Pier 21

Letitia as a hospital ship arriving at Pier 21

The war almost completely halted immigration, but Pier 21 quickly became a major embarkation port for troop ships. Canadians and other Allied forces boarded hundreds of converted ocean liners ranging from the giants RMS Queen Mary and RMS Queen Elizabeth to smaller liners such as RMS Ascania. As the war continued, a special medical embarkation unit was established at Pier 21 to move wounded soldiers from hospital ships to special hospital trains as the hospital ships Lady Nelson and Letitia brought wounded Canadians home. Most of the over 90,000 aviators who came to Canada as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan landed at Pier 21. Over 2,000 child evacuees from the United Kingdom arrived at Pier 21 during the war, fleeing the Blitz. Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands arrived at Pier 21 amidst ceremony aboard the Dutch cruiser HNLMS Sumatra in 1940 after the invasion of the Netherlands, en route to wartime refuge in Ottawa. Winston Churchill passed through Pier 21 four times, traveling in 1943 and 1944 to the Quebec Conference and the Washington Conference. During the latter trip he led a sing-along of "O Canada" and "The Maple Leaf Forever" at the Pier 21 railway platform where hundreds had gathered to see him.[9] Enormous amounts of gold bullion were secretly shipped through Pier 21 during the war to banks in Ottawa and Montreal to safeguard currency reserves of beleaguered European nations. Britain alone shipped over 2.5 billion in gold reserves in 50 different shipments codenamed variously as "margarine" or "peanuts" from 1939 to 1941.[10] At the war's end the Pier welcomed returning troops followed by war brides. A large fire heavily damaged Pier 21 on March 5, 1944 causing the central portion of the facility to be rebuilt in time to handle returning soldiers and war brides in 1945.[11]

The Pier 21 complex in 2014 with a cruise ship docked at the former immigration shed and assembly hall. The immigration annex can be seen in the foreground, connected by an overhead walkway, through which immigrants walked from customs to the trains that took them across Canada.

Following the war brides, several major waves of immigrants arrived at Pier 21 beginning with the Displaced Person refugees from across Europe, including many Holocaust survivors. These refugees were followed by large numbers of post war economic immigrants from several European countries such as Britain, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands.

Displaced Person refugee with baby at Pier 21, 1948

One of the smallest ships to ever come to Pier 21, the former minesweeper SS Walnut arrived in 1948 packed with 347 refugees from the Baltic, triggering a controversy about their admittance to Canada which help shaped Canada's postwar refugee policies.[12] The 1950s marked the peak years of immigration arrivals, many of which were Italian-Canadians.[13] A large two-story addition was built onto the immigration annex building in the 1950s to handle the heavy traffic of postwar European immigration. The Hungarian Uprising in 1956 brought another group of refugees to Pier 21, although some from this wave were now arriving by aircraft. The decline in ocean liner travel due to the rise of jet airliner travel during the 1960s caused immigration to shift to airports. With few ships calling at Pier 21, the terminal was used more often in its final years to handle overflow from airport immigration offices.[14] The last major group of immigrants were 100 Cuban refugees from the Gander International Airport who were transferred to Pier 21 in 1970 to be accommodated while their refugee claims were processed.[15] Pier 21 closed its doors on March 28, 1971. The last ship to bring immigrants to Pier 21 in 1971 was SS Nieuw Amsterdam (1937), which bore the same name as the first ship to bring immigrants to the Pier in 1928.

Pier 21 Museum in 2015

From the 1970s until 1991, the former immigration facility at Pier 21 housed the Nova Scotia Nautical Institute, a training facility for professional mariners. During the 1990s, the space provided studio and workshop space for artists.[16] The Immigration annex was used by customs officials and the Halifax port's police. The growth of the cruise ship industry in the 1980s led to the return of large passenger ships to the Pier 21 wharves, however only for short recreational visits. Some of the former immigration terminal areas in Shed 20 and 22 was converted in stages to cruise ship passenger reception and retail spaces.

On September 22, 1997, the Pier 21 facility was designated a National Historic Site of Canada on the recommendation of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada because of the facility's major role in 20th century immigration in Canada and because it is the last surviving seaport immigration facility in Canada.[17] The Pier 21 Society opened an interpretive centre in part of the former immigration facility in 1999. The society became the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in 2010, and occupied an expanded portion of the former immigration facility. The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design's seaport campus took over Pier 21's former medical, detention and accommodation wing in 2011. The Garrison brewing company leased a large portion of the immigration annex building in May 2006.[18] A variety of retail shops as well as artists' and architects' studios and cultural organizations occupy the remainder of the immigration annex.

In late 2005, Pier 21's Carrie-Anne Smith and Vice Admiral Duncan "Dusty" Miller contributed wood from the building's rafters to the Six String Nation project. Part of that material now forms the X-brace on the interior of Voyageur, the guitar at the heart of the project.[19]