Shannon Park

I was actually tempted to categorize this as "ghost town" as it would meet the Chernobyl test for sure.

Named for HMS Shannon, Shannon Park was a part of the 1950's building boom that saw the federal government realize if you're going have a professional military, made up of folks you're going to move around a lot, often to remote locations, you need somewhere for them to live.

Originally the site housed a small community including 421 apartment units, a Canex, two schools, two churches, four storage facilities, an arena, swimming pool, community centre, and a large sports field. The majority of these buildings were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s, while the Canex was built in 1987.

Shannon Park closed in 2004.

Now, the residences, owned by the Canada Lands Corporation, sit surrounded by temporary fencing and hidden behind screening. The former military school is maintained and used by Halifax Regional School Board as a French immersion school. The former CANEX is closed and securely locked. The sign for the former Protestant church now welcomes worshippers to a parking lot. The sports fields are overgrown and, with the city and the closed residences themselves in the background, offer an excellent opportunity for some post-apocalyptic photography (even by me). The arena survived for some time but is gone now. On a personal note, we played many games there against the base kids. As this is a legitimate asbestos and biohazard site, security was robust, with lighting and ATVs used to patrol this sizeable chunk of land. Two of the building were sealed with negative pressure being maintained and filtration underway.

The 33 hectares has been "split" into three, with a small portion being returned to the Mi'kmaq, the aforementioned school and the remainder slated for demolition. There was talk of a Canada Games site (Halifax declined to pursue its bid for the 2014 games) and a stadium for a CFL team (which make senses if building a 25,000 seat stadium at a choke point makes sense). I am partial to making it a shrine for retired military folks who like to take pictures.......