History Collection - Weathervane

Nord, Süd, Ost, West

The Little Dutch Church in Halifax is little, but it isn’t Dutch. Dutch is a misnomer for Deutsch or German, the language spoken by most of the 3000 German, Swiss and French settlers who came to Halifax between 1750 and 1752. Some of these “Foreign Protestants” moved on to settle parts of the South Shore, including Lunenburg. Those who stayed in Halifax built this church, the oldest Lutheran church in Canada, built in the 1750s. This was the church’s original iron weathercock – an essential piece of equipment in a town full of sailors. The brass weathercock that now sits atop the steeple provides the compass points in German.