Meeting interesting people, discovering interesting facts, finding interesting things: The perks I enjoy preparing my column and articles for this newspaper.

Thanks to the column and articles I’ve interviewed some amazing, talented and versatile people: A near-centenarian with the body of an average 40-year-old (a former Kentville Mayor whose secret of staying in condition is daily walking); a guy with a vocation that once kept the armies of the ancient world on the move (farriery); and people with unusual hobbies, avocations and interests that give them a zest for living – genealogy, railway lore, sailing ships, the collecting of artifacts, for example.

Along the way, I’ve unearthed a number of unusual facts that trivia lovers would delight in. While researching recently, for example, I discovered that the origin of playing cards is obscure. No one knows for sure where they came from – China or Persia or Gypsies perhaps – but historians say playing cards as we know them are at least 700 years old. One popular kids’ game, Go Fish, originated 400 years ago and was once the exclusive domain of the adult world.

And speaking of card games, Nova Scotia has made a unique contribution in auction forty-five. For a long time, the game was peculiar to Nova Scotia and you couldn’t find mention of it books on games. One supposedly exhaustive book on card games that was published for the North American market, fails to mention this favourite game of generations of Nova Scotians.

The game had to come from somewhere, of course. Perhaps with the Planters or Loyalists; and perhaps with Irish colonists, which was the suggestion in the one book I’ve found that mentions auction forty-five.

The average life span is increasing, and increasing rapidly, which is something I learned when preparing an article on walking. People who have reached age 65, for example, will live an average of 80 years. Only a few decades ago the average life span was in the low 70s.

Big deal, I say. A couple of hundred years ago people lived to be 80 and more without all the medical and nutritional benefits and the knowledge we have available today.

An interesting account about longevity is found in Calnek’s Annapolis County history. Writing about one General Timothy Ruggles, who received a land grant in Wilmot, Calnek tells us that this gentleman lived to the age of 80, succumbing to a hernia rather than old age in 1795 when he went hill climbing.

Ruggles was centuries ahead of his time when it came to nutrition. “It may not be without use to remark,” Calnek wrote, “that for much the greater part of his life (Ruggles) ate no animal food (meat) and drank no spirituous or fermented liquors, small beer excepted, and that he enjoyed health to his advanced age.”

When I wrote about the collection of A. L. Hardy photographs on file at the Courthouse Museum in Kentville, I called it the largest private collection in existence. I should have said that the Museum has one of the largest private collections. I simply forgot the Kentville collector and historian, Louis Comeau, has a magnificent collection of Hardy landscapes and portraits, perhaps the largest of anyone, anywhere. Comeau’s collection numbers between 130 and 140 photographs (Louis hasn’t counted them lately) and he also has Hardy’s studio camera.

My apologies to Louis for the oversight. By the way, some of his historical artifacts are currently on display at the Courthouse Museum.

Writing on the apple industry in a 1979 issue of the Nova Scotia Historical Quarterly, Keith Hatchard comments on an incident involving Kings County fruit growing pioneer, Colonel John Burbidge and another prominent settler, William Best.

“In 1763, an Indian named Bartholomew Nocout was experiencing some difficulty in the townships of Horton and Cornwallis and was at one point set upon and stoned by some of the new settlers,” Hatchard writes. “Messrs Burbidge and Best rescued the Indian from his tormentors and took him to their home for care and treatment.”

Hatchard mentions this incident only to elaborate on the generous character of Colonel Burbidge; unwittingly, he also gives us an unpleasant look at the mentality of early Annapolis Valley settlers. Most accounts of the settlers, who were freely granted land forcibly vacated by the Acadians, dwell on their hardships and grand accomplishments, the dyke building, for example. Historians rarely touch on the sordid, seamy side of colonial people and even when they do, we are usually given brief glimpses.

But despite being ignored by most historians, social ills such as slavery and racism were alive and well in the Annapolis Valley in the colonial period. Hatchard reveals the racist attitude of settlers while describing Burbidge and Best’s rescue of an Indian being stoned by settlers. We are only given a fleeting glimpse of the incident by Mr. Hatchard, but a footnote informs readers that he gleaned his information from A. W. H. Eaton’s history of Kings County.

Eaton devoted about half a page, a 16-line paragraph, to the stoning incident. Why he felt it necessary to mention the stoning is puzzling since he rather downplays the whole affair. The courts decide it is a trivial matter as well. While an officer appointed by the Lieut. Governor spent four days “investigating the affair,” and the Attorney General was “ordered to prosecute… those who had beaten Nocout,” little comes of it.

For the “severe if not dangerous injuries” (Eaton’s words) handed Nocout, the settlers involved, while obviously guilty, are never charged. Eaton tells us that the offenders “admitted their fault and the trouble was satisfactorily settled without recourse to the law.” Was Eaton serious or being facetious when he quotes an earlier historian’s views on this incident. “It is pleasing, says Murdoch, to find that if some of the new settlers were excitable, they were ready to acknowledge and make amends for their faults.”

It may not be a matter of racism when a native is stoned because he “got into difficulty with some of the new settlers,” (Eaton’s words again). But the fact that no charges were laid when the offenders said “sorry,” tells us not everyone was equal under the law in colonial times.

In his Kings County history, Eaton also glosses over the fact that some early settlers owned slaves. Col. Burbidge and other upper-class settlers, including some of the Planters, owned slaves. Hatchard notes that while Burbidge was one of the pioneers of the apple industry, “he was, nevertheless, a slaveowner and must have employed a number of these unfortunate people in the orchards of Annapolis.”

Like Checkers, Snakes and Ladders, and Parcheesi, it’s a board game; it combines elements of the world’s most popular word game, the crossword puzzle, uses numbers and is a game of chance in that the luck of the draw is an important element.

While it has a huge element of chance, this game is like bridge and chess in that to play it well, skill, memory and creativity are necessary adjuncts. In other words, the very best players of this game, say world championship level, must possess a good imagination and a fair degree of intelligence. On the other hand, anybody can learn to play the game and play it well; one doesn’t have to be a computer expert or rocket scientist to be good at it.

The game? You’ve probably guessed – if you’ve unscrambled BARBELCS in the heading – that it’s the complex, engaging word game, Scrabble. Invented about 70 years ago by an American, Alfred M. Butts, Scrabble is one of the most popular board games in the world and has millions of adherents. Since the first Scrabble game appeared in 1931, over 100 million sets have been sold worldwide. Today Scrabble is the second best-selling board game in the world behind Monopoly.

Why is Scrabble popular?

Perhaps the words of the game’s inventor will explain. In an interview published some years ago, Butts said in effect that he was looking for something that would combine the elements of the three basic types of games – board games, number games and word games. After a period of diligent research, which mainly consisted of studying the leading newspapers of the day to make up an appropriate word list, Butts came up with a game that has captivated millions of people.

Scrabble, in effect, is a crossword puzzle on a board that keeps score and has an element of luck. Butts hit upon the perfect game for people who thrive on a harmless but challenging combination of word puzzles, competition and games of chance.

If you’ve never played Scrabble, you won’t find it a difficult game to learn. However, it can become a passion, so be warned. While suitable for various levels of playing ability – there’s even a junior game for kids – at advanced levels, it is complex and demanding.

I use “demanding” here in the sense of requiring skill and effort. To play at the top level in Scrabble, the Canadian championship, for example, players must know thousands of words of two to eight letters. One of the top Canadian players, Christopher Sykes of Cambridge, Ontario, knows 100 two-letter words, 100 three-letter words, 4,000 three-letter words, 7,000 seven-letter words and 3,000 eight-letter words.

And, says Sykes, knowing all these words still puts him behind the experts. Sykes claims that there are actually 20,000 seven-letter and eight-letter words and champion players know 15,000 of them.

At championship level Scrabble players must also be familiar with an assortment of “weird words” – words without vowels, and Q words without the letter U, for example.

The very best Scrabble players in the world have one thing in common – photographic memories. For you and I to enjoy the game, however, it suffices if we know a few Q words that don’t require the letter U, have a fondness for playing with words and like a bit of competition with our equals.

(If you’re interested in Scrabble for fun, a group meets informally at the Wolfville Library on occasion. For information contact the library.)

The mention of Acadian cellars in this column prompted a reader to call and ask about old maps. Lydia Phinney, Wolfville, asked me if I was familiar with a map showing the location of Acadian cellars in Grand Pre. The map indicated that the cellars were along the railroad track near the old Grand Pre D.A.R. station.

Ms. Phinney told me that the map came from Acadia University. Her daughter brought the map home while studying at Acadia and it was probably material related to a course.

I am aware that such maps exist but have never seen the one pertaining to Grand Pre. The late Ernest Eaton once showed me a hand-drawn map of an area near the Canard River in Upper Dyke that indicated possible Acadian homestead sites. Using old documents, Eaton had searched for the sites and apparently found areas where several cellars were visible.

I saw the Eaton map over 40 years ago and have no idea if it still exists. The map Ms. Phinney’s daughter showed her is probably still extant. I understand that this map was used for some amateur digging at the indicated sites of the cellars but without success.

Old maps are valuable historical records and in some cases are genealogical tools. Maps such as those produced by Ambrose F. Church in the 19th century, for example, not only show old roads but are also directories. The Church maps indicate where families lived along 19th-century roads, and include the name and occupation of the head of the household. Some of the Church maps also contained advertising for merchants, blacksmiths, carriage makers and so on.

Recently a friend showed me a series of maps he discovered in some discarded furniture. Actually, they are copies of maps that were probably used for geology courses at Acadia University. While they are of no great monetary value, the maps are interesting since they show the effect of Minas Basin tides on the shoreline, and on Boot Island in particular, during the last century.

One of the maps shows the shoreline along Long Island, Evangeline Beach and the Boot Island area in 1759. What was to become Boot island is part of the shoreline in this period. The Guzzle, the present channel between Evangeline Beach and Boot Island doesn’t exist at this time. An accompanying map, dated 1780, indicates that time and tides have had their way and the Guzzle is nearly carved out.

A map of the same area, dated 1963, indicates where the shoreline was in 1759. The Boot is now an island and a legend reads “Guzzle forms circa 1800 AD.” Also indicated on this map are the locations of old oyster beds (dated “3700 yrs BP”) and the remnants of an ancient forest with the date “4400 yrs BP” (before present).

A similar map can be found in the Blomidon Naturalists Society publication, A Natural History of Kings County. This book indicates that the old forest off Boot Island is comprised of hemlock and white pine that were “covered by rising sea levels 4500 to 3500 years ago.”

Included in this series of maps are two rough sketches of Wolfville harbour, dated 1959 and 1973. While of little interest compared to the shoreline maps from the 18th century, these sketches indicate the location of ancient clam shells – “750 years old” – near the mouth of Wolfville harbour.

Perhaps it is appropriate that one of the Valley’s greatest photographers once lived a few doors from where his pictorial treasures are housed.

The Old Kings Courthouse Museum in Kentville hold between 60 and 70 of Amos Lawson Hardy prints. Deemed the largest private collection of Hardy’s work, the photographs are stored in the same vault as several rare tourist publications from early in the century; these publications, which contain over 100 of Hardy’s best-known landscape photographs, were once circulated across North America.

At one time A. L. Hardy (1860-1935) was one of Canada’s best-known photographers. As the “house photographer” for the Dominion Atlantic Railway, Hardy’s work graced a number of publications that touted the beauty spots of Nova Scotia and the Annapolis Valley in particular.

In a previous column on A. L. Hardy in 1996 I mentioned that the Kentville photographer had privately published at least one book with his landscape photographs. The Evangeline Land was published in the early 1900s and a copy is in the archives of the Courthouse Museum. There is no publication date shown in the album but it contains a photograph of the Harold Borden monument in Canning, which was erected in 1903.

In the archives as well are two tourist publications, Vacation Days in Nova Scotia, Souvenir of the Land of Evangeline, and a tiny volume called The Beautiful Land of Evangeline. All three publications have Hardy photographs, the last named book being circulated across Canada-wide as one of a series called “Dominion-wide view books.”

The Evangeline Land is all Hardy photographs and even contains a portrait of the photographer himself looking dapper and trim with a moustache and what appear to be pince-nez glasses. The photographs in Vacation Days are likely all Hardys as well since the book was commissioned by the Dominion Atlantic Railway and he was their official photographer.

With the exception of The Evangeline Land and the view book, the publications named above were circulated with one aim – to attract tourists. Nova Scotia was being touted as a vacation land at the turn of the century with a “marine and Acadian landscape unequaled in eastern Canada,” and the photographs of A. L. Hardy were used to convince Americans and other Canadians to visit.

The photographs used in the tourist publications undoubtedly had great appeal to outsiders in the early 1900s; but like Hardy’s self-published album, The Evangeline Land, they are also historical records. In his album, Hardy, for the most part, concentrates on land and seascapes. In so doing he records a period in Valley history that exists now only in memories.

The tourist publications perform a similar function. Sheep washing on a spring hillside, schooners at rest at low tide in Kingsport, ox teams at work on a fledgeling railway: These are Hardy images of another time we would have no record of but for his camera.

It is said that in his late years Hardy spared no effort to photograph Valley scenes. Perhaps he realized that his would be the only pictorial records we would ever have.

A knowledge of military history and the collecting of badges often go hand in glove. “One sort of complements the other, ” says longtime Kentville collector Gordon Hansford. “Whenever I pick up a military badge for my collection, I can’t rest until I’ve dug out its history and the history of the regiment it represents.”

As a result of his interest in badges and a determination to research their story, the retired school teacher is a knowledgeable military historian. This knowledge comes in handy on occasion when Hansford is called upon to “give a talk” on military history before Legion branches and historical groups. He enjoys these talks immensely he says since occasionally “some good comes of them.”

A talk Hansford once gave before the Fieldwood Society may have sparked a special celebration in Canning, for example. In this talk, Hansford dwelt upon the prominent monument that stands beside the Main Street in Canning. This monument commemorates the memory of Harold Lothrop Borden, a Canning native who was slain in the South African (Boer) War while serving with the Canadian Mounted Rifles.

Possibly as a result of Hansford’s talk, the Fieldwood Society and the Canning branch of the Royal Canadian Legion have plans to mark the 100th anniversary of Borden’s death with an elaborate ceremony on July 16; the ceremony will be held at the Borden monument. Borden fell on July 16, 1900.

Not a great deal has been written about Harold Borden but readers interested in his story are referred to volume 7 of Kings County Vignettes, which is in local bookstores; a publication of the Kings Historical Society, volume 7 of the Vignettes has an article on Borden by Daniel Sanford.

Borden came from a prominent Valley political family. Borden’s father Sir Frederick William was elected to the House of Commons in 1874 and except for the years 1882-87, served until 1911; Sir Frederick served as minister of militia and defence in the Laurier Cabinet from 1896 to 1911. Sir William was a cousin of another famous Canadian, Sir Robert Borden, prime minister of Canada, 1911-20.

Another member of a prominent Valley family, Robert Holden Ryan, served in the Boer War with Harold Borden. Thanks to the generosity of Advertiser columnist Brent Fox, I have a large file on Ryan who must be considered another famous Valley son; this file contains among other things, letters Ryan wrote during the Boer War, war records and a detailed 1986 article by Brent Fox (from the Novascotian) that traces Ryan’s career.

Ryan was in the skirmish in which Harold Borden fell; two days after Borden’s death, Ryan wrote to his father describing the incident. It is a curious letter which early on mentions that Borden had been ill for two weeks. A few lines later Borden’s death is nonchalantly described. “The first to drop was Borden. He was shot through the heart. I was along side of him at the time.”

Ryan’s letter ends with the observation that “the game (war) goes on and I tell you what, but I like it. It beats snipe shooting all to pieces.”

I have no doubt that Ryan’s letter describing Borden’s death on the battlefield will be referred to during commemoration ceremonies in Canning on July 16th. Ryan’s indifference to the fall of a comrade who was from his home county will undoubtedly be ignored.

Where are the “Pine Woods?” I asked readers in a column last November.

One reply came from Kings County historian and author, Marie Bishop, who believes the Pine Woods were located on the camp Aldershot grounds, on the Steam Mill side. Ms. Bishop recalls reading somewhere that Camp Aldershot was once referred to as being in the Pine Woods or being called Pine Woods. This was puzzling to Advertiser columnist Brent Fox, author of a history of Camp Aldershot; Fox didn’t think that the current Camp Aldershot and the Pine Woods were in any way connected.

After I mentioned Marie Bishop’s remembrance of a Camp Aldershot, Pine Woods connection in a follow-up column, Gordon Hansford called with additional information. During World War 2 Gordon took his basic training at Camp Aldershot before going overseas. On route marches from the camp, soldiers usually stopped for a water break at a large pine stand a mile north of Kentville – in the triangle formed by Cornwallis Street and Nichols Avenue which is now occupied by the A. P. Redden house. The military referred to this area as the “Pine Grove” but Gordon believes the local name was Pine Woods.

Pinpointing the location of Pine Woods may not seem important; however, I believe the area may be of historical value and there are several reasons why its exact location should be determined.

First of all, Pine Woods may have been a Micmac encampment. Eaton’s Kings County history mentions this possibility but neglects to give its exact location, writing simply that it was “in Cornwallis, near Kentville.”

Second, the Pine Woods Eaton mentions may have been one of the first black settlements in this area; also, the Pine Woods may have been populated by some of the Annapolis Valley’s first freed slaves, which in itself is of historic value. It appears certain that a number of freed slaves lived in Pine Woods; Eaton names several families who occupied Pine Woods and notes that some were once slaves. This is a phase of Kings County history often overlooked and neglected by historians.

Besides the Cornwallis Street, Nichols Avenue triangle, it’s also possible that the Pine Woods community was located on Cornwallis Street immediately north of Gallows Hill in the area of Wade Street. Several longtime Kentville residents recall a Micmac camp being located in this area.

Oddly, Marie Bishop’s recollection that Camp Aldershot and Pine Woods are identical is true in one sense. However, the Camp Aldershot called Pine Woods isn’t the base that’s north of Kentville today.

As Brent Fox said, there is no evidence that today’s Camp Aldershot was ever called Pine Woods. However, the current military base is Camp Aldershot number two. Before the base was established at its present site, it was located in Auburn, Kings County. At Auburn the base drill grounds were situated in an area called “The Pines” and “The Pine Woods.”  I discovered this bit of trivia in a book called Paradise Terrestre, a history of the village of Paradise, Annapolis County.

(Who originated the Apple Blossom Festival? It wasn’t Kentville, Hantsport resident Ray Riley said when he telephoned recently in response to a May 19 column headed Kentville: Home of the Blossom Festival. The same column brought an e-mail response from Kentville historian, Louis Comeau, with some Blossom Festival history.)

Hantsport, not Kentville, should be recognized as the original home of the Apple Blossom Festival claims a longtime resident of the town.

Ray Riley says that the first celebration of the apple blossoms in the Annapolis Valley started in Hantsport sometime late in the 1920s and “ran for years before Kentville took it on.”

According to Mr. Riley, the Hantsport celebration began as an Apple Blossom Festival ball that was held at a warehouse on Station Street. Riley recalls that the warehouse was decorated with an apple tree that was in blossom. “Every year the owner of the warehouse, Laurie Sanford, would cut down an apple tree that was in blossom and reassemble it in the warehouse,” Riley says. The ball and the apple tree were an annual fixture.

Mr. Riley recalls that the blossom ball was a popular event that kept on growing year after year and was soon too big for Hantsport. “That’s when Kentville took it over,” he said.

A former Hantsport Mayor, the late B. T. Smith, apparently was conversant with the facts regarding the town’s apple blossom celebrations. Mr. Riley remembers hearing a speech by Mayor Smith in 1948 in which the latter noted Hantsport’s early blossom celebrations. We (Hantsport) were first, Mayor Smith said. The speech was made at the Kentville ball park on Apple Blossom Festival parade day.

In his book on the Apple Blossom Festival, Harold Woodman mentions the possible Hantsport connection. Mr. Woodman notes that the Hantsport celebration started two years before Kentville became the center of festival activities.

And Louis Comeau Writes

“Your article of May 19th on the origins of the festival was interesting; however, having done extensive research into festivals such as ours, I have found no less than 26 others. Three of these predate our festival.

“First is the Washington State Apple Blossom Festival (which started in 1920); you can visit this site at www.appleblossom.org. This festival was based on an earlier event in New Zealand (but I have not been able to establish what kind of festival this was as of yet).

“Second is the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival (which started in 1925); this site address is thebloom.com. The organizers of our festival, all being in or near the apple industry might have known of these other festivals; especially Frank Burns who was in the newspaper business and probably had access to other editors or newspapermen throughout North America. Burns might have heard about these other festivals and along with others in the community decided to establish our own festival. If you visit these sites listed above you will note the similarity to our own festival.

“The third festival was at Fayetteville, Arkansas (started in 1923) but at the present moment I cannot supply you with an Internet address.

“Hope this sheds some light on the topic of who was first. I believe that we were early organizers in the multitude of other festivals but were only copying earlier events.”

Ask any youngster if they know what a shivaree is and you’ll either get a blank stare or a guess that it is some kind of frozen treat.

In his book My White Rock Bert Young mentions shivarees and the senior generations know precisely what he’s talking about. Chances are that anyone in their 70s or 80s who grew up in the Annapolis Valley participated one way or another in a shivaree; which for the benefit of younger readers was a noisy boisterous serenading of the bride and groom on their wedding eve, just when they’ve settled down on the first night of nuptial bliss.

This is what’s special about Bert Young’s reminiscing. Bert recalls the old days when instead of a honeymoon, the bride and groom took a horse and wagon ride as far as a parent’s home to spend the first night there. This, of course, made it convenient for anyone with a shivaree in mind.

Burt writes about the turn-of-the-century period in the Valley; a period when cars and telephones were relatively new, the choice of transportation was either the horse or shank’s mare, and the pleasures of life were simple and down-to-earth. If you wonder how our grandparents and great-grandparents lived, what they did for work and recreation, some of the answers are in this book.

I enjoy reading personal accounts of the early days because they often introduce fascinating new words and phrases – words and phrases that often have vanished or are no longer used in the old sense. Take “burnt land,” for example. Far from being self-explanatory, this phrase rings of a time when the clearing of wooded land was a laborious process that sometimes took years.

When woodland was clear cut in Bert’s boyhood period, the work was done with axes, handsaws, horses and oxen. Bert writes that the “brush was burned where it lay and the charred stumps left to rot.” For a year or two, the stumps stood like black sentinels on what was called “burnt land.” The soil between the stumps was tilled and planted, a practice that harkens back to pioneer days.

I learned two new words when reading Bert’s book – lockshoes and lockchains. These are wonderful old words of another era, the era of horses and oxen. Lockshoes were used on wagon wheels to slow them on a downhill grade. Bert describes it as a “little wooden sled” made of “a piece of hardwood about eight or ten inches wide, eighteen inches long by four or five inches thick … (with) a seat in the middle for the wheel.” They were, Bert said, “works of art.”

Lockchains performed the same function as lockshoes, except that they were used in winter on the runners of sleighs. Bert describes the lockchains as “eighteen inches long, made of large iron links with the two end links being larger.” The lockchain was wrapped around rear runners and held in place with a wooden key that was inserted through the end links.

Bert mentions Hank Snow twice in his book and, yep, there’s a White Rock connection. Hank Snowophiles (is that a word?) will find glimpses in the book of the great country and western singer in his younger days.

As you probably read in this paper, the second edition of Bert’s book just came out. The first issue was a sell-out, so if you missed it, I suggest you check with a local bookstore right away; the second issue won’t be around long.

Thanks to working on assignments for this newspaper, I’ve been reading a lot recently about apple growing and Blossom Festival history. To use an old cliché, this has been an eye opener. For example, while I knew the Acadians had apple orchards, I never understood until now how their fruit growing evolved into a major Nova Scotia industry. As well as shaping our early history, the Acadians laid the groundwork for the future prosperity of the Annapolis Valley.

While researching for my assignments I learned a lot about apples. I always wondered why so many of the apple varieties of the past century disappeared from our orchards and are now found only in history books. I discovered several answers to this puzzle. Some of the old varieties didn’t store well; some were cooking varieties only and were no longer suitable for today’s fresh fruit market, and so on.

Then there was a bunch of interesting apple trivia, some of which I found in unusual places, such as Marguerite Woodworth’s history of the Dominion Atlantic Railway.

In the chapter on the apple industry and how it spurred the coming of the railroad to the Valley, Woodworth offers readers an intriguing aside about the word “graft.” As orchards expanded with the railroad’s arrival, the Valley became infested with tree peddlers and tree grafters from the United States, Woodworth says. The grafters frequently defrauded the farmer by selling him grafts from the trees in his own orchard. “So prevalent was the practice,” Woodworth writes, “that the professional ‘grafter’ came to be looked upon with suspicion, and one wonders if the modern conception of the word might not have had its origin in the activities of these gentlemen.” (On “graft” and “grafter” as used in the sense Woodworth mentions, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary notes that its origin is unknown).

Some of the old varieties of apples Arthur W. H. Eaton mentions in his Kings County history are Nonpareil, Golden Russet, Yellow Belle Fleur (Bishop’s Pippin), Calkin Pippin, Greening Spitzenbzerg, Pearmain, Ribston and Gravenstein among others. Some of these varieties are still grown in Kings County orchards.

Historians agree that the Acadians planted the apple orchards Nova Scotia, (between 1606 and 1610) but the statistics they use regarding tree numbers differ slightly. An Agriculture Canada booklet on apple production says a 1698 census shows that 53 Acadian families had 1,375 apple trees. A three-page overview of apple growing, which I picked up at the research station in Kentville, gives the 1698 census figure as 1,584 apple trees. In Valley Gold, Anne Hutten’s superb history of the apple industry in Nova Scotia, the author gives the 1698 census figures as 54 families of Acadians with 1,584 apple trees.

And speaking of Anne Hutten’s book, it must rank as the definitive history of the apple industry in Nova Scotia. Published in 1981, Valley Gold is now out of print; copies are difficult to find and are sure to be collector’s items in the future. At a Wolfville used book store, The Odd Book, there’s a waiting list for Hutten’s book. If you have one, hold on to it.

One more piece of apple trivia. A number of Valley orchardists are operating farms that have been in the family for more than 100 years.