Labour Relations

As a more subtle view, hope surfaced that planning and housing measures could be applied to mollify labor and transform Halifax into a city renowned for social stability. A lengthy editorial of April, 1918, in the form of two dreams by 'soldier Jones,' depicted futures presented by the explosion.

In the first fantasy, Jones returns in 1933. Disembarking, he receives a 'Beautiful Halifax' brochure and finds transportation difficult to secure, the city being filled with American tourists attracted to a well designed city. Whisked to the north end on broad avenues, he observes a new Moirs' chocolate factory 'where the workers were living in model cottages'; there were other 'fine new residential areas, with big gardens and cheap but well designed cottages for workers.' All would come to pass if the Relief Commission used ample funds to reconstruct the city.

His second dream described conditions if the Commission did not take a lead. 'Cities are poor miserable things when left to themselves. They need eternal vigilance. Men living in poor homes and their children brought up in miserable surroundings had become discontented and were ever on the grouch.' More to the point, without broad reconstruction 'we will have to go through strikes and bloodshed.(51)





Hydrostone neighbourhood under construction (Public Archives of Nova Scotia)





In another editorial appeal for extensive reconstruction, the Halifax Herald concluded that 'people working under hygienic and improved surroundings are likely to turn out better quality and quantity of work.'(52) Expressed at a time of mounting tension between capital and labor, these beliefs suggest that planning and model housing were accepted by some as a means of alleviating class conflict by offering workers better accommodations and surroundings under bureaucratic direction.

Haligonians were made aware of such dividends of planning by the publicity given to the English 'Garden City Movement' in the months after the explosion. Whether these aims coincide with those of Ross and Adams is quite another question, difficult to resolve, but worth serious consideration in light of some features in the project's execution, Ross' frank admiration for German housing schemes, and Adams' stress on scientific approaches to social life.

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This document was last modified on March 8, 2000.