Talk:Halifax, Nova Scotia/Archive 3

Confusing!

I've got no association at all with Halifax, NS or Canada, and having had a look at all the Halifax articles, I gotta say that the word that comes to mind is "confusing".

I'm not sure why provincial/local government boundaries are considered of such significance in how the articles are organised. This is of no interest to anyone outside Canada, and I'd bet of debatable interest even to most Canadians. A city, meaning an overall built-up area with a distinct history, culture and demographic makeup, can exist independently of how govt boundaries are drawn.

For example, I'm in Australia, which doesn't even use urban areas as local govt entities. That doesn't stop people referring to places like "Sydney" or "Melbourne" without causing confusion. There is in fact a City of Sydney local govt area, but it only covers the Sydney CBD, which is a tiny fraction of the area commonly known as Sydney. 99% of people browsing Wikipedia neither know nor care about it (nor is there any reason why they should care). When someone wants to know more about "Sydney", the information they're after can be found at Sydney, the obvious place to look.

I'd bet that when someone wants to find out more about "Halifax, Nova Scotia", what they mean is the urban area, with its distinct history and culture. However, half of the information they're after is at Halifax Regional Municipality, and the other half at City of Halifax. A regional municipality is an entity in the Canadian local govt system which nobody outside Canada would be interested in; treating it as the main point for information about Halifax seems misguided at best. Even Halifax Urban Area, the other obvious place to look, contains relatively little of interest. All of this is needlessly cluttered and confusing, and only makes the wiki less usable for people who aren't already familiar with Halifax and its environs. -- Hongooi 08:16, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Checking the archives, I see this is something that has come up repeatedly in the past. Well, just so that I'm adding something constructive, how about the following:

• Halifax, Nova Scotia - includes most of the information currently in HRM and City of Halifax, including history, suburbs, culture, demographics, locations of note, etc
• Halifax Regional Municipality - specific information about how Halifax is governed (cf New York City Council, City of Sydney, Greater London Authority)
• City of Halifax - specific information about the area of Halifax within the old boundaries (cf Lower Manhattan, Sydney central business district, City of London)
• Halifax Urban Area - mostly unchanged

-- Hongooi 08:40, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Or even more simply:

• Rename current Halifax Regional Municipality -> Halifax, Nova Scotia
• Rename current City of Halifax -> History of Halifax (ie, reverse current redirect)
• Rename current Halifax, Nova Scotia -> Halifax, Nova Scotia (disambiguation)

-- Hongooi 09:34, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

I support this. --Kmsiever 15:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Halifax Nova Scotia is not the Halifax Regional Municipality

The proper article the applies to the term "Halifax, Nova Scotia is the article City of Halifax the area designated by both the province of Nova Scotia and the Halifax Regional Municipality as "Halifax , Nova Scotia. Putting Halifax Regional Municipality as Halifax, Nova Scotia caused more confusion as thier 207 other places within the HRM including place like Sable Island which is part of the Halifax Regional Municipality . Like how many times wikipedia editors have changed Halifax Nova Scotia changed when 1. its the wrong term and 2. Not verifiable . Please leave it alone .--19960401 16:54, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see why this is important. I live in Sydney. I also live in Hornsby. This is explained by the fact that Hornsby is a part of the broader Sydney urban area, which is what people generally mean when they use the term "Sydney". I never have to explain to people that I don't live in the City of Sydney, and the fact that the article is called Sydney as opposed to "Sydney urban area", "Greater Sydney", or some other awkward construction doesn't cause problems.

Similarly, just because an obscure island 100 miles out in the Atlantic is part of the HRM is not going to cause confusion if the HRM article is renamed to "Halifax, Nova Scotia". The only mention of Sable Island in the HRM article is one line pertaining to offshore resources; 99.9% of the information in the article pertains to the Halifax urban area. If people want specific information about Sable Island, as opposed to the overall Halifax area, they are not going to search for "Halifax" in any case. They will go straight to the Sable Island article itself, so your objection is moot. -- Hongooi 00:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

This map from the Halifax Regional Municipality itself shows that Halifax, Nova Scotia is only the area designated by the NS government as a community .--19960401 17:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the NS government has designated "Halifax" as a regional municipality. And...? Nobody said otherwise. This has nothing to do with the entity that people from outside Canada, or indeed people in Canada, call "Halifax". What the NS government chooses to use for regional boundaries is a matter for the NS government alone. -- Hongooi 00:10, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that you are both at least partly right. As Hongooi observes, firstly, the articles concerning Halifax are badly organised and thus needlessly confusing, and, secondly, most anyone consulting an encyclopedia expects to find basic information about Halifax, Nova Scotia in an article entitled "Halifax, Nova Scotia" (or just "Halifax", arguably) and conversely expects "Halifax, Nova Scotia" to hold such information. At the same time, Halifax Regional Municipality does not rightly equate with Halifax, Nova Scotia. Halifax is that centuries-old human settlement which is now grown into a large city -- though, curiously for a city, it lacks any municipal government (or governments) unto itself. Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), by contrast, is the municipal government of all of Halifax County, including Halifax, the city. Much the greater part of Halifax County is countryside, dotted with many separate towns and villages that are not part of Halifax, the city. The regional municipality is thus roughly the same thing as Halifax County. (To split hairs, the regional municipality is the municipal government of the area while the area itself is Halifax County.) Failure to distinguish Halifax (the city) from Halifax Regional Municipality is thus akin to failure to distinguish between the Zürich and the Canton of Zürich.
Much of the material in "Halifax Regional Municipality" belongs in a "Halifax, Nova Scotia" article. In fact, the article on the regional municipality has largely been turned into the article that most readers would expect to find under "Halifax Nova Scotia". Other material in it pertains only to the regional municipality at large, though, and (as just shown) the two topics are not truly identical. Thus simply re-titling the article on the regional municipality would not be sensible. Rather, the article on "Halifax, Nova Scotia" should be restored -- which is essentially to say the same thing as the first point in Hoogai's first proposal.
-- Lonewolf BC 03:38, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

We have a disambig page because it is confusing. It points people to appropriate articles. Please read the archived discussion to understand how we ended up with this compromise. WayeMason 13:54, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

At risk of sounding inflammatory, it wasn't clear to me that consensus was reached. In Archive3, there was a proposal from User:WayeMason, which User:Lonewolf BC disagreed with but is yet to construct a complete alternative proposal. I'm not sure who I agree with, except User:Hongooi because his/her arguments from analogy make sense to me. I'm not sure what the best proposal is, but I offer the following comments:

• The arrangement of articles needs to make sense to people outside Nova Scotia, not just those inside it.
• The pre-1996 city of Halifax might not exist now as a legal identity - but it did, and there are a large number of articles in WP that refer to events that occurred in that place in that time. For example, it would be ridiculous to talk about a 19th-century person who was born or who died in a location, with that location pointing to an article about legal entity that only came into being in 1996. We need to be able to accurately place current and future articles that occur in Halifax (for any definition of Halifax), but also to correctly (and, I would assert, intuitively) link in articles about past events.

To develop User:Hongooi's comments a little more:

• Most people who use WP would (correctly) expect an article on Sydney, Australia to be about an area measuring roughly 12,000 km² that contains 4 million people, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Opera House and hosted the Olympics in 2000 - the (lowercase) city.
• The (uppercase) City of Sydney, which is a legal and governmental entity, is only about 25 km², contains only 150,000 people, and doesn't contain said Bridge or the Olympics venues.

If I told anyone that I don't live in Sydney (on the basis that I'm about 15 km from the City of Sydney boundary), they would think I'd lost all grasp on reality. WP acknowledges the reality of the legal entity of the City of Sydney, but also acknowledges that the world at large has an accurate understanding of what "Sydney" is that does not match with the legal reality. People and governments here sometimes use the term "Greater Sydney" to mean the (lowercase) city of Sydney (in contrast to the (uppercase) City of Sydney), but I wouldn't expect many people outside of Sydney to know or care about that term, so I'm in no hurry to create a redirect for it, let alone an article.

I believe that the set of pages for the Halifax should work in a similar way. They need to make sense to the 99.9% of people who don't live in Halifax, just like the Sydney pages make sense to the 99.9% of people who don't live in Sydney. Acknowledge the legal entities, but also acknowledge the reality that the common understanding of what Halifax, Nova Scotia is doesn't match that legal entity (and maybe, like Sydney, never will). Whatever article is placed at Halifax, Nova Scotia should reflect that common understanding, and (like Sydney), include links to the article that explains the legal/governmental entity. And, ideally, the 1600 odd articles that refer to famous people or events that took place in the city (which might also have been the City, until 1996) of Halifax should be able to link to the correct place through Halifax, Nova Scotia, without having to be disambiguated. Paddles ^T_C 17:05, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. --Kmsiever 15:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Halifax Harbour

I've added Halifax Harbour to the page, mainly because I've been doing some stuff that refers to the port of Halifax, and I previously didn't know where to link it to. Now I do, I find it's not on the Disambiguation page, so I've added it. But I feel I'm diving into a can of worms by doing so, so apologies!
And I agree with the above; it is confusing as it is! Xyl 54 16:39, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll toss in my 2 cents as well. I agree with the above. This current arrangement clearly does not follow the principle of least astonishment and is needlessly confusing. Remember that consensus can change, and in this case it seems to have. Am I wrong here? heqs ·:. 11:30, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

No your not "Halifax, Nova Scotia" today is the area described in the page City of Halifax according the Civic Addressing and survey offices of the Halifax Regional Municipality See Map of the Halifax and surrounding communities of the Halifax Regional Municipality from HRM GIS and Halifax Regional Municipality Community List . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 19960401 (talk • contribs) 17:02, August 24, 2007 (UTC)

Shambles

This disambiguation page is a shambles, and is clearly the consequence of an incredibly unhelpful edit war. Any person not entirely familiar with the peculiarities of local government in the Atlantic Provinces (e.g. me, and probably most other Wikipedia readers) would expect the article "Halifax, Nova Scotia" to be the main article about the capital of Nova Scotia. Not so. Furthermore, when presented with this page, it is not at all obvious to an outsider which article they need to read, which transpires to be the one entitled Halifax Regional Municipality. How is anyone supposed to tell that? To someone who doesn't know what a "Regional Municipality" is, it's impossible.

I've made a quick fix to that, but the split of information across the City of Halifax, Halifax Regional Municipality and Halifax Urban Area articles is really unhelpful. Worse still, comments on articles such as "[...] and often simply, although incorrectly, as Halifax" appear to me to be more like POV-pushing digs at other editors than encyclopaedic information.

While this situation may have been a compromise that was reached to end an edit war, it is most unsatisfactory to the general reader. --RFBailey 04:16, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I cleaned up this page. It was evolving into its own article and looking less like a dab page. Hopefully things are a little clearer. --Kmsiever 15:29, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that, but it still doesn't solve the problem of this being a dab page. --RFBailey 16:13, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

See Talk:Halifax, West Yorkshire#Discussion for a little more on this. Andrewa 20:46, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

To my mind, it neither was a compromise nor had a proper consensus. Be that as it may, it is, as RFBailey observes, "most unsatisfactory to the general reader." -- Lonewolf BC 22:23, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The page move discussion going on at Halifax, West Yorkshire really highlights why this situation is a mess. In short, the argument being used by the proponent of that move was essentially that Halifax, NS isn't called Halifax, but is called "Halifax Regional Municipality" (and he was more-or-less quoting directly from the article), so therefore the one in Yorkshire is clearly the most important out of all the others (taking Halifax, Massachusetts as the next largest). Had the main article here been entitled Halifax, Nova Scotia this argument wouldn't have been available. But it goes to show why something really, really needs to be done here! --RFBailey 22:35, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Just to pile on, the current situation is far less than ideal. To anyone new to the discussion, read User:Hongooi's extensive comments above and his use of the example of Sydney are instructive. I would add London to his argument. City of London, Greater London, Greater London Urban Area, &c. are articles of their own that discuss aspects specific to the repsective entities (often administrative and statistical points) but the bulk of the information on the city in general is at London as it should be. The different definitions of London are discussed (not merely listed) in the first section of the London article making it easy for those seeking a specific administrative unit to find it. Granted it will take real work to selectively move information from Halifax Regional Municipality and City of Halifax to Halifax, Nova Scotia but Wikipedia will be well-served by it. — AjaxSmack 00:50, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

"...Wikipedia will be well-served by it."
Yes. Very much so. I tried for something along those lines, early this year. Other folk had a different idea. Although they were but few, they were more than myself and (as I recall) the one or two others with similar views to mine, and they posted faster and more aggressively. Things ended up much as they had been before.
-- Lonewolf BC 05:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that's not quite how it went: Re-reading the old discussion just now, I see that most commenters essentially agreed with me.
-- Lonewolf BC 06:51, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

You never met a flame war you could walk away from, eh? And you know that is not true. WayeMason 13:55, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposal

I suggest that we need an article similar to the London article, giving an overview of all the various things in Nova Scotia that are or have been called Halifax, something that someone like me with no previous idea of the various complications can read without getting confused. This article should link to more detailed articles on the various legal and/or historical entities on which there's enough information to justify a separate article.

In view of all the discussion that precedes this (see particularly Talk:Halifax, Nova Scotia/Archive3 but the earlier archives have more of the same) I'd like consensus on this before I'm much interested in going any further. However, I'll foreshadow we're I'm headed... We need to next decide the name of this article. Personally I'd call it Halifax, Nova Scotia, and have only one disambiguation, currently at Halifax, which already includes all the entries of the lower-level diambiguation page currently at Halifax, Nova Scotia.

But this is negotiable, and cuts across some past decisions. What matters most to me is just that this new top-level article is created, by whatever name. Comments? Andrewa 07:12, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

These are all good ideas and the name Halifax, Nova Scotia is a good location. At a minimum, it would require reassembling the former History of Halifax material along with general geographical and cultural info. Ideally the proportion of material in the main article vis-à-vis the City and HRM should be quite large. (By comparison, the quantity of London material in he main article is very roughly 10:3:3 compared with City of London and Greater London; Sydney is 5:1 in relation to the City of Sydney.)

For those opposed to one main Halifax article, please step back and think about "When a reader enters a given term in the Wikipedia search box and pushes "Go", what article would they most likely be expecting to view as a result? " I would wager that for most users, wading through two or three disambiguation pages only to find that there is no article on Halifax, Nova Scotia and that a rather detailed understanding of Nova Scotia's administrative structure is necessary merely to find out basic information on the city is not ideal. — AjaxSmack 19:36, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't why we need to have one main Halifax article, nor why we need to reassemble any of the former material, nor why we need the proportion of material in the main article to be large. Personally I'd keep the high-level article as short as possible, with links to more detailed articles. Having a longish top-level article can work too but personally I don't think it's the best way.

But more to the point, it's not the best way to start. We can and should start with a short article. If others, including yourself, want to then expand this article, that's a different issue. It's far more important for this top-level article to exist than it is for it to be a particular length, short or long. Provided it has a good lead section, it will remove the problems that you and others have highlighted.

Again, see London... which is not a particularly good lead section IMO but still does the job of clarifying a very confusing situation. For example, the British Houses of Parliament aren't in London in a legalistic sense. They're in Westminster. Andrewa 21:18, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

The Term "Halifax , Nova Scotia " is the Area in the article City of Halifax . not the Halifax Regional Municipality which is incorrect according to the Nova Scotia government. There are 200 communities within the Halifax Regional Municipalty and each are civic divisions for civic addressing which means they separate places . Also places like Bedford, Nova Scotia and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia also have separate histories to both the Halifax Regional Municipality and Halifax, Nova Scotia . The term Halifax Regional Municipality only represents the municipal governce of the area and is also not use as a location as at represents a very large area . Also the Halifax Regional Municipality is not a incorporated city nor there are any incorporated cities in Nova Scotia--19960401 02:45, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe to someone from there. But to those of use outside of HRM, there's no difference. Just like people outside of Vancouver use "Vancouver" to refer to more than just Vancouver proper. --Kmsiever 04:24, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Even HRM council is debating whether or not to change the name of the HRM to just be "Halifax" this situation is far from clear. I strongly support a merger of Halifax, NS and HRM, NS page with clear descriptions of the different uses of Halifax in one article. As was said above, it cuts across all the arguements and documents it and puts it on one page.WayeMason 13:54, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia does pay attention to official names, but we don't slavishly follow them, for just reasons such as these. The whims of bureaucrats don't impress us overly! Instead, we have Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Well worth a read.

Or to put it another way, the statement which is incorrect has no great bearing on Wikipedia article names. It belongs to the era of now-discredited prescriptive linguistics. Instead of asking what should people say? recent linguists ask what do people say?, and Wikipedia's guidelines follow this school of thought. Andrewa 10:47, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, it's now been a couple of days and nobody has yet opposed the proposal. There's been some repetition of the various POVs as to what Halifax means in some sense of correctness which has little relevance to Wikipedia's article naming practice anyway, but little discussion of the issue I raised, which is the need for a top-level article whatever it is called. So do I go ahead and create the article? I think I'll call it Halifax, Nova Scotia (temporary article name) because I can't think of a better one than Halifax, Nova Scotia. But I'm open to suggestions.

And at the risk of rererepeating myself, the article name is a separate issue. Andrewa 06:36, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

For more of what I'm on about here, see London, City of London and Greater London, three different articles. The issues are not identical but look at how well the information is presented in these three articles. Both people with no preconceptions as to what the word London means and others with strong and conflicting views on its meaning can all find the article they want with a minimum of fuss. We can and should do as well here. Andrewa 06:43, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with your proposal for an article, your choice of name, and your contention that the name choice is a separate issue. One possible location for the article could be Halifax, Nova Scotia/New article, something I've seen done somewhere else on Wikipedia. I don't have the knowledge or time to help so good luck. — AjaxSmack 03:29, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be best to turn this title back into a proper article, and move its the present contents to Halifax, Nova Scotia (disambiguation), or perhaps better yet just integrate them with Halifax (disambiguation). This is the title where people will expect to find information on Halifax, Nova Scotia. Any other title will make for awkward and troublesome linking. As with London, differing concepts "Halifax, Nova Scotia" can be accounted for in its article without too much trouble. There is, so far as I can find, little disagreement about that among standard reference works, though.
-- Lonewolf BC 04:07, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

When last I looked, Halifax (disambiguation) contained (duplicated) all the entries of the disambig at [[Halifax, Nova Scotia, and wasn't too long for that. So I question whether there's any need for a second disambiguation page just for the Canadian entries. Andrewa 11:06, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

For the record --- I am entirely in favour of an article on "Halifax" that incorporates ALL the various uses of the word Halifax to describe places in Nova Scotia. I am glad to see growing consensus that we need to revamp these articles.

I pointed out that even the government is arguing to change the name not because I feel the govt is a definitive source, but to point out to those of you who have been participating in this discussion for over 3 years that even the government is starting to refer to the whole area as Halifax. the main arguement of people who wanted to perpetuate historic place names as the only current fact have certainly been happy to use the government websites as quote definitive sources endquote! But things are changing, and evolving, and that change and evolution should be a part of the wikipedia article!

I am glad to yet another person in this discussion making the point that we don't just follow the dictat of technocrats or out of date govt sources. Andrewa wrote Instead of asking what should people say? recent linguists ask what do people say?, and Wikipedia's guidelines follow this school of thought. As I have said repeatedly, the media and the man on the street refers to metro, or urban Halifax as "Halifax," but also when talking about local issues inside of Halifax, they will still use local place names like "Dartmouth."

Many people beside myself have argued against the appropriateness of a Halifax, Nova Scotia article that does not clearly define the difference between the old administrative area of the City of Halifax, and the modern definition of Halifax, which is far more flexible and ambiguous. The article needs to recognize that outside of the Halifax Regional Municipality, most people just refer to the whole area as Halifax.

I would say that in line with the London example, I would like the see a Halifax, Nova Scotia article that would absorb most of the current Halifax Urban Area, Halifax Regional Municipality articles. I think the City of Halifax article should be maintained, to describe the historical town and city 1749-1996.

As has been stated repeatedly, the issues here are difficult in part because 1 - there is no general agreement on naming conventions either officially or in everyday use 2 - the municipal government itself uses different definitions of urban and rural depending on which department is doing the talking and 3 - politically motivated editors continue to try and insert their own POV.

All I want, and have ever wanted, is a full and complete picture of what is really going on on the ground here in Halifax and area, the best most comprehensive wiki article we can produce, that lets people from "away" understand the complexities around self-identity here now since amalgamation. Not trying to perpetuate old divisions as "facts" nor create new labels that have no legitimacy in the real world. Lets make good wiki! As long as we are all working on that, then let's, as we say, giv'er. WayeMason 01:15, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Halifax, Nova Scotia is the legal community name for what is covered in the article City of Halifax. Halifax Regional Municipality is not ,Halifax Nova Scotia legally either . What HRM council (and it is not even pass yet ) is rename Halifax Regional Municipality just plain Halifax as Halifax, Nova Scotia is proposed to be separate from Halifax .--19960401 01:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Please read the above discussion thoroughly. While what you say about the names of legal entities is (as far as I can tell) accurate, your logic is what contributes to the shambolic situation we have. To quote from an earlier remark, "Wikipedia does pay attention to official names, but we don't slavishly follow them [...]". While Halifax may (under present local government arrangements) not have any legal status, it is still a well-known entity. According to the Wikipedia Naming conventions:

Generally, article naming should prefer what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

In this case, the name "Halifax, Nova Scotia" is what would most easily be recognised. Yes, there should still be an article about the Halifax RM, in the same way that we have an article about the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall (a local government district), but that article coexists with the one on Walsall (the town after which it is named). Excessive pedantry is detrimental to Wikipedia. --RFBailey 01:40, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

At the risk of pedantry myself, it is by definition excessive. But I heartily support these comments. Andrewa 11:06, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Halifax, Nova Scotia, can refer to Halifax/Dartmouth, Halifax, Halifax Peninsula, Halifax Regional Municipality, and urban Halifax. 19960401, they are all correct, depending on context. Driving to work today the CBC again referred to damage in the "city of Halifax" after Noel this weekend, as apposed to rural Haifax. They were referring the to the Nova Scotia Hospital being damaged, and that is in Dartmouth, Woodside to be precise. This is but one example. The CBC, Herald, and CTV all use Halifax to refer to metro Halifax, including Dartmouth and Bedford. Our job is to document ALL of these usesWayeMason 20:45, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Radio and TV stations nor do the Newspapers in the Halifax Regional Municipality do not have the authority to give out place names onlly the Halifx Regional Municipality Civic Address office does . Halifax, Nova Scotia is the area that is legally name that is covered in the article City of Halifax for the present name is Halifax ,Nova Scotia given by the Halifax Regional Municipality .There 190 other legal and separate placenames in the HRM as well and they do not refer themselves as Halifax --19960401 14:00, 6 November 2007 (UTC).

Yes, we understand that Nova Scotia placenames (and administrative areas) have a legal definition, and that local (or provincial) governments have the authority over that legal definition. And: yes, we understand that Halifax is not the HRM (as your edit summary puts it)--that was my point about Walsall, which is in a similar situation. However, we are supposed to be writing an encyclopaedia, and the Naming conventions which I quoted above are what should be followed; in particular, what is in most common usage. This includes what is used by the media, as well as what is used by "the man in the street" (in the Halifax area, in the rest of Canada, and beyond). Thus the "Halifax, Nova Scotia" article should describe both the legal and common usages of the name. It should not be a disambiguation page. --RFBailey 14:56, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The term "Halifax Nova Scotia" only refers to the area and the present unincorporated area that used to be City of Halifax and does refer anywhere else in the Halifax Regional Municipality . Making HRM -- Halifax Nova Scotia confuses of which area the article is suppose to teell sa there are 199 other places within the HRM other than Halifax .--19960401 16:29, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by your second sentence--if it had proper spelling and grammar it would help. As I have said several times, there should be articles about both Halifax and the HRM. The Halifax article would describe the area covered by the article City of Halifax, for sure. But the common usage of the term "Halifax" is to refer to the urban area (i.e. Metro Halifax), and there is material in the Halifax Urban Area article which is also relevant. On top of that, a lot of the stuff in the current HRM article doesn't pertain to the local government area as much as it does to Halifax itself, or the immediate surrounding area (e.g. the list of buildings).

No-one is doubting the existence of the "199 other places" in the HRM that are not Halifax, so I fail to see what you are worried about there. --RFBailey 16:57, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The Halifax Urban Area article is based mostly on the Stats Canada Area for the most part is a statistical area . I do agree on your statment that the current HRM article doesn't pertain to the local government area because it focuses to much on the Halifax City of Halifax area too much , than discribing the diversity of the municipality as a whole . Which is complicated .--19960401 18:31, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Attempt at a compromise article

I've attempted to make a first draft of a new Halifax, Nova Scotia article, in my userspace here. It's in a very rough-and-ready form, and needs a lot of tidying, sorting, and being made consistent, as well as a proper opening, before it's ready. But it should give an idea as to what I believe that article should contain. If implemented, it would replace the City of Halifax article as well as the current disambiguation page, and would also contain material transferred from the Halifax Regional Municipality article, and from the Halifax Urban Area article too.

Thoughts are welcome! --RFBailey 19:29, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

A second version is now available. --RFBailey 03:55, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Can somebody tell me where the article on the place called Halifax in Nova Scotia is?

WP seems to have lost its way here. There seem to be lots of articles on different obscure permutations of local government areas, but nothing I can find on the place. In most cases WP writes articles on places, not local government areas.

I'm trying to update the base Halifax dab page to include a 'most often' list in the lede, but I simply cannot find an appropriate single article to represent what most people do mean when the talk about Halifax, Nova Scotia. Help. -- Starbois (talk) 10:41, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree completely. That is a real problem and it's a shame that it's been six months since you posted this and nothing has happened. The section I wrote below is sort of my response to this, but I don't know how well it'll go over since this has been discussed before and this was apparently the best that could be done. Guff Brooking (talk) 04:35, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Round Two

I realize that this has been debated to death, and it seems that discussion has died down recently, but the Halifax articles are unacceptable in their current state.

As someone who has never been to Nova Scotia, I am part of the "target audience" of these articles - people who don't know much about Halifax and want a good overview. That being said, I think I know enough about the area from what I have learned to make some educated assumptions about what should go where.

• The City of Halifax article should be the main article in the Halifax, Nova Scotia namespace, because it is the article that most people will want. (The History section in particular is very good.) It should be a general overview of Halifax the place and its relationship to the other articles. This would also be good for consistency - Dartmouth and Bedford are both former cities inside the HRM and yet both get to keep their own articles. The Dartmouth article mentions that the name "Dartmouth" is still used in an official capacity. I am aware that the confusion arises because the former City of Halifax and the HRM both have "Halifax" in their names, but once you get past that, it's really not confusing at all. Imagine the HRM was called something different without "Halifax" in its name, and the division of articles becomes clear. Halifax is still a place, even if it's no longer a city.

• The Halifax Regional Municipality article should mostly contain information about municipal governance. It should not be the first article the reader sees. The list of constituent communities should be more prominent. That being said, I think that a little bit of overlap could be good in this situation.

• The Halifax County, Halifax Peninsula, Halifax Harbour, Metropolitan Halifax, and Mainland Halifax articles are all okay the way they are and can probably stay that way.

That's my brief assessment of the articles. I think I'm just scratching the surface with this - there's the matter of which topics are covered in each article - but it's important to get the ball rolling. It's been two years since any discussion happened.

And if this restarts the debate all over again, that's good, because talking about it is better than just lying back and accepting this half-baked compromise. (winces, hesitantly clicks "save page" and prepares for the worst) Guff Brooking (talk) 04:17, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

To your first point - Dartmouth still exists as an administrative unit, Dartmouth/Cole Harbour. Halifax does not, it has been split into the Mainland and Peninsula. So yes, Dartmouth still is used, but not Halifax in that way, except in the vernacular. Two your second point, HRM is a single polity, to treat it as an administrative district would be like doing so for Metro Toronto or New York City, years after they were amalgamated. Of course the main article for Toronto is the greater Toronto, not the old City of Toronto. Culturally, economically, administratively, HRM is Halifax, and should be the primary article. Are we grown up enough to do that? If so, lets make Halifax, NS point to HRM, and rename City of Halifax to the History of Halifax. Final point - thanks for the props around the history of Halifax, that took a lot of research!  :) WayeMason (talk) 20:51, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I completely support Guff Brooking's point. What he so clearly points out, and was missed out on by many people through the 3-years-ago debate, is that the article is on the PLACE. Just like Victoria, British Columbia does not stop itself from talking about things outside the municipal boundaries of the City of Victoria, because the concept of "the place Victoria" includes many things that intersect with, and touch upon, the Capital Regional District, Oak Bay, and other things. The place is seldom, if ever, delimited by municipal boundaries. As another example, within Canada, there are many places where Indian Reserves fall within the normally-accepted definitions of a given place. They are often very small "islands" that are not formally within the city/municipal boundaries, though any article that attempted to somehow pretend that they were not part of the history and story of that place would be foolish. I believe that, for the encyclopedia to be useful, Halifax, Nova Scotia must be the main article on the place - the one that includes the primary history, transport, culture sections and so on. It should not, simply be a disambiguation page for a bunch of municipal subdivisions. I'm going to try to gather some people who agree (look at that vote up above - it's unanimous in favour of this idea, and yet it didn't quite happen. Then, hopefully, we can make it happen. AshleyMorton (talk) 23:09, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I have reverted two edits which moved this page to Halifax#Canada. It is clear from past discussions that there has been no consensus for such a move.

Like some other contributors, I do not live in Canada, but I do know that know that there is a place called Halifax, Nova Scotia, and that it is not a range of mountains in B.C., nor a parish in PEI, nor a municipality otherwise known as HRM. I do not care much about local government arrangements in Nova Scotia, but I do know that many people will want to find out about the place that Air Canada calls "Halifax, Nova Scotia", that Via Rail calls "Halifax", and that people address letters to. Is it too much to ask that WP helps readers find out about that place?

The article which seems to be closest to the subject is City of Halifax, which starts "Halifax is [my italics] a community in Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) in Nova Scotia, Canada". If the objection is that Halifax is no longer a "city" in the legal sense, let's rename that article Halifax, Nova Scotia and explain its current status in the article.--Mhockey (talk) 11:19, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose per many of the past discussions in the past. Halifax, Nova Scotia is very much an ambiguous term. The area you consider Halifax, Nova Scotia is not what City of Halifax is about. It is only about a portion of the what is currently what Air Canada etc calls Halifax, not the entire thing. A neighborhood basically. It is about the historical city of Halifax which is much different than the current settlement of halifax which is known as the Halifax Regional Municipality. The confusion is clearly the lack of understanding that there no longer is a city of Halifax. It was amalgamated with many other cities to form the HRM. It is the HRM which is the capital of Nova Scotia and what airlines etc are referring to when they say Halifax, Nova Scotia. There is a movement to rename the entire HRM back to Halifax, Nova Scotia but there is push back from the other communities that were not called Halifax prior to the merger. -DJSasso (talk) 15:19, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not a question of what I consider Halifax, Nova Scotia. The issue is whether other communities, including those in other parts of the HRM, consider Halifax to be an identifiable place within the HRM. What is meant by "Halifax" in the opening sentence of City of Halifax? What do road signs say? Nova Scotia Highway 103 starts in "Halifax", meaning the place described in City of Halifax. The article on for example Dartmouth, Nova Scotia refers to Halifax as a different place. The fact that there is no longer a "city" of Halifax is not the point. The issue is whether there is still a place called Halifax in Nova Scotia. Consider many examples in England: Bradford, Leeds, Eastleigh, even Halifax, are all distinct places, with their own WP articles, even though they no longer have their own governments but were amalgamated with other towns to form wider local government units (City of Bradford, City of Leeds, Borough of Eastleigh, Calderdale). Those articles have no problem resolving the ambiguities.--Mhockey (talk) 17:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Merge this disambiguation page with Halifax per WP:INCDAB. There are just too many uses for Halifax, Nova Scotia for it to redirect to any one article. I think the arguments make that clear. 117Avenue (talk) 19:42, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah I have no problem redirecting it to the Halifax dab page as was discussed at WP:CANADA. -DJSasso (talk) 15:58, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes it certainly is an identifiable place within the HRM. It is a neighbourhood within the HRM. However, on maps and when organizations like airlines or trains to use your examples refer to Halifax they are not referring to that which used to be Halifax, but to what would now be the HRM. The airport for example is not even close to what used to be Halifax, it is instead on the opposite end of the HRM. There are two places in Nova Scotia called Halifax. What people outside the city/province call Halifax is the HRM. What people inside the HRM call Halifax is a neighbourhood. So if someone from the otherside of the world were to type Halifax, Nova Scotia it would be the HRM that they should be redirected to because that is what they are most likely searching for. -DJSasso (talk) 22:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. That seems to boil the issue down to which of two uses (the HRM or the neighbourhood within the HRM) is most commonly meant by the term "Halifax, Nova Scotia". Maps: I have consulted several maps: Geonames, the Atlas of Canada, the CAA/AAA, The Times Concise Atlas of the World, all identify "Halifax" as the place on the south side of Halifax Harbour. The location of the airport is not really the point - it is very common for airports to be located some distance from the city they serve. Mailing addresses can be misleading, but are you saying that mail for, say Bedford, is addressed to Halifax, NS and not Bedford, NS?

I would question the view that most people from outside the HRM mean the HRM when they refer to Halifax, Nova Scotia - the previous discussions seem to me to show the contrary. If there really is confusion about what is commonly meant by "Halifax, Nova Scotia", that is a fact which really ought to be explained in an encylopedia, with commentary on how the meanings have evolved. And the most natural place to explain that is an expanded article entited "Halifax, Nova Scotia".--Mhockey (talk) 22:00, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose This particular page is a waste of space. I doubt that a person would type 'Halifax, Nova Scotia' using instead the single word 'Halifax' for a search. This particular disambiguation page should be redirected to [[Halifax]]. Richard Harvey (talk) 11:35, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
• Comment and questions From the discussion so far, three things are puzzling me:
  

1. It seems to be agreed that there is a community called "Halifax" within the HRM. Which (if any) is the WP article about that community?

2. What is the evidence (from reliable sources) that the HRM is also referred to as "Halifax" (or "Halifax, Nova Scotia")?

3. If both the HRM and the community of Halifax are referred to as plain "Halifax", how are they differentiated in normal speech or text in a context where plain "Halifax" could be misunderstood?--Mhockey (talk) 12:04, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Locally the HRM is differentiated by saying "The HRM", outside of the area if someone is saying Halifax they just mean the HRM because most people in the rest of the country are unaware that things changed just over a decade ago and are unlikely to be referring to just a small section of the area anyways. Halifax is just a neighbourhood now (actually two neighbourhoods as I mention below). Like Soho in London for example. Its not considered a separate community per say, just the name of an area within the community of the HRM. As for what articles cover this area, there are two Mainland Halifax and Halifax Peninsula which are the two neighbourhoods that Halifax was split up into after the amalgamation. There is a third article City of Halifax which covers the entire area of historical Halifax. As for reliable sources that the HRM is just known as Halifax I can look some up but I there wouldn't be much context in them because if they just say Halifax it becomes impossible to know if they are just speaking about one or the other. -DJSasso (talk) 15:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, Soho in London has its own WP article - one of very many articles about neighbourhoods or localities which are not precisely defined by local government unit boundaries. It has an article because it is an identifiable place which WP users want to read about. It seems clear from previous discussions that Halifax, Nova Scotia is also, like Soho, an identifiable place (distinct from the HRM) which users want to read about (sections headed Confusing, Shambles, Can somebody tell me..., Search for Halifax to get here).

The answers to my questions seem to be

1. The article about Halifax before 1996 is City of Halifax, and the article about Halifax since 1996 is Halifax Peninsula - although many editors treat the City of Halifax article as the article about Halifax now (e.g. present tense in opening sentence, links in the road articles). (I am discounting Mainland Halifax: if I understand the article correctly, that is the formal name (since 1996) of an area which was in the City between 1969 and 1996, but is not a name favoured by its inhabitants.)

2. No evidence yet.

3. Not sure I understand this. It would be odd if people outside NS often used "Halifax" in the sense of the HRM (which most probably would not have heard of). Surely they would be thinking of a locality, not a region or municipality. But people within NS? If I am in Bedford and ask for directions to Halifax, would the answer be "Silly question, you're already in Halifax" or would they send me to Halifax Peninsula? Do people use expressions like "Halifax itself" or "Halifax proper"?

The aim of the merger proposal is to help users like the ones who started previous discussions, and probably many casual users, find the information they need quickly. The current position is just unhelpful. The alternative of treating a name like Halifax, Nova Scotia as "incomplete disambiguation" has not attracted support at Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation#Incomplete_disambiguation_(again) - it would not be a good way of getting users to the info they are looking for.--Mhockey (talk) 20:49, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I've got to disagree with 3. I think that most people outside NS think Halifax is a city, because most of the world has cities. Since NS doesn't have cities, they would want the HRM. 117Avenue (talk) 03:26, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

City is often used loosely, in the sense of a large town. Different jurisdictions have varying requirements for formal city status, which are sometimes at odds with the looser meaning. In the UK we have the City of London and the City of Bradford, neither of which are large towns (or cities in the looser, traditional, sense) - one is an area within London (which is a city in the looser sense), and the other is a local government unit which contains several towns, including Bradford (which is a city in the looser sense). I agree that that most people outside NS think of Halifax as a city, but in the looser sense of a large town, which the HRM is not. And the HRM is not a city in the formal, legal sense either.--Mhockey (talk) 18:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

this page should not redirect to a sub-section of a disambiguation page

Halifax, Nova Scotia really should not link to a disambiguation page, if only because this more specific references just equates to where Halifax links. To me, the Halifax, Nova Scotia page should contain what is started on Halifax (former city). Halifax, Nova Scotia should not link to Halifax Regional Municipality, as that page encorporates other cities beyond Halifax if I'm reading the comments correctly. The fact that the city formally ceased to be a seperate entity is not relevant; the city still exists, just not as a "City" entity. And also, "former city" to me means that it's gone (like Troy is a former city in what is now present-day Turkey). Just my 2 cents. - Hooperswim (talk) 20:50, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

And everyone has their comments, that's why there is no primary topic. By your own admission, Halifax, Nova Scotia still exists, so why would the title go to the former incorporation? I think that both the former and current are important, and the title can't go to one. 117Avenue (talk) 04:12, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Per your suggestion, I've attempted to write a primary topic article, as one should exist. - Hooperswim (talk) 17:13, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

That isn't what I suggested. Per WP:INCDAB, three or four entries isn't enough for a disambiguation page, if it can be merged into another. What I suggest exists at the Nova Scotia section in Halifax#Canada. 117Avenue (talk) 04:59, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't attempting to write a disambiguation, I was attempting to write the start of a primary topic page. But I give up: if even a proud Canadian such as yourself doesn't care enough about the city to fix this, then I, who am just trying to steer things to a consolidated, simple, make-sense, outcome, will not either. I will just use Halifax, since it links to the same place as Halifax, Nova Scotia. (What I learned from this: Halifax, Nova Scotia doesn't exist. It's an idea of a place/city, but it was apparently torn-down completely in 1996--because that's what the pages reflect.) - Hooperswim (talk) 15:20, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

If I "don't care enough about the city", funny, because it isn't a city; I intend "to fix this" wherever I see this error, I hope this shows respect for the Government of Nova Scotia. I hope you don't actually think "Halifax, Nova Scotia" doesn't exist, because it does, it can mean several places. Just because you hit a disambiguation page, while surfing Wikipedia, doesn't mean you were wrong, it just means the term applies to many things. A couple of other examples I know of is Fairview, Alberta, and Springfield, Wisconsin. 117Avenue (talk) 02:56, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

change need on Canadian Provinces page

I was just on Provinces and territories of Canada, and they have Halifax as the largest city of Nova Scotia. From the discussion here, it seems to me that Halifax is no longer a city, and therefore it should not be listed as the largest city for the province. Someone should fix the other page(s) that also make this mistake. - Hooperswim (talk) 17:15, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Done, but this probably isn't the page to bring that up. 117Avenue (talk) 05:22, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, so now a non-city is listed in the city category: sounds good. - Hooperswim (talk) 15:22, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Edit warring

After the edit warring on this page, I have protected it for a week and started a discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2013_January_16#Halifax.2C_Nova_Scotia. The results of that discussion should be respected, and no further edit warring should take place. ‑Scottywong| communicate _ 18:16, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

"Demonym Density" in info box

I think that's a mistake. It doesn't mean anything. Anybody have any idea how to fix it? I think it's some kind of bug in the infobox. Maybe that's supposed to be the Metro density? 64.141.49.29 (talk) 22:20, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Main Page Link on 4/1/10 doesn't seem to be relevant

The main page link to this article on 4/1/10 reads "1996 – The government of Nova Scotia ordered the people of the City of Halifax to mate with over 200 multiple partners around the area." The words "to mate" are bold and are supposed to link to an article that is relevant to this main page title. It takes you to the Halifax article where there is no content about what the link says. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.69.4.81 (talk) 00:03, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

It looks to be temporary vandalism. I don't see any such link as of right now. —C.Fred (talk) 01:35, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Sable Island in Geography

From what I understand, Sable Island is part of the HRM, but it's only mentionned offhand once in the Economy section. Would someone with a bit of knowledge care to make a bolder mention of it somewhere, perhaps in the Geography section? Thanks, -M.Nelson (talk) 04:37, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Why I deleted the "Ethnic Groups" Table

It used data from the Statistics Canada Tables here: [1], yet it had the following problems:

• It called these classifications "Ethnic Groups", when in fact they are listed as "Visible minority population characteristics". NOT the same thing, and I'm not being politically correct.
• The table took the numbers for "No Visible Minority" and listed them as "White". That's completely incorrect. The numbers from the Stats Can info specifically counts aboriginal Canadians as non-visible minority, so this number includes people who are white, people who are aboriginal, and people who chose not to answer. Definitely not "White".
• The table had lumped together numbers for South Asian, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Japanese and Korean to come up with an "Asian" line in the table. This is original research, but it's also false. Even if you are one of those people who care what someone's visible minority designation is (i.e. what they look like), I don't think that you would consider people whose background is in China to look like those from Indonesia and/or those from Pakistan...

My primary concern is that this is invented data, NOT a replication of what the source actually says, and this is *especially* critical in such a delicate area. We have a table for Ethnic Origin, which is much more useful and interesting data. I don't believe that we need this pseudo-racial one. AshleyMorton (talk) 01:18, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think the whole table should have been removed. I actually found it to be more accurate than the current one. The current table shows that 37.7% of Haligonians claimed they are "Canadian", when in fact everyone in HRM is Canadian! It also shows a small population of Black/African people, which is less than half of the population taken from the removed table. While the removed table strictly shows the percentage of visible minorities and non-visible minorities, I find that it gives an accurate depiction of HRM's racial diversity. I agree, the Asians were lumped together, but they can be separated. Likewise, non-visible minorities are Whites and Aboriginals, that can also be fixed. If we can't agree on restoring the table, with some changes, we should list the top 4 or 5 visible minorities (and percentages), similar to the Toronto article. Blackjays1 (talk) 21:49, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I generally disagree that "racial diversity" is as interesting and relevant as the "origins" of the people in a place. Remember that this is about origins, so "Canadian" can be a valid option - One branch of my family has been in territory that would become Canada for 14 generations - therefore, "Canadian" is part of my origins. However, a recent immigrant has other origins. I completely agree that the recent immigrant IS Canadian, but that's different from having Canadian ethnic origin. I am, generally, opposed to these visible minority statistics. The only ones we have available are the Statistics Canada ones, and they have a raft of problems. For example, if someone puts down multiple responses, then there are formulas about what gets counted as a vis-min, and what not. (Black & White = vis min. Arabic & White = non-vis-min) For a thorough description of how this works, see [2]. The bit about what gets counted and what doesn't if you put down multiple responses is about 3/4 of the way down, under "Classifications". My biggest problem is really philosophical, though - This takes the concept of race, and treats it as if it's one of the defining elements of a place. I think that's bollocks. However, If we must, I'd be willing to buy into the "summary sentence" idea that you pointed to from the Toronto article. For one thing, it avoids the need for a "non-visibile minority" population number, which is one of the most frustrating things about the StatsCan data in general, and it certainly lends itself to having people show up and change the text to "White". So, how about the following:

In terms of simple visible minority status (as opposed to ethnic origin), the following are the four visible minority populations in the HRM for which there were more than one thousand respondents, as of the 2006 Census: Black (13,270 - 3.4%), Arab (3,840 - 1.0%), Chinese (3,105 - 0.8%) and South Asian (2,900 - 0.8%)

To reiterate, I don't think even that information should be included, but I'm not one to stand in the way of consenus, so I think that this would be the most appropriate way to display this information, if it is considered important enough at all.AshleyMorton (talk) 14:46, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the sentence that you provided would be fine. It should be considered important, partly because HRM is the center of Nova Scotia's black community, and also because the region has many other visible minorities and Aboriginals. Maybe the Aboriginal population can be included in that sentence (5,230 - 1.4%) [3]. Blackjays1 (talk) 05:23, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I feel strongly that we can't just mix it in - in Canada, "visible minority" does not include aboriginal Canadians, regardless of whether it seems like it should. See, this is part of the problem, and makes me stronger in my opposition to including this info - we're conflating two concepts: visible appearance ("visible minority") and ethnic heritage ("ethnic origin"). And StatsCan doesn't give us any way around it - they don't provide us with vis-min stats that include aboriginal identity. The only way to include aboriginal people in the vis-min stats to pull them from ethnic origin. But if we do THAT, then we should pull the "black" vis min stats from "African" ethnic identity. ...But wait, those numbers don't come out the same. See? I would like to see at least one or two more opinions that are not me or you. I am willing to go with the majority, but at the moment, we've only got we two who are speaking up.AshleyMorton (talk) 08:55, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

The Navy in Halifax

Being one of the two navy bases in the whole country, I can't believe that there isn't a section on the navy in Halifax. This is a serious deficiency for this article! — Preceding unsigned comment added by HiFlyChick (talk • contribs) 21:40, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Links to other languages

Since this is the article about the current municipality of Halifax I added the corresponding link to the German article about the municipality of Halifax.

There are a lot of other language articles about Halifax (the present city and municipality). I think we should also add them here.

Regards, Kmw2700 (talk) 03:06, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Halifax which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. --Jiang (talk) 20:43, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Collage Image

The collage is a problem - it only reflects landmarks of the urban core. At the very least shouldn't an image of the Peggy's Cove Lighthouse be included? If someone knows how to make changes to collage would you consider this suggestion.--Hantsheroes (talk) 12:13, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Halifax Regional Municipality/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: TBrandley (talk · contribs) 05:07, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I will be reviewing this nomination. TBrandley ^{(what's up)} 05:07, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry, but I have to quick-fail this nomination on the basis that the article contains mostly unsourced sections, some of which contain {{citation needed}} tags. Other large concerns include:

• The lead needs to meet WP:LEAD, thus needing to summarize every section.
• Please remove the airport climate data table, because it is located in a nearby community, not this for which a different table serves it directly above.
• The references that are already include are bare references, use {{cite web}}.
• Some of the external links fail WP:ELNO, which states it should only be based on the municipality itself and not its contents which are for seperate articles.
• There are mixed date formats, please check.

TBrandley ^{(what's up)} 15:37, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Requested links under "See also"

Hello, I suggest adding the following link under "See also": Destination Halifax.ReegieD (talk) 21:56, 20 November 2013 (UTC) ReegieD (Nov. 20, 2013)

Addition under "Tourism"

I propose someone add "Destination Halifax is a not-for-profit society fulfilling the role of destination marketing organization (DMO) for 201 communities within the Halifax Regional Municipality. It is a partnership between the Halifax Regional Municipality, the Hotel Association of Nova Scotia, the Province of Nova Scotia, and participating industry members. Its mandate is to dramatically increase tourism expenditures on a year round basis. The organization is responsible for promoting to both business and leisure travelers from external markets. The organization’s priority is sales and marketing programming directed to audiences in the domestic, cross border and international markets." ReegieD (talk) 22:02, 20 November 2013 (UTC) ReegieD (Nov. 20, 2013)

Requested move 2014

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Consensus is to move to Halifax, Nova Scotia. J04n(talk page) 13:38, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Halifax Regional Municipality → Halifax, Nova Scotia – The Regional Municipality have now had their say on this. Effective today, the name for all but the most formal legal processes is to be simply "Halifax". Here's the Municipality's "rebranding" site: [4]. Here are two news reports from local media: [5], [6]. Here is the report from the staff with the recommendation within it [7]. This has long been the accepted way to refer to the location in general, if not the formal Municipality. Even at that, it can be seen that most organisations ignore the "...Regional Municipality" outside of the most formal situations - the way people don't usually call it the "Commonwealth of Virginia" - they just call it "Virginia". Here's an example of that - the 2011 Census results, when searching for "Halifax" in Nova Scotia: [8] We can see that the Population Centre is called "Halifax", the Census Metropolitan Area is called "Halifax", and the Census Division is called "Halifax (Regional Municipality)". The airport is the "Halifax Stanfield International Airport", not the "Halifax Regional Municipality Stanfield Airport" [9]. Once (if!) this is accepted, I (and I'm sure others) will go about fixing the other required changes, such as the opening text, etc. Finally, this would much better meet every one of the Wikipedia Article Title guidelines: Recognisability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness and Consistency. AshleyMorton (talk) 03:18, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

• Alternative move it to Halifax and displace the disambiguation page to Halifax (disambiguation); considering its importance in WWI and WWII, and the Titanic disaster, this should be the primary topic. -- 65.94.77.36 (talk) 04:59, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose moving to just Halifax While I kind of support your argument, this would clearly be a very contentious move (as indicated by the very first comment response below). To me, finally, after all these years, having a clear indication from the Municipality means that we should finally be able to solve this efficiently. I worry that your proposal, meritworthy though it is, would make that process long and confused. AshleyMorton (talk) 11:48, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

• Confused There seem to be rather a lot of articles about various configurations of "Halifax" in Nova Scotia, to the point I'm not sure that Halifax, Nova Scotia is actually redirecting to the specific place most commonly given as "the Halifax in Nova Scotia". Strong oppose just "Halifax" - the British town and the bank are both highly prominent, and the regional municipality postdates all the events cited above. Timrollpickering (talk) 11:39, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
  • The confusion makes total sense. There has been a lot of argument around this issue, not least from a former mayor who was not from Halifax (former city), but found himself mayor of the broader regional municipality - he argued strongly against any usage other than all three words, or the acronym "HRM". Unfortunately, the resulting articles (not just their titles) reflect a fair bit of awkward writing done to be as true as possible to the titles - which were themselves significantly problematic. Therefore, the appropriate locations for text about e.g. pre-settlement history were tough to determine. As a result, *once* we have this title changed, I believe that we will be able to improve the coherence of all of the articles about this region. AshleyMorton (talk) 16:20, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

• Support but I might take it a step further. In the past I was opposed to the HRM article and the Halifax (former city) being merged. But now that they are named the exact same thing, maybe they should also be merged into one article. Other people used Toronto and London as an example for when the cities merged with surrounding cities that there continued to be only one article. -DJSasso (talk) 14:33, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I might support that, too, but I recommend we start with this step, so that the appropriate location for the "core article" becomes unambiguous. Then, we can identify which of the closely-linked articles should be restructured, and how. AshleyMorton (talk) 16:20, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
• Strong support This is overdue. WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CRITERIA support the move, and I believe WP:CANSTYLE does as well. It specifically mentions this case as a "special case" without really explaining why, or whether this is correct. The current title continues to WP:ASTONISH. For just one example, compare the results for "going to halifax nova scotia" versus "going to halifax regional municipality". Don't want to check the links? It's ~80,100 to 1. --BDD (talk) 19:14, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
• Strong support per BDD. Absent some elaboration regarding the basis for this peculiar name, there is no reason to maintain it as an exception to the normal conventions. The current title does indeed WP:ASTONISH. Xoloz (talk) 21:27, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
• Support. I've never understood why we've used an administrative name decided by government. At least now we don't have to use the WP:OFFICIALNAME. Zarcadia (talk) 17:14, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
• Support. Per BDD and Zarcadia. Name should never have been changed in the first place. Aloha27 (talk) 21:03, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
• Support Let common sense prevail. Saffron Blaze (talk) 00:56, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
• Support At last!!! Let the confusion of the Halifax's come to an end! Let's do this sooner rather then later...--Kylestewart98 (talk) 04:06, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
• Non Support The legal name is Halifax Regional Municipality the charter is 'The Halifax Regional Municipality Charter "and the press release clearly states the legal name did not change as Halifax NS is only the area within the former City of Halifax any change will create confusion between Halifax the Regional Municipality which no different CBRM and halifax the place name . There 288 place names in HRM has anyone looked at the civic address webpage . Halifax is not the whole HRM Halifax is where Halifax the place is .As for the airport it was Halifax Internal Airport before 1996 when HRM was created and it is not in Halifax but in Enfield — Preceding unsigned comment added by 19960401 (talk • contribs) 22:45, 19 April 2014‎
  • I cannot disagree more. effectively every other merged city on earth has exactly the same concerns, and effectively every other city has resolved this by using the name of the place, in the general sense, rather than the name of the Municipality. The decision by the Municipal Council confirms what everyone has been operating under in real life for a long time - the "place", in the general sense, is simply "Halifax". Of course, the formal municipal body will need to be described in the article, as will the evolution of the boundaries, including mention of where the former city had its borders (which have actually moved several times through history). Wikipedia policy is crystal clear on this - WP:OFFICIALNAME - "People often assume that, where an official name exists for the subject of a Wikipedia article, that name is ipso facto the correct title for the article, and that if the article is under another title then it should be moved. In many cases this is contrary to Wikipedia practice and policy." This is clearly the case here. "halifax the place name" *does* now apply to the entire area, and it is WP:ASTONISHing to see anything else there. Of course, Dartmouth is still Dartmouth, the same way that Etobicoke is still Etobicoke, but that does stop us from quite reasonably saying that it is "part of Halifax". The airport is a perfect example - it is in Enfield, of course, but it is the airport "for Halifax" and "of Halifax" - and when we say "Halifax" like that, we mean the general place - which is what this article is about. AshleyMorton (talk) 23:24, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
    • I disagree -Halifax Nova Scotia is boundaries are where the formal city of halifax where before Apil 1,1996 .That the legal placename determined by The Halifax Regional Municipality -nothing changed since other than what the civic address office changed and who has the only authority to determine the boundaries of the communities including Halifax NS .This article is about the Halifax Regional Municipality which the official name is the same just the "logo" changed there is a big difference between a logo and the legal corporate name of the municipality . Halifax NS is a placename where the old city of halifax existed just like Bedford , Dartmouth and Enfield nothing changed in any of these .The Halifax regional Municipality like the Cape Breton Regional Municipality are the corporate governance not the placename .If you lived in Glace Bay you do not say you are fron Cape Breton nor if you lived in Fall River like me we do not say we are from Halifax . Like I say There is a difference between a place and a municipality and this where people will getting confused . If this is the case than the article on the Cape Breton Regional Municipality should be "Cape Breton " and if this goes ahead I will be pushing wikipedia for that article to be changed . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 19960401 (talk • contribs) 00:11, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
      • Cape Breton as a place name has always referred to the island whereas Halifax has always referred to the city. The fact some politician forced the forming of the Halifax and Cape Breton regional municipalities should barely be a footnote. Saffron Blaze (talk) 02:56, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
      • The argument basically boils down to the idea that the formal boundaries from 1996 are the only things that can be, or ever should be, called just "Halifax". That is clear, and internally consistent, but clearly not what either Wikipedia, nor the world outside Wikipedia actually does. It is based on the faulty assumption that the existence of a formal government structure (even if that very government has chosen to ignore it most of the time) means that Wikipedia must use those titles always and forever. We can even repeat the Google test mentioned above with "Mayor of...", which should really be about the larger administrative place, not just the "former territory". For that, there are, in fact, 55,000 results for "Mayor of Halifax Regional Municipality" - but there are 250,000 for "Mayor of Halifax, Nova Scotia". It is worth noting that the territories of the former cities of Toronto, Montreal, St. John's, Hamilton, and Quebec City do generally all exist for some administrative purpose or other - perhaps Canada Post designations, wards in municipal elections, or school districts. And yet none of those have the need to have separate articles for the former city and for the new merged municipality that are titled based on the administrative entity - rather, they are simply Toronto, Montreal, St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Hamilton, Ontario and Quebec City. I don't say that we should copy them just 'cause they're big fish - rather I cite them to show that we're currently in a strange circumstance, and we should have a very good reason in order to maintain it - a reason that hasn't shown up yet. AshleyMorton (talk) 15:01, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
• Support; Personally it should have been like this from the start. "Halifax Regional Municipality" is a full, legal name. Halifax is still the WP:COMMONNAME. ViperSnake151  Talk  15:30, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hatnote Conflict

Okay, so the first edit conflict under the new title! The "hatnote" (the little italicized text at the top that helps people find other relevant articles) has had at least three versions over the last 24 hours or so, and some people (me included) who seem to have strong opinions on the issue. Here's my summary of the different versions:

a)

For the 1749–1996 city, see Halifax (former city). For other uses, see Halifax, Nova Scotia (disambiguation).

This version is the simplest, but contains the least information.

b)

For the 1749–1996 city and present day General Service Area, see Halifax (former city). For other uses, see Halifax, Nova Scotia (disambiguation).

This version includes a specific reference to the fact that Halifax (former city) is a "General Service Area".

c)

For the 1749–1996 city and present day General Service Area, see Halifax (former city). For other uses, see Halifax, Nova Scotia (disambiguation).

This version includes a wikilink to "General Service Area".

d)

For the 1749–1996 city and present day community, see Halifax (former city). For other uses, see Halifax, Nova Scotia (disambiguation).

This version uses the word "community" to wikilink to "General Service Area".

Two things: First, let's sort this out here on the talk page. This has changed so many times in the last day that it's silly. Second, it is my opinion that we should keep the simple version ("a)", above). This is the primary article, and I think that the other articles that people might be looking for (such as Halifax (electoral district), Downtown Halifax and Halifax (former city)) are more or less as likely as each other. I don't think that we can reliably say that people who search or type in "Halifax, Nova Scotia" will want the former city way more frequently than the other options. If this primary article is *not* what they want, then they really should go to the disambiguation page. AshleyMorton (talk) 13:46, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

• Go with a. The fact that it's a General Service Area is so unimportant that the article on the former gov't doesn't even mention it. Also, hatnotes are for disambiguation - they shouldn't explain anything except where the link is going, and explaining a General Service Area is not needed to tell where the link is going. Ego White Tray (talk) 14:18, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
• A is certainly the way to go. -DJSasso (talk) 14:41, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
• That someone is arguing to include that crap about GSA in the hatnote is appaling. That it even has its own article is suspect (merge or RFD that crap) This is an enclopedia, not a compendium of all municipal bureaucratic dogma. Saffron Blaze (talk) 15:47, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
• A (IMHO) is the right call. Aloha27 (talk) 11:25, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Why is there edit warring going on over this issue while it is being discussed here? Saffron Blaze (talk) 22:06, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Okay, as you mention, there has been a further, slightly different version put up now - I think that rather than calling it edit warring (which it might be), let's just keep the discussion going here. So, here it is:

e)

For the 1749–1996 city and present day community, see Halifax (former city). For other uses, see Halifax, Nova Scotia (disambiguation).

The difference between this and "d" is that it links to Community, instead of General Service Area.

To be honest, I don't think that this removes any of the weight of the previous opinions supportive of "a", above, but please speak up if you disagree. Most notably, I'm going to try (again) to contact the author about this. This author seems to have lots of desire to improve articles about Halifax, and lots of energy. I would love to collaborate with him/her. However, this specific issue, about the importance of General Service Areas, and definitions based on previous boundaries, is getting in the way. I hope that he/she will join the discussion here so that we can actually work together on this kind of stuff! AshleyMorton (talk) 02:49, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Just as GSA was too obscure to be of any encyclopedic use in a Hat, I don't think adding community adds any encyclopedic value. Instead of being obscure, it is too generic. A is still the only non complex yet useful choice. If an explanation is needed about the various iterations of "Halifax" it may be mentioned in the article space with appropriate links to a "main article" on the matter. The HAT is not a place to quibble. Unless of course you want a debate on whether the GSA is actually the community of today (did the community get to decide?). Frankly this fight with the Hat smells of sour grapes. Saffron Blaze (talk) 04:08, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

I am pretty sure the user in question is a sockpuppet of a user that had these same sets of fights about 7 years ago and was blocked and sockpuppeted at that time. Unfortunately its hard to proove since it was so long ago, all we have to go on is behaviour evidence. I am guessing the fact that the city making the announcement of going with the name Halifax, NS woke them back up. -DJSasso (talk) 11:46, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I see. Irrespective of that issue, I am going to change the hat to A and if I am reverted the instigator will be brought to ANI for a block. Saffron Blaze (talk) 13:42, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

The instigator has edited virtually EVERY geographical entry of NS communities to GSA's. Even Barrachois, Colchester County which consists of about three houses and a marina. Regards, Aloha27 (talk) 14:19, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

It's true. I have been trying my darnest to engage with this editor (see his/her talk page), but getting not much more than a repeat of the basic points - the person clearly feels that the formal, administrative boundaries of GSAs are the way that articles should be organised, and that anyone who sees thing differently really doesn't understand. I agree with the earlier suggestion of potential sockpuppetry. It certainly seems a possibility. Finally, I will note that it isn't actually a ridiculous idea to indicate the GSA in the infobox of some of these places, if there is no other formal definition. If they are used in an official capacity by the Provincial government, then okay. ...But we have to get the Halifax articles cleaned up and structured better. If this person absolutely blocks that, then we need to seek a block. However, as I said, he/she makes useful contributions, and I wish we could just redirect his/her work! AshleyMorton (talk) 14:51, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi all. Glad to have found this conversation as I have also suspected that user of being a sockpuppet of Matthvm, whose many accounts were banned in the past here (August 2006), here (January 2007), and here (July 2009). I also figured the city's rebranding exercise spurred him to come back here. I grew suspicious not only because he's doing the same edit warring on the same topics as before and has the same writing style, but also because the username takes the same YYYYMMDD date format as two other accounts which were previously banned. I think the present account simply slipped through the cracks during the last round of blockings. Maybe we could collaborate to get an administrator involved. The user has a contentious editing style which doesn't seem to have improved over half a decade, considering we are all here talking about it again... regards, Citobun (talk) 18:11, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah that is exactly the user I was talking about. I intend to put a sockpuppet request up if he keeps with the battling. But anyone else is free to do so if they think it should be done now. -DJSasso (talk) 12:37, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I do not see what the big deal the area of where the former city was is a community today that is in Nova Scotia is a General Service Area that is nothing changed since Halifax the city was dissolved in 1996 the area is called Halifax Nova Scotia .It has nothing to do with municipal dogma etc it all to do with someones interruption with rules that they claim that the they are right . I read the rules too its states that you also the articles have to be verified .19960401 15:05, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

First, let's be clear - the facts are not in doubt. What you just said about the area of the former City being a GSA is true. The question is whether it should be in the hatnote. The response, in line with Wikipedia policy and the experiences of the editors participating above seems to be a pretty clear "no". I would be interested to hear from you why you feel that it must be in the hatnote (not whether it is a GSA - we know it is). There are lots of true things that are not in the hatnote (for example, the latitude of the city, the fact that it's on a peninsula, or the fact that my cat is named Frank.) The question is about why that particular piece of information is necessary to help people find the article they're looking for.AshleyMorton (talk) 15:19, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

• There is a simpler issue. Current GSA and Current Community are not explicit enough to be in a Hat. They do not offer any level of differentiation, which is the role of hat, as there are many un-named GSAs and Communities. So saying current GSA could easly be construed as the former city being the only GSA. 19:21, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Too much of an ad

This article on Halifax ,Halifax Regional Municipality is becoming too much of an ad for Downtown Halifax -Great Halifax -whatever because some of these editors seam to know the instant when to write the sahttps://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/07/launching-a-privacy-policy-built-the-wiki-way/me propaganda whenever those three organizations . In fact one of has ties to and made a donation to Halifax Regional Council members campaian . hfxfail Wikipedia is not suppose to be an ad website or a propaganda outlet its suppose to be a encyclopedia . — Preceding unsigned comment added by Easternhfx (talk • contribs)

This article is not an ad, it is a factual article on the HRM. The fact that you are not impressed with the changes the municipality made is irrelevant. If we were to remove all mention of those changes when we would be hiding the truth of the matter and would actually then be propaganda for people against the changes. The changes are explained and opinions on both sides of the matter are mentioned so it is a fair and balance representation. -DJSasso (talk) 13:03, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

The video you link to effectively makes the argument that Municipal resources that should have been going to the various services have been instead going to Wikipedia editing. I don't know about the other editors, but I can guarantee you that I am not in any way paid by the Municipality.

Regarding the name of the article, the place is, and has been since the founding of the Town of Halifax, called "Halifax". That is the common name of the place, and it is what should be used as the article's name. At the same time, I completely support the idea that the article should not be "an ad for Downtown Halifax". Many cities' articles manage the issue of different neighbourhoods (many of which were formerly independent municipalities) quite well. See, for example, the Toronto "Neighbourhoods" section. Similarly, the Bronx is mentioned dozens of times in the New York City article. I will support (and assist with proofreading, etc.) efforts to flesh out the diversity of the article, so that it isn't just the "ad" that you're worried about. However, as someone who moved to the Peninsula when I moved to Halifax, it will probably have to be others who do the work of fleshing out text in other areas. On that front, I can't see that you've actually made an effort to add any text to the article that would improve it. Until and unless you do that, your argument will be weak, to say the least. In fact, your account was created in early May, clearly to grind an axe on this issue. I really hope that you might consider using your energy to improve the articles, rather than fight about their names. AshleyMorton (talk) 00:27, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

The authors are puppet's of the municipality 83.71.193.244 (talk) 06:07, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

On the name, it should have been Halifax from the start per WP:COMMONNAME. Those pushing HRM as the name of the article are basically showing favoritism. ViperSnake151  Talk  02:17, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Another go-around on Ethnic / Visible Minority Statistics

Hi all. I deleted a table of statistics this morning, and here's why:

• The statistics cited a source that had nothing to do with the data (the source cited was for Pickering, Ontario)
• The statistics had been modified in order to be included in the article (A category for "White", that did not exist in the data, had been created).
• The table listed as "Ethnicity" a group of categories that were actually about "Visible Minority" or "Aboriginal Identity" groups (closer to "race" than "ethnicity", but certainly not what was being advertised).
• The table included a really selective listing of the author's thoughts on ethnicity. For example, "Inuit" was listed, with 155 people, and apparently 0% of the population, yet there was a category called "Other Visible Minorities" that had over 6,000 people in it.
• The core problem, however, is that this takes "Aboriginal identity" numbers, mixes them into "Visible Minority" status, does some mathematics to come up with a remainder, invents a category called "White", publishes it under the label "Ethnicity", and then provides a source that has nothing to do with the topic. It is original research that borders on fiction, with a link to an irrelevant source.

Then, without addressing the concerns (truncated, I know) that I put in the edit summary, my edit was reverted. The edit summary for the reversion claimed that the source was "reputable", which it is, but its statistics about Pickering are still not relevant for Halifax, and the statistics for Visible Minorities and Aboriginal Identity are not the same thing as Ethnicity. Please see the discussion that took place 3 years ago (above). I believe that this was done in good faith, but I still believe that it was incorrect. So I reverted it, and started writing this explanation. Before I could finish, it had been reverted again. So - I'm going to delete this material again, now that I've explained why I believe that it cannot be included. I understand that some will say "then make it better", but I believe I did several years ago when I included the "Ethnic Origin" table further down the same section. This data is really just manufactured, and in my opinion neither it, nor anything closely similar can be included. AshleyMorton (talk) 14:48, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Here's an idea, why don't we just redo the table without linking the Pickering stats as a source? IMO, this issue would be resolved if it linked to the Halifax stats only. Or if the table is too much, why don't we just list the top 5 visible minority groups by population percentage, alongside the Aboriginal population percentage, in a sentence? I think that's better than completely removing the table, with no mention of visible minorities and Aboriginals afterwards, and relying solely on the ethnic origin responses as the be-all end-all. Blackjays1 (talk) 04:28, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, I don't personally think that's of huge value, but I totally understand that some people would disagree with me. As long as the data isn't original research, isn't so large as to take over the entire section, and cites a reasonable source (the StatsCan sources for this stuff aren't too hard to find), then I won't go deleting it again. Your suggestion seems completely reasonable to me. AshleyMorton (talk) 17:34, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Strangely if you add up the english scotish and irish you dont get a logical number. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.173.144.213 (talk) 13:45, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Municipality vs. Metropolitan Area

I see in the infobox the metropolitan and municipality population figures are different. In the case of Halifax, isn't the municipality the only component of the CMA? So, wouldn't that mean the figures should be idenitical? --Criticalthinker (talk) 11:17, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

The Metropolitan area is smaller than the municipality. I believe Metro is only made up for Dartmouth, Halifax, Bedford and Lower Sackville. The rest of the municipality isn't part of the Metro area. -DJSasso (talk) 14:43, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Interesting. I was under the impression that the base components of CMAs were municipalities. What are the base components for CMAs in Canada? Statistical divisions like Census tracts? --Criticalthinker (talk) 12:09, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I would have to look to be sure. But I can say that the Halifax Regional Municipality which is what this page is about (although its recently been moved to hits common name of Halifax, Nova Scotia) is alot different than most municipalities. It used to be a number of different cities and has since been made a single municipality covering hundreds of square kilometers. I am guessing due to this it may be handled slightly differently by Stats Canada. -DJSasso (talk) 16:23, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

This article is relevant. -DJSasso (talk) 16:25, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I figured as much (that census subdivisions are used as the base components). Unfortunately, it still leaves me confused about Halifax in particularly. I'm guessing that for statistical purposes, maybe Halifax is a special case that the municipality is actually divided into census subdivisons, where as in almost all other cases a municipality is, itself, a census subdivisions. But, I can't confirm this. Perhaps, if someone could find a map showing the CMA as it relates to the municipal boundaries, that would be helpful. And, if Halifax is a special case, that would certainly be worthy of note both the page describing census subdivisions and Halifax's article. Thanks for all of your help thus far, though. --Criticalthinker (talk) 14:51, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

A week and a half has passed with no input or objection, so I've merged the content from Metropolitan Halifax into this page. Citobun (talk) 14:16, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

---

I propose merging Metropolitan Halifax into Halifax, Nova Scotia. Most of what appears in Metropolitan Halifax already appears in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A separate article seems unnecessary and, being made up of redundant content, makes maintenance more difficult. It causes unnecessary confusion – and a number of articles link to Metropolitan Halifax when there is no reason for them not to simply link to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The concept of the "urban area" can easily be explained within a subsection of Halifax, Nova Scotia – which is already the case (section 2.1). Citobun (talk) 09:23, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Info Box Pictures

The infobox pictures do not represent the whole of the Halifax Regional Municipality it only represents the area of the downtown area of Halifax 142.177.130.26 (talk) 13:22, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

This is a good point. Some of the most iconic Halifax things are clearly in the core, and you couldn't have a Halifax article without a picture of the bridges, but I think having a picture of one of the Eastern Shore fishing wharves or one of the great beaches would definitely fit, and make it better. AshleyMorton (talk) 12:20, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

"Unusual" angles and locations...

In this paragraph:

"The urban core is home to several blocks of typical North American high-rise office buildings, however segments of the downtown are governed by height restrictions which prevent buildings from obstructing certain sight lines between Citadel Hill and Halifax Harbour. This has resulted in some modern high rises being built at unusual angles or locations."

What's so "unusual"? According to whom?

"Unusual" in this context is a weasel word. This sentence is essentially meaningless.

Agreed. The sentence could be removed. Magnolia677 (talk) 12:16, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Halifax photo hunt

During my last visit to Halifax I tried to add photos to some articles that didn't have any. But there are still many Halifax-related articles without photos of the main subject, or missing photos altogether. I've collected 50 below. Can any residents of Halifax help?

For anyone is unfamiliar with the process of contributing your own photos to Wikipedia, please see Wikipedia:Uploading images. In a nutshell, you must upload it to Wikimedia Commons, which entails releasing it under a free licence. Then you can add it to the article here on Wikipedia.

Once you add a photo, please strike out the article name in this list and leave a note if you like. Cheers, Citobun (talk) 10:19, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

1. Albro Lake, Nova Scotia
2. Alexander Keith's Brewery
3. Armbrae Academy
4. Armdale, Nova Scotia
5. Atlantic Canada Aviation Museum
6. Atlantic School of Theology
7. Bedford Highway
8. Bedford Institute of Oceanography
9. Beth Israel Synagogue
10. Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia
11. Canada Games Centre
12. Casino Nova Scotia
13. Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility
14. Cogswell Interchange
15. Conrose Field
16. Cornwallis Street Baptist Church
17. Dartmouth General Hospital
18. Dartmouth Sportsplex
19. Downtown Dartmouth (thanks WayeMason)
20. Ecole Oxford School
21. Emera Oval
22. Fort Massey Cemetery
23. Grand Parade (general view)
24. Halifax Central Junior High
25. Halifax Shopping Centre
26. Halifax Urban Greenway
27. Harbour Solutions
28. Herring Cove, Nova Scotia
29. Highfield Park, Nova Scotia
30. Huskies Stadium
31. Holy Cross Cemetery, Halifax
32. J. L. Ilsley High School
33. Lake Micmac
34. Larry O'Connell Field
35. Lawlor Island
36. Long Lake Provincial Park
37. Mount Saint Vincent University
38. Nova Scotia Power (headquarters building)
39. Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame
40. Neptune Theatre (Halifax)
41. Pennant Point, Nova Scotia
42. RCAF Station Beaverbank
43. Sacred Heart School of Halifax
44. Spryfield, Nova Scotia
45. Sunnyside Mall
46. Uniacke Square
47. Volvo Halifax Assembly
48. Wallace Heights, Nova Scotia
49. Waterside Centre
50. Westin Nova Scotian (present-day photo)

I have been meaning to do this for awhile. Maybe I will take a weekend to do this later this month or next. -DJSasso (talk) 13:55, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I can do the downtown ones maybe even later on today. I have a meet at 4pm and if the rest of my day goes well I can head out a bit early. WayeMason (talk) 13:47, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Done ones struck out above, you can see them here have not had time to place them! https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/WayeMason WayeMason (talk) 21:22, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Placed them!  :) WayeMason (talk) 23:25, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Waye! Fantastic photo of the Grand Parade. Citobun (talk) 04:32, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

A couple more articles that need photos:

• Chocolate Lake
• Texpark site

I will try to chip away at this next time I visit. Citobun (talk) 05:42, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I got HRM corporate communications to rights release a bunch of photos. Reasonably high res but not print quality, unfortunately. Have not had time to correlate them to the list above! See them here: [10] WayeMason (talk) 00:17, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Halifax Explosion

the SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship carrying munitions, collided with the Belgian Relief vessel SS Imo; but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion states The Norwegian vessel SS Imo collided with SS Mont-Blanc, albeit chartered by the Commission for Relief in Belgium.--Manfariel (talk) 11:31, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

• A great deal of discussion has taken place as to how the collision occurred. The Halifax Explosion website [11] states that Imo sliced into the hull of Mont-Blanc. Ergo the Imo collided with Mont-Blanc. Regards,   Aloha27  talk  19:55, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

The number of "Halifax" articles

I hate to bring this up for the millionth time, but honestly, there are too many articles for this city. None are particularly well-written. We shouldn't be divvying up a ton of articles based on administrative entities past and present, there ought to be a single "Halifax" article based on the entire HRM, with sections explaining the nuances of the administrative system and districts within the city. Kinou (talk) 07:50, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. It's unfortunate that the history of Halifax's municipal government is so complex, but that's no reason not to have a single proper article governing the city, which is a good deal more notable than any of the various councils who have governed it. David Arthur (talk) 15:03, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I think a first step would be to rename the main article "Halifax, Nova Scotia" or something, in the same way that the article on Denver is named as such, and not "City and County of Denver". I don't know that the city has a terribly unusual governmental history - it's just that they called the new entity a "regional municipality" rather than a "city" like other places did. Kinou (talk) 13:23, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

It's a problem that exists on some level for most large places in Canada, because of the way local government is run. In Britain, if they merged all the councils in (for example) the Manchester area, the resulting body would probably be called 'Greater Manchester Council', and no one would dream of saying Salford had ceased to exist; in Canada, though, it tends to be called a 'city', and so people argue that Scarborough and Etobicoke are now 'former suburbs' of Toronto, or try to erase them entirely. (In Sweden, terms like 'city and 'town' have no role in local government, so everyone is quite willing to accept that Uppsala kommun is within Uppsala county, and that neither council is synonymous with the actual city of Uppsala.) This seems to produce more arguments in Halifax than elsewhere, though – whether it's because of the physical distinction between Halifax and Dartmouth, or the term 'regional municipality' I don't know.

I agree that a re-naming is the best place to start, although it gets difficult to decide which really is the 'main' article in this case. We have Halifax, Nova Scotia, Halifax Regional Municipality, Metropolitan Halifax, Mainland Halifax, City of Halifax, Halifax County, Nova Scotia, Halifax Peninsula, and possibly others I haven't noticed; at most I think two main articles are justified here, though the exact division of content would take some thought. David Arthur (talk) 14:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The place "Halifax, Nova Scotia" is legal place as per the article City of Halifax. However Halifax Regional Municipality is not place in particular but an area that represents the area the Halifax Regional Council governs . Its not proper to refer the people living in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia or Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia as living in Halifax . Also the fact that there is no incorporated cities in the Nova Scotia Halifax Regional Municipality is not a city . I think it based on fact and what is in the real world if you want to change the article you base it on the real world and not it should be . Remember the Halifax Regional Council voted for the name to stay to be Halifax Regional Municipality not Halifax, Nova Scotia. People identify themselves from their community not their municipality. I say for the millionth time leave it alone . Cherry1000 (talk) 18:07, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware that this issue has been discussed multiple times without reaching a satisfactory conclusion. The problem is that as it stands, Wikipedia is so obsessed with accurately representing the confusion created by the multiple forms of local government and geography, that it simply does not provide useful coverage of Halifax. It would be far better to have one or two consolidated articles, which can cover the physical city and area, and explain the organisational complexities rather than requiring that readers already understand them as a prerequisite to finding any information. David Arthur (talk) 18:58, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

First the Halifax Regional Municipality is not a city its a Regional Municipality in fact there are no incorporated cities in Nova Scotia since 1996 . Secondly Halifax, Nova Scotia is not the Halifax Regional Municipality and it never will be . Thirdly the communities have their separate histories ,economies , and geography that its impossible to put in all one article to describe.Let put this way Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, City of Halifax and Bedford, Nova Scotia are three completely different communities that are completely different from each other . The only thing they have in common is they all are next to the Halifax Harbour that it . There 288 other communities that nothing in common with City of Halifax or Dartmouth, Nova Scotia other the fact they were in the former Halifax County, Nova Scotia . Any article of anyplace in wikipedia has to reflect the real nature of the place based on fact not a condensed version just on an authors wishes . The article City of Halifax is titled wrong it should be "Halifax, Nova Scotia" just as if you sending a letter there and the "Civic Address office of the Halifax Regional Municipality " has for civic and postal addressing . Cherry1000 (talk) 03:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Might as well add my opinion: create Halifax, Nova Scotia, based primarily on the current article City of Halifax, and use it as the beginning for an article about the city -- the history, urban geography, society, landmarks, tourism, and so forth -- what people mean when they say "I'm going to Halifax" or "I live in Halifax." Summarize the evolution of the municipal government in Halifax, Nova Scotia, providing more detail in City of Halifax (about the former city municipality) and Halifax Regional Municipality (about the current HRM, from a government point of view). Agree with the above that the current situation is untenable. I can't even write that the Princess Royal was supposed to travel to Halifax without any link users abruptly getting a crash course on the minutiae of Nova Scotia municipal politics just to find out what the freaking city is. -- Montréalais (talk) 14:52, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree. It needs to be split into one article on the city of Halifax itself, and another dealing with the local government issues in a separate HRM article. Other notable communities in the HRM, like Dartmouth, should have their own article. Referring to a place as far away as Ecum Secum, as being part of Halifax, is ridiculous. 142.165.239.230 (talk) 17:33, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I find that Halifax shares a lot in common with Honolulu - perhaps that can be a model for any reorganization effort. In common usage, Honolulu refers to the urban area on the southeast coast of the island of Oahu from Pearl Harbor to Makapuu Point. But like Nova Scotia, Hawaii has no municipalities below the county level, so the entity that governs Honolulu, the City and County of Honolulu, encompasses not just urban Honolulu but the entire island, including rural areas on the other side of Oahu (geographically and culturally). I personally live on the east coast of Oahu in the suburban beachside community of Kailua, so I get the same services there as those in "town" would. But you wouldn't hear me say that I live in Honolulu unless I'm far from home talking with someone unfamiliar with local geography. I would probably recommend getting some sort of a consensus about what area comes most to mind when you say "Halifax" - is it the HRM or some subset of it? - and set that as the default article with cross-references as necessary. The Honolulu article, for instance, focuses on the urbanized area with some discussion of the consolidated city-county arrangement, with more details in the Honolulu County, Hawaii article. And Oahu deals with the area from a geographic point of view. Just my 2 cents (which at current exchange rates is just about the same in CAD as in USD). KeithH (talk) 20:01, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

It's been a few years, and nobody's made a move, but I concur: the main article should be called "Halifax, Nova Scotia". Mark M (talk) 15:09, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually things were changed about two months back now with a solution that appeased most people involved in the discussion. -DJSasso (talk) 16:43, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

As Wiki is always moving forward and never stuck in the past, such a discussion can be ongoing as long as the article is not changed willy-nilly. It is ludicrous to me to call this article which is about the HRM "Halifax", especially as the article acknowledges that the correct title of the subject of the article is "formally the HRM". No one I know who is not from Halifax calls it that or says they are from Halifax. They say "Dartmouth" or "Bedford" or "Sackville", etc.

(link to discussion?) Oh.. well, it still seems silly. It really feels like "Halifax, Nova Scotia" should be an article.. Mark M (talk) 18:26, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

This article minimally needs to be renamed to Halifax Regional Municipality. No one calls HRM "Halifax". Whenever someone says "Halifax", he's referring to the former city. HRM isn't really even used as a place name. People always talk about Halifax, Dartmouth, or Bedford. Ideally, there would be a short article, maybe a paragraph long about HRM, and a separate article for each city or town within HRM. It's also highly misleading to title the article "Halifax", say that it's legally known as the Halifax Regional Municipality, and then use "Halifax" throughout the article, when no local would ever use "Halifax" to refer to the entire HRM. Also, no local thinks of the entire HRM as a single place. It's a huge area encompassing two cities, a town, several small villages and a huge rural area. Each community should have its own article.

I get the impression that there are people who aren't from the area pushing for an oversimplification which simply does not reflect reality. Another absurdity that this has produced is the term "Haligonian" under "Demonym(s)". "Haligonian" is the demonym for a person from Halifax, not for a person from HRM. There is no demonym for someone from HRM.

Finally, it doesn't make sense to have a single article for such a large place with many communities that are thought of as being distinct places. To make clear how absurd this is, imagine that all of Nova Scotia were amalgamated into a single municipality. Would you really object to there being separate articles each community in Nova Scotia?

Another of way of thinking of it is as follows. Would you deny that there exists a city in HRM? Because legally there isn't. But I'm sure we can all agree that the city of Halifax exists still. It didn't disappear in 1996. We should have an article on the city even though it isn't legally recognized. Rectipaedia (talk) 23:59, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

IMO. As HRM is an entity for governmental purposes only and may be obliterated at any time with the stroke of a pen the article as it stands is the correct way to go. Regards,   Aloha27  talk  00:50, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

A discussion on this happened in the last year. (this discussion you responded to is very old there have been many since) Ihe article used to be named HRM and was changed because outside of the HRM this is all called Halifax. Living here I agree people call the different areas by their different names, but that is no different than most cities which call different neighbourhoods by their names while people outside those cities would know it as a collective name. In the case of Halifax, almost no one out of the region even has a clue that the name Halifax Regional Municipality exists. I know I didn't prior to moving here. And because we write for a global audience not a local one, we go by the common name for the area which is simply Halifax, Nova Scotia. -DJSasso (talk) 19:28, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Halifax is not the common name for Halifax Regional Municipality. It's the name of the former city. Dartmouth is not a part of Halifax. Sackville is not a part of Halifax. Ecum Secum is definitely not a part of Halifax. It doesn't matter if people outside the area are ignorant. The proper names should be used. They haven't heard of Yarmouth or Truro either. That doesn't mean we should pretend that those places are part of Halifax. Halifax is not the legal name of the place. It's not the common name of the place. It just happens to be part of the official name. Maybe you're forgetting how big HRM is. It's not like Dartmouth and Halifax merged together and became one city. It includes the entire county! Halifax is less than 5% of the area. You can drive for two hours through undeveloped forest and still be in HRM. Even people from outside the province would never consider themselves to be in Halifax at that point. People from outside Nova Scotia think of Halifax as a city. HRM is not a city. It's a municipality. It's mostly undeveloped forest. It's not like Toronto which is nothing but urban area and is a small part of the larger metropolitan area. Halifax and the surrounding urban area is a tiny part of HRM. I just can't emphasize enough how absurd it is to call HRM Halifax to someone who grew up here. We just don't think of it that way. It would be like renaming all of southern Ontario Toronto if the area were merged into a single municipality for some reason. Such an absurd decision could not be justified by explaining that some people don't know what Guelph is. A final example of how the article just doesn't make sense when you call it Halifax, if you're from Dartmouth, you're not a Haligonian. So the part that says that Haligonian is the demonym no longer makes any sense. Finally, Halifax is not a neighbourhood of HRM. It's its own place. Haligonians have little to do with Dartmouth. We don't know people who live there. We don't go there. We don't know the streets there. It's physically separated by the harbour. It's a different city. Rectipaedia (talk) 03:15, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

K'jipuktuk

The Mi'kmaq name for the city is "K'jipuktuk" (media source: http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/local-organization-refers-to-halifax-by-mi-kmaq-name-1.2112417 ). This should be in the article in some way; suggestions as to how? DS (talk) 21:02, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

I am in the process of rewriting the "History" section. Could be incorporated into the opening paragraph about indigenous settlement, with a note about modern-day usage – cited to your link? Ben MacLeod (talk) 13:50, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

It would certainly seem reasonable, to me, to include this in the infobox. A reasonable example, to me, would be Newport, Wales. Welsh is a minority language in Newport, though it clearly has historical status, and there's no question that Welsh is a live, valid language in other parts of the country (as is Mi'kmaq - there are Nova Scotia communities where it's the majority first language). So, you can see in the Newport article, that "Newport" is at the top of the infobox, in standard font. "Casnewydd", which is the name in Welsh, is immediately below, but shown in italics. I think this communicates that it's not "official", but it's still relevant for users of the English-language Wikipedia to know of as a current-day placename (It's become common in certain circles to use it for newspaper articles. AshleyMorton (talk) 23:52, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Let's give it until the 20th to see if there's any better suggestions? DS (talk) 17:37, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AshleyMorton (talk • contribs) 18:41, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Living here I have never even seen reference to this name before which leads me to believe it is not common enough to be in the infobox. Completely agree that putting it into the prose of the article would make a lot of sense. -DJSasso (talk) 23:24, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not heavily emotionally invested in this, but here's where I've heard/seen it (I also live in Halifax):

      ° The Ecology Action Centre uses it on all of their press releases: [12] [13]
      ° So does Halifax Pride [14]
      ° Articles published the Halifax Media Co-op use it in their byline, and sometimes in their direct content: [15] [16]
      ° Mount St. Vincent University used it for an exhibition: [17]
      ° Several of the professors at NSCAD University use it to describe where they work: [18] [19]
      ° ADSUM, a local women's shelter uses it to describe where they are. [20]

To be clear, I'm not at all suggesting that this is a primary name, particularly not *in English* - that's obviously just "Halifax". All the same, I think that it's a relevant-enough "non-English name" to be included in the infobox, the way that Welsh names are, even in the English-dominant parts of Wales, and Cornish is for Cornwall, even though Cornish is a functionally-dead language.AshleyMorton (talk) 13:28, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

The difference of course being that Welsh is the primary language in much of Wales or atleast neck and neck with English. And to be clear, I wasn't saying it isn't used. Just that it isn't one of the most important points of information in the article which is what everything in the infobox is supposed to be. But yeah it isn't something I am going to rally against or anything, just don't think its an important point to be in the infobox . Its a slippery slope because then you have to consider things like the Acadian name for the area prior to the English since if anything there is a larger french presence here than Mi'kmaq. I think its just more appropriate for that level of detail to be in the prose instead. -DJSasso (talk) 17:37, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Couple of things here: a) The Acadians didn't have a name for Halifax, because there was never an Acadian community here, unless I'm solidly mistaken. To the degree they ever needed to refer to the place, they just used loose approximations of the Mi'kmaw names. b) It seems to be Wikipedia's stance to use locally-important names as secondary in the infobox, even if they're not widely used. I cited Cornwall earlier, but Brittany is another good example, as well as Cape Town, Auckland, Glasgow and Yellowknife. At the end of the day, it will only make the article better, not worse, and I think it should be included front-and-centre in the infobox. AshleyMorton (talk) 03:12, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Okay. Any more suggestions, comments, objections? DS (talk) 20:13, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

After five days with no further comments, I've added "K'jipuktuk" to the infobox. DS (talk) 00:53, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

So I have been you know busy doing other things - but HRM is not K'jipuktuk. That word refers to the harbour and area, and HRM is 5500 square KM of other geographic and cultural places and spaces all of which have different Mi'kmaw names. I think the settlement along the peninsula was absolutely in K'jipuktuk, I do not think Bedford, Dartmouth would have been called that and certainly not Cole Harbour and Hammonds Plains. So it is a nice thought but it is kind of still weirdly colonial to apply that place name to a post colonial political division that does not align with pre-colonial boundaries and place names. WayeMason (talk) 15:47, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

The MAP of Halifax HRM is wrong

The map is wrong. Halifax HRM extends to the Musquodoboit river only. The map shown in this article shows the legal boundary of Halifax COUNTY. Not HRM. Please fix this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.89.229.157 (talk) 18:41, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

"Haligonians" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Haligonians. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. feminist (talk) 12:52, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

unceded territory

I don't think the fact that a school board decides to announce unceded territory (the provided reference) counts as support for the fact that the territory is unceded - it only supports the fact that the school board has in fact decided something. I've been looking for a clear statement that this is unceded territory. The best I have come up with is this: https://novascotia.ca/abor/office/what-we-do/negotiations/current-status/ "The Mi'kmaq of Nova Scotia claim Aboriginal title to the lands and waters of Nova Scotia and adjacent areas of the offshore, and maintain that they did not give up their land rights through treaty, voluntary cession, or otherwise." But this too does not support anything beyond the fact that "the Mi'kmaq ... claim ... and maintain...." Anyone have a better source? --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 23:57, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

I think the school board would not do something that public without studying it first. That said, there are references in books, not the internet. I'll do some digging. Alaney2k (talk) 15:47, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Shouldn't the onus be in the other direction, though? Presumably, if territory was once someone's, and they ceded it to someone else, then there should be evidence of that. Proving a negative (that there has never been an act of cession) can be almost impossible, because you have to prove that you have explored all possible avenues and come up empty. I'm not trying to be combatative here, but... are you aware of any proof *of* cession? If it happened, then it should be pretty straightforward to demonstrate. For example, there are all of the numbered treaties across the Prairies. There are clear arguments that they were unfair, illegal, etc. - but no one can debate the idea that they exist, and that they discuss transferring land to the Crown. In reading the treaties that concerned Mi'kmaq groups (texts available through links here: [21]), it's tough to find any indication that land was ever ceded... AshleyMorton (talk) 15:27, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Since the British decided that they had taken the land by conquest by defeating France, and rejected the Mi'kmaq's proposed boundaries, I don't think there is anything to find like that. Alaney2k (talk) 15:47, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, but normally, when someone takes something by conquest (as happened in Europe for millennia...) there is usually some document at the end of it all, saying who now owns what. We can debate the legitimacy of taking territory by force, I suppose, but there's still normally something in writing. I don't think we even need to have that debate. We can just say that no Mi'kmaw group ever actually signed a document (or equivalent) saying "Yes, this is your land - no longer ours." That, to me is the definition of "unceded" - Even if *you* believe that you've taken this, *we* haven't agreed. ("you" and "we" in that sentence aren't meant to be from my voice - I'm not Mi'kmaq.) AshleyMorton (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't think we need to find proof that it is unceded, just a statement that someone with authority claims that it is unceded. I understand the absence of proof is not proof of absence, etc, but the government of NS does not state anywhere that this is unceded land. When I do a Google search "nova scotia unceded mi'kmaq land" I find the CBC, a school board, "activists", and Prof. Paul. I suggest the sentence be changed to "Halifax is located on land which many, including the government of Nova Scotia, acknowledge as land which the Mi'kmaq peoples claim to be unceded" Richardson mcphillips (talk) 01:18, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Historians have analyzed the treaties. The Mikmaq agreed to surrender and not fight the British. They then proposed boundaries that were rejected by the British. There is no land claim treaty. Not to be too critical, but I think your sentence is too unwieldy. More like "Halifax is located on land which the government of Nova Scotia acknowledges is Mi'kmaq unceded territory." Alaney2k (talk) 15:25, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

They agreed to surrender, the first paragraph in the Treaty of Peace and Friendship shows that. It also claims that the Native populations will not attack Fort Anne, the capital at the time. Fort Anne was attacked 6 times. The "unceded" arguments comes from the British claim that they would only build on Fort Anne and Canso, provided they were not attacked. They were. To the British at the time, they believed that voided the Treaty, and they build on Halifax. Halifax did not "become" the Capital, as per the article, rather it was built explicitly to BE the Capital as Fort Anne was considered undefendable, given it was attacked at least 6 times. -Kirkoconnell (talk) 22:27, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

The Government of Canada -- in whose supreme interest it would be to maintain that the Mi'kmaq did cede their land in the treaties you mention (there was more than one) -- says they didn't cede the land. Period. 2607:FEA8:BFA0:BD0:F044:E397:D8E7:80F9 (talk) 01:33, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Misinformation about Halifax being the capital!

The Halifax Regional Municipality is the capital of Nova Scotia, NOT Halifax. Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford and Sackville are all the major centers that now make up the HRM. Halifax ceased being the capital during amalgamation when the HRM became the new capital. Gargramel (talk) 14:03, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

The HRM has rebranded itself as Halifax, so it isn't misinformation. -DJSasso (talk) 19:50, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Its still Halifax Regional Municipality. They only shortened the logo slogan to Halifax. Its still called the Halifax Regional Municipality by 911 services and canada post. It should be renamed Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia with the article mentioning how it is often called Halifax for short. -Freakboy (talk) 00:32, 21 August 2021 (ADT)

It was at that name and an RfC decided that it should be moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia because outside of Nova Scotia it is never called that so its common name is Halifax, Nova Scotia. It is definitely HRM officially no doubt, but we use common names on Wikipedia. And since the municipality also uses only Halifax on all their signs and documents now, the case for it being the common name is even stronger than it was when the consensus agreed to move it. -DJSasso (talk) 19:32, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Fastest population growth - okay to include in the article?

From the current [6] source in the article, we can see that among the 25 largest municipalities in Canada, Halifax stands at 6th place in terms of fastest population growth between 2016 and 2021. Will it be okay to state so in the same sentence in the article?  Latin Beau  18:33, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Proposed history page move

I propose that the Wikipedia article about the history of Halifax and the HRM, currently found at Community of Halifax, Nova Scotia, should be moved to History of Halifax (former city) and the Halifax Regional Municipality. The name is a bit longer and clumsier than I would prefer, but it's more logical than the current name because it accurately reflects the actual page topic. Feel free to join the discussion. Carguychris (talk) 17:09, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I've changed the proposed title to History of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Simpler and more logical. Carguychris (talk) 23:15, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Geographic Location

Hi folks. This seems to fall broadly into the same category as a number of topics that have been on the go here a fair bit lately: the geographic point for the article. User:Vbond changed it to a point in the downtown core of Halifax, and then User:19960401 changed it back. I understand the arguments - one is about the concept of Halifax as a place, regardless of its municipal borders, the other is an identification of the centre of the municipality. Actually, I'm not as sure on this one as I was on the other ones. I offer, for consideration, three possible relevant maps, all from StatsCan. The Municipality [22], the Census Metropolitan Area [23] (which are effectively identical), and then the Population Centre [24]. I see several strategies:

• Centre of the municipality (as per Toronto & Vancouver - but these cities have a "core built up area" that extends all the way to their municipal boundaries, also St. Catharines)
• Downtown / City Hall (as per Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Quebec City, London, Victoria)
• Compromise "middle of the built-up area", but not necessarily the centre of downtown or City Hall (as per Edmonton, Kitchener, Oshawa, Windsor, Saskatoon)

I am leaning towards that last option (which might, for example, put the dot in the Narrows somewhere), but I would be interested to hear what others think. AshleyMorton (talk) 11:49, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I would have no problem with option #3. Perhaps even the Legislature/Grand Parade area. Regards Aloha27 (talk) 12:43, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

• Odd that there is no MOS or guideline for this. Saffron Blaze (talk) 15:13, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

• For most cities there is an official point that is considered the centre point. I don't know if the HRM has one being that it isn't a city. -DJSasso (talk) 16:00, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Which coordinates to use (from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates#Which_coordinates_to_use)

National mapping agencies such as the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), Ordnance Survey (OS), and Geographical Names Board of Canada (GNBC) are reliable sources for coordinates. The GEOnet Names Server (GNS) database is not reliable. For other locations, the following points should be considered:

• For villages, towns, communities, etc., use the current centre. Where this is difficult, choose the earliest known settlement of that name.
• For military and industrial establishments (e.g., castles, barracks, dockyards, car plants) use the main gate.
• For administrative districts, use the head office.

Since the article is referring to the administrative entity called the HRM it would seem the head office is the correct choice for Wikipedia. Saffron Blaze (talk) 17:07, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

On the policy basis, I would say that it fits into the "villages, towns, communities, etc." category. In my opinion, it is an article about the place Halifax, not one about the administrative entity called the Halifax Regional Municipality. However, that might be pretty academic, because a dot on City Hall or a dot on the population core would be pretty close to each other. Here's what I propose - we use just (44 39 N, 63 34 W), because those are roughly correct for the downtown core and City Hall, but they actually fall in the water of the harbour. If we get more detailed, we can have a fight over a pretty irrelevant point. Sticking to minutes of latitude and longitude, rather than going to seconds maintains some useful fuzziness. AshleyMorton (talk) 23:28, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

This issue has not been discussed in some time, and the present dop pin was not helpful to non-natives of halifax, and obviously wrong to those who know the area both officially and in local language use. I cited a FedGov database that noted that as the location for the capital of NS. I feel that is more than clear. If anyone has any new arguments other than those discussed above go ahead but the edit has stood for a few weeks now so I think it is fairly uncontroversial. (Edit: spelling) Iammemyselfb (talk) 23:24, 19 October 2022 (UTC)