Tag Archives: Freshwater Brook

CBC Radio Interview- Common’s Death by a Thousand Cuts

People walk up Citadel Hill through some thick fog on Thursday in Halifax-photo by Jeff Harper, Metro News

On the eve of the Halifax Common’s 252 anniversary CBC Mainstreet’s Stephanie Domet interviews Peggy Cameron. The conversation outlines the many decisions that the city is making in advance of an integrated master plan for the Halifax Common.

There are no rules. Individual decisions outside of a plan are having a cumulative impact and are diminishing the Common. These also preclude the outcome of any planning process related to the now promised Halifax Common Master Plan.

Concerned about what Common will be left for posterity? Or that the Mayor and Council have no vision for the Common?
Email the Mayor and Council at: clerks@halifax.ca.

(begins at 4:10)

Jane’s Walk – Freshwater Brook, Halifax Common – Sunday May 3, 11am

The path of Freshwater Brook as commemorated by Friends of Halifax Common for Earth Day 2011

Did you know that Halifax has its own lost river system? Join Jane’s Walk guide, Ben Wedge on the North Common to explore Halifax’s river system and its influence on development patterns in a growing garrison town. After centuries of development burying our beautiful urban streams, cities are rediscovering them and starting to bring them back. Inspired in part by the documentary “Lost Rivers” Halifax Council is debating daylighting Dartmouth’s Sawmill River.
Here is a nice facebook page and previous posts on Freshwater Brook can be found here…This post about HRM’s 2006 daylighting policy for both Sawmill River and Freshwater Brook. This post includes links to excellent essays by Matt Neviille and Sam Austin. Continue reading →

Letter to Herald- Will Halifax City Council See The Wisdom of Daylighting River?

Example of a landscaped raingarden to absorb stormwater and create habitat.

Paul Schneiderheit’s story highlights the benefits of daylighting streams. Jan 6, 2015- Chronicle Herald – Schneiderheit One omission is that HRM’s 2006 daylighting policy specifies two water courses: Dartmouth’s Sawmill River and the Halifax Common’s Freshwater Brook.

We’re generally unaware that the Halifax Common as the watershed for the peninsula was a rich and diverse ecosystem of plants, trees, birds, fish, frogs-all manner of critters and beasties. Ruth Whitehead Holmes’ The’ Old Man Told Us, Excerpts from Micmac History, 1500-1950 “ recounts histories of Mi’kmaq hunting beaver, Black Duck and moose near Black Duck Pond, later Egg Pond and now the skatepark. Continue reading →

Freshwater Brook & Sawmill River

1917 Halifax Map taken from an article by Matthew Neville. see: https://spacing.ca/atlantic/2010/01/28/representing-halifax-exploring-the-potential-of-the-city-through-mapping/

What do these two watercourses, Freshwater Brook and Sawmill River, have in common you might ask? Well, for now, they are both underground.

Freshwater Brook drains the Halifax Common watershed into Halifax Harbour and was piped underground around 1878. See Matt Neville’s detailed essay: Representing Halifax, Exploring the Potential of the City through Mapping
and Freshwater Brook Facebook. Sawmill River was part of the Shubie Canal system and runs between Dartmouth’s Sullivan’s Pond into the Halifax Harbour and was piped underground in the 1970s for flood-control. Continue reading →

The Path of Freshwater Brook Commemorated

Friends of Halifax Common celebrated Earth Day 2011 by installing 100 blue stakes along the former pathway of Freshwater Brook. Approximately 30 willow tree switches were planted alongside the blue stakes which were decorated with fish – as a reference to the former waterway. The original Halifax Common included the lands which drained into this stream that is now buried, channeled or diverted underground. The watershed was a marshy, wooded area with the stream starting above the North Common and running through the Central Common (the small Egg pond there is now part of the skate park), the Public Garden (Griffin Pond) all the way to the Halifax Harbour below Inglis Street. In former times ships would collect fresh water from this brook at the Harbour outfall.
For an illustration of the Freshwater Brook’s path from “Representing Halifax: Exploring the Potential of the City through Mapping” by Matt Neville.
see: https://spacingatlantic.ca/2010/01/28/representing-halifax-exploring-the-potential-of-the-city-through-mapping/