By Jacque DesLauriers • Halifax • 2026-04-03
Crystal Crescent’s Third Beach is an historic queer space at Pennant Point, a half hour drive from downtown Halifax. It has been a safe space for naturists / nudists of all stripes for decades. Below is a link to the Halifax Rainbow Encyclopedia entry for it which itself has several links.
Starting about a year ago, there was a push to recognize its queer heritage. This initiative was led by queer activists connected with other similar projects across Canada, including Hanlon’s Beach on Toronto.
Last year, almot 500 people responded to a questionnaire created by the Toronto team. This helped them gauge interest in maintaining "The Third Beach" as a queer space as well as a naturist hangout. In the time since, it has become clear that the Third Beach heritage designation project could not be run from Toronto. They have offered the use of their collected information to interested local parties.
But, upon reaching out to local activists through Instagram, the third beach project has met with new problems: no one has stepped up to be on the team; Of the many wonderful queer organizations and event coordinators the city of Halifax has to offer, none appear to have the capacity or the availability to take on this important work.
The call to action is simple
Crystal Crescent Third Beach has been a site of queer joy and a spiritual hub for many. Around the turn of the 21st century, two of Halifax’s gay community chose it as their final resting place. In 1998, gay social worker Ken Belanger died by suicide at the beach which was so important to him spiritually. Two years later, Wilson Hodder, AIDS activist and scholar, had his ashes cast upon the winds that sweep Third Beach. Many queer people found themselves as well as their friends and lovers on Third Beach over the past four decades. The beach itself is in no danger of going anywhere, but its queer history is threatened if its stories can’t be passed on to a new generation.
The call to action is simple: it requires little more than providing signage referring to Third Beach’s queer heritage, rounding up transportation for a yearly queer beach trip (or two!), and a little regular maintenance to keep our beach clean.
There will be a public meeting in May to rally a team to take on this project.
If this sounds like worthwhile work to you, if you'd like to help designate Crystal Crescent Beach as a queer heritage site, please register or send a note about how you'd like to help out, using this form.
Here's the Halifax Rainbow Encyclopedia article about CC Beach #3 which includes directions and several links to other sites.
Here's an article about a similar project for Hanlan's Beach in Toronto, also a long established Q nude space.
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