Long for the Endless Immensity of the Sea: How a City Began to Change its Course

We become the stories we tell. That is true of people. It is true of organizations. It is true of cities.

The story of the past 15 years in Halifax has been, among other things, a story about enough people deciding to think about the city differently. Not unanimously. There has been plenty of disagreement along the way. But enough voices, across enough institutions and sectors, found enough shared purpose to move in the same general direction.

That critical mass is, frankly, critical. Without it, a story stays locked with a few people, or trapped in a polarized view from one side or another. With it, the story starts to shape decisions and coordination. It creates energy, alignment, and forward motion, and that attracts others.

A caution: storytelling is not everything, and the word has been overused for years. Stories do not build housing, fix roads, or shorten commutes. They do not train workers or attract investment on their own.

But they do shape what a community believes is possible, and what it chooses to get behind. Stories determine what leaders say out loud, what institutions agree to do, and what a city is willing to attempt.

Five Chapters: Shipbuilding, Ivany, Sell Halifax, HQ2, Oceans

When Irving Shipbuilding won the National Shipbuilding Contract, our firm gave every partner in the Ships Start Here coalition a framed print of this quote:

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

A smarter person than me had the idea, but I have always loved it, and not just because I have a dog-eared copy of The Little Prince. The quote captures a central truth about the Ships initiative. We were not organizing the community only to get behind a bid. We were building a movement to support a larger vision for the region and the city.

That required new thinking, new belief, new language, and new ways of seeing ourselves. The Ships Start Here campaign moved the opportunity from procurement to inspiration, from a contract to a new claim about what Halifax was and could become.

The Ivany Report from the One Nova Scotia Commission, Now or Never: An Urgent Call to Action for Nova Scotians, shaped the conversation with hard truths and direct language. It named a lack of cohesion and collective will as a real barrier to Nova Scotia's potential. More specifically, it stated that “the single most significant impediment to change and renewal is the lack of a shared vision and commitment to economic growth and renewal across our province and among our key institutions and stakeholder communities.”

The report also argued that “the active engagement of all of these stakeholders is required if we are to achieve meaningful economic and demographic improvements.”

You can only do this with a compelling story, told at the right time, calling on citizens, government, business, universities, municipalities, and non-profits to support change. No one person or group could pretend the problem belonged entirely to someone else. This chapter had a point of view, and it shaped what came next.

Cities, provinces, and states need convenors, at least in the liberal democracy we have been fortunate enough to have for the past 70 years. Organizations focused on economic development, whether in government or government-adjacent, can become prime movers in building the story that creates alignment and makes momentum possible.

Sell Halifax was a specific and important expression of that role for the Halifax Partnership. For those unfamiliar, it is a coordinated program that organizes the city's value proposition and gives businesses, institutions, and civic leaders a coherent, competitive case for Halifax. It provides tools, language, and positioning they can actually use when talking to investors, talent, and partners.

It is rooted in competitive advantage and truth, which makes it both strategic and useful. If that foundation is set well, the story becomes more than a way for a place to explain itself to others. It becomes part of how a community makes meaning and understands the contribution it can make beyond itself.

That matters because the language gets used. By large infrastructure developments. By employers trying to recruit talent. By institutions working on retention, growth, and wellbeing. A shared story becomes useful when many people can carry it into their own work without making it smaller.

Sell Halifax helped set the stage for the Amazon HQ2 bid, a high-energy side quest that took on a life of its own. Halifax did not win, and most people outside the business and economic development community have probably forgotten it. What the pursuit revealed, though, was that the city could organize, respond quickly, make a competitive case, and treat a large external opportunity as within reach. Belief comes in layers.

The work to define Halifax’s ocean economy as something of national interest built on this foundation as well. A broader community gained critical mass and started to see the ocean sector beyond heritage and geography. It could become an economic platform, part of the emerging shipbuilding story, connected to technology, energy, research, talent, and global markets.

Again, this required institutions, companies, and governments to see themselves in relation to one another. A larger story made each part of the ecosystem stronger.

Somewhere in this sequence of events, “why not here?” started to beat “why here?” Our older assumptions about ourselves began to change. Some were deserved. Some were inherited. Some had outlived the facts that produced them.

More young people not only wanted to stay. They wanted to get in.

Growth is Complicated

Growth brings pressure, and Halifax feels it, as do other cities. We feel it in housing costs, traffic, in projects that take too long, and in public systems built for smaller and slower places. Employers feel it when they cannot find workers. Residents feel it when the experience of living here does not match the promise of the story being told about it.

The story Halifax told over the past 15 years built confidence. The story it tells over the next 15 will have to build capacity, meaning the actual ability to deliver. One major piece of that is the defence investment coming to this region. It is generational.

The region will be a centrepiece of Canada's national story on defence, sovereignty, oceans, energy, and innovation. That is an opportunity. It is also a test of housing, workforce, infrastructure, procurement, transportation, and institutional coordination.

Shared language and a story that creates critical mass will matter in this next chapter, just as they have with every major turn. Story helped the region claim a more ambitious identity. Now it has to help set vision, give leaders the language to communicate direction, earn and maintain trust, and keep institutions moving together when the work demands more initiative than any one group can provide.

Regional Lessons for National Moments

Canada is in the middle of a next chapter: asserting sovereignty, building a new economic identity, and finding the unity of purpose marked by national interest. This challenge requires a recipe that Halifax spent 15 years practicing, starting with Ships Start Here: develop a shared story, build critical mass around it, find institutions willing to collaborate rather than compete, and do the patient work of turning ambition into capacity.

Would that it were as easy as it sounds.

Atlantic Canada is better positioned today to contribute to the national effort because of the work done to get here. Over the past 15 years, we have developed a habit of working toward something larger than ourselves. Not perfectly, and not without disagreement, but often enough to change our trajectory. That habit may prove to be one of our most valuable assets in the years ahead.

I wrote this while preparing for a Halifax Partnership panel marking the organization’s 30th anniversary, on defining moments, milestones, decisions, and partnerships that have shaped Halifax’s growth over the past three decades. I’m looking forward to the conversation with Wendy Luther, Suzanne Fougere, and Don Mills. Tagging Andy Fillmore, Mayor of Halifax, and his recent perspectives on The Blueprint for the city.

These challenges are not unique to cities. We see the same dynamic inside organizations, industries, and institutions facing major transitions. Strategy, communications, engagement, and leadership all matter, but often the hardest work is helping people develop a shared understanding of where they are going and why it matters. Without that, even the best plans struggle to gain traction.

This is part of the work we do at NATIONAL Public Relations, where I'm a Partner and Head of Innovation and Strategy. Helping organizations navigate change often means helping them build the shared understanding, alignment, and momentum needed to move forward together.