Post War Settlement Patterns in Portland Place: 1946-1951
Gary Hughes, Curator of History & Technology, New Brunswick Museum
During and following the Second World War, several initiatives were taken to house both war workers and returning veterans through new developments on the north, east and west sides of the City of Saint John. Moderate and low-income housing stock in the city was poor with some extreme slum conditions. While some war workers and veterans originally living in slum housing may have benefited from the new developments, their actual number is unknown. It is believed the principal beneficiaries were in the middle-income bracket. It is not known if the civilian poor received any benefit in the form of better housing.
The renewal began in the early 1940’s with the city-planned and developed Rockwood Court multi-family homes in the east end and was followed by the federally sponsored Wartime Housing Ltd. and private Housing Enterprises Ltd. in which single and multi-family homes were constructed in the north and west sides. A road map, of sorts, for the future had been established with the Master Plan of the Municipality of Saint John, NB Canada by the Saint John Town Planning Commission in 1946. Housing was only one of the its concerns and much of it was underway at that point.
Rather than a macro study of post war housing in Saint John, research concentrated on the north end Portland Place development, first as this responded to federal housing policy and Then to available housing statistics covering occupancies and length of occupancy, occupation and, where possible, military affiliation and rank during the five year period 1946-1951. Newspaper research over an 8 month period in 1946 gave some sense of the social history behind the initial move in period. To gain a fuller appreciation of reaction to the acquisition of new housing in the immediate aftermath of the war, the adjustment to a new type of neighbourhood and new architecture and recollections of the usual ‘pioneer’ spirit that often develops in new neighbourhoods, first person interviews will be conducted in year four of the project. Information still classified by the federal government is military unit and rank of householder upon move in. Occasionally that information was gleaned from newspapers or ship’s lists and it is hoped that memories may assist in this process to form some patterns of unit settlement in Portland Place.