W.R. MacAskill Nova Scotia Archives 1987-453 no. 4230
THE BACKSTORY
Before cars were king A century ago, the tram system offered Haligonians unprecedented freedom and mobility
BY KATIE INGRAM
T
rams were once part of the hustle and bustle of downtown life, screeching across tracks and stopping at the clang of the bell. Now they’re gone, and pavement covers their tracks, leaving them to rust beneath the streets, briefly glimpsed during road-work season. “The tram car was pretty much the major source of transportation for the average working person,” says Don Cunningham, co-author of The Halifax Street Railway 1866–1949. “Most people travelled on them back and forth to work and (operators) knew everybody because they used same tram car for pretty much their entire adult life.” Compared to the buses to today, the tram cars were much more efficient, he adds.
According to a blog post on trams from the Halifax Public Libraries (“From the Birney to the Bus: A Brief and Not at All Definitive History of Halifax Public Transit”), originally the trams ran every 15 minutes. That’s a level of service users of most Halifax Transit routes today would envy. By the 1940s, Halifax had over 80 trams in its fleet, but in 1949, replaced them with electric trolley coaches. Gas-powered buses came in 1969. Even though they are long gone, Cunningham who was a child when the last trams rolled through, often thinks of what was. “When I was a kid, trams were just so much fun almost like a carnival,” he says. “They were noisy because they had the compressors and all that stuff running … but they were a real treat.”
SEPT/ OCT 2021
UNRAVEL
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