They were a necessity at one time, in the period when sections of the dykes were fenced to contain cattle and horses.
The Oxford Canadian Dictionary defines them as an “arrangement of steps allowing people but not animals to climb over a fence or wall.” We knew them simply as “stiles.”
I climbed over a few stiles in my day but if I remember correctly, by the late 1950s there were few to be found in the upper area of the Canard dykes. The stiles and fences disappeared when dyking of cattle in the fall was discontinued.
The stiles I remember were made of rough-hewn lumber; definitely sturdy, they were constructed to last, and you’d never believe they could attract people or were romantic in any way.
But think again.
Continue readingThe Korean conflict in the 1950s is often hailed as Canada’s forgotten war. The same can be said of the South African (Boer) War (1899-1902) for which over a thousand Canadians initially volunteered. Except for memorials in Halifax and Canning and the odd record of Boer War veterans on Legion cenotaphs, this truly is a forgotten conflict.
However, the stories of Boer War veterans, some of the young men who attended university in Wolfville, are being told. Acadia University archivist Wendy Robicheau is on a mission to collect the stories of those Acadia students, and to use a cliché, save them for posterity. “I want to know their stories,” Robicheau said. “Who are they? What happened to them?”
To find their stories, Robicheau began by searching war records, which she found to be sketchy at best. “It is mostly by chance that I’ve been able to find these men, although sometimes they find me,” Robicheau said, giving as an example a visit to the war memorial in Port Williams where she found Private Congdon and Private Lockwood (of which more below).
Continue readingBefore the First World War “there was much coming and going to Cape Split by an odd little Physics professor at Acadia,” Esther Clark Wright wrote in her book, Blomidon Rose. “Some materials were transported across and around the mountain (to Cape Split) but nothing came of the affair.”
Wright doesn’t tell us which Acadia professor she was referring to as odd and little – three were involved in the so-called “affair” – but she was referring to an attempt in 1916 to harness the tides at Cape Split and generate awesome amounts of electricity.
The odd little man Wright refers to may have been Acadia’s engineering professor, Ralph C. Clarkson, an American who had joined the University’s faculty in 1912. He had patented a unique tide-generated turbine, the Clarkson Hydraulic Current Motor. The motor was the key ingredient in a scheme, originating apparently with Clarkson, to generate electricity at Cape Split and potentially light up the entire Maritimes.
Continue readingFor the most part, earlier newspapers now out of print were compilations of dull advertisements and smatterings of what newspaper people today call news copy.
On the other hand, they’re goldmines of information, and little windows into the past. Simply fill in the blanks, read the ads, what there is of the stilted news reports, and you have inklings of what people did a century or more ago and what mattered most to them.
One of my pastimes is reading those old newspapers. Unfortunately, one of my regrets is that some of those old papers exist today only as archival copies, and while I have no choice and have to read them online, I don’t enjoy it. If that makes me a Luddite, then so be it. No apologies.
Continue readingLloyd Smith’s role as a town crier began in Windsor in 1978 when he was with the CFAB radio station – a role he says began “accidentally” and not by his choice.
Smith was the manager and the on-air voice of CFAB when Windsor’s Sam Slick days were being organized. As a radio celebrity, he was a natural choice to play the role of Sam Slick. Then, in 1978, the provincial government attempted to re-introduce town crying by organizing an international competition.
“They’d hired a British crier to set it up,” Smith recalls. “At the last minute, town officials advised me that I was enrolled in the competition representing Windsor.”
Despite his total lack of experience – he had to ask what a town crier does – Smith went to the competition and figured he didn’t do badly at all. “Out of 13 criers I placed 12th,” he says, “so I wasn’t on the bottom.”
In his day he was hailed as a master of his trade, designing and building some of the finest ships ever to slide down the ways at Kingsport – and in Canada as a matter of fact.
This was Ebenezer Cox (1828-1916) who in 1864 began shipbuilding with his brother, William. The Cox shipyard in Kingsport turned out some of the largest sailing vessels in Canada; one of these vessels, built in 1891 was the 2,137-ton Canada. The Kings County, hailed as one of only two four-masted vessels built in Canada, was launched in 1890.
The shipbuilding career of Ebenezer Cox has never been fully told. However, an attempt was made to tell his story in 1903 when Cox was interviewed and his record published in Middleton’s weekly newspaper, the Outlook – he was 75 at the time. In 1904, the article was reprinted in the Wolfville Acadian. I learned about this account of Cox’s career from the Windsor historian L. S. (Larry) Loomer. Mr. Loomer copied the account from the Acadian and sent it to me, along with an explanatory letter. That was 20 years ago.
Continue readingJust over 100 years ago, in 1900, the Canadian Kodak Company introduced a novelty, a camera made to produce postcard-size negatives. The camera sold for roughly $20.
At the time Canadians were mailing more than 25,000 postcards a year. Within a few years, after the postcard format was changed by the post office, the number had ballooned into the millions.
These figures are questionable, but research by deltiologist Larry Keddy confirms the numbers, and it’s possible they’re underestimated.
The study and collection of postcards – deltiology – was the topic of a presentation Keddy made at the bi-monthly meeting of the Kentville Historical Society in January. In the talk, Keddy referred to postcards as yesterday’s email, noting that their popularity began over 150 years ago – in 1869 – when they were first introduced in Austria.
Continue readingIn a census conducted by the province in 1766, Windsor’s population was 243, of which 60 were from Ireland.
So writes L. S. Loomer in his book on the history of Windsor, which in the index has at least 20 references to the Irish and Ireland.
Elsewhere, circa1860, the population of East and West Dalhousie was about 50 percent Irish. Near Kingston, between 1880 and 1920, there was an Irish community called Irishtown. In her writing, historical author Hazel Foote (the history of Woodville) refers to a substantial Irish settlement at Black Rock in Kings County. And as I mentioned in a recent column, Centreville and Atlanta, in Kings County, also had Irish settlements.
Continue readingAs a historical writer, Mack Frail has done a considerable amount of research on the Irish that settled in Kings County, around Centreville, Sheffield Mills and Atlanta especially, and in a corridor under the north mountain above these communities.
Frail wrote me recently to comment on the November column about the Irish in Hants and Kings Counties, and to tell me about some of his findings.
His research indicates that beyond a doubt, the Irish somehow found their way to northern areas in Kings County towards the Bay of Fundy. Banes Road, which runs behind Centreville to Canning, has been of special interest to Frail. His research indicates that Atlanta, a little-known community along Banes Road, was the site of an Irish settlement. However, “settlement,” as used here, may be incorrect. Atlanta may have had no more than a few Irish families strung out along a community road. Which, until determined otherwise, most likely was the case.
Continue readingReferences to the Mi’kmaq fishing and hunting in earlier times on our rivers can be found in various historical documents. In this area, two of our largest rivers, the Avon and the Cornwallis, were recorded as major sources of fish, fowl, and game for the Mi’kmaq.
Both rivers also were tremendous sources of wild foods for the Acadians. Later settlers, the Planters and Loyalists, harvested fish and fowl on these rivers as well.
A major resource for fish, fowl, and game is only one characteristic the Avon River and the Cornwallis River have in common. Both are tidal, of course, and flow into the Minas Basin. As the crow flies, to use an old cliche, their estuaries are relatively close.
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Ed Coleman 