14 Jul A fascinating [local] story of history, community, and class

It’s easy to overlook the loss we’ve suffered as traditional news outlets contract in Nova Scotia and elsewhere. This message from a former Halifax journalist, unpublished for four years, shows he has lost neither the itch nor the knack:

My wife, a friend and I went to the Old Mill tavern Thursday night to have a beer and laugh at a Dartmouth dive on the eve of its destruction. What we discovered, instead, was a fascinating story of history, community, and class.

The huge wooden beams running across the pub’s ceiling – six of them, at least 16 inches on the side, running the entire 30-foot length of the bar – unwittingly unlocked the story. Behind the bar was a small grey-haired, balding man whose subdued sadness peeked through the fissures of his smile. We asked him about the beams.

Marcel Logan, 64, has tended bar all his life – the original Misty Moon and Derby, two stints at the Lighthouse, and almost 20 years at the Old Mill, which closes forever Saturday. Marcel served Schooner while watching a young Matt Minglewood make his name, back in the days when cocaine was new and sex was carefree.

Marcel has lived the history of Halifax’s nightlife, witnessed its culture and weathered its seediness, but the looming loss that saddens him is far, far older. Those massive beams, hewn from trees the likes of which few remain in Nova Scotia, he told us, date back to the mid-1800s.

Because the Old Mill is the last standing piece of the historic Dartmouth Rope Works.

Founded in 1868, the rope factory laid the economic foundation of north-end Dartmouth in the anxious and hopeful years immediately following Confederation. It was the reason why Wyse Road was laid through a swampy stretch of the Dartmouth Commons. Within a decade, the Dartmouth Rope Works was manufacturing more rope than any other plant in Canada, at the end of the age when sailing ships fished, fought wars, and ferried immigrants and riches from foreign lands.

Almost a century and a half later, “heritage advocates” wail against any development that might be visible from the hallowed ramparts of Citadel Hill. Yet there is not a whisper of protest against the loss of a piece of history on the eastern side of Halifax Harbour.

And for those for whom history is a luxury, even more is being taken away.

The Old Mill is being razed to make way for a new Sobeys store. After it opens, the old Primrose Street Sobeys, located a little more than a kilometre away, will close.

The Primrose Street supermarket is one of the last of the small, community Sobeys in the Halifax region Metro Halifax. It serves one of the city’s most economically depressed neighbourhoods. Low income seniors and welfare mothers walk there to buy their groceries. That will soon end.

And nothing will replace it.

The community Sobeys in Woodside shut down a couple of years ago, relocating to bigger store in a more affluent location, close enough for the corporation to say it still served the community, but far enough away to be immensely inconvenient for those most needing its service. No supermarket has replaced it.

The community Sobeys on Gottingen Street in Halifax moved away 30 years ago. That lot is still vacant.

I don’t blame Sobeys. Business is business. And business models that don’t or can’t modernize fail and die.

Like rope works.

But where are the people who profess to care about these things?

Where are the self-appointed protectors of our history and heritage?

Where are the anti-poverty activists? The occupiers?

Why are they silent?

Perhaps these things – historical integrity, community equality, class dignity – only count on the peninsula.

To which Contrarian adds, where are the keen young Herald/CBC/Coast/OpenFileHalifax reporters who should have noticed and written about the passing of this culturally important, non-peninsular institution? It’s enough to send subdued sadness peeking through the fissures of our smile. A year’s free Contrarian subscription to the fourth reader who correctly identifies the lamented writer.

UPDATE: Mike Dinn tweets: “Isn’t there still a community Sobeys out in Musquodobit Harbour?” It appears so. Any others?