Posted Mar 27, 2010, 12:24 PM
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Location: B3K Halifax, NS
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Old burial ground may halt tower plan
By CHRIS LAMBIE Business Editor
Sat. Mar 27 - 4:54 AM
Centuries-old French and Mi’kmaq burial grounds could derail a 19-storey development planned for the Bedford Highway.
Basin Vista Developments Ltd. wants to build a residential tower on the site of the former Bayview Motor Inn at the Halifax end of the Bedford Highway. But an archeological study that Basin Vista commissioned raises some major concerns.
"The area . . . has high potential as the site of part of a French military encampment in 1746 and may have been host to French or Mi’kmaq burials," says a report prepared by Davis Archaeological Consultants Ltd., now known as Davis MacIntyre & Associates Ltd. of Dartmouth. "It is recommended that professional archeologists be on-site during mechanical excavation of the cultural soils on the site during its redevelopment."
Are developers allowed to build on old burial grounds in Nova Scotia?
"Typically no," April MacIntyre, one of the archeologists who compiled the report, said Friday.
"There is a piece of legislation called the Cemeteries Protection Act which protects burial grounds, whether they’re pre-contact First Nations or historic period cemeteries. So it would protect consecrated ground as well as earlier First Nations stuff."
If any signs of burial grounds are found at the site, the heritage division of the provincial Tourism, Culture and Heritage Department will make the final call as to whether the development can go ahead, said MacIntyre, a partner with Davis MacIntyre & Associates.
"If they did happen to discover any human remains there, then the excavation would be halted right away and we would confer with the heritage division on what would happen next," she said.
Large projects have been halted in Nova Scotia before because of the presence of burial grounds, MacIntyre said.
"There was one a few years ago in Port Hawkesbury (in 2005) where I think the town was building a sewage treatment plant and they were warned before time that there was a historic burial ground there. And lo and behold, as they started excavating for the sewage treatment plant, they ended up discovering a couple of graves.
"They had to move across the street."
Archeologists will be on hand when excavation of the former motel site on the Bedford Highway starts next spring, said Cesar Saleh, an engineer with the W.M. Fares Group of Halifax, which is acting on behalf of Basin Vista.
Saleh said he isn’t sure what will happen if evidence of a burial ground is discovered.
"Anything further would be under their direction," he said of the archeologists.
The origins of the potential problem now facing the highrise development date back 266 years. After New Englanders captured Fortress Louisbourg in 1744, the French sent Duc D’Anville across the Atlantic with a fleet of 37 warships and 34 transport vessels to recapture Acadia.
The fleet, "battered by storms and delayed by calms," limped into Halifax three months later, according to the archeologists’ report.
"By this time, the men were suffering the ill effects of scurvy, typhoid and dysentery. With several thousand men dead, the surviving members of the fleet put ashore between Fairview and Rockingham along the (Bedford) Basin. They camped on the shore for a time, (and) buried their dead where they could in the rocky soil.
Perhaps adding to Basin Vista’s predicament, there may be Mi’kmaq graves at the site, too.
"Around this time (mid-18th century), some of the local Mi’kmaq are said to have dug up some of the sailors’ bodies and stolen their clothing, from which they became infected with typhoid," the report says.
"It is also possible that they became infected merely by trading with the French encampment. The disease then spread, killing a large portion of the natives in the area."
A native burial ground is believed to be in the same location, the report says.
"What they should be doing, actually, in my opinion, is determining if in fact there was such a thing," Dan Paul, a Mi’kmaq historian, said Friday.
"And if they do, then I would imagine that they should be consulting with our chiefs before they go any further."
Any burial ground found at the site should be recognized in some way, said Jean Leger, executive director of the Acadian Federation of Nova Scotia.
( clambie@herald.ca )
I of course respect cemeteries and all but how exactly does a former excavation pit have bodies buried under it? You'd think they would of dug up anybodies when the excavated the rock from the area.
Also they found a body at 6955 Bayers that didn't halt construction permnamently so I have high hopes that the same will happen here.
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