The first Cathedral of the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and, in fact, the first Cathedral in North America, so designated by the first Bishop, Charles Inglis, on his arrival in 1787, was St. Paul's Church, Halifax, and it continued as such until 1864 when Bishop Hibbert Binney made St. Luke's Church on Morris Street his pro-Cathedral. In 1905 St. Luke's was completely destroyed by fire and it was this event that provided the initial impetus for the designing and building of the Cathedral Church of All Saints.

The idea of a Diocesan Cathedral had been around at least since 1865 when Bishop Binney obtained authority to constitute a Dean and Chapter with power to erect a stone Cathedral. Some money was raised, a fine site was donated by Bishop Binney on Robie Street at the head of Spring Garden Road, at the other end of which the Roman Catholics had already established their Cathedral, drawings were obtained for a handsome stone gothic revival structure by the prominent English architect Arthur Edmund Street, and, shortly after Bishop Binney's death in 1887, the foundation stone was laid. Work then stopped while further funds were raised and a chapel, dedicated to St. Stephen, was erected on the site.

When the 1905 fire brought into focus the necessity for a new Cathedral, Bishop Lamb Worrell, possibly thinking of the Cathedral-building activities underway or in the planning stages in Liverpool, England, and in Washington and New York in the United States, rejected both the Cathedral design by Street and the site on Robie Street which proved to be too small for what he had in mind. He called for a competition which brought designs from William Critchlow Harris, architect of many outstanding Maritime churches who hoped to realise his life's ambition in this new Cathedral, as well as from the firm of Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson of Boston and New York who were fast becoming the foremost interpreter of gothic architecture in North America. It is ironic that one of the factors that led Bishop Worrell to chose the second of these entries was the Central Tower that they provided; this was never built.

The congregation for this new Cathedral was formed by uniting the three parishes in the area: St. Stephen's Chapel, which was afterwards demolished, St. Alban's Church, which remains today as a private residence at 616 Tower Road, and St. Luke's Church. St. Luke's Hall, at the corner of Morris and Queen Streets, later found service as St. George's Greek Orthodox Church and is now a small apartment building. Each of these churches is commemorated by a Chapel in the Cathedral and they are also pictured on the Altar Rail kneeling cushions in St. Stephen's Chapel.

The opening of All Saints Cathedral took place on 3 September 1910, two hundred years after the first Anglican service in Canada (then excluding Newfoundland) at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, in 1710. Coinciding with a great Anglican Church Congress, the opening of the Cathedral brought twenty-three Bishops and many clergy and laypeople from around the Anglican world for meetings and for the numerous services that marked the event. At the formal opening service of Matins the music included the anthem Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place by Cobb, and Blundell's School Hymn Great God of wisdom, life and light sung by the Cathedral choir augmented by other choirs of the city to a total of 140 voices, accompanied by the new Casavant Organ. After this service a photograph of the Bishops, clergy and choir was taken on the lawn to the south of the Cathedral.

Built of local stone from across Halifax's Northwest Arm at an original cost of $200,000, the building is 255 feet long, the width of the Transepts is 86 feet, the exterior height of the Nave is 68 feet, and the interior width of the Chancel is 26 feet. The Cathedral was built essentially as Cram designed it with the exception of the 132 foot high Central Tower which was never completed, and the ecclesiastical West Front which, after existing for many years as a temporary wooden construction, was finally finished to a modified design in 1979. Not part of the original plan, the Anglican Diocesan Centre was erected in 1960.

As the years have gone by defects in the construction of the building have come to light and added to this has been the damage caused by the Halifax explosion of 1917, which probably caused more harm than was apparent at the time, and by the explosion of the magazine on Bedford Basin in 1945 which required even more repair and renovation. Much work has been done at great expense over many years in an attempt to keep ahead of the many defects of the building; this is a continuing problem with no easy solution.

Particularly worthy of notice in the Cathedral are the carved wooden furnishings: the Choir Stalls with their carved angels, the Dean's and the Canons' Stalls, the Chancellor's Stall and the two Sedilias, all with their canopies and carved shields, the Bishop's Throne which is a rare and exquisite specimen of the woodcarver's art, the High Altar which is considered one of the most beautiful of its kind in Canada, the Pulpit, the Reredos in the form of a triptych in St. Stephen's Chapel, the Litany Desk, the Nave Altar which was dedicated in 1999, and, most impressive of all, the beautifully carved Reredos behind the High Altar which was completed in 1929. One may also observe the text Pax silentiaque above one of the doors in what used to be the Choir Vestry (now the Servers Vestry) behind the Organ console, carved there in the optimistic hope of influencing for good the behaviour of the choirboys!

The stained glass windows also add much to the beauty of the building and these include the Great Window above the High Altar, the work of the English glass-artist C. E. Kempe, which includes references to the Te Deum and to musical instruments and which was erected after the First World War, the Pentecost Window, dedicated in 1960, in the ecclesiastical South Transept, and, across from it in the ecclesiastical North Transept, the Communion of Saints Window; the newest window is the Bicentennial Window over the front entrance which dates from 1987.

All Saints Cathedral is reputed to have its own ghost: in 1933, shortly after his death, the figure of Dean Llwyd was seen in the Cathedral by several people who knew him well. Other sightings have occurred over the years associated, in the opinion of some, with the Ralph Vaughan Williams' hymn tune Down Ampney, Come down, O love divine.

In closing, one might note the comment made by the Canadian composer and organist Healey Willan, in a paper given at the Royal College of Organists in London, England, on 31 July 1935, and reported in the RCO Calendar 1935-1936, when he stated that "in Canada there are at the present time but two cathedrals in the architectural sense of the word, All Saints Cathedral, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the Cathedral Church of Christ, Victoria, B.C. and the latter is unfinished; all the rest are pro-cathedrals, i.e. parish churches in which the Bishop of the diocese elects to sit. It is true that they are often enlarged and added to, but the fact remains that they are really large churches with no attempt at the lay-out of a cathedral as it is generally understood in England.

[A Brief History of the Cathedral Church of All Saints; 250 Years Young; Year Book of the Diocese of Nova Scotia, 1910-1011; Robert C. Tuck: Gothic Dreams: The Architecture of William Critchlow Harris 1854-1913; Brian Cuthbertson; The All Saints Restoration Fund booklet; Cathedral Guidebook; William Naftel; The Cathedral of All Saints Silver Jubilee 1910-1935; Calendar of the Royal College of Organists 1935-1936; Canadian Churchman 29 June 1939; Memoranda respecting the Cathedral, 1943]

DEANS AND RECTORS OF ALL SAINTS CATHEDRAL, HALIFAX