Just over 100 years ago a general emergency was declared when winter storms paralysed the province. Called the “great blockage,” the 1905 storm was hailed as one of the worst to strike Nova Scotia in over a century; during the persistent storm, entire communities were isolated for weeks at a time and with the railway lines shut down, shortages of fuel and food were a fact of life.

Over the years I’ve written several accounts of the 1905 storm in this column, based for the most part on published reports. Except for talking with my father, who remembered snow tunnels being dug on Kentville’s Main Street, any information I gleaned about the storm came from old weekly and daily newspapers. Regretfully, I never interviewed people who could have provided first-hand accounts of the 1905 storm.

But fortunately, there are people who lived through the great storm and recorded the event in personal journals. One of these people was Hants County farmer Harry Pemberton. For well over half a century, from 1890 until a few years before his death in 1957, Pemberton wrote daily reports in his diary. At the time of the great storm, he was farming in Hants County near Garland’s Crossing.

Recently, Mr. Pemberton’s granddaughter, Faye Hergett of Wolfville, provided me with entries from his diary for January and February of 1905. These entries, stark and to the point, give us a firsthand glimpse of the great storm. As you will see from reading them, it was a harrowing period to be a farmer in an isolated community. Note how often the railroad is mentioned, illustrating the importance of the line at the time.

January 25. Drawed (sic) two small loads of wood. 18 below zero and a terrible storm in afternoon. Pulled horse very hard to get home.

January 26. Stayed home and ploughed roads. Still snowing. Heaviest storm in years.

January 27. Ploughed roads all the morning. Snow piled 12 feet deep all over my wood and sleds. Roads are full. No trains have run since yesterday noon. Heaviest storm in 32 years.

January 31. More snow. So much now it is almost impossible to do anything.

The diary entries are similar in February, Pemberton noting that from February 1 to February 7 it was cold and snowy. The February 7 entry reads: Another snow storm. For February 16: Another terrible snow storm. The comes the most telling entries of all:

February 18. Roads are heavy. Lots of snow and more coming. The midland trains have been stopped for the winter and men paid off, it being impossible to get through for snow. The D.A.R. have not had a train through from Halifax for a week now on account of all the snow and ice on the tracks. All the snow plows have been smashed up and a hard time is generally spoken. Everywhere food stuffs and coal are a (?) and it is almost impossible to get wood so severe is the winter…. Generally speaking, it is a hard, severe winter.

February 22. No trains through on D.A.R. yet. Teams are taking passengers and mail to and from Halifax by road. A very serious time.

February 23. Another snow storm. Road is very heavy and it’s hard indeed to get wood cut as the snow is fully five feet deep on the level. Trains have not got through to Halifax yet.

By February 25 the storm situation has eased a bit, Pemberton writing that he’s heard the trains are running. Then comes a note that an engine and plough finally make it through to Windsor from Halifax. On February 26 Pemberton writes that the trains are running again and the rail line seems to be clear. The great storm of 1905 is over.

Since Nova Scotia has a relatively short history compared to European and Asiatic areas, if someone was inclined they could easily produce a comprehensive disaster timeline; that is, a year to year record beginning with the Acadian period of all the storms and other natural disasters that have created havoc and hardship in the province.

The records are there – in history books, in the folklore passed from generation to generation, and since the advent of the Internet, on websites – so a historian would have little difficulty compiling a timeline. The only problem I can see is what to include and what to leave out. Being a coastal province, for example, Nova Scotia has been subjected to innumerable hurricanes and gales since the Acadian period, and all have been disasters of some sort. Chronicling the wind storms alone would demand a lot of effort by a timeliner.

If one were to work on a disaster timeline for Kings County, the question would be where to start. Obviously, the Saxby Gale, that disastrous combination of high winds and high running tides in 1869 would place high in the list of storms that wrecked Kings County and other coastal areas of the province. However, the Nova Scotia potato famine of 1845-1846 hit farmers in Kings County harder than the Saxby Gale and had long lasting consequences up and down the Valley. In Kings County, farmers in Horton township lost 75 percent of the potato crop, in Cornwallis township the loss amounted to 50 percent. Historian L. S. Loomer called the hardship and hunger suffered during the blight years the “worst of such years in recorded history.”

The “year of the frost” in Nova Scotia also rates high on the list of natural disasters that adversely affected Kings County. In 1816 wintry weather – snow, heavy frosts and below freezing temperatures – persisted through most of the summer, destroying crops and bringing near famine conditions to Kings County. Another natural disaster the year before, hordes of mice that destroyed food supplies, was also felt in Kings County.

Many a severe winter blizzard has brought everyday life to a standstill in Kings County, but the most disastrous may have been the “great storm of 1905,” or as it has also been called, “the great blockage.” This was a 21-day storm that began in February and literally tied up the countryside. The areas hardest hit in Kings County were towns, villages and communities that depended on the railway for food and fuel supplies. Only a massive turn out of manpower cleared the railway lines and averted disaster.

I call a bit of nasty weather in 1759 the storm that had an effect on Kings County history. Several years after the expulsion of the Acadians the dykes of the county, left unattended, had deteriorated to the point that they were a disaster waiting to happen. And happen it did. On November 3 a combination of high winds and high tides – which thanks to Ivan Smith I learned is called a perigean syzygy – created a storm surge that broke the dyke walls and flooded land the Acadians had spent generations reclaiming from the Minas Basin.

Farmland in Kings County was in such bad state after the flooding that the Planters petitioned the government for assistance, asking in effect that no more Acadians be deported since they were invaluable in repairing the dykes. It’s generally acknowledged that without the dyke expertise of the Acadians, it would have been years before the fledgeling Planter settlement was stable. In petitioning the government the Planters said that without the Acadians, “many of us cannot continue our improvements, nor plowe our lands nor finish the dykeing still required to secure our lands from salt water.”

Some of the Acadians who laboured on county dykes were later permitted to remain and their descendants can still be found here.

We were just below Blarney Castle in Cork and on our way to see the famous blarney stone when we encountered a man selling poems. He was sitting beside a stone walkway near the castle and as we approached he shouted something about offering the work of an “authentic Irish poet.”

I still have the poem I bought that morning, for the equivalent of one Canadian dollar, and frankly, it’s a piece of drivel. But the chat I had with the self-styled “Irish poet” was interesting. When I mentioned that one of my ancestors had emigrated from Cork he told me that Coleman was a common surname in the area. “My surname is not all that common,” he added. “It’s one of the oldest surnames in Irish history.”

Intrigued, I said, “Oh, really?”

“Aw,” he said with a smirk, “you’re not even close.”

I hope that with St. Patrick’s day upon us you appreciate this bit of Irish humour. We did meet a would-be Irish poet at the foot of Blarney Castle and just as I said, I bought one of his poems. However, his surname was Kidney, as un-Irish a name you can find even though his family had been in Ireland for generations.

Anyway, like I said, St Paddies Day is here and you can expect the usual Irish stories, Irish suppers and the odd Irish musical this Friday. Rightfully we should celebrate St. Patrick’s Day here in Kings County since there is an Irish element. Folklore has it, for example, that an old burial ground in Centreville was originally an Irish cemetery. Supporting this folktale is the fact that burial records indicate most of the early burials in this cemetery have Irish surnames.

There’s a local folktale as well that there was a tiny Irish settlement near Centreville, or possibly near Hillaton or Atlanta. This is said to have been the first Irish settlement in the Valley but there are no known historical documents that confirm this.

Here’s an Irish fact. One of the first settlers in Kentville and one of its earliest and most successful merchants was out of northern Ireland. This was Henry Magee who first settled in the States and came to Nova Scotia as a Loyalist. Magee became a prosperous merchant in Kentville, building and operating a mill and one of the largest general stores at the time (1788) in the Annapolis Valley. He died a wealthy man in 1806 and is buried in Kentville’s Oak Grove cemetery.

It was an Irish element that almost brought what was to become the Dominion Atlantic Railway to a standstill when it was being constructed. In her D.A.R. history, Marguerite Woodworth writes about the “Railway Riots of 1856,” a series of clashes between disgruntled Irish railway workers and their Protestant counterparts. The most serious battle took place on the Windsor branch, at a place with the Irish sounding name of Gurlay’s Shanty. The Irish workers apparently got the better of their Protestant fellow workers, inflicting such terrific damage that construction was held up for almost a week.

More Irish trivia. Nova Scotia was almost New Ireland, rather than New Scotland, and it would have been had one Col A. McNutt had his way. McNutt received a large grant in Nova Scotia circa 1759 and planned to re-name the province New Ireland.

Why corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day I once asked a Tipperary native. The cabbage because it’s green, the Irish national colour, I was told. As for the corned beef, the Tipperary man said it was a North American addition. “In Ireland,” he said, “it’s more likely to be a ham and cabbage dinner on St. Patrick’s Day.” The Tipperary man added that while we celebrate the day here with drinking, in Ireland it’s more of a religious event.

Which of the roads existing today are Mi’kmaq, Acadian or Planter in origin, I asked in a previous column. As I pointed out in this column, it’s almost impossible to drive without traversing portions of old Acadian and Planter byways and Mi’kmaq trails. In fact, many of the existing roads in Kings County following the original paths and trails laid out by the Acadians and the Planters. Literally, you’re taking a historical drive every time you use your car for a Sunday jaunt or go out to pick up a loaf of bread.

You can determine which roads are Acadian or Planter simply by studying books like Eaton’s Kings County history or Herbin’s Grand Pre history. Most local histories – such as those of Coldbrook, Port Williams, Greenwich, to give a few examples – offer substantial clues to the vintage of the roads in their communities. However, some of the older trails which eventually morphed into the well-used highways of today appear to be of obscure origin.

While this is true, there are clues to the origin of roads with obscure ancestry.

Here’s a hint. Highway Number 1, which runs through the heart of Kings County, lengthy old Brooklyn Street, which starts in Kentville and runs towards Annapolis County, Main Street in Berwick, which eventually winds east to Waterville, historic Canard Street, Belcher Street, and other roads which you can come up with yourself, share an attribute and have one thing in common.

Obvious, isn’t it. They all run parallel to and near waterways. For much of its length, the Number 1 Highway runs parallel to the south bank of the Cornwallis River, as does Berwick’s Main Street. Brooklyn Street runs parallel to the north bank of the Cornwallis for many of its kilometres, as does Belcher Street. Church Street winds just above the south bank of the Canard River, and Canard Street runs parallel on its north side.

I believe all these roads originally were Mi’kmaq trails. With a couple of exceptions, most of these trails follow the high ground parallel to rivers and streams. Canard Street and Belcher Street both run along high ground overlooking the Canard and Cornwallis River. This high ground would have been the logical area to use when the Mi’kmaq made their annual journeys to tidewater and to summer camps near the seashore. It’s no accident that Canard Street follows the high ground between the Habitant and the Canard River. Mi’kmaq fishing these rivers and harvesting food along the nearby mouths of the streams would have found the high ground the easiest route to follow.

Highway Number 1 appears to be an exception in that it doesn’t follow the high ground. However, Herbin and other historians write that the Acadians made rough roads from Minas settlements west towards Port Royal and in most cases, they followed well established Mi’kmaq trails. Part of the Number 1 Highway near Kentville appears to have been one of the roads the Acadians briefly worked on prior to the expulsion.

Cornwallis Street crosses the Cornwallis River in Kentville and if we accept what historians tell us, this main thoroughfare apparently was a Mi’kmaq trail. Silas Rand writes, for example, that there was a Mi’kmaq ford where the bridge crosses the Cornwallis River in Kentville; the Mi’kmaq name for this place, says Rand, translated into fording place. It’s no accident of nature that several roads lead to this fording place in Kentville; all undoubtedly were Mi’kmaq trails that later were adopted by the Acadians and then the Planters.

The next time you have some time to spare, boot up your computer, go to a search engine and type in Nova Scotia History Index. Left click and then sit back and enjoy a trip through one of the most extensive websites devoted to Nova Scotia history to be found on the Internet today.

Maintained by Canning historian Ivan Smith, the website touches on so many aspect of our history that describing it in a few words is impossible. Hence my suggestion that you take a look for yourself. But first, make sure you have lots of free time; the site is massive, detailed and to me mindboogling, to use a cliché that’s fitting.

For a look at an event that shaped Nova Scotia history, you can go directly to the section of Smith’s website devoted to the Seven Years War. On your search engine enter Timeline of the Seven Years War. Smith tells me that in creating this site he had in mind the target audience of “a student in junior or senior high who is doing a class project on Nova Scotia history.”

That he was immensely successful was obvious when less than two weeks after his posting, the Seven years War Timeline was in the top ten for hits in North America. To put this in perspective, there are literally hundreds of thousands of websites (according to Google) that will be reported to anyone looking for information on the Seven Years War.

Also impressive is the fact that Smith’s historical website is now a decade old and counting. “I overlooked a notable (to me) anniversary last Tuesday,” Ivan Smith wrote recently. “The uploading to the WWW (Worldwide Web) of the first page of my first website (on) February 17, 1996. The website has been in operation continuously for 10 years, hosted all that time by the same service.”

That service, Smith said, was originally named Beverly Hills Internet and later became Geocities. In 1999, Geocities was purchased by Yahoo (for the unbelievable sum of $3.57 billion) which is still the host of Smith’s website.

The Anniversary of Smith’s anniversary came and went unnoticed by the general populace, but it should have been marked. When it comes to personal websites devoted to Canadian and specifically Nova Scotia history, his website undoubtedly is the leader.

As is typical of Smith, he is modest about his accomplishments. He wrote me recently, for example, and told me there were other Kings County websites that have been around longer than his and should be recognised. “The early history of the Internet in Kings County deserves to be preserved, and I’m a small part of that history,” he wrote.

Once you log onto the Nova Scotia History Index and look at its contents, you’ll see that Smith’s claim to only being a small part of that history is an understatement. I dig around a lot on the Internet looking for historical information; and frankly, wherever I wander out there on the web, most trails eventually lead back to Smith’s History Index. And no wonder. I have yet to find a site that covers so many aspects of Nova Scotia history. And the amazing thing is that, like the Internet, the site is constantly growing and changing.

As I suggested, check it out for yourself. Once you do I’m sure you’ll join me in congratulating Ivan smith on his efforts and wishing him a happy 10th anniversary.

“I see you mentioned Ebenezar Cox in your column. He built some of the finest sailing ships in Canada in his day, you know.”

With these words, Leon Barron introduced himself one evening at the Kings County Museum. This was more than a decade ago, but I can still visualise Leon sitting on a bench beside me and recounting the career of Kingsport’s famed shipbuilder. Minutes passed as Leon told me about Ebenezar Cox and his K ships. Awestruck, I sat listening, amazed both by the Cox story and by Barron’s knowledge of the arcane craft of shipbuilding.

Over the years that followed, Leon amazed and educated me with his store of marine and railway lore. In one of my columns I dubbed him Mr. Minas Basin Know It All. If he had the inclination, I wrote, he could author an interesting book on Minas Basin ships. After a lifetime of researching, collecting and poking around the Minas Basin and Fundy shore, his knowledge of sailing ships and the marine landscape was considerable. He astounded me on many occasions with his knowledge of ship and railway lore. Amazingly, I said in the column, Leon carries much of this lore in his head and can recall it instantly.

Regretfully, I write this in the past tense. Leon Barron passed away on January 31 and this is my salute to one of the most dedicated sailing ship and railway historians this area has known. It’s one of the most difficult columns I’ve ever had to sit down and write. A few hundred words cannot do justice to a friend who devoted his life to researching local shipbuilding and railway history. He was a tireless researcher, ever digging into old books and various archives, and always sharing what he unearthed with others. He was one of those natural born autodidacts who never stopped learning.

I’ve been the benefactor many times of Leon’s ongoing research. Some of my most interesting and illuminating columns on local history came from interviews with Leon and from documents he had found while researching that he shared with me. My fondest memory will be of Leon characteristically clearing his throat several times and saying, “Here’s something I found that may interest you.”

Leon was born in Kingsport in 1932 at a time when the Kipawo was still running in the Minas Basin and the Dominion Atlantic Railway still chugged over the old Cornwallis Valley Railway line to the Kingsport wharf. Undoubtedly it was due to his early association with Kingsport, where the tracks ran out on the wharf and met cargo ships, that Leon developed a passion for sailing ships and for the railway.

One of his earliest memories, he used to say, was the discovery of a shipwreck on the Medford beach when he was about five. More than once he told me he would have been happy if he had been born in the golden age of sailing ships. He regretted that he wasn’t, I believe.

In his lifetime of research Leon Barron amassed a wealth of information on sailing ships and railways. I hope that one day we will honour his memory with an indexed collection of his historical research, placed perhaps in a niche in the Kings County Museum. It would be a fitting tribute.  

Referring to Parrsboro in his 1829 history of Nova Scotia, Thomas Chandler Haliburton wrote that it was from this “small village” that “packets run to Horton and Windsor twice a week and occasionally oftener.”

The packets, or ferries as we later called them, are mentioned in the brief description of Kingsport in Eaton’s Kings County history. Eaton writes that besides being a popular summer resort, Kingsport was “long the Kings County point of departure for the Parrsborough packets.”

Since the twice daily tides controlled the lives of people living on or near the Minas Basin in earlier times, ferries were once a necessity. I’ve never come across solid evidence that the Acadians used ferries in Kings County but the Planters quickly discovered they couldn’t function without them. Well before the time Haliburton and Eaton said ferries plied the Minas Basin, various boats ran to and from the larger ports and even from Planter community to Planter community on tidal rivers.

On the Cornwallis River, for example, a ferry may have been running as early as the Acadian period. “One mile east of Port Williams, at Town Plot,” the editors of The Port Remembers wrote, “a ferry was maintained by both the Acadians and the Planters.” The editors note that the ferry connected with a road that ran across the dykes to Wolfville.

One of the earliest Minas Basin ferries is documented by Gwendolyn Vaughan Shand in her book Historic Hants County. Shand says this ferry may have been running as early as 1794. The Ferry, the Parrsborough Packet ran twice a week between Windsor and Parrsboro. Shand cites government documents and almanac advertisements published in the 1700s as evidence of this ferry’s existence.

At a much later date, between 1910 and 1937, another ferry used Windsor as a home base and connected several Minas Basin communities. This was the Rotundus whose fate is chronicled in L. S. Loomer’s history of Windsor. According to Loomer the Rotundus ran from Windsor to Avondale, Hantsport, Summerville and Cheverie.

Possibly the most famous Minas Basin ferry of all is the Kipawo, which ran between Kingsport, Parrsboro and Wolfville, hence the name, a combination of the three ports.

For a folksy and romantic history of the Kipawo I refer readers to Esther Clark Wright’s delightful book, Blomidon Rose. I prefer to quote about the Kipawo from a railway column that ran in this newspaper in the 1930s. Railway Notes by George Bishop relates that the Kipawo operated from 1926 to 1939 but was discontinued “due to declining business and insufficient subsidies.”

But while possibly the best known ferry on the Minas Basin, the Kipawo wasn’t the first to make the Kingsport, Parrsboro, Wolfville run. George Bishop wrote that before the Kipawo there was the Evangeline which was commissioned in 1893 and operated until 1904 when it was replaced by the S. S. Prince Albert. The Prince Albert operated until 1926 when the Kipawo took over.

A town with a merchant that issued his own money, where its sole medical practitioner was often paid with butter, eggs and poultry, and a town where Baptists, Episcopalians and Methodists lacked separate churches and shared the same meeting house.

This was Kentville in 1842 as described in an old newspaper account. Said to be from an “old newspaper clipping, the property of Robert Ward,” and published in The Advertiser in 1971, the account has details on the town several decades before it incorporated and approximately 16 years after it adopted its present name in honour of the Duke of Kent.

Kentville in that period was a slumbering village with few streets and a pretentious name. One of the streets, Main Street, claims to be the old military road or French Road, which eventually led to Annapolis Royal; another main artery, Cornwallis Street, is believed to be of Acadian and Mi’kmaq origin.

The Kentville described in the newspaper account is the town before the railway arrived and turned it into a prosperous centre. Dr. William Bennett Webster (1798-1861) is its sole physician in the period described in the account. Webster would eventually lay out other streets in the town. Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton in his Kings County history calls him “the most enterprising and far-seeing man in the village.” The newspaper article tells us that Webster occasionally accepted farm produce for services rendered. At the time, various farms operated within what are now the town limits and there were hitching posts for horses.

Another prominent Kentville family, along with the Websters, are the Moores. The 1842 article mentions several prominent members of the Moore family, among them Daniel H. Moore, who was “for many years M.P. for Kings County.”

Another prominent Kentville citizen mentioned in the article is the Hon. James d. Harris, a “Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and afterwards a member of the Legislative Council. Harris, the article said, was a merchant and banker who “issued five pound notes, which gave him a large floating capital free of interest.” This “Kentville money” was later withdrawn from circulation since Harris failed “to establish agencies …. to redeem them.”

Another prominent citizen at the time was James Edward DeWolfe, “a native of Wolfville,” who is described as one of the town’s “successful and worthy merchants.” Another prominent citizen was the lawyer John C. Hall, who was “a representative in the Legislature.” Prominent also was Caleb H. Rand who according to the article, built the Kentville Hotel, organised the Halifax Coach Company and saw to it that the stagecoach extended its line to the town.

“Kentville 50 years ago had a mail to and from Halifax twice a week instead of twice a day as now,” the article’s unknown author boasted. “The postage was ninepence, six times as much as at present and a single letter must be on one sheet of paper only.”

There are many more interesting revelations about the town’s early days in the article; several of its early spiritual leaders are named, for example. As I mentioned above, several religions shared a common church or meeting house in the period described in the article, but eventually this would change. Apparently in 1842 only Roman Catholics and Presbyterians worshipped at their own churches.

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.