Quick now, who was Gavin Rainnie? Rainnie Drive? Doesn’t tinkle any bells yet? How about that short street that skirts the northern base of Citadel Hill from the new Halifax Common roundabout at North Park and Cogswell to the corner of Brunswick and Duke, the one thousands of us pass through daily on our way to or from downtown? Ah, yes, that one.
If you don’t faithfully follow the ins and outs of city council debates — or lurk among the rushes on Skyscraperpage.com, a chat room where people endless debate the latest in buildings and developments — you may have missed Rainnie Drive’s recent 15 minutes of infame.
City Council last week accepted a staff report renaming a portion of Rainnie — from Duke Street to the corner of Rainnie and Gottingen — to just “Gottingen.” The decision, staff insist, follows “fairly straightforward, defined policies” so street names are “consistent for emergency response.”
That might have been that, except we’re talking about Gottingen Street.
And that changes everything.
The Pearl
Grafton Developments is in mid-crane construction of an eight-storey, mixed commercial-residential development called The Pearl. The Pearl was to be at 5447 Rainnie Dr., but its address will now become 1901-03 Gottingen St.
In a letter to councillors, developer Jason Ghosn claims his company paid a “premium” for the site “in recognition of the heritage of the street name.”
Grave marker for Major Rainnie near Juno Beach.
Rainnie?
Really?
You may be forgiven if you didn’t instantly know Maj. Gavin Rainnie was a soldier who died on D-Day in 1944. (If his name matters so much, you might ask, why didn’t the developer call it “Rainnie Towers?” But that’s another question.)
The real answer to the “Rainnie” question is not Rainnie at all, but Gottingen. Ghosn claims a Gottingen Street address would “adversely affect” the Pearl’s “marketability and ultimately the profitability.”
He isn’t the first. Back in the 1980s, residents of Gottingen Street north of Young Street petitioned to have their street renamed to the meaningless “Novalea Drive” just so no one would confuse their fine middle-class neighbourhoods with the public-housing-social-service-drug-addled-boarded-up-and-well… black district to the south.
That — and not historic significance — is behind Grafton’s argument too.
Historic significance? Gottingen Street (“Upon application of the people, the north suburbs of Halifax were called Gottingen” in 1764) celebrated its 250th anniversary last year.
During last Tuesday’s meeting Coun. Linda Mosher asked council to defer renaming the street so staff could consider coming up with an entirely new and different name for the block — historical significance anyone? — but her motion, thankfully, was defeated 10–5.
STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax and co-founder of its MFA in Creative Nonfiction Program, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of two novels and eight non-fiction books. Buy his books 
I lived on Gottingen Street in the 1950s. I remember a great shopping street. Crowell’s Drugstore. The Metropolitian store. Hudson’s and Glube’s department stores, one of which held a tea for girls graduating from high school and presented each of us with a mini cedar hope chest – I still have mine. My first job was at the hardware store with the old fashioned cash register and creaky wood floors. I remember ending a whole day with friends watching Love Me Tender (Elvis) over and over until the theatre closed.
I now live at Gottingen and Young andvwalk in the area every day. I cannot help but feel that with this development in the south end of of Gottingen and all the residential construction in the Young and Gottingen area in the north we have two anchors, between which a vibrant community of people of all ages and income levels could grow and thrive. With Gottingen as the main street for shopping and socializing. But we need people like this developer and civic leaders to step up and lead this transformation instead of hindering it.
When my family moved from Lawrence Street, where the rent was going to go up to $900, to Columbus and Novalea in 1990, where the rent was $600/month for a 3-bedroom, people asked me where we’d moved. I’d tell them and They’d say “ew, you live in the North End”, with some taken-aback disdain. (Being new to Canada it took me a bit to figure out that it was in the “ghetto.” Didn’t care though.
Later on, say by 2000 or so, I’d say where I lived and people would say, “Oh, you live in the Hydrostones!!! sounding jealous at the cheap rent in the newly made nationally historic location. By the time we moved in 2010, the rent had just been raised to $825. After we left, it immediately went up to $1,200 (probably rather higher now). Gentrification anyone?