Urban highway infrastructure in North America has been singularly designed for the automobile, severing parts of the urban fabric, blighting our once-thriving city centres and resulting in spaces that are void of the human scale. The Cogswell Interchange in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada is such an infrastructure, cutting through the downtown core and heritage district. This thesis investigates the Cogswell Interchange in an attempt to animate and enliven a dead urban space, reducing traffic and bringing new activity and life to the street. Reappropriating parts of vehicular infrastructure for cyclist and pedestrian use and creating a variety of activities and programs (gallery, gym, restaurant, park) enables an increased connectivity for pedestrians and cyclists and brings a more human-scale urbanity to the site. The infrastructure itself becomes a framework upon which to build, revisioned as an active, vibrant place which people can experience with a renewed sense of wonder and appreciation.

Why do some people in Halifax, Nova Scotia work collecting recyclables rather than in other—more formal—means of employment? Some scholars argue that informal economic activity is the product of a shift towards flexible work regimes and reductions to the social welfare system (the informalization thesis) and/or that increasingly marginalized people are forced into informal economic activities by economic necessity (the marginalization thesis). Drawing on a close analysis of provincial and municipal recycling policies and ethnographic fieldwork with informal recyclers, I argue that the informalization and marginalization theses are based on overly deterministic models of informal employment. Demand for informal recycling in Halifax is supported by a complex raft of environmental legislation designed to increase the rate of recycling. People willingly choose informal recycling as an alternative to formal employment for various reasons, but above all because it offers a tax-free, honest living, autonomy and a decent income.

The years 1815 to 1867 marked the first protracted period of peace in Nova Scotia’s colonial history. While the immediate effects of peace were nearly disastrous, these years ultimately marked a formative period for the province. By the eve of Confederation, various social, cultural, political, economic, and technological developments had enabled Nova Scotia to become a mature province with a distinct identity. One of the manifestations of this era of community formation was the emergence of a cosmopolitan-oriented music culture. Although Atlantic trade routes ensured that Nova Scotia was never isolated, the colonial progress of the pre-Confederation era reinforced and entrenched Nova Scotia’s membership within the Atlantic World. The same trade routes that brought imported goods to the province also introduced Nova Scotians to British and American culture. Immigration, importation, and developments to transportation and communication systems strengthened Nova Scotia’s connections to its cultural arbiters – and made possible the importation and naturalization of metropolitan music practices. This dissertation examines the processes of cultural exchange operating between Nova Scotia and the rest of the Atlantic World, and the resultant musical life to which they gave rise. The topic of music-making in nineteenth-century Nova Scotia has seldom been addressed, so one of the immediate aims of my research is to document an important but little-known aspect of the province’s cultural history. In doing so, I situate Nova Scotia’s musical life within a transatlantic context and provide a lens through which to view Nova Scotia’s connectivity to a vast network of culture and ideas. After establishing and contextualizing the musical practices introduced to Nova Scotia by a diverse group of musicians and entrepreneurs, I explore how this imported music culture was both a response to and an agent of the formative developments of the pre-Confederation era. I argue that, as Nova Scotia joined the Victorian march of progress, its musicians, music institutions, and music-making were among the many socio-cultural forces that helped to transform a colonial backwater into the civilized province that on 1 July 1867 joined the new nation of Canada.

The years 1815 to 1867 marked the first protracted period of peace in Nova Scotia’s colonial history. While the immediate effects of peace were nearly disastrous, these years ultimately marked a formative period for the province. By the eve of Confederation, various social, cultural, political, economic, and technological developments had enabled Nova Scotia to become a mature province with a distinct identity. One of the manifestations of this era of community formation was the emergence of a cosmopolitan-oriented music culture. Although Atlantic trade routes ensured that Nova Scotia was never isolated, the colonial progress of the pre-Confederation era reinforced and entrenched Nova Scotia’s membership within the Atlantic World. The same trade routes that brought imported goods to the province also introduced Nova Scotians to British and American culture. Immigration, importation, and developments to transportation and communication systems strengthened Nova Scotia’s connections to its cultural arbiters – and made possible the importation and naturalization of metropolitan music practices. This dissertation examines the processes of cultural exchange operating between Nova Scotia and the rest of the Atlantic World, and the resultant musical life to which they gave rise. The topic of music-making in nineteenth-century Nova Scotia has seldom been addressed, so one of the immediate aims of my research is to document an important but little-known aspect of the province’s cultural history. In doing so, I situate Nova Scotia’s musical life within a transatlantic context and provide a lens through which to view Nova Scotia’s connectivity to a vast network of culture and ideas. After establishing and contextualizing the musical practices introduced to Nova Scotia by a diverse group of musicians and entrepreneurs, I explore how this imported music culture was both a response to and an agent of the formative developments of the pre-Confederation era. I argue that, as Nova Scotia joined the Victorian march of progress, its musicians, music institutions, and music-making were among the many socio-cultural forces that helped to transform a colonial backwater into the civilized province that on 1 July 1867 joined the new nation of Canada.