Halifax Riots

Interviewer: What do you remember about the Second World War in Halifax, when you were growing up? Oh, I remember that you couldn’t get on the Citadel Hill when you wanted to. They had soldiers patrolling around it. You had people sneaking up there, sailors drinking beer up there with their girlfriends. And then, when the war was over, they broke in the liquor store on Buckingham Street and cleaned it right out. And then they busted all the windows on Barrington Street, you know. Even the street cars had a hard time there.Interviewer: What became know as the Halifax riot … did you remember seeing it? Oh yeah. Well, I was downtown when it was going on, when the war was over. That’s when they broke all the Barrington Street windows and the liquor store on Buckingham Street. The military was all over the place, you know, and the police wouldn’t do nothing.Interviewer: What to you remember about the people that were rioting? Oh, I don’t know. They just acted kind of crazy, as kids, you know. And to us, we just enjoyed them, seeing them doing different things that we never seen before, you know. Breaking windows, taking stuff out of the stores and going with it, you know. And we were tempted to go down, but my father was pretty strict. He said, “Don’t you go down there,” he said.