Where the streets have explorers’ names, some Halifax residents call for change
HALIFAX — When builders created Halifax’s distinctive Hydrostone neighbourhood more than a century ago, they chose to honour celebrated explorers. There are streets named after William Grant Stairs, Christopher Columbus, John Cabot and Henry Morton Stanley, among others.
But now some residents are taking a closer look at the legacies of the men the streets are named for, part of a national trend examining whether people honoured on the country’s maps are worthy of celebration.
“We live today in a society that does not honour explorers and what they did,” Frances Early, a retired Mount Saint Vincent University history professor, said in a recent interview. “We live in a society that understands that we live on unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people. If we are going to commemorate, we need to commemorate appropriately.”
Early lives on Stairs Place in the Hydrostone, named after the Halifax-born explorer who was instrumental in some of the most violent expeditions across Africa. A few blocks over is Columbus Place, which is just down from Cabot Place.