Pier Review

When I was thirteen, my family took a summer trip to the East Coast. For my father, it was his first time in Halifax since he had landed at Pier 21 several decades before. He was just eight when he, his brother, and his parents all stepped off SS Queen Frederica, in October 1964, part of a final wave of newcomers before the fabled immigration terminal closed in 1971. I was too young to understand the significance of our visit to the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, which the Pier 21 Society founded in 1999, nor did I notice my father’s quiet reflectiveness. But I remember leaving with a bespoke souvenir for my grandparents — a framed photograph of the ship my father’s family sailed, marked with the date they disembarked. It still hangs prominently in their foyer in Toronto.

When we visited, the museum bore none of the hallmarks of a national institution; it simply...