Prospering Halifax and a Coat of Arms

Creating an urban infrastructure did not come without difficulty. By mid-century, Halifax had, however, such much-needed civic improvements as dependable piped water supply, street cleaning, sewers and mud-free sidewalks, befi tting a community of some 20,000. With increasing wealth, much of it from expanding mercantile seaborne trading in the great age of sail, came renewed confidence in Halifax’s destiny as a metropolitan centre. After some thirty years of construction, the completion of the imposing star-shaped masonry fortification on Citadel Hill demonstrated Halifax’s strategic significance for British imperial defence. Rudyard Kipling called Halifax “Warden of the Honour of the North”.

Its prospering seaport and military importance were symbolically linked in the City’s Coat of Arms granted in 1860. It displayed a fisherman with a cod fish in his right hand and a Naval seaman as supporters of a blue shield consisting of a gold kingfisher (an heraldic symbol for the fishing industry) surmounted by a golden mural crown in the form of an embattled wall, a device widely used in civic heraldry. On a ribbon at the shield’s base was the City’s motto E MARI MERCES (“WEALTH FROM THE SEA”).

Next: A New City Hall