Did you know it’s considered an insult to call an ox shoer a farrier, or that the word “ox” is a term of endearment, that oxen predict the weather? Or that oxen have been used as draught animals for over 6000 years, and the Acadians farmed and built their dykes here in Kings County with the aid of oxen?

These are a few on the interesting, little known facts about oxen Carmen Legge divulges in his book on the care, training and use of these hardy animals.  Legge’s book is just off the press – it will officially be launched July 14 at Ross Farm in New Ross – and I’ve been given the privilege of reading and reviewing it.

What an eye opener this has been!  I’ve seen oxen around, mostly at pulling competitions and farm fairs, for as long as I can remember; but I was never fully conscious of the role they played in settling our land.  From the Acadian period right up until relatively recent times, Oxen have played a vital role in field, dyke and forest, helping settlements establish and helping them flourish.

“We can say that societies would not be were they are today (without oxen)” Legge observes in his book.  They were fixtures in the farms of old, performing tasks no other draught animals were capable of handling.  As Legge amply illustrates, there simply would not have been any farms, no clearing of the wilderness or of fields without these animals.

Basically written as a how-to-do book on the care, training and use of oxen, Legge’s book has enough historical background and is so well researched that I recommend it as a good historical read. I’ve often looked with disinterest at oxen plodding along at community fairs but not anymore.  Anachronisms they may be today, but they weren’t always, as you will discover in Legge’s book.

In the book you will be introduced to various words and expressions that in our great grandparent’s days were commonplace.   You will see what farm life was like with oxen and how difficult life would have been without them.  You will discover how important, actually how vital oxen were when Nova Scotia was a wilderness that was waiting for the axe and the plow.

Most of all, you will discover why oxen were cherished for the work they did and why they are still cherished today.  Carmen Legge grew up farming with oxen and his love and understanding of this magnificent animal shines through.  You may wish to skip the sections of his book dealing with the care of oxen but the remainder is educational and enlightening.

In 1897, D. O. Parker, M. A., compiled and published a book that is an unusual combination, a historical document, tourist guide and local directory.  Parker called it a Souvenir of Wolfville and Grand Pre.  The book was published in Wolfville (likely by Davison Bros., publishers of the Acadian newspaper) and sold for 25 cents.

Only 24 pages, there are historical notes, tourist information, and a business directory that’s brief and incomplete.  Yet it is interesting.   Written over a century ago, the book contains some historical nuggets.  Doug Crowell, who sent me the text of the book, notes for example that it has information on the location of the friar’s house that “Parks Canada has been searching to find for years.”

Parker places the friar’s house a “few steps west of the chapel.”  Here are the “remains of a cellar,” Parker writes, that “without doubt belonged to the house of the friar,” – I assume he meant the house of an Acadian priest.  The chapel, in turn, is said to have been west of “Evangeline’s well,” which was “discovered a few years ago by treasure seekers digging for hidden gold.”  Many valuable Acadian relics were found at the bottom of the well, Parker says.  An Acadian graveyard was also close by, “a little east,” according to Parker.

Also historically interesting is Parker’s contention that the grounds of Acadia University once held Acadian homesteads.  In the rear of Acadia University are Acadian cellars, Parker writes.  Many Acadian relics, found on University grounds, were stored at one time in the college museum but were destroyed in a fire.  “A valuable cabinet of (Acadian) relics was lost when the college was burnt,” writes Parker, no doubt referring to the 1877 fire that destroyed most of the University.

Readers familiar with an earlier Wolfville will be intrigued by Parker’s reference to Acadian homesteads where “about one mile and a half east of the P. O. (Post Office?) a private road leads in by C. C. Harris’s to one of the most picturesque nooks imaginable.”  There, says Parker, one can find old willows, old apple trees, the remains of old cellars and a “remarkable road down to the dyke… where the Acadians passed up and down a century and a half ago.”

The reference to the C. C. Harris property may be enough of a clue for amateur archaeologists to find this “picturesque nook,” and its Acadian cellars.  Parker mentions that a brook ran through the site and there were old willows, which also may be helpful clues.

As for being a local directory, Parker only mentions a few businesses, most of them catering to tourists.  “Only” is the correct word here since in 1897 Wolfville was a prosperous town, the largest in the county at the time.  In the early 1890s Wolfville had 16 stores and hotels, several boarding houses, a busy port and a patent medicine factory.

Parker writes about six Wolfville and three Grand Pre hotels in his  book and briefly describes points of interest that might attract tourists.  There are “pleasant walks” and “pleasant drives,” and mention that in 1897, land now occupied by Acadia University held “3,000 young apple, pear, plum and peach trees.”

Readers interested in early Wolfville and the various references to the Acadians will find Parker’s book more than interesting.  While the book is out of print, it is posted on the Internet and can easily be accessed.