Canada's Atlantic Gateway: An Illustrated History of the Port of Halifax.

Randall White is the author of Voice of Region: On the Long Journey to
Senate Reform in Canada, Too Good to Be True: Toronto in the 1920s, and
Global Spin: Probing the Globalization Debate.

My first thought on picking up this rather heavy book was, Here is another PR puff job. After all, author James Frost is a transportation expert based in Halifax who works as a senior consultant with CPSC Transcom, an Ottawa-based consulting firm. How wrong I was. Instead, I became engrossed in this superbly illustrated and researched history of our most important Atlantic port from the city’s founding in 1749, down through its formative years before Confederation, and on to the impact of the First World War. This period takes up the first four chapters, 90 pages in all, covering the efforts of local politicians and business leaders to convince central Canadians of the port’s unique qualities and possibilities, efforts that often fell on deaf ears. My attention was constantly drawn to the numerous illustrations, some taking up an entire page and others at least half. The reproductions are remarkably clear, thanks in part to the high-quality glossy paper which accounts for the tome’s unusual weight. The pages are 8 by 10 inches, which creates a book less easy to hold, but those pictures, mostly crystal-clear photographs, more than make up for this inconvenience.

Two-thirds of this study, taking up the last five chapters and 120 pages, I found the most rewarding. Frost shows both his academic research skills and clear writing style in dealing with the complex and, from a Maritimer’s perspective, frustrating attempts to overcome Ottawa’s (i.e. Montreal and Toronto) determination to bypass Halifax’s unique geographic and nautical attributes. It is only with the coming of the global transportation system with its massive container vessels that Halifax has finally come into its own, building the most modern handling facilities and deepening a harbour that was already much deeper than Montreal or the St. Lawrence Seaway. This is one book that won’t be given to the local library; it will remain on my personal shelves for future reference.