vanishing Halifax Commons was held Friday afternoon. Less than one-third of the Halifax Common’s original 95.1 hectares, granted in 1763 by King George III, is public open space, say Friends of the Halifax Common.

Members and supporters drew a line around the entire perimeter of the original Commons. Volunteers were supplied with chalk at various meeting points around the site.

“Our vanishing Halifax Common(s) is a metaphor for the disappearance of our global Common, most urgently our atmosphere and climate,”” said Friends member Sheila Hunt. Continue reading →

The Coast, Bruce Wark Editorial – Looking for Common Sense

E D I TO R I A L by Bruce Wark

Looking for Common sense

The land deal between the city & the province chips another piece off of the Halifax Commons

I call it city council’s royal fuck-up. The Queen’s High School

is being traded to the Queen’s Hospital for a new central library on—where else—Queen Street. And we’re all worse off. The deal means another chunk of the Halifax Common is about to disappear. It’s all part of a land swap between city and province that council approved last week.

Believe it or not, the city is giving away 269,000 square feet of prime downtown land in return for 131,000 square feet of prime downtown land and paying nearly two million bucks for the privilege.

Under the deal, the province gets the former Birks site on Barrington to build more office space plus the Queen Elizabeth High site at Robie and Bell for expansion of the QE II Infirmary. In return, the city gets the block on Queen between Spring Garden and Morris for a central library, officespace, shops and housing.

Continue reading →

Halifax Metro News – Hospital space trumps green space in Common decision

By Lindsay Jones

The Queen Elizabeth High School property is part of a land swap between the city and the province.

Regional council approved giving up the rest of the Queen Elizabeth High School land to become part of a hospital expansion yesterday.

The city is exchanging the former Halifax Common land, as well as several other parcels, with the province to help pay for land at the corner of Queen Street and Spring Garden Road. That’s the site where the city wants to build a new Central Library. Continue reading →

Chronicle Herald Op Ed – Protecting Halifax’s Common Ground

Money spent by HRM for private and expensive Concerts on the Common would be better spent on protecting the Common for everyone.

Public money spent by HRM for private, expensive Concerts on the Common would be better spent on protecting the Common for everyone.

Recently, Friends of Halifax Common were informed HRM will begin electrical repairs to the Centennial Fountain on the North Common. This was conveyed to us as a “good news” story. Indeed there hasn’t been much good news about the Common for a long time.

The Halifax Common, Canada’s oldest urban park, was created in 1763 when King George III granted 240 acres “for the use of the inhabitants of the Town of Halifax forever.” Originally extending between Cunard and South Streets, bounded by Robie on the west Continue reading →

Letter to The Coast – Don’t lighten up

To the editor,

Thanks for all the great Halifixes suggested (“Halifixes ’08,” Jan. 3, 2008). However, the “Common sense proposal” is going down the wrong path on two counts:

Continue reading →