So this is pretty cool: Exploring Halifax’s secret underground world | The Chronicle Herald
Exploring Halifax’s secret underground world | The Chronicle Herald
Text below the cut, in case the article disappears at some point:
Exploring Halifax’s secret underground world
BY STEPHEN COOKE ARTS REPORTER
Published March 27, 2015 - 6:30pm
Last Updated March 27, 2015 - 6:39pm
Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on linkedinMore Sharing Services
Comments
Share on email
Share on print
The city of Halifax has been building upwards since it was founded in 1749, as newer and shinier buildings replace older wood and stone structures, but there is another history beneath the streets and sidewalks that has remained unchanged since long-forgotten labourers constructed it.
Halifax Underground is a new documentary by filmmaker Scott Simpson and Tell Tale Productions, airing on CBC-TV’s Land & Sea on Sunday at noon, that looks at the mythology and reality of a secret world underneath the city’s pavement and landmarks and examines stories of secret tunnels extending from Fort George on Citadel Hill to the waterfront, or even out under the harbour to Georges Island.
The stories have been passed down through generations, and like many urban myths there is an element of truth to them, but Simpson says many of us have never taken the extra step to find out what really lies beneath our feet.
“We’re not tourists in our own town,” he says.
“When we travel abroad, we’ll often take a tour or explore a museum or whatever, but we rarely do that at home. I’m learning things through my kids because we take them to museums and places like that, so I’m learning new things through their eyes because I’m doing things with them I wouldn’t have done on my own.
“How many of us in Halifax have gone on a city tour, whether it’s the Harbour Hopper or something else? We don’t normally do that sort of thing.”
Our Halifax Underground tour guides include Citadel Hill historian Hal Thompson, archeologist Laura de Boer and Georges Island expert, retired archeologist Earl Luffman. They examine the historical record and take us through some of the sites that are a gateway to the lower depths.
Simpson’s interest in the tunnels was sparked a few years back when one was uncovered beneath the Halifax Club on Hollis Street. Research for the show led to a similar story of a man-made passageway discovered when a portion of George Street caved in 40 years ago. It’s stories like these that fuel the belief there’s a network of tunnels stretching throughout the downtown core and beyond.
To find out more, the Halifax Underground production team had to literally start at the top and work their way down.
“I knew that this would be a historical mystery that needed to be explored, so we began on Citadel Hill, and Hal Thompson is the resident expert there,” says Simpson.
“We knew that the stories generally reference a tunnel system that connected military facilities throughout the city, so it made sense to start with that history.
“At the same time, making a new TV documentary, I was quite keen on trying to find something new and physically uncover some evidence that hadn’t been discovered before.”
The process began with asking owners and managers of historic downtown properties to see if there were any promising portals in their basements. Simpson and his crew spent hours on the phone cold-calling businesses, as well as seeking help from civic workers, “literally looking under every rock that you can.”
Eventually, they were able to accompany de Boer into the
basement of the Bluenose II Restaurant at the corner of Duke and Hollis streets to examine a bricked-up underground archway, the kind of structural element that’s becoming increasingly rare in the city.
“As we develop and modernize above ground, we’re also losing some of that heritage that’s underground. When a building gets taken down, there goes its foundation and basement too,” says Simpson.
“I was in the Roy Building basement before it was torn down, and it seemed quite dark and mysterious, but now that’s gone. Any possibility of finding a passageway or an entrance to a tunnel that may have been there is gone.”
On Citadel Hill, Thompson shows us the T-galleries, which extend underneath the slopes around the fort and were meant to be filled with gunpowder and ignited under the boots of an advancing enemy force. But that’s as close as they’ve come to discovering the legendary tunnels to the harbour, or Georges Island.
“It wasn’t that the technology didn’t exist at the time,” explains Simpson.
“As Hal points out, there were mines in Cape Breton that went out well underneath the ocean, going down fairly deep. They could do it, but to do it surreptitiously without any evidence of their construction - any quite significant evidence - is another story.
“It’s not exactly the kind of thing you could do under the cover of darkness.”
For Simpson, the whole project was a learning experience, from finding out that Fort George is actually the fourth defence structure to sit atop Citadel Hill to getting a guided VIP tour of Georges Island’s fortifications from Luffman and venturing into spaces usually forbidden to the public.
After the final credits roll, the sense of mystery isn’t completely dispersed, and there’s still hope there’s more to be discovered beneath the pavement and old cobblestones, even during the process of modernization.
“When public works crews are working around this sort of stuff, it’s an obstacle to them,” says Simpson.
“They’ve got a job to do, they’re putting in a new sewer pipe or an electrical line, and, unfortunately, preserving a heritage landmark isn’t what they’re there to do.
“The conventional wisdom is that we’ve lost access to a lot of the tunnels that existed under downtown Halifax because of modernization, but an exhaustive study of the underground area has not been done so there’s always the possibility of discovering access points that haven’t been found yet.”
About the Author
BY STEPHEN COOKE ARTS REPORTER
Text below the cut, in case the article disappears at some point:
Exploring Halifax’s secret underground world
BY STEPHEN COOKE ARTS REPORTER
Published March 27, 2015 - 6:30pm
Last Updated March 27, 2015 - 6:39pm
Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on linkedinMore Sharing Services
Comments
Share on email
Share on print
- (1 of 3)
Federal government historians explore a passageway discovered by workmen during a cave-in at the bottom of George Street in 1973. The passageway is among a number of underground landmarks explored in the new documentary, Halifax Underground. (Photos by TELLE TALE PRODUCTIONS) - (2 of 3)
Archaeologist Laura de Boer investigates a mysterious sealed doorway in the dark corner of a historic building in downtown Halifax. - (3 of 3)
Archaeologist Earl Luffman takes viewers into the restricted areas that lie beneath George's Island.
The city of Halifax has been building upwards since it was founded in 1749, as newer and shinier buildings replace older wood and stone structures, but there is another history beneath the streets and sidewalks that has remained unchanged since long-forgotten labourers constructed it.
Halifax Underground is a new documentary by filmmaker Scott Simpson and Tell Tale Productions, airing on CBC-TV’s Land & Sea on Sunday at noon, that looks at the mythology and reality of a secret world underneath the city’s pavement and landmarks and examines stories of secret tunnels extending from Fort George on Citadel Hill to the waterfront, or even out under the harbour to Georges Island.
The stories have been passed down through generations, and like many urban myths there is an element of truth to them, but Simpson says many of us have never taken the extra step to find out what really lies beneath our feet.
“We’re not tourists in our own town,” he says.
“When we travel abroad, we’ll often take a tour or explore a museum or whatever, but we rarely do that at home. I’m learning things through my kids because we take them to museums and places like that, so I’m learning new things through their eyes because I’m doing things with them I wouldn’t have done on my own.
“How many of us in Halifax have gone on a city tour, whether it’s the Harbour Hopper or something else? We don’t normally do that sort of thing.”
Our Halifax Underground tour guides include Citadel Hill historian Hal Thompson, archeologist Laura de Boer and Georges Island expert, retired archeologist Earl Luffman. They examine the historical record and take us through some of the sites that are a gateway to the lower depths.
Simpson’s interest in the tunnels was sparked a few years back when one was uncovered beneath the Halifax Club on Hollis Street. Research for the show led to a similar story of a man-made passageway discovered when a portion of George Street caved in 40 years ago. It’s stories like these that fuel the belief there’s a network of tunnels stretching throughout the downtown core and beyond.
To find out more, the Halifax Underground production team had to literally start at the top and work their way down.
“I knew that this would be a historical mystery that needed to be explored, so we began on Citadel Hill, and Hal Thompson is the resident expert there,” says Simpson.
“We knew that the stories generally reference a tunnel system that connected military facilities throughout the city, so it made sense to start with that history.
“At the same time, making a new TV documentary, I was quite keen on trying to find something new and physically uncover some evidence that hadn’t been discovered before.”
The process began with asking owners and managers of historic downtown properties to see if there were any promising portals in their basements. Simpson and his crew spent hours on the phone cold-calling businesses, as well as seeking help from civic workers, “literally looking under every rock that you can.”
Eventually, they were able to accompany de Boer into the
basement of the Bluenose II Restaurant at the corner of Duke and Hollis streets to examine a bricked-up underground archway, the kind of structural element that’s becoming increasingly rare in the city.
“As we develop and modernize above ground, we’re also losing some of that heritage that’s underground. When a building gets taken down, there goes its foundation and basement too,” says Simpson.
“I was in the Roy Building basement before it was torn down, and it seemed quite dark and mysterious, but now that’s gone. Any possibility of finding a passageway or an entrance to a tunnel that may have been there is gone.”
On Citadel Hill, Thompson shows us the T-galleries, which extend underneath the slopes around the fort and were meant to be filled with gunpowder and ignited under the boots of an advancing enemy force. But that’s as close as they’ve come to discovering the legendary tunnels to the harbour, or Georges Island.
“It wasn’t that the technology didn’t exist at the time,” explains Simpson.
“As Hal points out, there were mines in Cape Breton that went out well underneath the ocean, going down fairly deep. They could do it, but to do it surreptitiously without any evidence of their construction - any quite significant evidence - is another story.
“It’s not exactly the kind of thing you could do under the cover of darkness.”
For Simpson, the whole project was a learning experience, from finding out that Fort George is actually the fourth defence structure to sit atop Citadel Hill to getting a guided VIP tour of Georges Island’s fortifications from Luffman and venturing into spaces usually forbidden to the public.
After the final credits roll, the sense of mystery isn’t completely dispersed, and there’s still hope there’s more to be discovered beneath the pavement and old cobblestones, even during the process of modernization.
“When public works crews are working around this sort of stuff, it’s an obstacle to them,” says Simpson.
“They’ve got a job to do, they’re putting in a new sewer pipe or an electrical line, and, unfortunately, preserving a heritage landmark isn’t what they’re there to do.
“The conventional wisdom is that we’ve lost access to a lot of the tunnels that existed under downtown Halifax because of modernization, but an exhaustive study of the underground area has not been done so there’s always the possibility of discovering access points that haven’t been found yet.”
About the Author
BY STEPHEN COOKE ARTS REPORTER