SARA RUSSELL
I think there's a lot to discover around and living in a place that has a strong visual identity. And right now I'm narrowing in on some of the threats.
I was uncovering some more information and Research around gentrification and like rapid planning and how that is all kind of affecting the look of Halifax and will continue to change the look of it.
And then who's protecting these unique things? And that's when the Heritage Trust came into the picture.
Would be able to start off with what your role is and what led you to your role in the trust?
EMMA LANG (Heritage Trust NS) (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely. Can I first ask what are you defining as Halifax?
SR
OK, so HRM.
EL
Are you including the rural areas?
SR
I'm not focusing in on the rural areas, although I have actually done some sight studies like data collection in Bridgewater, Lunenburg, Mahone Bay.
EL
But you're not looking like at the Prestons or all the way up to sheet harbour like those parts of HRM.
SR
I haven't been that way yet, but it is on the table. I'd definitely be interested in doing some research and data collection there.
EL
I'm asking because when we think about it, when I think about those questions, I'm partially think like up the Bedford Highway. So anyways, it’s just useful because people use Halifax, and it depends what your relationship is to the city is what I mean.
So my role is I'm the executive director. I'm also our sole staff person. We have interns on Young Canada works grants and we have volunteers and we have a board that is a sort of a quasi working board.
There was no one in this position for at least 10 years prior, so my role has largely been what I've created out of it. When I was hired, I was tasked with both doing being like a no one had picked up our voicemail in six months. So like the basic admin stuff I do, I sweep the floors, I do all that.
I do all very Canada works grants I do all of our grant applications. I take minutes during board meetings, but that's only one section of what I do.
A lot of what I do is also trying to fulfill our mission around which is currently listed as being promoting to Foster and encourage interest in the preservation and education around built heritage.
So I do workshops around at the moment we're trying to help push towards registration because that's a really practical and pretty simple way to do preservation and but I also, you know work on on like some level of policy change both on the federal level but also on the provincial level.
I answer inquiries. I feel the last year I've been averaging at least one per day and they come from all across the province. So our mandate is province wide.
SR
And other provinces have similarly structured trusts?
EL
If you wanted to look up similar organizations and we function like Heritage Newfoundland and Labrador, we function like Heritage BC but also equivalent to heritage.
Alberta doesn't have a provincial similar, but they have, like Heritage Calgary heritage, Edmonton.
There's basically a parallel organization in every province.
So our organization is different from those in that to date, we have not received operating funding.
All the other organizations receive between $5000 to over several $1,000,000 in operating grants from the province or, in the case of Calgary and Edmonton and Ottawa, from the city.
So we do a lot with very little or we try and do a lot with not very much.
SR
Wow, so this area isn’t really a priority provincially or municipally
EL
One of the things I was tasked with is historically the the trusts focus and heritage preservation writ large in Nova Scotia has been focused on the histories of rich white men, particularly in the South end of Halifax.
So if you think of how big the provinces the South end of Halifax is not like if you take out the demographic focus, the geographic focus, even if you say it's really we've focused on the peninsula, it's incredibly small.
And so I was tasked with trying to both expand that, both pushing more broadly.
Like, how do we encourage representation of built heritage of communities?
Like, how do we up the registration across the province in general, but also how do we engage with communities who traditionally have been excluded or felt excluded or both from built heritage preservation?
And I come as an immigrant and an outsider. I think I'm able to do that pretty more effectively because I'm seeing as somewhat neutral. I'm not seen as representing a certain community.
SR
Yeah, that could be an issue that comes up at board-level I’m sure
EL
So we've been working closely with the African Nova Scotian community, but also just outreach to rural areas, because if you look at representation, if you look at it's we're not, it's not evenly distributed.
And also trying to also raise this issue of in the built heritage world, we say anything that's 50 years old is built heritage.
SR
Mm-hmm, so pre-1975
EL
And that doesn't mean it's registered or protected, but that means that's the cutoff, and probably like in grade 8 you learned something like I did, where history is 50 years like up, which is sort of a made up date, but that's the federal government actually uses 40 as their cut off and they're new heritage bill, which may or may not go through C23, would bump it up to 50.
They're way behind, but that’s the way the federal government looks at it.
They are supposed to do a heritage assessment of every building as it hits 50 years.
SR
Wow. That would be a massive amount of work.
EL
So if you have a shared on a military base, those built in 1974, it's supposed to be evaluated this year it won't be, but it's supposed to. And that to me, like there's the demographic issues and the location issues, but there's also, if we look at what is currently actively preserved in HRM, there's only three buildings built after 1930 that are currently registered.
SR
Wow, really.
EL
Like this is not representation representative of our architectural history of our cultural history and also looking at what to me the other thing is looking at vernacular structures.
And I don't mean like things that are vernacular architecture, but the vernacular in a more broad based way. So ah, the corner store. And the gas station, like the buildings we look at everyday, because those stories are so important too.
SR
I'm very interested in that too. In particular the things that are not just private residents but things that serve the community like the cultural convenience stores that are pinnacle to particular communities.
I think a lot of people are unaware that those are even on the table, you know.
EL
Yeah. And I live in an I live in Fairview and in our neighbourhood we have nothing registered. But the Facebook posts that we that we shared to a community group got the most responses was The Hub convenience store just closed which is on Dutch Village Rd. We got over 200 responses and that building is likely going to be demolished in the next few years, but everybody in the neighborhood has a story about that building.
SR
Yeah I bet.
EL
There was a lot of protest when the gas station, that was on the corner of Dresden Row.
It was torn down, but that gas station was this Art Deco building, everyone remembers stopping and getting gas there.
And so, you know, in this, in the eyes of some of my board Members, this is not what our focus should be. But to me, I look at as someone who is trained as a heritage professional, I am not a layperson. This is my career, like I've worked in heritage for 20 years.
I go by the professional standards and the professional standards are 50 years as the cutoff.
Anything counts and I don't have aesthetic opinions at work.
SR
Yeah, I honestly I find this very interesting because I thought that my impression with the there would be so much more like strict kind of parameters that you'd have to adhere to.
But this is interesting that say for example you could apply the same parameters to South End Halifax that you do to Preston. Is that correct?
EL
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean it depends what in what context. I mean, if you're looking at registering a building, so if you look at the registration policies, HRM is updating theirs because I don't know if you've reviewed their standards.
They have this very strict thing that gives precedence to age architect and and that and that is a very biased that has inherent bias towards rich white men's houses.
It just does and they are looking to change it to some other registration applications. So it's sort of there's different layers.
SR
Mm-hmm.
EL
If you're looking to register, you have to look at every municipalities various documents, which all stem from the provincial one, which stems from standards and guidelines, and the guidelines was very open.
But then some municipalities have 100 Year cut off.
They rank it based on age and all of that is the sort of debate about all of that is really a debate amongst the professionals, because in theory it's planners with heritage Experience, though it usually isn't. It's just planners, but thinking about that and trying to say sort of, how do we approach that?
Ohh and National Trust in the UK are doing like they're trying to address these issues of quality by what are they by looking at it more broad based. Though no ones going to planners and saying you need to change this. The idea is, hopefully the planners will eventually come around.
On the other hand, they're dealing with their own city councils that may or may not have to pass these policies and their own.
It's more complicated, but as an if I look at us as a professional industry, I think increasingly like when I go to National Trust meetings and talk to colleagues and heritage, whether they're museum professionals or folks in built heritage, that idea of taking and I'm saying professionals very deliberately, there's a lot of people who do not have professional training.
SR
Yeah, yes and strong opinions
EL
That's a very different category that I will happily talk about, but I'm leaving them.
SR
Haha, yeah.
EL
I just wanna be deliberate in what I'm saying, because I think there's a very big gap. Like, how do we deal with the TRC recommendations or how do we deal with even just thinking about these, how do we counterbalance that?
SR
Yeah that’s a factor to navigate
EL
And so in my day to day, that means reaching out to the African Nova Scotian community and saying, OK, we have not worked with you, particularly in the past. I know from what I hear on CNBC, that your community and what I know from my bit of background and at least African American studies and what I know from living here, this is what your community so that means and we can help you with those targets. We can help you with economic development. We can help you with housing stuff everybody else has had access to.
SR
Like in Preston
EL
Yeah. Say if you're building as registered in HRM, you can get grants, grants that will pay for a new roof or help pay for a new roof of grandma's house.
If Grandma lives in the South end, she probably knows that – but if Grandma lives in Preston, she probably doesn't.
So how do we share some of that?
Like, it's not about saying giving, you know this isn't affirmative action.
This is information making sure that the information is getting across communities.
SR
And was that well received or was that kind of met with like some skepticism?
Because I think you're building trust from scratch with new communities, I think there would probably be some hesitancy there.
EL
So the way I approached it was a few I sort of took a few different paths.
I went to the National Trust meeting in 2022 when I first got this job, but this will be my I'm hitting my second year mark on April 4th and I met a guy called Graham Nickerson who's from the Black loyalist community in Shelburne but lives in New Brunswick and is very involved in built heritage.
And so he started saying, well, you need to work on this chart done in Yarmouth, so I had that on the go and then we had a workshop that wasn't run by me and there was a woman there who has my favorite name in the world. Her name is Sunday Miller.
So Sunday also works and she wants to register her house, but she also works for a coma. Who's the organization that is in charge of the former home for Coloured children.
And she said, we're registered, but I want you to come to my to my boss because I think she wants to tear down a building that's on site. So and then I start talking to them and said, well, why don't we do about like how registration can help and all of this and so why don't you come to this meeting?
And so I had an intern and I thought and my project for that intern was to help with registration for underrepresented communities.
SR
Wow that’s great.
EL
So she did two one was looking at the Lebanese and Syrian community and the other was looking at and this province wide. The other was looking at the African Nova Scotian community.
So she started working on registering this building down in Yarmouth because we connected with them through gram and at the same time we had a workshop in with a coma out in Preston, which then led to a few people coming and saying, can you do another? Can you come and talk to this group?
First of all, I'm an outsider which is hugely important to acknowledge at these meetings
SR
Yeah, I guess that's interesting that you kind of go into it just knowing that, yeah, you're probably going to be met with some kind of skeptical like attitudes, but that's good. And that's OK.
And you wanna try and just build that relationship even if it takes a long time and kind of get those people like, even the one person you mentioned.
EL
Yeah.
SR
But the Yarmouth Church you need buy in from one person and then more people kind of follow.
EL
And I think the other, I think what what's interesting is that you know. My personal background aside, I mean, I think it's impossible to disentangle who we are as humans and our personal stories from, but I come to heritage.
I've worked in museums. I'm a museum curator by training. I come to this because I'm interested in the stories and I want people to have their stories preserved and because I'm a secular Jew, I don't have a place like we are placeless.
And so I think the way I've always practiced history and my interest in all of this, my interest in heritage is about stories and sort of, you know, like what do our stories tell and how are we presenting?
What's the face we're presenting?
So that's why I say I don't have aesthetic opinions that work because part of it is. That's not my job. My job is to help you solve your problem and preserve your story.
SR
I find this so interesting, I feel like I came with a lot of preconceived notions about, you know, trust societies, and obviously I appreciate the work that a lot of trust societies do.
EL
I am not the trust I am the trust employee, our history and our board are very different.
SR
Yeah, for sure
EL
I am allowed to take this approach and when I was hired I told them I was going to take this approach but this is not the approach that the board that the trust has historically had, and it's a really hard learning curve for some of our board members.
SR
Yeah, I think this is so interesting that you, your perspective is definitely rooted in storytelling.
I'm wondering too, like as we see I'm, you know, the kind of rapid construction that the high rises and things being demolished and things like that. And I'm kind of thinking specifically of the North End Halifax, like when we lost the row of houses for the steel auto expansion and things like that.
I'm wondering when the trust kind of sees things like that and you can speak as yourself or as the trust. Both are probably different opinions. When you see that, do you think and this is like a missed opportunity, what's like the reaction when you see something like that happen?
EL
I think what's most frustrating both to me and our organization is the vacant lots and there's the misconception that if you tear it down, like my understanding is, and you'd have to double check this, but there's been actually a net loss of housing in the last few years because there have been so many demolitions, and it takes three to four years to build a building.
So the idea and one thing we've been pushing is trying to get a tax on vacant lots because at the moment they're tax lower, so there's no advantage to keeping the housing while you wait for your permit, say, so, yes, you need, if you're going to build something in the place where something else is, you need to demolish it.
But ideally you want that to be seamless, but when I moved back here in 2018, I was shocked at the amount of vacant lots there were. And it's obviously only gotten worse. And that to me is that's the sort of the crux of the issue.
That there is a need to preserve these structures, and there's absolutely no reason why. Like, why are you tearing down affordable house right now? Like, that's the bonkers part the there is also an understanding that we have a housing crisis.
What we're seeing is not a solution to the housing crisis we're seeing an exacerbation of the housing crisis. I think as an organization, we accept that the center plan was done with consultation. We may not like it.
SR
Yeah, it was done with consultation, but from many different angles.
EL
We may think it is ill designed but it was done with consultation. The stuff with the housing accelerator has had no consultation.
This is also why we have to actively work to preserve more modern buildings, and this comes also from my museum experience. If you don't save the thing now, you lose it.
There's a great story that I'm just going to tell you because I think it will muse you and I think it's such a great example of this is after Obama. I was living in Washington, DC when Obama won the presidency. The Smithsonian forgot to collect from a campaign office, so the day after the election, when all the campaign offices are being demolished, someone at Smithsonian goes Oh well and calls the campaign office closest in Northern Virginia and rushes over to, like, take the bulletin board and take all of this because they forgot to prearrange it.
Because if you don't save it now, you're gonna lose it, right?
The same is true when I look at say Spring Garden, where we've lost all these wonderful 1930s and 40s buildings and the same is true. You know, we risk losing all of these more recent, but in 150 years, they're gonna be really old.
They just don't seem old now.
And but when we see these demolitions, it's I think it's very frustrating because there is always, there's the I think the other thing that always comes to mind is both that economic end of this is not solving the problem that you say it's solving because it's just displacing people.
But there's also this huge environmental impact and I think nationally we're trying to emphasize that more, partly because in theory, all of the municipal and provincial governments say, woo, we're fighting climate change, and this is a way that they are not, but also because I think sometimes that's that of that.
It's easier to understand than me trying to convince them that my 1930s house is heritage.
You don't have to agree with that. To agree that a building that was built in the 40s that is in good shape, to demolish it and throw it in a landfill is a bad idea environmentally.
You know Victoria BC put has created new policies that are that they're hoping to expand where if it's building is over 40 years X percentage of it has to be recycled.