Canal Turbine Revealed in Nova Scotia

News May 14, 2015

(Cultural Resource Management Group Limited)
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Halifax-Turbine-Discovered
(Cultural Resource Management Group Limited)

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA—Nova News Now reports that a section of the nineteenth-century Shubenacadie Canal has been uncovered at the corner of Prince Albert Road and Pleasant Street in Dartmouth. This section of the canal, which linked Halifax to northern Nova Scotia by connecting a series of lakes, carried boats via a pulley powered by a turbine installed in 1862. “It’s very rare,” Terry Gallagher, manager of facility design and construction for the city, said of the surviving piece of machinery. The canal was widely used during the gold rushes of the 1860s but eventually closed in 1871 after a fixed railroad bridge that blocked steamships was built over the canal. The site will be reconstructed and interpreted as part of the Dartmouth Canal Greenway Project. To read more about canals in the Archive, see "The Canal Age."

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