Past comes back to complicate future of Halifax’s Memorial Library

The Halifax Regional Municipality is facing a grim predicament as it attempts to determine the future of its downtown Memorial Library, which was built upon the gravesites of an estimated 20,000 people.

The library on Spring Garden Road has sat derelict since it closed in August 2014 as the municipality transitioned to the new Halifax Central Library across the street.

Although tearing up the ground of the municipality’s downtown core can be a challenging proposition, due to provincial regulations requiring permits for any downtown excavations, the future of the Memorial Library faces a unique challenge.

“It’s the site of a massive burial ground,” said Andrew Murphy of the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia.

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Many of the estimated 20,000 remains buried under the grounds of the old library and nearby streets were residents of the city’s Poor House or prison inmates. All were buried in shallow, unmarked graves between 1758 and 1869.

Replacing or revitalizing the library, as detailed in a declassified report released by Halifax Regional Council in 2018, could disturb the remains buried beneath it.

That comes with its own monetary costs.

More than two years ago the Presbyterian Church of Halifax paid approximately $1.2 million to reinter the remains of 244 bodies buried beneath part of its property leased to a local developer for construction of an apartment building.

Mac Mackay, a church historian, told Global News that the bodies were discovered, removed and respectfully reinterred in the church’s crypt before the building’s construction began.

It’s a situation that Murphy and the Heritage Trust would like to avoid.

“We don’t wanna see condominiums here. If the building has to be dismantled, we’d like to see part of it kept as an actual war memorial,” he said.

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Instead, the Heritage Trust’s plan would delicately pull apart some parts of the building but would not involve any excavation.

At a meeting of the municipality’s  Heritage Advisory Committee in November, the committee voted to hold a public hearing on an application to designate the memorial library as a heritage property.

A date for the hearing has yet to be set.