Holy Cross Historical Trust

Community initiatives at Holy Cross Cemetery in Halifax during the last five years were organized around a physical restoration program. This work led to a greater awareness of the historical significance of the site for Irish Roman Catholics. The physical restoration work was conducted under the auspices of the Holy Cross Cemetery Trust, organized... for, and dedicated to, that specific purpose. Eventually, however, there was a realization that the opportunities for research and interpretive education were of such a scale as to require the formation of a continuing organization. This charter document outlines the aims and organization of this new association, Holy Cross Historical Trust. Much of the impetus for this initiative concerns the search for alternatives to support a renewal of civil society. The new attitudes pushing Canadian federal government devolution and withdrawal, the efforts to reconstruct the logic of acculturation of immigrant communities and founding peoples, the call for more sustainable and frugal forms of development, and the need to strengthen the church as a transmission belt for moral tradition, all require a different modus vivendi. The recovery of our history, making it intelligible and accessible to both contemporaries and future generations, opens the door to alternative paths for social reconstruction and renewal. The repository of information, in this case, is the communion of saints implicated at Holy Cross Cemetery particularly with the seventeen thousand people buried there in the nineteenth century, together with their ancestors and descendants. Although primarily Irish and Roman Catholic, the burials have included those of other ethnicities, races, and faiths. The long-term goal, then, is to improve the understanding of the social practices, institutional organization, and religious and intellectual discourses of the Holy Cross Community. The benefits for the scholar of such an historical laboratory are derived from a system of rich, cumulative research about major ...Read More