October 21/2008: our Sunday afternoon outing took us to the ‘York Redoubt’ in Halifax, Nova Scotia. York Redoubt was the heart of the defenses protecting the outer harbour approaches to Halifax. It is currently a national historic site of Canada.
“Your Redoubt was the heart fo the defences protecting the outer harbour approaches to Halifx. Begun in 1793 it was enlarged by the Duke of Kent who constructed a martello tower here in 1798. The redoubt became an essential link in the communications sytem protecting the city against surprise attach. Its strategic importance was such that it was rebuilt in the 1860’s and 1880’s to mount more powerful guns. In the twentieth century York Reboubt became the tactical command centre for all harbour defenses. It remained active until 1956.”
With the beautiful fall colors and the temperatures still not too cold, it was the perfect day to go exploring. From the top of the walls of the redoubt we saw a walking path below and found a way to get on it and then found out that we could go all the way down to the ocean.
The following pictures were taken a various elevations from the path below the redoubt looking toward the lighthouse off McNab’s island.
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At redoubt there was a building that looked like the stones were rusted. At first I could not figure out the reason why. But once I made it down to the seashore, it became very clear. The local stones must have a very high iron content as they also looked rusted. The view is away from the harbour toward the Atlantic Ocean.
I found all those openings in the walls intriguing and just had to take pictures of them. The left picture is of one that is set right into the corner of a wall.
This picture on the right is my favorite picture. There is the quaint small wooden church just below the redoubt. A plaque dates it to 1846. I looking in throught the big windows and saw that there were pews inside, so I decided to take a picture. As it turned out the windows reflected my hubby walking along on the path and the trees and at the same time the pews in the interior of the church are also visible.