Pier Perspectives Blog

We hear innumerable stories about seasickness from our Museum visitors who crossed the Atlantic and first arrived at Pier 21. They all laugh about it now, but frequently add that they haven’t been on a ship since and have no interest in repeating the nauseating adventure. Although it begins with a seasick girl, this is not one of those stories.

Between 1928 and 1971, nearly one million immigrants arrived at Pier 21 before setting out across the country to begin their new lives in Canada. The experience of leaving Europe and crossing the Atlantic Ocean for North America garnered a multitude of diverse reactions from individuals and families who sought to resettle in Canada. Many immigrants remember their arrival as a positive encounter with Canadian immigration and customs officials, and volunteer service agencies.

Almost half a million Canadian military personnel departed from Pier 21 to serve overseas during the Second World War. This image depicts one of the first arrivals of a troop ship carrying soldiers back to Canada after World War II.

The Ile de France, laden with ecstatic soldiers, docked at Pier 21 on July 14, 1945. Flora Campbell was visiting her aunt when she heard the music on the waterfront and decided to bring her young son David down to the Pier to greet the soldiers. The boxes in her arms are cookies, which the soldiers had thrown down to the well-wishers who had come to watch their long awaited return to Canada.

A very brief archaeological reconnaissance of the historic quarantine station at Lawlor’s Island in Halifax Harbour revealed that significant resources related to the old quarantine facility still survive, in the form of ruins and debris concentrated mostly within the northern half of the island. These were documented in accordance with standard archaeological practices in the region, including taking photographs. Some of the resulting images are included here.

In the 2001 movie The Wedding Planner, we watch JLo with her calm professional demeanour and her bag of tricks (or belt in this case) solve multiple last minute crises seconds before the wedding ceremony is about to begin.

On March 13, 2012, I received an email from Bonnie Pollock of Nova Scotia who wanted to find out more about her great-great-grandfather George Little. He arrived in Canada from Ireland before 1837 and settled in Prospect, Nova Scotia. But there was no record of his arrival because Canada did not start keeping record of immigrant arrivals until 1865. Manifests from this time are few and far between, as not many of them survived. Knowing I would not be able to determine which ship he arrived on, I focused my search on determining where in Ireland the Little family is from. I began with some early genealogical research on George Little and his family in Nova Scotia, determining who he married and who his children were. I discovered that George married Mary Coolin and had the following children: James (b. 1840), Thomas (b. 1841), John (b. 1844), Peter (b. 1847), Ann (b. 1848), Margaret (b. 1854), George (b. 1856) and Mary (b. 1858).

In the years immediately after the Second World War, transportation companies published children’s food menus abroad their ships and trains. In order to attract prospective travellers, transportation companies realized that illustrating the services they offered and the travel experience aboard was vital in acquiring customers over their competitors. These postwar menus provide a unique window into how passenger travel evolved after the Second World War.

Pier 21 today, as it was in years past, is a building. For visitors past and present, some find this site unmoving. They give little thought to what the walls and their surroundings have seen. For others, the site is precious and represents a new beginning in a country that they love. These individuals never forgot their first steps on Canadian ground. And I tend to agree with the latter, Pier 21 is much more than a building.

The story I’d like to share happened a long time ago but I will never forget it. It illustrates the significance of Pier 21 to the thousands of refugees and displaced people who arrived here during the 1940s and early 1950s, better than any of the histories that I have read or documentaries that I have seen.

As an active ocean port serving traffic on the North Atlantic, Halifax has long needed facilities for protecting the public against the danger of infectious disease carried by the passengers or crew of an arriving ship. One of the harbour islands, Lawlor’s Island, functioned as a quarantine station from the 1870s to the 1930s. Despite the heritage resources that survive on the island, much of that history is neglected in our public historical landscape.