Until recently, I never heard of American artist Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler (1842-1922) or the Kentville connection with him and his work.

Fowler was a “panoramic artist,” and he is noted for sketching and publishing hundreds of detailed maps of towns and village across North America. During his lifetime he visited Canada, eventually arriving in Nova Scotia where he drew panoramic views of various areas. A collection of Fowler’s Nova Scotia sketches can be found in the Nova Scotia Museum.

In 1879 Fowler found his way to Kentville and while there produced a sketch of the town. His sketch, which he called a “Bird’s eye View of Kentville,” looks down upon the town from the site of the Valley Regional Hospital. Fowler issued color prints of the sketch, and at least two are still in existence. Kentville historian Louis Comeau had one in his maps pertaining to the town but it is now part of the Nova Scotia Museum collection. Another copy has been in the Dennison family for several generations and is now the property of Fred and Kay (Dennison) Ward of Kentville.

Thanks to Mr. Ward (and the Town of Kentville) I have a copy of this print. I must say that it looks more like a photograph than a map; or to put it another way, it looks like a sketch of the town made from an aerial photograph. Fowler shows streets, commercial buildings, churches and the school, for example, and it isn’t difficult to pretty well see what Kentville looked like in 1879.

In his sketch/map or whatever you want to call it, Fowler numbered some of the prominent buildings in Kentville, school, post office, courthouse and railway facilities, for example, and these are listed underneath. According to the map, Kentville in 1879 had five churches, the Presbyterian, Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist and Catholic. The sketch shows that four hotels operated in the town in 1879, the Lorne Villa, Riviera House, Kentville Hotel and Webster House, but there may have been one or two more.

Up on a hill above Kentville and immediately east of the Valley Regional Hospital, Fowler has sketched a magnificent building which must have been the pride of citizens. This was the three-storey Kentville Exhibition Building, which obviously was built at least as early as 1879; according to Kentville historian Louis Comeau, this building was destroyed in a fire in September of 1900. I believe this was one of the earliest agricultural exhibits around Kentville, but I have to admit difficulty in digging out facts about this structure.

I’m indebted to Louis Comeau for enlightening me on one of the most prominent Kentville buildings in 1879. Fowler showed Scotia Hall, which was located on the north-west corner where Webster Street joins Cornwallis Street, as one of the largest buildings in downtown Kentville. I checked four historical sources and couldn’t find Scotia Hall mentioned, but Mr. Comeau knew all about it.

Scotia Hall apparently was an early attempt to build and operate a combination mini mall, business and social centre. In it at street level were various small stores, while the upper building housed business offices and a hall that was used as a clubroom by the fire department. Mr. Comeau told me the building burned down in 1896 while it was still unfinished and the damage was assessed at $21,000.

Most people connect the bagpipe with Scotland; here in Nova Scotia we tend to think in terms of the pipes as synonymous with Cape Breton and the neighbouring counties of Pictou and Antigonish.

However, little old Kings County with its deep Acadian, Planter and Loyalist roots has a piping tradition all its own. In fact, bagpiping has been alive and well in Kings County for well over 100 years. When Camp Aldershot was established over a century ago, first near Aylesford in the 1880s and later at its current site, highland militia regiments regularly held exercises there during the summer. Traditionally, pipers were fixtures in militia units such as the Pictou Highlanders and the Cape Breton Highlanders and these units trained at the camp since day one.

Also, there’s photographic evidence that pipers were part and parcel of civic ceremonies in Kings County more than 100 years ago. Among the dignitaries posing for a photograph when the Kentville Exhibition Building opened in 1890, for example, is a piper is full highland regalia. The photograph is on file at the Kings County Museum.

Flashing forward, Camp Aldershot was the training base of the Nova Scotia Highland Brigade during the first world war. Included in this unit was the 85th Highland Battalion. A pipe band, or at the very least regimental pipers, were part and parcel of these units; photographs taken at Camp Aldershot during the war years clearly show the presence of pipe and drum units.

The “piping presence” was maintained during the second world war when Camp Aldershot became a major infantry training centre. Retired Kentville school teacher Gordon Hansford played in a pipe band that was established at Aldershot in 1940 or 1941 by order of the base commander, Colonel J. Jeffrey. The band was comprised of members of various militia units that trained there. Most of the pipers and drummers came from outside but among the drummers were local lads such as Hansford, Carl King and Alfred Graves who later became Kentville’s chief of police.

Carl King would later take up the pipes and was destined to be pipe major of several local bands in this area. King and Blair Campbell of Kentville were behind the founding of a cadet pipe band in Kentville in 1950, carrying on a tradition that had started over half a century earlier. When the Black Watch arrived at Camp Aldershot in 1952 their pipe band came with them and remained for nearly a decade, further enriching the art of piping in Kings County.

In 1970, about a decade after the Black Watch had departed Camp Aldershot, a civilian pipe band was formed in Kings County. Some of the pipers of this band still perform at numerous civic and private functions in the county today.

About two decades ago, the Canadian government decided that since the pipes have been part of the military since colonial days, most army and air force bases would include a pipe major. This has been the case at 14 Wing Greenwood since the 1980s. Currently, the 14 Wing pipes and drums, which is mainly a volunteer group, keeps the Kings County piping tradition alive.

Kings County piping timeline: 1880s – Pipers present at Camp Aldershot with militia units on the Aylesford Plains. 1904 – Highland militia with their pipers trained at Camp Aldershot. 1914-1918 – Highland regiments with pipers trained at Aldershot. 1940-1945 – Standing pipe band at Camp Aldershot. 1950 – Cadet pipe band formed in Kentville. 1953-1959 – Black Watch and their pipe band based at Camp Aldershot. 1970 – Civilian pipe band organised in county. 1980s-2006 – Pipe band maintained at Greenwood air base.

If you like to mark anniversaries of memorable storms, there’s a big one coming up next month – the 100th anniversary of the “Great Blockage.”

Early in February 1905 snow started to fall in Kings County and it continued for 21 days, literally burying this area under drifts said to be up to five meters deep. Elsewhere in the province snow levels are reported to have reached seven meters. Life in Kings County and around the province came to a standstill as the storm isolated communities, made roads impassable and closed down the railroad.

Newspaper reports at the time hailed the storm as one of the worst in over a century, and there are accounts of entire communities facing great hardship as food and fuel supplies ran short. Only the declaration of a provincial emergency and the calling out of every able male and arming them with shovels saved the day. One account of the great storm notes that among those answering the call to man shovels and attack the great blockage of snow was the entire student body at Acadia University.

Hardest hit in Kings County were isolated communities with few connections to the outside. Even communities lying along the rail line suffered. In various areas along the line the great storm piled up drifts nearly 30 feet high and it took weeks to clear them.

For several years in the mid 1930s The Advertiser published a column called Railway Notes by George Bishop of Kentville. Bishop, a railway man himself and a noted antique dealer, devoted a March 1939 column to the 45 year career of railway engineer W. B. Hartlen. Mr. Hartlen was the engineer who operated the famous “snow train” during another great storm, the great snowfall of 1916. Bishop wrote about this storm in the 1939 column on the occasion of Hartlen’s retirement. Thanks to Bishop’s column, we can see today how severe and crippling storms were in earlier days and why great hardship followed in their wake.

After the great storm of 1916 had abated, W. B. Hartlen’s first tasks as operator the snow train – a massive plough mounted on an engine – was to clear the North Mountain Branch of the railway. It proved to be no easy task. “Drifts piled 26 feet high and half a mile long” blocked the line Bishop reported. On one occasion Hartlen’s engine ran into a drift where it “completely disappeared” and had to be shovelled out by hand.

This gigantic snow drift on the line at Grafton proved almost impossible to remove at first and Hartlen had to call for assistance. He told Bishop about attacking the drift several times before getting through; and he only accomplished this by calling for a second engine to assist him.

Bishop wrote that Hartlen “did the job and did it well,” noting that Hartlen will “be remembered by many” as the snow train’s engineer.

While the 1916 storm wasn’t the near catastrophe of the 1905 great blockage, it too literally closed the county and brought everyday life to a standstill. One newspaper account of the 1916 storm said that on average just over 40 inches of snow accumulated in a three day period. In places, said the newspaper, winds caused drifts to pile up to a height of nearly 30 feet and for three days nothing and nobody moved.

In his history of Kings County, Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton writes that the honour of having the first steam mill in the county goes to Steam Mill Village.

This is about all Eaton has to say about the village. He tells us nothing of its history, if it was important economically, or where it was located in relation to the larger villages and towns of the county. As far as I’m concerned, Eaton let us down here. Perhaps the village was of little significance, but Eaton could at least have told us something about the pioneers who brought in and operated that first steam mill; after all, by his own admission it was a historic first in the county.

At this late date it may well be impossible to unearth any facts about that first steam mill and the village pioneers. However, a few tantalising clues exist in county folk lore, the stories people passed down from generation to generation. Also, there’s a brief overview of the village in files at the Kings County Museum which I’ll mention later.

Occasionally, I run across references to the early days of the village. Recently, for example, I interviewed long time Steam Mill resident Harlan Adams who mentioned that the old name for the North Aldershot Road was Garrett Road; Adams said the road was named for the man who once operated a mill in the area, most likely around 1900. From what Mr. Adams told me, Garret logged on what is now Camp Aldershot, so this mill may not have been the one that gave the village its name. I’ve been told the namesake mill was located in the main part of the village near Oak Grove cemetery.

In his book on Nova Scotia place-names, Charles Bruce Fergusson speculates that Steam Mill Village probably was settled as early as 1761, right after the Planters arrived and set up townships. If true, this would place the village among the first areas in the county settled by New Englanders. Located well away from any main waterway, the area couldn’t have had any special attraction for the settlers that followed the Acadians. However, the Planters that took up land in this area may have been among latecomers who had to accept grants away from the much-favoured dykelands.

When the Cornwallis Valley Railway line was laid out in 1889, Steam Mill Village was important enough to be a stop on the line that ran from Kingsport to Kentville. The station was maintained when the Dominion Atlantic Railway later took over the line and it was shown on the DAR’s timetables as Mill Village. Fergusson says the village had a postal way office which was opened in 1860; he also tells us that farming and milling have been the basic industries, confirming that the village was named after steam mills operating there in the 19th century.

A profile on the village, in files at the Kings County Museum, lists one house still standing that is said to have been built in 1775; if this is correct, this would be one of the oldest homes in the county. The profile also lists several homes existing in the village that were built around 1800 and 1900. As well as the carding mill located at Killam’s Pond, the profile mentions three lumber mills, one of them Garretts on Camp Aldershot property, another on Lakewood Road, and the third at an unknown location.