Peace and Friendship Park

At 1181 Hollis Street, where downtown Halifax's office towers give way to the harbour, a small waterfront park carries the newest name on the South End's map — and one of the oldest ideas in Nova Scotia. Peace and Friendship Park, the former Cornwallis Park, was renamed in 2021 after more than three decades of advocacy by Mi'kmaw elder and scholar Dr. Daniel Paul, and the name honours the Peace and Friendship Treaties that the British Crown and the Mi'kmaq began signing in the 1720s — agreements the renaming application notes "remain in effect today." For visitors walking the Halifax waterfront, the park is a quiet pause between the ferry terminal and the South End boardwalk, and one of the most historically loaded pieces of ground in the city.

The Statue, the Advocate and the Rename

For most of the twentieth century this was Cornwallis Park, named for Edward Cornwallis, the British governor who founded Halifax in 1749 and the same year issued a bounty on Mi'kmaw scalps. A bronze statue of Cornwallis stood on the site from its 1931 unveiling until January 31, 2018, when the municipality removed it by crane in the early morning — a moment photographed by the Halifax Examiner and remembered as a turning point in how the city commemorates its founding.

Dr. Paul had been pressing for exactly that since the late 1980s. His three-decade campaign led to the city's Task Force on the Commemoration of Edward Cornwallis and the Recognition and Commemoration of Indigenous History, whose 2020 recommendations included removing the statue permanently to storage and renaming the park. On June 21, 2021 — National Indigenous Peoples Day — Paul joined community leaders to unveil the new name, which the municipality had already been using informally since the statue came down. Council made it official in a unanimous vote, and the Cornwallis Street rename that followed the same process (the community chose New Horizons Street) closed the circle. The statue itself remains in municipal storage, its long-term fate undecided.

What the Park Offers a Visitor

The park today is deliberately modest: lawns, mature trees, benches facing the water, and an open sightline down Halifax Harbour toward Georges Island and the harbour mouth. It functions as a lunch-hour escape for the Hollis Street office crowd, a rest stop on the walk between the ferry terminal and the terminal piers, and a gathering place — community events and rallies are held here regularly, a role the space has played since long before the rename. Online ratings hover around 4.3, and the reviews skew local: people come to sit, read and look at the harbour rather than to check off an attraction.

That low-key character is the point. Where the boardwalk two blocks north is all noise and ice cream, the park is where the waterfront exhales. On a clear evening the benches fill quietly, the ferries cross to Dartmouth in front of you, and the interpretive weight of the place — a park named for treaties older than Canada, on the ground where a colonial statue stood for eighty-seven years — sits alongside the view. For more of the city's story, our Halifax local guide covers the sites that carry it.

Practical Details

Address & Location
1181 Hollis Street, Halifax, NS — South End waterfront, a short walk south of the Halifax ferry terminal and the boardwalk's southern piers.

Hours
Open year-round, dawn to dusk; no gate or admission.

Cost
Free.

Getting There
On foot from downtown via the Hollis Street sidewalk or the waterfront boardwalk; Halifax Transit buses stop on Hollis; the Alderney ferry terminal is across the harbour.

Facilities
Lawns, benches, tree cover, harbour views; washrooms and food are on the waterfront boardwalk a few minutes north.

Come for the view, stay for the history — and read the name twice.