Seven Days in Halifax by Robert Ashe
When citizens confronted the racists, liars and incompetents who ran their city.
As someone who spends a lot of time in Halifax’s past, I’m always excited to read about a chapter in the former city’s history that I didn’t know about. Seven Days in Halifax: When citizens confronted the racists, liars and incompetents who ran their city looks at one such chapter.
In Seven Days, Robert Ashe analyzes and discusses the Encounter on Urban Environment sessions from 1970. The sessions, as suggested by the title, took place over a week when 12 experts from outside of Halifax and Dartmouth held panels on current issues like poverty, civil rights, urban planning, and labour. Some issues were properly addressed, while others weren’t despite the public attention on them.
Tackling a story like this is hard, as there are many characters, factors, and contexts that need to be understood. Ashe does a fantastic job in this, by separating each day into sections. This not only makes each issue or topic, as well as the overarching story, more digestible. I will admit, it’s sometimes difficult to follow who’s who, especially if you aren’t familiar with the time period and important players or have to put the book down for a few days. But, this just shows how significant these sessions were: People showed up and made themselves heard.
Ashe’s dedication to the research also shows. He started the project well over a decade ago, conducted over 60 interviews and looked at archival material — including a 37,000 word report and a 1,000-page transcript.
Seven Days in Halifax: When citizens confronted the racists, liars and incompetents who ran their city is a worthwhile to any bookshelf that not only shines a light on a forgotten part of history but reminds us of how prominent some of these issues still are, 50 plus years on.
About the Author
ROBERT ASHE is an award-winning journalist and author who was raised on the outskirts of Halifax. He is the author of Halifax Champion: Black Power in Gloves and coauthor, with John Paris Jr., of They Called Me Chocolate Rocket. His other books include Even the Babe Came to Play, about a New Brunswick baseball team during the Great Depression, and a collection of columns about life in Saint John entitled Just Enough Fog to Keep It Cool. He lives in Ottawa.
About the Reviewer
Katie Ingram is a freelance journalist and the author of Breaking Disaster: Newspaper Stories of the Halifax Explosion and The Undesirables: A History of Rockhead Prison. She’s also a part-time instructor with the University of King’s College School of Journalism, Writing and Publishing.
Book Details
Imprint: Formac Publishing Company Limited
Publication Date: 6 October 2025
ISBN: 9781459508071
Page Count: 336