While it’s publicized as a Valley event and the majority and towns and villages between Windsor and Digby participate, I believe Kentville could rightly call itself the home of the Apple Blossom Festival.

The first Blossom Festival, which was held in Kentville, seems to have resulted from a series of earlier summer celebrations in the shire town. The celebrations were dubbed “Old Home Week,” “Old Home Summer Celebration,” and the like. Kentville’s 1928 summer carnival, which saluted the Planters and had a historical theme throughout, called itself a “Valley Pageant.” Since various Valley communities participated, this event may have been the forerunner of the apple blossom festival. As will blossom festivals in later years, the summer carnival featured a “queen” of the event, a Miss Helen Wickwire dressed to represent Nova Scotia.

From reading newspaper accounts of the 1928 carnival, one can see that the format for the first Apple Blossom Festival of 1933 is already established. There is a grand street parade through downtown Kentville with floats (100 in all) decorated cars, dignitaries and bands; some 3,000 people watched the mile-long 1928 parade which for the most part followed today’s festival route and terminated with a concert.

In his book on the history of the Apple Blossom Festival, Harold Woodman suggests that Kentville can be credited with originating the event or, to be precise, Kentville business leaders can be credited. Mr. Woodman mentions in particular the former publisher of The Advertiser, Clifford L. Baker, as being the first to suggest an Apple Blossom Festival. Woodman quotes two sources who attributed to Mr. Baker the original idea for an annual celebration with a blossom theme.

Clifford L. Baker apparently played a prominent role in organizing the summer carnivals that preceded the Blossom Festival; and he is mentioned in newspaper accounts as adding a personal touch to Kentville’s 1928 carnival. “There was a moment of silence – the band and orchestra crashed into the strains of ‘Rule Britannia’ and the ‘Hymn to Nova Scotia’, composed by Clifford L. Baker was sung by the entire stage group of 400 people,” reads a newspaper account of the 1928 carnival. (Mr. Baker’s composition, called “an original piece” in the account, has apparently been lost.)

In my early days with this newspaper, I had the pleasure and the honour of associating with one of the festival founders, Frank Burns. In his later years, Mr. Burns often came into The Advertiser, where he was once general manager, and we had many long talks. I questioned Mr. Burns often about the early days of the festival. From our discussions, I have no doubt that both Mr. Burns and Clifford Baker were the main movers and shakers in originating the Blossom Festival. Burns was modest about his contribution but on one occasion he told me, “I guess Baker and I were the first push the idea of a Valley-wide blossom festival.”

As mentioned, Kentville’s summer carnivals and old home festivals established the pattern for the Blossom Festival. In fact, some of the first Blossom Festival committee members had previously helped to organize the Kentville carnivals. Harold Woodman pays tribute to one of these committee members in his book and at the same time confirms the carnival-Blossom Festival connection: “Bob Palmeter was a member of the management committee of the Kentville Summer Carnival, which paved the way for the Apple Blossom Festival.”

“On the morning of the 9th of September between the hours of 9 and 10 o’clock, I was working in my barnyard when I heard my name called by J. W. R…., who was sitting in his wagon with his wife in the road, some four or five rods from me. He said, ‘Trueman, come out here; I want to talk to you.’

“I put my shovel down by the fence and went to the road. I spoke to and shook hands with Mrs. R….; then Mr. R…. said, ‘Trueman, did you say so and so,’ repeating something I had said. I said I had. Mr. R…. then said ‘You are a liar.’

“I replied that if I am, there are a pair of us here; you are another one then. Then Mr. R…. said, ‘Old lady take these lines; I will settle with this young man.”

This heated discussion which took place over a century ago on a quiet farm road near Hall’s Harbour lead to an altercation and the death of Mr. R…. in the autumn of 1886 at the hands of Trueman T….. The unusual aspect of this old killing is that it did not come to trial. Instead, the case was tried in the pages of a Kentville newspaper, the New Star. The paragraphs highlighted above are taken from a letter to the New Star‘s editor, a letter written by Trueman T…. who in effect, pleaded self-defense and had written to defend himself.

It may seem strange to us today that someone would use the pages of a newspaper to answer possible manslaughter or murder charges; or that a newspaper would dare print such a letter before charges had been laid or an inquest had been held.

But that’s what it was like here in the last century. Not only would newspapers conduct trials in their pages but people were freely defamed, libeled, slandered, labeled as scoundrels, swindlers, drunkards and so on. When they talked about freedom of the press in the 19th century, that’s exactly what they meant. Late in the last century, for example, a local newspaper devoted its entire front page to a raid on a bootlegger, naming the man and using scathing adjectives in describing him.

The killing of Mr. R…. by Mr. T…. is a typical example of how far newspaper could safely go at one time. The letter from Mr. T…. spelled out exactly what transpired (from Mr. T….s point of view) during the fatal argument. No details are spared.

Even more amazing, the newspaper had earlier printed the entire sworn statement of the wife of Mr. R…., which was given at a coroner’s inquest nearly two months after her husband’s death. Mrs. R…. recounted the events leading to her husband’s death, which prompted the rebuttal letter from Mr. T….

On printing the statement Mrs. R…. gave at the inquest, the editor of the New Star tells its readers that “now we are able to give the evidence and the verdict of the Coroner’s Jury so that the public may be able to judge of the facts themselves.”

In other words, the New Star is asking its readers to be judge and jury. The trail has already taken place – in the pages of the New Star. Mr. T…. has already convicted himself of manslaughter, thanks to the letter the New Star printed. There was nothing else for the Courts to do except to lay sentence on Mr. T….

According to the New Star, however, that will be impossible. The newspaper dutifully reported that Mr. T…. has skipped the country.

In 1940 the Federal Government decided that the area comprising Long Island, Grand Pre and Boot Island would make an excellent artillery range. The Federal plan to expropriate this land was announced in the October 24 edition of the Wolfville Acadian; at first, the plan aroused the ire of landowners but there was soon a change of heart.

Several weeks after the announcement the Acadian reported that dykeland owners were willing to sell if “justly remunerated.” The plan to convert the Long Island, Grand Pre dykelands into a military range was discussed in the Acadian over a four-week period in October and November. Sherman Bleakney came across the story while doing dykeland research and it is his compilation of the event that is used here.

Grand Pre farmers opposed using dykelands for military purposes announced an Acadian headline on October 24. In the accompanying article, the Acadian said British technical experts had selected Grand Pre as an ideal site for an artillery range as it had no trees to clear, was flat, had an adjacent railway line and was backed by the open ocean. The Federal Government had already formulated detailed procedural plans; gun emplacements would be built on the Wickwire Dyke east of Wolfville and the dykeland, Long Island and Boot island would become target areas. To set up the practice range (which would be one mile wide at Wolfville, three miles wide at the west end and extend outwards for 10 miles) some 15 families would have to be uprooted.

At a meeting of farmers on October 21 it was agreed that if there was no alternative, landowners would not thwart wartime plans; however, adequate compensation was expected. The secretary of the Grand Pre Dyke called for an emergency meeting on October 31 – at the request of certain proprietors – to consider what action should be taken on the government’s proposal.

Before this meeting was held, the Wolfville Acadian ran an editorial (October 24) stressing that “anything that is absolutely necessary in order to win a victory must be gladly sacrificed.” The editorial mentioned a strong protest against taking the land for the proposed range and outlined the areas of compensation that should be considered.

Despite an announcement in the Acadian that Federal engineers had ruled out the Grand Pre site as a potential artillery range, there is a strange development. The Acadian reported on November 7 that a meeting had been called by those proprietors who wish to have the government take over their land. At the meeting, dykeland holders voted almost overwhelmingly in favour of selling their land to the government. However, the government had to agree that “as soon as circumstances permit,” (i.e. the war ends) the land would be returned to the original owners.

The final chapter in this wartime saga appeared in the Acadian on November 14. “Will Not Use Dykes for Artillery Range” was the heading the Acadian ran over a report that the Grand Pre site had definitely been eliminated from consideration.

In his compilation of this event, Sherman Bleakney points out that the use of the Grand Pre terrain as an artillery range would have saturated the area with unexploded munitions, rendering future ploughing extremely hazardous. There was also the possibility that shelling would have destroyed the ancient seawalls and inundated the dykelands. These potential hazards were ignored by landowners who saw an opportunity to rake in Federal gold and still have the land when the war was over.

“The War on Tuberculosis,” my daughter said, reading aloud the title of the old book she spied on a dining room table. “You must be bored if you’re reading that.”

“It’s interesting,” was all I could manage.

I could have answered that thanks to the book, I learned the name of a rare malady I was afflicted with when I was a boy. When I was growing up near the old Nova Scotia Sanatorium I suffered from a severe case of phthisiophobia.

In fact, most of the kids in my neighbourhood had this phobia, a morbid fear of phthisis, which is another name for tuberculosis. There were times when we were afraid to walk downwind of the “San,” believing we could pick up TB germs that were blowing in the air. Any contact with patients at the San was rigorously avoided and the buildings were shunned. Contact of any sort with the San meant we would catch TB, which we believed was incurable and deadly.

Our childhood fear of the San was fed by adults, in most cases our parents, who were ignorant of the facts regard tuberculosis. My old phobia was recalled when I read the 80-year-old handbook my daughter called boring. The War on Tuberculosis was written in 1921 by Dr. A. F. Miller and Jane W. Mortimer. Dr. Miller was the pioneer director of the San from 1910 to 1947.

When Dr. Miller took over as medical director, the San had been in operation for less than a decade. Little was known about tuberculosis at the time but there were many myths about the disease which Dr. Miller wished to dispel. Hence the writing of this book, which while apparently prepared as a guide for TB patients and close relatives, also dealt with facts and fallacies about tuberculosis.

When Dr. Miller co-authored The War on Tuberculosis, TB was killing 1,500 Nova Scotians a year. We were decades away from the discovery of Streptomycin, the drug that would eradicate tuberculosis. All that was really known about tuberculosis at the time was that the only “possible cure” was rest, sunlight, good food and fresh air. The sanatorium set up by the provincial government north of Kentville in 1904 was laid out to apply this cure in good measure but when Dr. Miller arrived the death rate at the facility was 50 percent.

In writing a historical review of the San in the period 1904 to 1975, Dr. J. J. Quinlan said that in his struggle to combat tuberculosis, Dr. Miller faced “apathy and ignorance, not only from the public but from his own medical associates.” Tuberculosis was largely believed to be incurable but Dr. Miller’s earlier experiences with the disease showed it could be beaten. Miller himself had developed the disease shortly after graduating from Dalhousie University in 1904.

Miller’s firm conviction that TB could be conquered shines through in every page of The War on Tuberculosis. In many ways Miller is years ahead of his time in that he praises the value of fruits and vegetables over meat; Miller almost but not quite recommends a vegetarian diet, noting that meat really isn’t a necessary diet item.

Sex was a delicate, taboo subject in 1921 and one certainly wouldn’t find many discussions on it in print during this period. But Dr. Miller and his co-author tackle this subject with little mincing of words. One finds their thinking on tobacco well ahead of its time as well. The smoking and chewing of tobacco is harshly condemned and its ill effects on health clearly spelled out.

Far from being boring, I found The War on Tuberculosis enlightening, educational and in some ways prophetic regarding health and nutrition.

In one period during my long stint with newspapers, my office was opposite the editorial department and I heard firsthand the wrangling and agonizing that went on about the daily problems encountered in a newsroom.

This was an educational period. For one thing, I heard some colourful phrases they wouldn’t dare print in the paper. I learned that a weekly migraine was one of the perks of the editor’s job, said headaches often being caused by printing errors and ambiguous story headlines. Once, for example, the police arrested a suspect in an arson case and the story headline read, Arson Suspect Held in Berwick Fire. A reader called to comment that grilling the arson suspect over the fire – as the heading intimated – was probably fitting but rather severe punishment.

The editor chuckled over that one but there were times when a heading with a double meaning was embarrassing. Due to common words having several shades of meaning, newspaper headlines like the arson example are difficult to avoid. Watch the newspapers carefully and you’ll find a heading with a double entendre now and then. An amusing example follows.

Hot on the trail of a renegade gene that was suspected of causing dwarfism, British researchers needed cells from a person who was a dwarf. An advertisement was placed in a large circulation newspaper asking for volunteers but none came forward and the research had to be stopped. In an article about the research problems and the futile search for volunteers, a newspaper came up with this heading: Researchers Find Dwarfs in Short Supply.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word “contain” can mean both “control or restrain” and “hold or be capable of holding within itself.” Using the latter definition gives both a humorous and gruesome twist to this heading, which appeared in a daily newspaper: New Vaccine May Contain Rabies. A similar example occurred when pharmacies decided to remove a questionable eye drop product from their shelves. A newspaper dutifully reported the removal with a story headed Eye Drops Off Shelf.

It wasn’t all that long ago that a provincial daily startled readers with a story that turned out to be a report on the annual deer harvest. Deer Kill 1,600. Those nasty deer, eh?

Even the big time newspapers goof with ambiguous headings now and again. The Globe and Mail once ran a story headed War Dims Hope for Peace. Remember when the attempted mating of captive giant pandas failed? Apparently, they tried an alternative method since an American newspaper reported that Pandas Mating Fails – Veterinarians Take Over.

Each new newspapers turn out hundreds of such humorous headings. Here are a few that I culled from the Internet:

New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group.
Kids Make Nutritious Snacks.
Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case.
Iraqi Head Seeks Arms.
British Left Waffles on Falkan Islands.
Teacher Strikes Idle Kids.
Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim.
Planes Too Close to Ground, Probe Told.
Miners Refuse to Work After Death.
Stolen Paintings Found by Tree.
Two Sisters Reunited after 18 Years in Checkout Counter.
Man Minus Ear Waives Hearing.
Stud Tires Out.
Cold Wave Linked to Temperature.
Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge.
Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant.

In a recent column, I mentioned that efforts will be made to mark a 19th century accidental drowning in the Minas Basin. Ivan Smith, Canning, has come up with a novel suggestion, a possible alternative to the standard plaque on a cairn. In the following letter received via e-mail, he outlines a proposal for a monument on an Internet site.

“You mentioned,” Smith writes, “that Roscoe Potter, Wolfville, is spearheading a fund-raising effort that he hopes will result in a cairn-mounted plaque commemorating the tragic sinking of a sailboat in the Minas Basin in 1852. Certainly, I support the idea of establishing a memorial to this event, but there’s another way – I believe a better way – to do it. I refer to the Internet.

“A cairn with a plaque will be seen only by a very small number of people, maybe a few dozen a year. Consider the cairn-mounted brass plaque that was installed some years ago in a little park beside a paved highway in Nova Scotia, in memory of Abraham Gesner. How many Nova Scotians stop to read that plaque in a year? How many Nova Scotians even know this memorial exists?

“Narrow the query to Kings County, where the plaque is located. How many residents of Kings County have read that plaque? How many even know this memorial exists? Or where it is located?

“In an ordinary week I drive past the Gesner memorial four or five times. In the last eight years I’ve passed by there more than a thousand times. I always look at it as I drive by, and I’ve never seen anyone in the vicinity of the Gesner plaque. Not even once.

“Compare that with the Gesner material that is available on the Internet.

“At [http://newscotland1398.ca/99/gesner-whales.html] there’s an excellent article describing how Abraham Gesner saved the whales. It is quickly and easily available any time to anyone in the world who has Internet access – which includes almost all of the high school students in Nova Scotia. I believe this one Internet article is a far more effective way to commemorate Gesner than any plaque, and there is much more about on the Internet.

“[http://ns1763.ca/kingsco/gesnermem.html] there is a collection of… links to an assortment of historical information about Gesner, which provides an excellent overview of what Gesner accomplished and the circumstances in which he worked. These references contain many thousands of words of first-rate information. And there are pictures. Today, Google (the best search engine now available) reports 147 webpages in response to the keyphrase “Abraham Gesner.”

“The webpage techdt03.html has been viewed by more than 1400 people in the last six months. Have 1400 people stopped to read the Gesner plaque in six months? In six years? Compare this rich resource with the sparse information – a paltry 93 words – on the Gesner plaque.

“In my view, there’s no contest. The Internet in one day reaches more people than the plaque does in a year, even in a decade.

“How can a memorial to the 1852 tragedy be set up on the Internet? The quickest and easiest way is to find out who owns the copyright to Esther Clark Wright’s book, Blomidon Rose, chapter 12 (per your column). Then negotiate the purchase of the right to publish this text on the Internet.

“Almost certainly the purchase of this permission to publish will cost much less than the price of a decent cairn with a plaque, and the result will reach many more people than any plaque ever could.”

There are many reasons why Kingsport should be designated as a historical site. But says Kentville marine and railroad buff Leon Barron, we only have to look at shipbuilding and the era of sailing ships to realize how important Kingsport once was.

Some of the largest sailing ships ever built in Canada came from Kingsport, Barron says. Down the ways at Kingsport slid the Kings County and the Canada; built in 1890 and 1891 respectively, both were full rigged and exceed 2,000 tons – which Barron says “was huge for a sailing ship.”

Today Kingsport is a quiet seaside community on the Minas Basin with a popular beach and a wharf eroded by time. In the age of sail and rail, however, Kingsport connected the western end of the Annapolis Valley with the world. The vessels that rose from the stocks at Kingsport carried goods to and from distant ports around the globe. Kingsport had one of the first railway lines that ran to the sea. Laid over a century ago, the Cornwallis Valley Railway symbolized Kingsport’s importance as a commercial port in the 19th century.

While perhaps not as bustling or as large as Canning, its sister port up the shore, Kingsport was noted for turning out larger and finer vessels. In its heyday Kingsport boasted three hotels, a mill, a shipyard and a flourishing shipping trade. Late in the 19th century the “Parrsboro packets” made regular calls at Kingsport and it flourished as a holiday resort.

In its early days, Kingsport was known first as Indian Point and then Oakpoint, two names of obvious origin. Leon Barron tells me he has been looking through old newspapers and government documents for years, hoping to discover when Kingsport got its name. Sessional papers from the 1800s, the government records of public works, use Oakpoint and Kingsport interchangeably. “The change to Kingsport (as the sole name) must have been gradual,” Barron says.

Leon Barron has a special interest in Kingsport and especially the Kingsport wharf. Through diligent digging into old papers and documents over the years he has collected a lot of wharf history. Barron discovered, for example, that in either 1856 or 1857 the Oakpoint Pier Company was incorporated solely to construct a wharf at Kingsport. The Company didn’t build the wharf until 1865, however, and Barron speculates that problems with funding may have caused the delay. In his Kingsport file is a copy of the Oakpoint Pier Company incorporation papers.

Oddly, little information exists about any Acadian settlements at Kingsport. However, there is a Planter connection. After the expulsion of the Acadians, the area that eventually became Kingsport may have been granted to a Planter named Benjamin Newcomb in 1761. Some sources say that Kingsport was part of a grant given to Isaac Bigelow in 1761 or 1762.

Whether Newcomb or Bigelow were the original grantees, Kingsport is believed to be one of the oldest settled areas in the province. While this claim may be disputed, there is little doubt that after the Planters arrived, Kingsport proved to be a vital link with the outside world. During the 1800s and decades after the era of sailing ships had passed, Kingsport played a commercial role that historians tend to overlook.

Perhaps when Leon Barron completes his research on the Kingsport wharf and the scale model of the wharf that he’s working on, this oversight will be rectified.

The column late last February on Ralph S. Eaton brought a number of reader responses and some additional information on this pioneer fruit grower.

One of the readers who commented on this column was Lyna Connors. Ms. Connors, who is 90 and a resident of a senior citizens complex in Kentville, has photographs of Eaton and has his moustache cup. After Mr. Eaton’s death, Ms. Connors looked after his widow for a number of years and was a friend of the family.

Connors tells me that in addition to operating his fruit orchards, Ralph Eaton also established a pickle factory – which possibly may have been the first in the area. Ms. Connors believes the factory was located near the famous Hillcrest Orchards off Middle Dyke Road.

Another reader, Eunice Wannacott, left a message through the answering service that she had a handwritten notation in her Eaton book regarding Ralph and his wife. Before I could return this call the message was accidentally erased. If Ms. Wannacott ( I hope I’m spelling her name correctly) reads this, please write me c/o of this newspaper. You can also reach me via email at edwingcoleman@gmail.com.

Another reader who left a message on the answering service – but not her name – responded to the columns on Henry Magee (January 21 and February 11). The caller gave me the name of a Canadian book published in 1984 that contains “an excellent article on this pioneer merchant and early entrepreneur.”

I found this book in the Annapolis Valley library system. Loyalist Mosaic, published by the Ontario firm Dundurn Press Limited, traces the movement of Loyalist groups into various parts of Canada. The author, Joan Magee, devotes a chapter to Henry Magee and she tells his story well. There is a great deal of detail, including references to historical sources researchers will find helpful.

Joan Magee (is she a descendant of Henry?) calls the pioneer merchant a banker, pawnbroker and “general factotum for the district.” The author is blunt in her description of Henry and doesn’t paint all that nice a picture of Kentville’s first merchant.

Anyway, if you’re interested, read the story for yourself. The book is currently in the Kentville library but may be obtained by request at any Valley branch.

Plaque For Gaspereau Man

Readers of this newspaper may have seen the March 3 story about the 1852 sinking of a sailboat in the Minas Basin. “The “man from Gaspereau,” a phrase immortalized locally, referred to the loss Perez Coldwell who along with another Gaspereau resident, George Benjamin, manned the ill-fated sailboat.

Readers interested in this tragic tale are referred to Esther Clark Wright’s book, Blomidon Rose, chapter 12. Wright describes the incident in detail. The loss of Isaac Chipman and the students was a serious blow to a young Acadia University. “The loss of the students meant that there were none to graduate the following year and only one the year after,” Wright said.

I have none of the details but I understand that a move is afoot to preserve the memory of Perez Coldwell and the 1852 tragedy. Roscoe Potter, Wolfville, is spearheading a fund raising effort that hopefully will result in a cairn-mounted plaque. No decision has been made on where the cairn will be placed but Potter says the most likely site is the Gaspereau Valley.

Envision a dyke almost nine miles long running zigzag north from Boot Island into the heart of the Minas Basin, crossing the estuaries of four rivers and reclaiming thousands of acres of fertile sea bottom.

In 1878 this was the dream of Christopher Graham, an Irishman from Dublin who proposed building a great dyke from Boot Island to a point just north of the Pereau River. Starting at the northeast corner of the Boot, Graham’s proposed dyke would run north into the Minas Basin about three miles, turn west towards Kingsport for a mile and a half and north again for close to four miles before reaching landfall at Newcomb’s Point. Graham also proposed to build a smaller dyke that would lie inside the nine-mile sea wall; this dyke was to be constructed first and would run from Kingsport to Long island.

Looking back from our vantage point today, we know that Graham’s great dream was just that, a dream. There is no evidence that the proposed dykes got beyond the planning stage but they did receive much publicity, most of it negative. In an earlier column, I quoted an 1889 newspaper editorial that scoffed at the idea of dykeing the Minas Basin, a project that on completion would reclaim an estimated 6,000 acres of land.

In the Registry of Deeds in Kentville are two documents pertaining to this grand scheme (one dated 1878, the other 1895) and thanks to Geoff Muttart I have copies before me. These documents, which are land grants, indicate there were two proposals to run a giant dyke out into the Minas Basin on the scale outlined above. The earlier one was proposed, as mentioned, by Graham; the second proposal was made by a Hants County engineer, William Robert Butler of Windsor.

I had difficulty reading the Butler grant but from what I could decipher and from the diagrams accompanying the documents, the proposals appear to be almost identical. For the sum of one dollar, Graham and Butler were granted sole rights to the land that would be reclaimed by the proposed dykes. There were conditions, of course. In the Graham grant, it was stipulated that work on the inside dyke was to commence within three years and completed within six; work on the nine-mile dyke was to commence within six years of the grant date and completed in 12.

The grants stipulated that the proposed dykes had to be finished in an “effectual and efficient manner to the satisfaction of the Provincial Government of Nova Scotia.” Failure to do so, or to meet the time limitations would void the grant and “the said premises (would) revert to the Crown.”

I find it amusing that the document granted land that is swept by the treacherous tides of Minas Basin. It isn’t upland or marshland and twice daily when the tide is in, it isn’t land at all. So how do you grant land that isn’t land in the normal sense of the word. The document gets around this conundrum by stating that the grant conveys “a lot of land and land covered by water, situate, lying and being in the County of Kings and bounded as follows.” One of the boundaries is the high tide mark along the shore from Pereau back to Boot Island.

A newspaper of the time stated that the cost of building the proposed dykes was $600,000. We can only speculate that this enormous amount of capital (by 19th century standards) and the difficulty of running a dyke into the heart of the Minas Basin, using men, horses and oxen as the labour force, killed the project.

“Fine day. St. Patrick’s Day and not as much as a drop of grog to celebrate it,” Edward Ross wrote over 160 years ago.

This entry from Ross’s 1837 diary is interesting in that it indicates Nova Scotians have been observing St. Patrick’s Day for quite a while. However, I have no idea why a Scot would celebrate an Irish saint’s birthday – unless the Ross surname is more Irish than I thought.

One can also draw another conclusion from Ross’s reference, in the same breath so to speak, to grog and St. Patrick’s Day. In North America people associate St. Patrick’s Day with having a drop or two, just as Edward Ross did in 1837. The typical Irishman is stereotyped as a heavy drinker and the sort who enjoys a boisterous night out on the town.

Recently I called a number of people with Irish surnames while preparing an article on St. Patrick’s Day for this newspaper. At least half the people I telephoned associated having a drink at the local pub with St. Patrick’s Day. A typical response when people were asked how they celebrated on March 17th was, “We don’t go out for a drink.”

Talking about St. Patrick’s Day and drinking reminds me of my favourite Irish story. The following tale, which is typical of Irish humour, was told to me by a gentleman from Belfast who emigrated to Canada in 1967.

The setting is Belfast. Michael’s brothers, Dennis and Tim, are emigrating to Canada. Before they leave, they extract a promise from Michael that when he goes to the local pub on Saturday night he will have a Guinness for each of them as sort of remembrance.

Michael kept his word. Every Saturday night at the pub he ordered three Guinness and sat there drinking one after the other. This goes on for quite a while until finally the barkeeper speaks up. “That’s not the way to drink Guinness, my lad,” the barkeeper says to Michael. “You’ll enjoy them more if you order one at a time and drink one at a time.”

“You don’t understand,” Michael replied. “I promised my brothers who are in Nova Scotia that I’d have a Guinness for each of them when I came in. The first one’s for me, the others are for Dennis and Tim.”

A couple of years pass. Then one Saturday night Michael goes into the pub, orders two Guinness and drinks them. Noticing the change in routine, the barkeeper offered condolences. “Sorry to see you’ve had a death in the family,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Michael asks.

“Well, I see you’ve only two Guinness. I assume one of your brothers in Canada has passed away.”

“No, no, my brothers are fine,” Michael said. “One Guinness is for Dennis, the other for Tim. I’ve given up drinking.”

“Why corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day,” I asked a Tipperary native who has been in Canada for nearly three decades.

“The cabbage because it’s a green vegetable, the Irish national colour,” I was told.

As for the corned beef with the cabbage, the Tipperary man told me that this was a North American recipe. “In Ireland it’s more likely to be a ham and cabbage dinner on St. Patrick’s Day.”

Since my great grandfather came over from Cork in the 19th century, and I’m proud of my Irish ancestry, I’ll be wearing a bit of green today and a pin proclaiming I’m full of blarney. A happy St. Patrick’s Day to all my readers.