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[Standard Parks Canada Intro]
Text:
Halifax Citadel National Historic Site

[Flag of Nova Scotia flapping in the wind]

[Wall made of stone]

Text:
The Restoration of the Citadel - An Armed Camp

Carol Whitfield: When somebody walks in here they can tell the difference between this place and a theme park.

Kevin Robins: The fourth fort to be built here, one of the last great bastion forts to be built anywhere in the world.

[Black and white aerial view of the fort]

Dr. Ron McDonald: So when this fort was built it was the cutting edge of technology.

[Wall made of stone]

David Korn: Halifax was so well defended that the enemy knew that he has no chance to take it.

[Wall made of stone]

Greg Corkum: It's real wood, it's real stone, it's real brick, it's even made the same way it was back when it was built the first time in the 1800s.

[View of the fort. Stone being split apart. View of the fort]

So it was quite exciting to kind of bring it back to life.

[Image of a building. People walking on the grounds of the fort. Guard walking. View of the fort]

Narrator: Every year thousands of visitors arrive at Halifax's Citadel to experience a national historic site that stands sentry to Canada's past. A fort that is always ready to protect and defend, that looms steadfast seemingly ageless, except looks can be deceiving.

[Black and white photos of the fort in need of repair]

Narrator: Not long ago, the great fortress was all but forgotten, its thick walls collapsing, its battlements crumbling.

Carol Whitfield: The army gave this place up in 1951 and it sort of went into a caretaker mode. Masonry walls over time began to disintegrate and so it was in need of significant work.

[Black and white photos of the fort in need of repair]

Narrator: Foundation sunk in unstable soil rather than firm bedrock, walls that heaved and buckled from Halifax's freeze and thaw cycle, mistakes by the original designers and builders had been worsened by time and neglect.

[Black and white photos of the wall sinking in soil]

Dr. Ron McDonald: It was used for a number of museums and the Citadel really isn't a museum - it's a monument, it just needed that attention.

[Black and white photo of the fort]

Narrator: That necessary attention came from a sweeping 1950s government report on the state of the arts and sciences in Canada.

[Black and white photo of the fort. Fort wall being held up by wooden planks]

Carol Whitfield: There is a recommendation that the government of Canada should restore the Halifax Citadel and should reconstruct the fortress of Louisbourg.

[Write-up about the government's recommendation]

Dr. Ron McDonald: Historians were sent to archives all over the world to find the original documentation associated with the Halifax Citadel.

[Black and white photos of archived documentation]

Kevin Robins: You have an enormous number of very dedicated, highly skilled, highly trained engineers, draftsmen, historians.

[Black and white photos of archived documentation]

Greg Corkum: We were called as found recorders, we were told to record the entire Halifax Citadel and when inside the casemates, recorded the casemates, locations of fireplaces, windows, doors, profiles of the arches. Recording was done accurately so that we could put everything back accurately. A proper record of where the British constructed the fort originally.

[Black and white photos of the fort. Photos of numbered stones]

Narrator: As they pieced together the puzzle, structural engineers took the first tentative steps in rebuilding the fortress. Most of the time it was just hard, painstaking work done with an artisan's pride and an artist's touch.

[Numbered stones]

Kevin Robins: The masons that we had here were master masons; they basically had the same skill sets and the knowledge and understanding as the people that built the fort in the 19th century.

[Masons working on a wall]

Dr. Ron McDonald: I know the stone mason in particular, a man named Charlie Mosher, he cut many of the stones that needed to be cut.

[Masons working on a wall]

Carol Whitfield: He feathered a stone just so beautifully, I watched him put the feathers in, they're metal clips like the top of a fleur-de-lys and you drive a spike through the center and as you drive it down, tap-tap-tap. Suddenly the stone splits along the line of these feathers. It breaks exactly on the line he wanted it to break.

[Mason splitting a stone]

David Korn: And when you look at some details of the arches, see each stone was carved exactly for the place. This is granite. This stone is here for 150 years and it looks almost new.

[Arches made of stone]

Narrator: Authenticity demanded unwavering attention to the smallest detail. The Douglas fir used for the fortress signal mast had to come all the way from British Columbia. The hand lettering over doors had to be the right size and style. Long ago formulas were consulted to ensure paint colors were as authentic as possible. Perfection, alas, isn't always possible. Sometimes the engineers and architects couldn't deliver exactly what the historians and archaeologists demanded.

[View of the walls from inside the fort. Signal mast. Hand lettering over doors. Images of various doors. People walking on the grounds of the fort]

Dr. Don McDonald: We tended to lean in the direction of authenticity and we wanted to make sure that we were doing things as authentic as possible but of course things like public safety, costs, engineering concerns also enter into the equation.

[An engineer wearing a hard hat. Men working on a wall]

David Korn: When we started the restoration process, the regional director came to me and he told me in my ear David, your biggest enemy is water.

[Men working on a wall. Black and white photo of a wall]

Kevin Robins: Groundwater as it comes into a fortified work it will get in-between the masonry, turn to ice and expand so it leads to fissures and cracks.

[Black and white photo of a wall with numbered stones]

David Korn: We decided that we would build it; reinforce concrete foundation so it will last a hundred years. This way you have much less maintenance and you don't, it doesn't fall apart.

[Concrete foundation]

Narrator: Sometimes only a vivid imagination can find solutions. When the weight of the walls threatened to collapse the leaking casement roofs, Styrofoam was inserted to lighten the load.

[Reconstruction of the fort. Roof and Styrofoam blocks]

Dr. Don McDonald: In the construction of the ramparts, which were earth at the time, one of the challenges that we faced was that that put tremendous strain on the walls.

[Ramparts. Men working on a wall]

David Korn: We have concrete then we have Styrofoam, then we have three feet or four feet of earth and it was very stable.

[Image of Styrofoam blocks]

Narrator: This was viewed as a reasonable compromise by those historians and engineers. Authenticity after all is at the cull of the rebuilding process. Throughout the Citadel's restoration this underlying commitment never wavered. This Parks Canada learned from the mistakes of the past: time and neglect can be more dangerous than any cannonball. The grass on the ramparts is being cut less often to establish a deeper root system.

[Various shots of the reconstruction. Cannons. Grass growing on the ramparts]

Walter Willms: We let the grass grow rather than mow it, it's better for the established protection of the bastions and we like the look rather than the manicured look.

We have a door and window program and Alan Durdle our carpenter he takes care of implementing that. He has a shop completely set up to do doors and windows. Alan can build a far better quality door than what we can buy.

[Walls, doors and windows. Alan Durdle working in his shop]

Alan Durdle: There are over 750 doors and windows on site and I don't even believe I got to see them all put; I know I worked on a large number of them. Parks Canada has researched all the doors and window types on site and have compiled them together here in a set of drawings. The window I'm working on right now is a type A window; it's one of the last old windows that are around. As you see the condition the shape that it's in, it's ready for replacement. It makes me very proud to be able to work on reconstruction of the Citadel here, being able to work on period doors and windows, you can't ask for anything better.

[Alan Durdle working in his shop. Various views of doors. Drawings of doors. Alan Durdle showing wood chips from an old window or door. New window]

Walter Willms: The craftsmen that come to work on the fort they take pride in their work and it shows.

[Worker splitting a stone]

Narrator: Artisans using time honoured skills continue to shore up the massive walls as they've done for more than 250 years.

[Masons working on a wall]

Kelvin Mealing: As you can see the boys are restoring the fort walls so the process would be to number and record the stones, take them down, get things prepared and ready for them to be rebuilt and then each stone would go back exactly where it was before as it was originally. The techniques of lifting the stones that we would use Lewis pins and dull pins which is what originally would have been used. I'm very proud of the work I've done here at the Citadel especially because it's British heritage as well.

[Masons working on a wall]

Narrator: Restoration is an ongoing effort so with Parks Canada's leadership the process continues. It's not rocket science, it's putting mortar and stone together to form a wall except somehow it becomes much more.

[Restoration work. Masons working on a wall]

Kevin Robins: The reconstruction of these forts maintain the direct link of our history to our everyday lives so our heritage isn't something that's merely bricks and mortar and guns and things like that, it's the story that those things encapsulate and tell us.

[Various views of the fort. Cannons]

Dr. Don McDonald: And if these good old stones could talk, they could tell a lot of stories about how this country was built. This is a living, breathing monument that has an association with Canadians of all generations.

[Wall made of stone. People walking on the grounds of the fort]

Carol Whitfield: I believe firmly that authenticity does matter and that it is part of what draws people to places like this. They know that they're going be able to touch history in a real way.

[Military men folding a flag. Military uniforms; button on a uniform]

Kevin Robins: There's few people anywhere in the world that could compare with the work and the dedication that goes into the restoration of this fort and others around the country.

[View of a fort wall]

Narrator: A famous writer once said the past is never dead. It's not even passed. By ensuring the Citadel's legacy Parks Canada isn't just preserving our past, it is enriching our future.