Remembering Peter Waite, beloved Dal prof who helped save Crystal Crescent Beach

Without Peter Waite and his friends, there might be no Crystal Crescent Beach in Nova Scotia. 

In the early 1950s, the Dalhousie University professor, along with a group of other young and influential academics, discovered the white sand beaches south of Halifax.

"They were just astonished with how gorgeous these beaches were and it then transpired that they were going to be developed for sand and gravel mining, and dad and his friends were absolutely horrified at this," his daughter Anya Waite told CBC's Information Morning this week. 

Waite happened to be good friends with the premier at the time, Robert Stanfield, who he helped convince to buy the land so it could be turned into a provincial park instead.

By 1956, the area formerly called Coote Cove was dubbed Crystal Crescent Beach, a place Waite would return to often with his kids years later.

Waite, a well-known historian and writer who taught at Dalhousie for 35 years, died on Aug. 24 at the Camp Hill Veterans Memorial Building in Halifax. He was 98.

His daughter Nina Waite said visiting Crystal Crescent with her dad over the years remains some of her fondest memories. 

The family also spent time exploring further from home, travelling around Europe and living in Australia. 

"His lust for travel was infectious, and he took us everywhere with him. We feel very lucky to have had that opportunity," she said.

Waite was born in Toronto in 1922 and served in the Royal Canadian Navy for almost five years during the Second World War. He moved to Nova Scotia and started teaching history at Dalhousie in 1951.

His daughters say he was one of those rare professors who could make even a dry subject riveting, and that students often didn't want to leave his class after a lecture.

He wrote several books about history and became an officer of the Order of Canada in 1993 for his contribution to the Canadian historical canon.

Nina Waite said her father's sense of adventure and dedication to his work never left, even when he moved into the Veterans Memorial Building in 2011.

"At age 90, living at Veterans, he was still writing and finished his last book on R.B. Bennett, who was prime minister during the Depression," she said. "So he never stopped thinking, learning, writing, experiencing."

In the final months of his life, the pandemic meant Waite could no longer join his family for their weekly dinners, but his daughters were there when Waite died peacefully last month.

"He faced life and accepted the challenges," Nina Waite said. "He had an equanimity that is admirable, and I guess I feel that that kind of inner happiness that he had, I hope I continue to find in my life because that is a gift."

Nina and Anya spent those last days with their dad reading to him from one of his favourite books, Jane Austen's Emma, and singing Scottish folks tunes.

"In fact, we were singing to him at the time, so we literally sang him across the threshold, which is an amazing privilege," Anya Waite said.