This is the third column on the old plant that once bottled Pepsi Cola and Morris soft drinks literally in downtown Kentville (first column, second column).  And thanks to various readers, I’m able to somewhat flesh out the story of the bottling plant operating in Kentville over half a century ago.

I mentioned in the second column on the Morris plant that the proprietor was W. E. Morris.  A reader called to tell me it was Bill Morris and his brother Jack who had operated the plant.  And, the reader informed me, Bill’s son, Dr. Donald Morris, resides in the Halifax area.  The reader also gave me Dr. Morris’ telephone number.  I’m delighted to report that on contacting him, Dr. Morris provided background on the bottling plant and how it got started.  Here’s what Dr. Morris recalled about the bottling plant his father and uncle set up Kentville.

“In 1939 my father (Bill) who was living in Montreal and his older brother Jack, who was living in Boston, acquired a Pepsi-Cola franchise for the Valley area.  They bought a truck, drove to NS, and chose Kentville.

“Neither of them had any experience in the pop business. Somehow they thought that the old vacant church could become a bottling plant. (I was somewhat surprised when I arrived a month or two later at age 12).  Luckily the Pepsi-Cola people were very helpful.  Somehow they got the place fixed up and started producing Pepsi,

“Jack was in charge of production and Bill was in charge of sales. Shortly after they got started war was declared and sugar rationing was brought in.  The production of soda pop starts with the syrup which comes in large barrels (like wine casks) from some top secret place.  At the local plant a large amount of sugar and water are added.  The rationing of sugar could have been a great problem, but extra sugar rations were allowed for pop sold to army camps, so with the help of Aldershot and Greenwood they were able to keep busy during the war years.

“After the war the business continued to grow.  Jack had gone back to Boston after the first year.  Dave Belcher was hired to run the plant and he was Bill’s right hand man for many years.  In 1949 the Pepsi people asked Bill to take the Pepsi franchise in Halifax.  This was a difficult decision for him but he decided to do it, building a new plant in Dartmouth which became very successful.  They continued to supply Pepsi to the Valley from the Dartmouth plant.”

Dr. Morris added that it wasn’t long after they were in business that his father began to experiment “with his own brand of flavours and they continued to be constantly changing.”  The company name was changed from Morris Bros to Morris Beverages.  According to Dr. Morris, after the move to Dartmouth, the Morris brand soft drinks were “distributed in the Halifax- Dartmouth area, down the east shore as far as Sheet Harbour, as well as the Valley.”

Morris soft drink bottles are treasured by collectors today, by the way.  The Morris bottles are likely all that remains as reminders of the time unique soft drinks were produced in Kentville.

Did Francis O’Neill, an Irish police Captain out of Boston, visit Kings County in the early 1900s to collect music and visit relatives?

My father Carl believes that such a man came here, an O’Neill who said he had Irish relatives in Kings County.  “He said he collected music for a book,” I remember my father saying and he had served as a policeman in Boston.   “He told us he was from the same area in Cork as my grandfather and he wondered why we had dropped the ‘O’ from our name,” my father said. “He didn’t get much music from here though, just a little.”

If it was the same Francis O’Neill who published several large collections of Irish music, then perhaps a few tunes in his books did come from the Kings County Irish.  O’Neill was cut from the same cloth as the Carter family who spent a lifetime collecting and recording the folk music of  the Appalachian Mountains.  Only O’Neill’s forte was Irish music.  Like the Carters he spent decades collecting Irish music and it can truly be said that without him, much Irish folk music might have been lost for all time.

So who was this the same Francis O’Neill and did he really come to Kings County to visit and collect music?  Possibly he did. Many years ago, in an Antigonish book store, I found a collection of music called O’Neill’s Music of Ireland.  The cover boasted that the book contained 1,850 melodies;  in it were airs, jigs, reels, hornpipes, long dances and marches, collected “from all available sources” by Capt. Francis O’Neill and arranged by James O’Neill.

Later I discovered a second collection of Irish music – The Dance Music of Ireland – also by Capt. Francis O’Neil, with arrangements by James O’Neill.  This was another massive collection of over one thousand Irish tunes containing jigs, reels, hornpipes and dance pieces.  Both books had the names of the tunes in Gaelic and in English.

It was only speculation on my part but it seemed too much of a coincidence that there were two Irish policemen Captains by the name of Francis O’Neil’s collecting music to put in a collection.  It was after I showed my father my find in Antigonish that he recalled the Irish policeman who visited here.  This would have been circa 1908, he said, when he was in his teens.

With St. Patrick’s Day upon us I thought I’d mention O’Neill, his collections of Irish music and the possibility he visited here more than a century ago.  Then came Christmas last and the gift of a book on the history of Irish music.  Capt. Francis O’Neill (1848-1936) was written up in the book and I learned as mentioned above that his lifetime hobby was collecting and publishing books of Irish music.  The article on O’Neill said he travelled extensively (after he left the Boston police force) to pursue his hobby and he is saluted as the man who saved Irish folk music.

Perhaps he did visit Nova Scotia and saw his Irish relatives here in Kings County; and perhaps a tune or two from some of the Kings County Irish did end up in one of his collections.  I have this in mind and wonder which ones they might be every time I play one of the many Irish tunes from his books.

O’Neill’s book. Were Kings County tunes published in this collection of Irish music?

After receiving a couple of e-mail messages, several telephone calls and comments from people I met on the street, I realised Kentville’s old Pepsi-Cola, Morse bottling plant is far from forgotten.  I wrote about the Pepsi plant and Morris beverages in my last column.  While the plant ceased operations over 50 years ago, people still remember it.  Surprisingly, there are families still living here who had close connections with a building that started as a church, became a bottling plant and became a church again.

First, I’d like to mention Sam Milne of Kentville.   He called to tell me his brother Cal was a plant employee for a time.  Sam told me Cal drove the truck that delivered Pepsi (and I assume the Morris brand soda pop) to stores in this area, working under the proprietor, W. E. Morris.  Cal had a humorous adventure or two working under Morris which indicted the latter had a firm hand on the operation.

In a note he sent me, Louis Comeau indicated that when the Pepsi plant was closed in 1949 it remained vacant until 1952, except for a short time when it was occupied by Maritime Roofers Ltd.  From 1953 until 1958 the building was again used as a church, the Church of the Nazarene.  Louis said the building was later moved to Spring Garden Road.

One of the readers who called about the column mentioned the late Bev Conrad’s connection with the Pepsi plant.  This led to a conversation with his widow, Marion Conrad.  She confirmed that she and her husband lived in an apartment that had been added to the building when it was moved to Spring Garden Road.  The building was moved by Irving Oil in 1959 (to make room for a service station) and the Conrads lived in it for 27 years.

Joan Kennedy of Sheffield Mills writes (via e-mail) that she remembers the Pepsi building very well.  “My grandfather, John William Turner was the Methodist minister in that church when he died in 1906,” Kennedy said.  “When he died, he left a wife, three daughters and one son, my father Reginald Turner, who worked so many years at the Kentville Advertiser.”

From information Louis Comeau and readers of this column kindly provided, here’s a brief outline on the old church cum Pepsi Cola and Morris bottling plant:  Used as a Methodist Church until 1923 (the Methodists stopped using the building as a church when they united with the Presbyterians.  Opened as a bottling plant circa 1923, first for Morris soft drinks and later Pepsi Cola.  The plant ceased bottling activities and closed in 1949.  Building vacant from 1949 to 1952 when it was briefly used by a roofing firm.  From 1953 until 1958 the building was used as a church (see above). Irving Oil purchased the building and the lot, moving the old plant to make room for a service station.  The building still stands today on Spring Garden Road and says Marion Conrad, “you can still see the old church steeple.”

One of the most popular soft drink beverages in Canada, Pepsi Cola, was once bottled in Kentville, from which point the drink was distributed throughout most of the Valley.

The old bottling plant rarely is remembered today; forgotten as well is the fact that the plant also produced a soft drink that may have been unique to this area.   As well as bottling Pepsi Cola, the Morris Bros. Bottling Co. produced a soft drink under its own label.  The Morris beverages bottle was once a familiar sight in county stores and canteens; and if you’re a senior, you probably recall that it came in several flavours.

Recently Roberts Meister called to ask if I knew anything about Kentville’s old Pepsi bottling plant.  Meister worked at the plant when he was a young man.  His job was to pour “special syrup into the Pepsi bottles.”  He recalls that he was required to put two ounces of syrup into every “10 or 12 ounces bottle of Pepsi.”

Meister placed the plant along west Main Street, on the south side, but he was unsure about its exact location.  However, he remembers names of people associated with the bottling plant.  The plant was owned by the Morris family, “Charlie, and Bill or Clarence,” he said, and one of the drivers was Cal Milne, who as readers may recall, ran a garage in New Minas.

Based on one of my brothers working at the Pepsi plant, I figured it had to be operational at least in the late 1930s and the early 1940s.  I remember as well sampling many a bottle of Morris pop.  However, after digging into my files and checking a few local history books, I came up with absolutely nothing on the Pepsi plant and Morris Bros. beverages.  I was surprised when checking Mabel Nichols Kentville history, The Devil’s Half Acre, that there was no mention of the Pepsi plant or Morris Bros. soft drinks in this book.

As a general rule, when anyone is stumped about some past Kentville event or if anyone needs to know something about an old Kentville business, it’s best to seek out historian and author Louis Comeau.  Comeau’s book, Historic Kentville, is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what he knows about the town’s history.  As always, Louis came through when I inquired about the Pepsi plant and Morris Bros.  Here’s what he came up with:

The plant (which Louis believes may have opened circa 1923 but he isn’t certain) was located at the corner of Main Street and Masters Avenue.  The plant was housed in what was the former Methodist church building – which the Methodists stopped using, Louis says, when they united with the Presbyterians in 1923.

At the plant they bottled Morris beverages, which came in assorted flavours, the contents indicated on the bottle caps.  Later the plant bottled Pepsi Cola products, which they continued to do until it was closed in 1949.  A few years later the building was again used as a church.  The building was later moved to Masters Park.

Louis also gave me the names of some plant personnel, which he found in the 1948 edition of Mosher’s Directory.  Proprietor:  W. E. Morse; sales manager David Belcher; sales staff, Arnold Tupper, Garnet Sawler; bottler, Francis Lynch; employee, Laurie Keddy.

Readers who may have additional information about the bottling plant are invited to share it with me.  Contact me at edwingcoleman@gmail.com.

This former Methodist church was converted to a plant to bottle Pepsi Cola and Morris beverages.

Pepsi Cola and Morris beverages (above) were once bottled in Kentville. Note the Kentville location stamped on the Morris bottle. (Louis Comeau collection)

“Shad is the best poor man’s fish of any, for they are fat of themselves, that they need nothing to make them ready for eating.”

Two British farmers touring Nova Scotia in 1774 wrote the above about shad after seeing how plentiful they were in Annapolis Valley tidal rivers.  Besides shad, they said, “these rivers abound …. with plenty of fish of different kinds.”

After completing that long ago tour the farmers took pen to paper, describing the province and its people in detail, writing a document that eventually was deposited in our public archives.  Most interesting of all, for those of us who wonder what hunting was like here over 200 years ago, there’s a description of wildlife and its harvesting.  There was little or no sports hunting here in those times and game was taken mainly to supplement the food supply.

But even then, the lengthy excursions into the winter woods to hunt moose must have taken on a holiday atmosphere.  Take the description of those winter hunts, for example: “Great numbers of the inhabitants employ much of their time in hunting in the woods, where they will frequently continue for a week, taking a quantity of provisions with them.  And at any time when their store is exhausted, they can readily make a fire and dress part of the game they have taken; for which purpose they constantly carry a steel and tinder box, with matches, &c. in their pockets.  At night they make large fires, near which they wrap themselves up in blankets and lay down to sleep with as much composure as if they were in their own houses.”

At that time game was abundant, the Britishers report:  “They have abundance of game in the woods.  The mouse-deer (moose) is also in great plenty….  They also have rein-deer which they call carraboes and numbers of bears, both of which they reckon good eating.”

Bears and wildcats are mentioned, the former “very ravenous and frequently kill sheep, calves and swine wherever they fall in their way.  Wildcats, or “lucovie” they call them, are also a “fierce animal (that) frequently does much damage amongst sheep.”

On small game, the report mentions “wild fowl and game in great plenty, such as geese and ducks, of which they have two sorts, and teal.”  I find this amusing.  Many waterfowl hunters today distinguish between bagging ducks and bagging teal, as if the latter wasn’t a duck.  The report indicates the British practiced the same distinction and we’re still doing it over 250 years later!

The report mentioned the various wild birds that were observed, among them “eagles, gleads, hawks, buzzards, ravens and water-crows.”  Now, what are gleads and water-crows?  Were buzzards resident here in 1774 when today they’re classed as accidental visitors?   Readers who have answers to these questions can reach me at via e-mail at edwingcoleman@gmail.com.  You can read the entire report by googling Robinson, Rispin.  Thanks to Roger Meister, New Ross, I have a copy of the report, which was printed and released in 1944 by the Public Archives of Nova Scotia.

It was printed almost 70 years ago on inexpensive stock and with its cover frayed and its flimsy pages yellowed by the years, the 1944 report of the Public Archives looked at first glance to be one of those boring government papers.

However, a comment by the gentleman who kindly dropped it off at my house quickly changed that “boring” booklet into an exciting document.  “You might be interested in this account by two English farmers who toured the province in 1774,” Roger Meister said in effect.

That’s exactly what it was.  In 1774 two British farmers, apparently looking to buy farms, toured much of the province, describing in detail what they saw – the land, the people, the early Planter way of life here in the Annapolis Valley.  “Journey through Nova Scotia containing a particular account of the country and its inhabitants,” is the title John Robinson and Thomas Rispin used on the introductory page of their account.

While I’ve read a lot of Nova Scotia history, I must admit the Robinson, Rispin account was new to me.   When I mentioned the account to Kings County Museum curator Bria Stokesbury, however, I soon found out that it was old news for professional historians.  “Google Robinson, Rispin,” Stokesbury said, which I did and I found numerous references to their account on the web.

If you’re interested in what early Planter life was like here in Kings County, you can check out the various entries about the account that are on the web.  Or you can continue reading this column.  Not everyone has access to a computer; and for many of us the Robinson, Rispin account isn’t old news.  For those people without computers here are some of the more interesting highlights of the account.

On Kings County, the general Horton township area:  “Along the side of this river is an extensive marsh called the Gramperre (but by the French the Plain of Minas) all diked in which contains two thousand six hundred acres; here are also other marshes undiked with great quantities of upland …. which seems of a reddish colour and is chiefly sown with rye, Indian corn, pumpkins, potatoes and other roots.”

Robinson and Rispin ventured on into Cornwallis Township, again noting the “large marshes, which are diked in.”  In this township, the English gentlemen write, “they keep good stocks both of beasts and sheep, but not many horses.”  One Mr. Burbridge of Cornwallis “has built a malt kiln, with an intention to set up a common brewhouse so that they expect to have good ale in Nova Scotia.”

On the people of Horton and Cornwallis townships those British chaps have a few unkind words along with high praise.  “They are as bad managers in this town as any we came amongst,” they comment on people of Horton Township.   Yet they later describe the New England settlers of Horton and Cornwallis generously:  “The New Englanders are a stout, tall, well-made people, extremely fluent of speech, and are remarkably courteous to strangers.  Indeed, the inhabitants, in general, poor as well as rich, possess much complacence and good manners.”

On dress we find from the British gentlemen that the men of that time period “wear their hair queu’d and their clothing, except on Sundays, is generally home-made, with checked shirts; and in winter they wear linsey-woolsey shirts, also breeches, stockings and shoes.”

During summer, on every day of the week except Sunday, the men go barefoot.  Except on Sunday, “the women in general wear woolseys both for petticoats and aprons; and instead of stays, they wear a loose jacket ….  The women in summer, in imitation of the men, usually go without stockings or shoes, and many without caps.  They take much pains with their hair, which they tie in their necks and fix it to the crowns of their heads.”

Then there’s a final contrary dig at the general character of the New England settlers:  “Nothing can be said in favour of the inhabitants, as to their management in farming.  They neither discover judgment or industry.  Such of the New Englanders, into whose manners and characters we particularly inspected, appeared to us to be a lazy, indolent people.”

Not a kind assessment.  Robinson and Rispin apparently can’t make up their minds about the character of the Planter people.

I collect locally written, locally published history books, in particular those written about Kings County communities.  With a bit of luck and patience I’ve managed to collect most of the local histories that have been published.

A few have eluded me, however.  I’ve had problems finding one in particular.  I know this book is out there and it went into a second edition, but all copies seem to have vanished.

Well, not exactly “vanished,” and not exactly all copies.  Somewhere, probably in attics, on dusty bookshelves, in boxes of discarded books stored in closets and sheds, are numerous copies of this book.  I can even tell you where several copies of the history can be found; but as they say, they “ain’t for sale.”

Recently I was able to add this history to my collection, but only after more than a decade of searching for it.  Grist from the Mills, the Sheffield Mills history, is the book I’m speaking of.  Thanks to an Internet search, and after checking every book dealer website in Canada and the U.S. I found a copy close to home, at a shop on Barrington Street in Halifax.  At this point I remind readers who collect books, new and old, to check the website of ABE Books.  This is the best website on the Internet when it comes to finding out-of-print books in any genre you’re interested in.

But back to Grist From The Mills.  The committee that produced this book, the Sheffield Mills Women’s Institute, did excellent work.  For details and historical interest, this book rates as one the best in community histories. Along with the Port Williams history, The Port Remembers and Greenwich Times, the Greenwich history, this book stands out for research and writing.   The book captures the origin and essence of old time Sheffield Mills.  In the book, for example, is the story of the early mills in the community; this was researched and written by a local historian, the late Ernest Eaton.

It took almost as long to add a few other out-of-print community history books to my collection as it did Grist From The Mills.  A few were difficult to find as well.   If you have a copy of Edythe Quinn‘s history of Greenwich, which I mentioned above, you should treasure it.  While the book has no great monetary value (I purchased a copy for $10) copies are impossible to find and have to be considered as rare.

While there undoubtedly are plenty of copies around somewhere, The Port Remembers is another local history that’s elusive.  The same goes for Anne Hutten’s excellent history of the apple industry, Valley Gold.  This is another book that’s hard to find.  I have two copies in my collection, one purchased for $2 at a yard sale, another for $10 from a book dealer who probably didn’t realise how rare this book is.

Most of the community histories I’ve collected have no great monetary value.  Their real value lies in the records they’ve preserved, for posterity, as they say.  But for the efforts of individual writers and the efforts of community clubs and organizations in writing and compiling these history books, many of these records may have been lost.

In 1955 Dr. Lin Comeau and his wife Edna purchased the A. A. Thompson house on Wickwire Hill in east end Kentville.

After purchasing the house, writes Kentville historian Louis Comeau, his parents got into serious collecting.  “It had all started with stamps as my mother had been collecting them before she met my father.  After they married in 1941 he too acquired her collecting interests.”

Edna and Lin Comeau decided to fill their Wickwire Hill property with appropriate furnishings to suit the age of their house which was circa 1900, says Louis.  The result was a large collection of antiques, historical documents and photographs. Many of these documents and photographs concerned various Kentville businesses, but more about this later.

Louis Comeau says his father and mother’s collecting “really got out of hand.”  Soon, he says, the “entire house (a two and a half storey Queen Ann revival) and its two adjacent two storey carriage houses became filled with antiques.

“It became quite an eclectic collection indeed; everything from hat-pin holders to a horse drawn surrey (a carriage with a fringe on top) to a complete circa 1920s general store.”

Born in Comeauville, Digby County, in 1904, Dr. Lin Comeau attended College Sainte-Anne, graduating in the late 1920s.  Comeau served at Camp Aldershot as a Sergeant in the Canadian Dental Corp during the 2^nd World War.  After the war he entered Universitie de Montreal, graduating in 1948 with a degree in dentistry.  In 1949 Comeau opened a practice on Aberdeen Street in Kentville and it was here that he began collecting in earnest.

Eventually Dr. Comeau amassed a huge amount of Kentville …..  “Included in the collection,” Louis says, “was thousands of old papers and photographs from Kentville.”  The collection provided the base for the book Louis compiled on the town of Kentville – Historic Kentville, published by Nimbus in 2003.

To Dr. Lin Comeau must go credit for amassing a collection that has preserved much of Kentville’s past.  This is his legacy, a work that has been carried on by his son.  Credit must also go to Louis for expanding the Kentville collection. He notes that his father and mother inspired him to “carry on their ideals.”  After his father died in 1975, Louis concentrated on “collecting anything of interest and importance from the town.”  Since 1975 he has specialised in collecting Kentville artefacts; currently he is cataloguing the entire collection.  His book, along with Mabel Nichols work, The Devil’s Half Acre, is the only published history of Kentville.

Yet another of the old homes that once graced Kentville disappeared when a bulldozer razed the former premises of the H.C. Lindsay Funeral Home last fall.

Known at one time as the Elmsdale, the house was built around 1840 by a Kentville merchant, Caleb Hanley Rand.  Mabel Nichols, in The Devil’s Half Acre and Louis Comeau in Historic Kentville, feature this house in their books, the latter including a photograph.  The house has historic connections – with Kentville’s first business tycoon Henry Magee (1739-1806) with the Dominion Atlantic Railway and with leading Kentville magistrates and physicians.

Another fine old Kentville home that yielded long ago to the bulldozer, had connections with this newspaper.  This was the home of Kentville’s first leading newspaper publisher, George W. Woodworth.  Deemed a “Valley landmark” by daily and weekly newspapers when it was demolished, the house, known as the “Woodworth Place,” stood on the corner of east Main Street and Prospect Avenue for 120 years.

Woodworth was the publisher and editor of The Western Chronicle, established in 1873, a weekly paper some sources say may have amalgamated later with The Advertiser.  The Woodworth house was deemed by a provincial daily newspaper to be “quite a centre for political activity.”  One member of the Woodworth family connected with the house defeated Sir Frederick Borden and served in the Provincial Legislature and House of Commons.

When the Dominion Atlantic Railway decided to build a new Cornwallis Inn and relocate it across town, two of Kentville’s most beautiful homes  were torn down to make room for it.  In her book, The Devil’s Half Acre, Mabel Nichols writes that the houses were “victims of progress.”

These houses were once owned by the Websters, which Arthur W. H.  Eaton salutes as one of Kentville’s leading families in its early days.  The two houses, The Chestnuts and The Birches were built respectively by Dr. Isaac Webster, Kentville’s first physician, and Dr. Henry Barkley Webster.  Eaton writes that one of the Websters, Dr. William Bennet, was “probably the most enterprising and far-seeing man (Kentville) in its early history had.”  Dr. Webster, says Eaton, laid out Church Street and Webster Street, completing the “Kentville square” which also comprised Main and Cornwallis Streets.

Readers interested in another early Kentville house that was a victim of progress are directed to Mabel Nichols write-up on the Charles Webster home.  Nichols writes that this house once was Kentville’s oldest landmark.  I recall not only seeing this beautiful house in photographs but I actually walked through what remained of it several times in the 1950s.