[someone123]

The gap is much smaller than many think and for certain kinds of buildings there is no quality gap or Halifax might have some nicer or simply unique buildings. There are a lot of scenes in old Quebec where the "before" looks like Halifax buildings. Many landmark buildings in Halifax have national architectural significance, like Province House (from the 1810's) or the Bank of NS or armoury and so on. They're not really inferior to any similar buildings from around the same era in Canada. It is true that Quebec City and Montreal both have a lot more medium scale masonry buildings and Montreal is just a much larger city in general. The size and wealth gap between Quebec City and Halifax is much smaller than the heritage building investment gap.

The armouries are interesting. The one in Quebec suffered a major fire, was repaired to a high standard, and has a bunch of nice modern architecture around it while the stuff around the Halifax armoury is very ugly. We can debate if the French Chateau style armoury is nicer or the Romanesque Revival style is nicer but I think the Halifax one might be the larger and more architecturally impressive of the two or they are on par. The difference is really all about how the buildings have been treated. They were both constructed at about the same time. I think there are still some wooden structures up around the Hailfax armoury to protect people from falling masonry.

There have been some wins like the armoury work that's ongoing now or the Keith's renos. Keith Hall is another one that would still look impressive if you transported it to Quebec City or Montreal but looked just terrible until it was renovated. And it still wasn't quite fully renovated (it lost a storey).

I post this stuff not as some kind of competition. I just think Halifax could look a lot better than it does and could take some cues from Montreal and Quebec City. And I think the reasons people come up with for the difference are often wrong (we don't have the buildings here, this town is too small/poor, we just need developers to step in and do it all and they won't). If there were more focus on enhancing that type of character there would be a dramatic shift, probably only at the cost of maybe 1-3% of the municipal budget or so.