Halifax’s noon boom: A ‘startling’ jolt of tradition since the 1800s
HALIFAX — Almost every day, exactly at noon, Alec Stratford is jolted by a thunderous boom that reverberates through his office, the intense blast so loud it rattles the plate-glass windows.
Stratford, who has worked in Halifax for six months, is still getting used to one of the city’s oldest, most raucous traditions: the firing of the noon gun at the Halifax Citadel National Historic Site.
His office is only a few hundred metres from the 19th-century British-built fort that overlooks the port city.
“It’s startling every time,” says Stratford, executive director of the Nova Scotia Association of Social Workers. “The gun pretty much faces our office and our boardroom. Whenever we are having meetings, often I’ll remember to remind folks of it. But I frequently forget — and every time it goes off, your heart stops for a minute.”