“In the shock and isolation of adjustment (upon returning to Canada after the First World War) the veterans turned to soldiers’ clubs and regimental associations to recapture the camaraderie and sense of purpose they had known in the forces.”

From the book marking their Diamond Jubilee, this quote reveals in a few words the origin of the largest organisation in Canada. The Royal Canadian Legion had its beginning in clubs and associations that probably first met to socialise and reminisce, but eventually began to concentrate on problems faced by veterans.

“At first the prime concerns were decent hospitals and proper treatment for the war-wounded,” reads the Diamond Jubilee book. “But soon longer-term issues came to the fore: pensions, war allowances, the care of the dependants of the dead and the disabled…and the federal legislation to govern all this.”

Early veteran’s groups were numerous, some dealing with specific war-related problems, while other associations were formed from military branches. The most prominent group was the Great War Veterans Association (GWVA) which existed from 1917 to 1926. Mainly through the efforts of the GWVA the various veteran groups and associations were unified into one body. At a national conference in 1925 the Canadian Legion of the British Empire Service League was formed. A charter was granted by the secretary of state the following year, giving the Legion official status. Just over three decades later the Queen assented to the addition of “Royal” to the organisation’s name and it became the Royal Canadian Legion.

From a scattering of veteran groups, with no more than a few thousand members in 1921, the Legion today is now over 600,000 strong and has branches in most major population areas. In this newspaper’s circulation area, for example, there are branches in Kentville, Wolfville, Windsor, Hantsport, Berwick, Kingston, Middleton and on down the Valley.

From its inception the Legion has worked long and hard on behalf of veterans. An example of its efforts is the Department of Veterans Affairs, formed after the Legion convinced Ottawa that veterans’ interests would better be served by one special department.

However, while efforts on behalf of veterans continue, today’s Legion is also a major contributor to society in other areas. The ongoing efforts of the Kentville branch (Kings Branch #6) to raise and donate funds to worthy enterprises is a typical example of the good work the Legion does in similar communities across Canada.

In an average year the Kentville Legion contributes thousands of dollars in support of various organisations, charities, schools and individuals in need of assistance. Some $6,000 was distributed to Kings County schools as scholarships and bursaries this year, for example. The branch makes major donations to the V.O.N. ($11,000 in the past two years) sponsors the local Army Cadet band ($3,500 annually) and provided equipment valued at $20,000 to the Valley Regional Hospital. In the first six months of 1997 alone, 19 other charitable groups, clubs, schools and associations in the area received financial support from the Kentville branch.

When Ward’s Mansion was destroyed by fire in 1965, a newspaper report called the building a “colourful Kentville landmark.” Built sometime around 1904, the mansion had “stood guard high over Kentville for over half a century,” said another newspaper account of the fire.

A column two weeks ago on Klondike Ward barely delved into his story. I used a lengthy obituary from a 1934 Advertiser as my source but many of the facts about the famous mansion weren’t there (the date of its construction, for example.) However, thanks to a call from Marie Bishop, I am able to expand some of the Klondike Ward story. Ms. Bishop told me she had helped in the preparation of a paper on Ward and his family and a copy was on file at the museum in Kentville.

The Klondike Ward story deserves more than a couple of my columns in this newspaper and a brief document stored in a museum. Ward obviously was a Kentville builder and he should be recognised in some way. Perhaps the efforts of this columnist will spark enough interest to get something started.

Anyway, more on the Ward saga. Here are some gleanings from the document on file at the Old Kings Courthouse Museum.

Klondike Ward was an adventurous man. He struck out on his own while a youth, journeying to the United States where he served for a while in the U.S. Marines. Ward joined the R.C.M.P. in 1890 when he was 26 and was posted to the Klondike area of the Yukon. A few years after Ward’s arrival gold was discovered in the Klondike. Ward went prospecting with a friend and in the words of the museum document, “found enough gold to buy his way out of the Mounties.”

Ward returned to Kentville in 1899, apparently a wealthy man. He married a banker’s daughter, Elizabeth Redden, and took her back to the Klondike (where they lived in a log cabin) for another four or five years of prospecting. There he was joined by his brothers, Norman, Winnifred and Nathan.

By 1904 Ward was back in Kentville (where a daughter Evelyn was born) and he began a period of construction. The area in Kentville known simply as the Klondike (I was unable to discover when the spelling was changed) was named after Ward perhaps because he developed it and constructed several of the first homes in this area. There is mention that Ward backed the construction of several major commercial buildings in Kentville but there were no details in the museum paper.

Ward began construction of his Prospect Avenue mansion at this time, sparing no expense in the building of it. One of the bedrooms was furnished with a mahogany suite shipped from Jamaica, for example. On record is Ward’s reply when he was asked why he was building so fancy a home. He said, “I had a little extra money and it will be nice to leave a memorial to the family.”

Elizabeth Ward died in 1924 at an Ontario sanitorium. Ward survived his wife by only 10 years but he was married again to an American, Florence Benner. After his death, Ward’s widow opened the mansion “as a home away from home for the troops stationed at Aldershot Camp.” Florence died in 1957.

It doesn’t take much prompting for people to tell you what life was like when they were young. “Prod an old-timer,” someone once said “and you’ll discover a potpourri of nostalgia, yearning for the ‘good old days’ and a tendency to compare things now with what they were in their generation.”

I haven’t prompted or prodded many old-timers, but I enjoy hearing them reminisce about life when they were young men and women. There’s something about the lifestyle of past generations that fascinates people. Run an old photograph in this paper, for example, and reader interest will be high. People like to see old pictures and they literally eat up old-time tales.

Understanding or explaining this interest is impossible. Like most people I like to look at old photos and artifacts and I enjoy old-time accounts. I can’t tell you why. I’ve never been able to fathom why these things are fascinating, so there’s no way I can explain why others have the same interest.

On the whole, people may believe life was simpler, less stressful, and definitely less costly in the old days; thus the widespread interest in earlier times may simply be the result of a desire to have lived in them. Obviously it’s difficult for people today to truly prove life was simpler and better in earlier times. An 18th century citizen of the Annapolis Valley may have had problems and pressures that would seem trivial today. There is little doubt, however, that the cost of living seemed to be lower a generation or two ago. As a matter of fact, prices of food and clothing were extremely low no more than five or six decades ago. For proof let’s turn to an issue of this newspaper for November, 1934, and a look at prices.

First of all, many popular brand name food products on grocery shelves today were available 60 years ago. But what a huge difference in prices then and now. Brunswick sardines, for example, were six tins for 25 cents. Heinz tomato catsup was 21 cents a bottle. Heinz tomato soup and spaghetti sold two tins for 27 cents. A half pound tin of Fry’s cocoa was 21 cents. Ivory soap sold at three cakes for 13 cents.

It looks like the dollar had more buying power in 1934. The above items were found in grocery ads for two Kentville stores, which also offered unbelievably low meat prices. Bacon for 35 cents a pound. Smoked picnics 21 cents a pound. Spareribs 15 cents a pound. Kippered herring three for 20 cents. Canned lobster 22 cents a tin.

In 1934 gents could purchase good quality overcoats from L.W. Phinney’s store for $15. A. G. Hiltz Dry Goods was offering wool dresses under 10 dollars. Lockharts had men’s nightgowns and pyjamas for $1.50 a pair and lined gloves for $1.

While The Advertiser issue I’m quoting from was printed over half a century ago, some things haven’t changed. As they do today, church and community groups were fundraising with seasonal suppers. An annual church chicken supper was advertised. The community of Scott’s Bay was hosting a harvest supper. And the forerunner of our popular flea markets, the rummage sale, was very much in evidence.

Ward’s Mansion loomed on a rise of land above Prospect Avenue on the southern edge of Kentville, a sentinel guarding the Cornwallis River Valley. It was a house of mystery when I was growing up around Kentville and I spent hours looking at it from my bedroom window with my old telescope. I don’t now what I expected to see – ghosts, lights, maybe Klondike Ward himself, who was said to haunt the building that was once a Kentville landmark.

Before he died in 1934, Klondike Ward planned to convert his mansion into a summer hotel. The remodelling was almost completed when Ward died suddenly at age 70. While he bad been in poor health of years, his condition wasn’t believed to be serious and his death was unexpected.

When I was growing up in the ’40s, Ward’s mansion was abandoned and it was in this period that rumours and stories about ghosts and “strange happenings” were circulated. There was just enough mystery about the mansion and Ward for some of the rumours to be taken as fact. According to newspaper stories of the period, Ward’s death had halted the conversion of his residence into a hotel. However, the story going around was that Ward lost the gold he had discovered in the far north and, being bankrupt, had been unable to complete the building of his mansion. His sudden death was attributed to the loss of his gold.

The only truth to this story was that Ward had struck gold in the Klondike and returned to Kentville a rich man. Born in North Alton, Ward joined the Northwest Mounted Police at an early age and served in the Canadian west. A page one story on his death, published in the Nov. 8, 1934 issue of The Advertiser, said that Ward quickly rose to the rank of Corporal and then “retired from the Mounties to respond to the lure of gold.”

Many men prospered during the Klondike gold rush days in the Yukon, which began in 1897. An estimated $100,000,000 was obtained from the placer deposits of the Klondike between 1897 and 1904 and Ward was one of the lucky ones. He would have been in his thirties when gold was discovered and was probably serving at the time with the detachment of the Northwest Mounted that was established in the Yukon in 1895.

Ward eventually returned to Kentville after finding gold and married a local girl. For years after, he invested in Kentville real estate and, in the words of The Advertiser obituary, “business blocks and residences stand as a monument to his faith in the development of the town.” I was unable to determine when Ward began construction of his mansion, but shortly after it was completed his wife died. Ward later became a world traveller and, perhaps saddened by his wife’s death, never spent much time at the fabulous mansion he built for her at the top of Prospect Street.

Ward’s mansion apparently stood vacant for years until Ward returned with a new wife. After his death, the mansion was again vacant for a long period. It was in this latter period that the tales of strange occurrences and hauntings began to circulate. For me, Klondike Ward and his mansion were mysteries. Through the 1934 tribute to Ward in The Advertiser I learned that the mystery man was actually one of Kentville’s most prominent citizens and his mansion its most famous landmark.