The Woodside waterfront on the Dartmouth side of the harbour is about to take on another role - albeit a relatively short term one.
An area in North Woodside between the Nova Scotia hospital at Mount Hope and the Irving Oil terminal has two piers, most recently known as the IEL dock and the Mobil dock and a few acres of back-up land. It is currently the home to Woodside Industries a steel fabrication facility operating as part of Irving Shipbuilding Inc.
The Woodside area has long been a distinct community with industrial, residential and institutional activities all close together. The piers were part of the Halifax Sugar Refinery, built in 1884. Under the direction of the Nova Scotia industrialist John F. Stairs it was merged with his Nova Scotia Sugar Refinery and the Moncton Sugar Refining Company in 1893 to form the Acadia Sugar Refining Company Ltd.
The Woodside facility was destroyed by fire in 1912 and rebuilt. The Halifax operation occupied a ten storey building, built in 1880 in the Richmond area which was levelled by the Halifax explosion in 1917. It had been the tallest building east of Montreal but was not rebuilt. Instead the Woodside operation was expanded under the newly formed Atlantic Sugar Refineries. (Acadia kept its brand name however.)
In 1939 the Anglo-Dutch Refining Company became owners of Atlantic Sugar and operated the Woodside factory it until 1942 when it was closed. The re-allocation of ships due to wartime cut off the supply of cane sugar, and the coal used to power the plant was instead directed toward the war effort. (Canada's need for sugar was met by processing sugar beets, which are not grown in the Maritimes.)
Sugar was rationed during World War II to prevent hoarding. Limited supplies were made available to civilians for canning, but its use as a sweetener was severely curtailed. Most sugar production was directed toward food for the military and manufacturing.
Following World War II Atlantic Sugar re-opened its Saint John, NB facility, but kept the Woodside operation shuttered. (The Saint John facility, built in 1912, closed in 2000.)
In 1963, seeking to take advantage of the new Canada-US Auto Pact, which eliminated tariffs on cars and car parts between Canada and the US, the Swedish manufacturer Volvo decided to set up an assembly operation in Canada to supply cars to Canada and the United States. By shipping parts to Canada and assembling the cars here, Volvo was able to avoid the duties on foreign built cars, and to sell in Canada and the US as Canadian-built. Volvo rented the empty Atlantic Sugar facility. They imported parts and CKD "knock-downs" over the pier, assembled cars in the plant and sent export cars to the US, initially be sea, over the same pier. Cars for Canada could be transported by truck or by rail.
In 1966 Volvo negotiated a ten-year tax relief deal and built a $1 million dollar factory at Pier 9 on the Halifax waterfront, adjacent to Halifax Shipyard, opening in 1967 (ironically within sight of the old Acadia sugar refinery). Volvo later built a new larger plant in the inland Bayers Lake industrial park and assembled cars there from 1987 to 1998.
Atlantic Sugar, since renamed Lantic Sugar, sold the Woodside lands to the Province of Nova Scotia in 1974 and the buildings were demolished.
In this barely recognizeable Halifax of 1973, the Acadia Sugar buildings are still standing on the Dartmouth shore at the far right left background in the photo. (All the transit sheds on the Halifax side are gone now too.)
Industrial Estates Ltd, a Provincial government crown corporation, tasked with attracting industry to Nova Scotia, managed the property and leased it to various users.
HMCS Algonquin moved from Quebec to complete its TRUMP refit in ice free Halifax, using the Woodside pier.
The north dock has been used for ship repair, and refit, including oil rig mobilization and construction, warship upgrades and miscellaneous uses.
The topsides structure for an offshore gas platform arrived on the Dutch heavy lift ship Happy Ranger and was landed on the Woodside dock and barged to the offshore site.
A large metal fabrication building has been used by several companies, but most recently by Irving Shipbuilding Inc to build complex shaped bow structures and signal masts for the Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessel project. The completed components are barged across the harbour to the Halifax Shipyard to be assembled with the other ship modules.
The smaller south pier, which has been known as the Exxon Mobil dock was used by offshore supply vessels to take on stores, and other material for oil and gas exploration, development, operation and decommissioning.
IrvingOil's Woodside terminal is on the adjacent propery to the south of the Exxon Mobil dock, and forms a backdrop to the photo.
With the end of all offshore petroleum activity off Nova Scotia, the small south pier has been largely idle. It was considered to be "union territory" and was included in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union collective agreement definition for jurisdiction. Ship loading and unloading work at the pier had to be performned by ILA members. That no longer appears to be the case.
Since 2010 Atlantic Towing Ltd has used a small portion of the north pier as base for its harbour tugs. However last spring they moved to the former CCG base now operated by COVE (Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship) a little farther north on the Dartmouth shore at Dartmouth Cove.
Since last year the Woodside piers have been used for the transfer of components for the Vineyard Wind power project off Massachusetts. The large mono pile / towers for the wind turbines were brought in from Rostock, Germany on heavy load transport ships and transferred to the crane ship Orion which in turn proceeded to the work site and installed the towers, section by section.
That transfer work appears to have been shifted away from Halifax to Sydney, NS. The heavy lift ship GPO Sapphire arrived in Sydney January 27 and appears to have offloaded to shore at the coal terminal and sailed again for Rostock, Germany. The crane ship has been in Vlissingen, Netherlands since January 11, having sailed from Halifax December 31.
New Use
A notice appeared on January 30 seeking public comment on the latest use of the Woodside piers and backup land. Irving Shipbuilding Inc intends to build a temporary Materials Staging Facility to dewater, sort, and store dredged material from its Land Level Expansion project at Halifax Shipyard.
To accommodate construction and launch of the next shipbuilding program - new frigates for the RCN - Halifax Shipyard is expanding its land base out into the Narrows where the floating drydocks used to be moored. In order to establish concrete caissons for the pier faces, the harbour bottom must be levelled and this involves removal of sediment by dredging.
The dredge spoil from the harbour bottom contains heavy metals and other contaminants that must be sent to a safe disposal site inland after initial processing. The plan is to build a bermed area on the Woodside piers to contain up to 20,000 cubic meters of material at a time that will be brought by barge and craned ashore. Once processed the actual contaminants will be trucked to the safe disposal (storage) area at an undisclosed location. Nearby Highway 111 may be the convenient route to that site, wherever it may be. (I had an idea that it was on Federal Governments Shearwater lands, but that is not mentioned in the submission.) The facility is to operate until December 2026.
Public comment on the project is invited until February 29, but there is no suggestion that changes might be incorporated.
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