King George III didn't necessarily envision a skateboard park as a common use of the Halifax Common, but that sort of change in the area has been a constant for centuries.
Fair to say, concerts by his countrymen, like the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney, were not on his mind either when the monarch gifted the land “to and for the use of the inhabitants of the Town of Halifax as Commons forever” in 1763.
A year earlier, Charles Morris, the surveyor general, registered the plan for the Halifax Common on land described as “rocky, swampy and unsuitable for cultivation,” according to a timeline on the Friends of the Halifax Common website, but it was good enough for “public grazing” and open space.
The Crown grant covered 235 acres of common land and five acres of roads, or about 97 hectares. It included all the land bordered by Robie and North and South Park streets between Cunard and South streets. (Central Park in New York City is about 340 hectares.)
By 1860, the City of Halifax and the War Department fenced off the North Common for mounted and marching drills.
The 20th century brought a swimming pool and a wading pool, and the North Common was landscaped in the mid-1960s ahead of Centennial celebrations. The Canada Games in 1969 resulted in construction of a softball field and tennis courts.
Pope John Paul II headlined the Common in 1984, attracting a crowd estimated at about 80,000. The year before, Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales brought back some royal relevance to the park.
More recently, parts were paved to accommodate car races, and a large oval skating rink became a permanent feature.
Over the years, hospitals, churches, schools, a museum and a television studio were regularly added to the original footprint of the Common. They sparked uproars from the community, but the commotion over the proposed construction of a parking garage and power plant near the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History on Summer Street, as well as the power struggle between the municipal and provincial governments, is just the latest in a series of outrages.
“Given the amount of public response to this particular situation, I think that people do have a lot more regard for the Halifax Common than either level of government was aware of,” said Peggy Cameron, a co-founder of the Friends of Halifax Common community group.
“Maybe in part that's because they're becoming more and more aware of what the size of the Common was and how it's being impacted,” Cameron said during a phone interview.
“Overall, I would say, incrementally people do have a much stronger awareness of the size of the grant, and then they are questioning more the uses of the property that's been either privatized or occupied by institutions.”
Friends of the Common estimates that less than a third of the original grant remains. Governments justified decisions that chipped away at the Common with the argument that the moves were for the greater good, said Cameron.
“The public has not always been in favour, but it's happened in any case,” she said.
“There's nothing that's ever been given back to the Halifax Common, as far as I know.”
It's not even the first go-round for parking as an issue. In 2014, Friends of Halifax Common sponsored Parking the Common — Documentation of Phylum Paveia, a collaboration between Cameron, a biologist, and photographer Kathleen Flanagan. It cheekily identified and documented an invasive asphalt species “responsible for the creeping disappearance of the Halifax Common.”
“Probably, by now, it's about 25 per cent of the land that is used for parking. That's very shocking,” said Cameron.
“I think it's a long-term problem that hasn't been dealt with very effectively in Halifax.”
Original Common boundaries (from Friends of the Common website)
Ironically for an area that's being proposed as a massive parking area for a hospital, Cameron said green spaces are essential to well-being.
"There's a very, very substantial body of evidence that shows the importance of spending time in nature for health, mental health and physical health.”
Friends of the Common has recently put up an online petition in favour of protection of the green space and specifically against building on Nova Scotia Museum property. It's accessible through halifaxcommon.ca.