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Buddhists Helped Modernize Halifax’s Business, Real Estate & Cultural Life

Oct 6, 2024 | Arts & Culture, Business

By Andrew Macdonald

Buddhists Helped Modernize Halifax

As a sidebar article to Macdonald Notebook writer Avery Mullen’s excellent piece on a mayoral contender, ‘HFX Bob’ Anders, who emigrated to Halifax as a Buddhist, this article pays tribute to the many businesses and cultural enhancements Buddhists made to their adopted City of Halifax.

Halifax was a backwater in the 1970s and into the 1980s.

But the building blocks to transform Halifax into the modern great city that it is today, had their roots in the 1980s.

That was when at its peak 500 Shambhala Buddhists immigrated to Halifax, mostly from Boulder, Colorado. Some came from NY City.

I can not overstate the positive contributions these new citizens of Halifax had on the business and cultural life of Halifax, enlightening society greatly.

Back then Halifax was mostly a small ‘c’ conservative town – today it is a great town, and some of that credit goes to the enhancements Buddhists had on life in the city, pushing it into a great city.

Back in the 1980s, when 500 Buddhists moved to Halifax, parents of kids were reluctant to have their children hang out with Buddhist kids, such was the thinking of the times.

Book author, David Swick captured the transformation of the city by Buddhists in his 1996 tome Thunder and Ocean : Shambhala & Buddhism in Nova Scotia.

Swick (b. 1957, Halifax, Nova Scotia) was living in Halifax at the time of publication. He is now a Kings Journalism School Professor and was a must-read columnist in the defunct Halifax Daily News.

In 1996, he wrote: “Almost twenty years ago, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher decided Nova Scotia would make the perfect world headquarters for his community.”

“Today more than five hundred members of Shambhala International call the province home. Their impact on the cultural, social and business life of Nova Scotia has been immense. Who are these people? What do they practice and believe? Why did they move to Nova Scotia?”, he wrote.

“Rumours abound, but the truth is far more interesting. It is the story of a historic union: one old Canadian province and two ancient spiritual traditions.” – from the rear cover.

The book writer wrote a chapter entitled Nothing Happens, which is devoted to the “many endeavours begun in Nova Scotia by the Sangha members.”

Those Buddhist businesses today might be under different ownership. Some still operate today, in 1996, the leading Buddhist businesses according to writer Swick included:

  • the Nova Scotia Sea School (Halifax and Lunenburg),
  • the Great Ocean Natural Food Market,
    the Italian Market
  • Trident Booksellers and Café (1570 Argyle Street and later 1256 Hollis Street, begun by Hudson Shotwell and Janet Moe),
  • the Attic Owl bookstore, (5802 South Street Halifax, and later 200 Portland Street, Dartmouth) owned by Jan Watson and Fenella Ax.

The Buddhists also established a worship site called Gampo Abbey, Pleasant Bay on the Cabot Trail.

“At the urging of Trungpa Rinpoche, the Tibetan teacher who died in 1987, several hundred adults moved to Nova Scotia from (Boulder), Colorado in the 1980s. More than 450 have stayed, adopting the province as home,” the book noted in 1996.

“Almost everyone in the Halifax Buddhist community were hippies,” the author observed.

In discussing what Nova Scotia was becoming in the 70s, Swick talks about homegrown music, the Wormwood Theatre, NSCAD students and that “the black, poor, and gay and lesbian communities began to demand respect.”

Newspaper accounts back around 1995 mention Allen Ginsberg and fiddler sensation Ashley MacIsaac performing at the Buddhist coronation event in 1995.

Swick’s book says the many contributions of arriving Buddhists, as well as contributions to society from rural gay and lesbian people moving to the city from rural Atlantic Canada, and contributions to city life from left-leaning NSCAD University students all helped to propel Halifax into a modern society, breaking down the 1970s and 1980s backwater small ‘c’ conservative thinking that existed in the city at the time.

A big part of businesses for Buddhists who adopted Halifax as their new home, included many of its members becoming active real estate developers around the city.

Some of them became heritage housing developers, other Buddhists 40-35-years ago built modern condos being successfully developed on Bauer Street, in the Halifax Commons.

Buddhists in 1987 restored this historic set of houses on Bishop Street, adjacent to Government House. The property is known as Charles H. Willis House. On the HistoricPlaces.ca website, it notes the original year of construction was between 1862-1864. (HistoricPlaces.Ca website image)

Another heritage condo building, lovingly restored by Buddhists included the former condo wooden structure adjacent to the Inglis Street gas station, which is now an apartment complex. Buddhists also restored to its original grandeur a wooden multi-residential building adjacent to the Lieutenant Governor’s mansion, on Bishop Street.

Buddhists restored this former condo building, now apartments in the 1980s. it is on Inglis Street. It was rebuilt in 2018 after a major fire and converted into apartments. (Star Metro).

For a 2020 archived story on the Buddhist-built condo/townhouses on Bauer Street, detailing the popularity of these Buddhist-built homes has drawing power – 40-35-years after they were built, here is a story on those homes and the appeal still among modern-day buyers:

A Chat With Realtor Krista Jensen: ‘Hfx Common’s Bauer Street Townhouse Had 24 Showings & 10 Offers’

By Andrew Macdonald – Published in The Macdonald Notebook in 2020.

One of the charming things about the history of the City of Halifax, but little understood, is the impact beginning 40-35 years ago of a wave of Buddhists arriving from Colorado. 

Back when condo and apartment developments in the 1980s and ’90s were ugly cookie-cutter designs, some Buddhists did property redevelopments that I consider both historically accurate and tasteful.

The apartment complex Joe Ramia did on Lower Water Street in the 1990s and the condo project his brother George Ramia undertook at the corner of Agricola and Cunard streets 20 years ago have not stood the design taste of time.

But look at the townhouses on Bauer Street in the heart of the Halifax Commons. The tasteful Buddhist design after 40-35 years definitely has stood the test of time from an architectural viewpoint.

In the 1990s, Joe Ramia built a cookie-cutter apartment building on Lower Water Street – it was not an architectural wonder – but during the same period, Buddhists arriving from Colorado were undertaking impressive designs on condos and townhouses in Halifax.

As I reported in 2020, a Bauer Street townhouse  came on the market. Even in that pandemic times, there were 24 showings on the home and 10 purchase offers were received, according to listing agent Krista Jensen, of Royal LePage Atlantic. She shared that charming listing with colleague Christine Murphy, a member of the famed Murphy’s On The Water clan.

The buyer was represented by Anna Hurshman of Domus Realty.

 

There were ten offers recently on this property at 2116 Bauer Street. (Viewpoint website). These condo/town houses were built tastefully 35-years ago by Buddhists

The townhouse at 2116 Bauer Street sold on May 28, 2020 for $505,000, well over the asking price of $475,000.

Listing agent Jensen described the abode as “urban living with the comfort of the ‘burbs! You can’t get any closer to the pulse of Halifax than Bauer Street. This three bedroom-end-unit townhouse shows like a dream and has a built-in garage on a street where most properties only have street parking.”

Jensen, who has been a realtor for seven years, says she was not aware of the tremendous influence the arriving Buddhists had on the Halifax landscape over the past 35 years until I detailed it to her.

She spoke to The Notebook on the strong interest on the Bauer Street property.

Confirming that 10 offers were received in 2020, she said she had physical showings as well as video virtual tours for the listing, but notes that has been her normal practice, even before the coronavirus.

That is a segment of the 2020 article on Buddhist-built Bauer Street in The Macdonald Notebook archives.

Krista Jensen is a realtor with the 73 Group at Royal LePage Atlantic.

On the Bauer Street property, in 2020 she had “24 showings in two days. It was listed on a Friday and we held offers on Sunday afternoon.”

Claudia Chender’s Parents Were Part Of Buddhist immigration wave to Halifax

In a 2022 Macdonald Notebook news feature on NS NDP leader, Claudia Chender, she mentioned her parents were Buddhists.

Chender’s immigration to NS is a neat story. In the 1980s her parents arrived with the Buddhists, who left Colorado to start a new life in Halifax.

Some became business folk, some were developers, and others contributed to the arts community.

“My parents were a part of that community, and we moved here in 1988. I was actually born in New York City, but I spent my young childhood mostly in Colorado and moved here (Halifax) when I was 11-years-old,” she adds.

“I would not describe myself as part of that community, particularly anymore. But, certainly, in the 1980s I think my parents, like so many people who come to NS, were looking for a place to raise their children and have a good life.”

NDP leader Claudia Chender’s parents were Buddhists. (Contributed).

 

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