Minor Local Mysteries

I’ve lived in Halifax for a pretty long time now, but there are still lots of things that I just don’t know about the place. There are several things that I used to wonder about, but over time I’ve just stopped noticing them or being curious about them, unless something specifically draws my attention back to them.

I’m not talking about Great Questions, but minor local mysteries that I would probably know the answers to had I grown up in the city. In fact, some of these things I almost prefer not knowing the real story about, since it’s kind of fun to just amuse myself with made up explanations–and the things I make up are probably much more dramatic than the real story anyway.

I was just reminded of a couple of these minor mysteries on the weekend as I was driving along the Bedford Basin with Sarah, on my way to our planned lunch at Pete’s. There are two things along that drive that I’ve always wondered about, but which had dropped below my threshold of attention over time. However, this time Sarah asked me about one of them, and that brought them both back to the forefront of my mind.

Here’s a satellite shot of the relevant part of the Bedford Basin:

You can see the highway running along the shore of the water. If you zoomed inHere’s a Google Maps link you can use to play around with the images., you would see that there is also a rail line that runs between the highway and the water, servicing the dockyard that’s visible at the “bottom” of the basin.

As you drive along the highway, you get a great view out over the water. And, you can see a blue barn-like building floating out in the water. This is marked with the red circle in the photo above.

I’ve also captured an aerial close-up of the building.

From the highway it looks something like this:

although you are obviously further away than that view.

Since the first time I drove up that highway, I’ve wondered what that building is. I’ve always assumed it was probably something prosaic like a gas station for boats, or somesuch, but I’ve preferred to pretend it’s something much more exciting. Maybe a floating roadhouse and low-rent casino. The kind of place where brawls break out and people end up flying through windows and splashing into the harbour. Yeah.

This is what Sarah was asking about. I’ve had to find out the real answer, since she probably wouldn’t understand if I give her a made-up explanation arising from my watching too much action television from the 80s. (Oh come on, you can totally see a floating roadhouse in a Dukes of Hazzard or A-Team episode.)

A little work with Google has revealed the answer. I’ll put it in spoily-text so you can have a chance to make up your own explanation before you see the prosaic truth–at least you will unless you’re reading this in an RSS reader. (Select the space below to reveal the text).

Apparently this is the Department of Defense Research & Development Canada’s Acoustic Calibration Barge. “The main function of the Barge is to conduct acoustic calibrations of sonar transducers such as hydrophones and projectors, in a free field salt water environment.” I admit, that’s got a lot more “high tech cool” than my explanation, much less a floating gas station. It is probably lacking in instances of defenestration compared to what I had imagined, though. There is more detail available here.

The second thing, though, is more genuinely mysterious. As you continue around the basin you come to a point where the highway and the rail line diverge slightly to pass around a small hill. And, on top of that hill is a vaguely Classical looking cupola-style building. It’s quite small–about the size of a gazebo. It seems wildly out of place, not seeming to fit in with the subdivisions on the other side of the highway, or the crude industrial nature of the rail lines below it. It doesn’t appear to be accessible, which would seem to rule out the obvious “basin lookout” explanations.

This is the item marked with the yellow circle in the photo above. I have also captured an aerial close-up of this item.

It looks something like this:

Since I didn’t know the real story I’ve been going with a Wicker Man / Black Light explanation. In this story there’s a hidden cult of Pan that’s been operating out of nearby Mount St. Vincent University since back in the days when it was an all-women’s university, and this building is a temple they use in certain ceremonies. Yes, Maritime Maenads, that’s what I’ve been going with.

A little work with Google has revealed the real story here as well. I’ll put it in spoily-text again.

This building is the music room from a royal estate. No kidding. In the late 1700s Prince Edward had an estate in Halifax (see a picture here), and all that’s left of the original estate is the “Rotunda”, which functioned as a music room for the Prince. I have to admit if someone had told me this I might not have believed it–that’s a pretty cool story, and the Romantic in me loves the idea that the estate is gone, but the music room remains alone, looking out over the water. And, given the history of aristocratic decadence, maybe there was a bacchanaliaWikipedia Reference or two in there anyway. You can see more info here.

While I have dug up the “real stories” please feel free to add other, more interesting, explanations for these structures in the comments.