The Halifax Public Gardens , in the centre of the Halifax Commons , is perhaps the best single way for visitors today to enter into the mindset of the citizens of the British Empire at its very height.
The gardens have no admission fee and can be conveniently entered through gates off Spring Garden Road, South Park Street or Summer Street.
They provides many park benches to relieve the feet and a view that offers a sheltered shaded respite from summer heat and traffic noise.
Washrooms and refreshments are here too.
On Sunday afternoons, brass bands play relaxing music from the grand bandstand.
Later , as you stroll through the immense garden, try to imagine yourself as a prosperous citizen of the still British garrison city of Halifax from one hundred and ten years ago.
You are here mostly to admire the botanical booty of imperialism (plants taken from all over the newly expanded empire), because Victorians had a fascination about flora and fauna almost totally lost to us.
But you are also here to meditate on all the monuments erected to the brave men, often from right here in Halifax, who had secured this vast empire for God and Queen , by force of sword and pen.
A year later, in 1905, the British garrison was handed over to Canada and a fifteen years after that, the certitudes of the biggest empire the world has yet seen seemed much less secure.
But, inside the Gardens and forever, the Empire is still alright with the world !
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