Opening late in the 19^th century, the Cornwallis Valley Railway connected the bustling Minas Basin terminal of Kingsport with the rail line in Kentville.  At the start, the CVR train ran twice daily six days a week, Monday to Saturday and once on Sunday.  Between Kingsport and Kentville the train stopped at various communities along the way, where apple warehouses often were conveniently located.  The Weston branch, running west from Centreville, was added in 1914, connecting the railway with some of the top apple producing areas in Kings County.

Primarily built to serve the apple industry and provide a connection to shipping at Kingsport, the CVR’s daily runs also made it convenient for students attending Kentville schools.  In his website history of the CVR, Ivan Smith writes that the Monday to Friday trains served as the school bus of the time:  “Students from the Kingsport, Canning, Sheffield Mills area who wanted a high school education traveled on the train to Kentville to attend classes at the Kentville Academy; at the end of the school day the afternoon train took them home.”

Smith says the railway and school schedules were coordinated to enable students to attend a full day of classes.  On Monday to Friday, the train left Kingsport at 8:00am and arrived in Kentville at 8:40am.  The station was only a few minutes walk from the school, allowing plenty of time for students to make the 9:00 o’clock start of classes.  On the return trip the train left Kentville at 3:30pm, arriving in Kingsport at 4:15pm.

While at Kings County Academy, I was aware of what we called the CVR’s school run. A number of my classmates traveled on the train and the “train kids” stood out because their situation was unique.  How many kinds in Nova Scotia, or across Canada for that matter, can boast they took the train to school?

The CVR’s morning and afternoon runs were a reliable method of transportation for school students attending KCA, even though the train tended to be a bit poky at apple harvest time.  It seems the daily runs between Kentville and Kingsport were adequate to serve the general population as well. So it was a surprise when I found that in 1947 the railway supplemented the morning and afternoon trains with a bus run.  I discovered this leafing through the May 1947 issues of The Advertiser.  I found an advertisement in the papers informing the public of a combined bus and rail service between Kingsport and Kentville, with the first bus commencing May 1.

The advertisement published the schedule of the train and bus runs, advising passengers using the latter they could board at train stations in Kentville and Kingsport and would be “picked up and set down at all convenient points on the route;” meaning, I suppose, the regular train stops at stations such as Aldershot, Steam Mill, Centreville and so on.  There was no change in the train schedule and train and bus tickets were to be interchangeable.

The bus run was scheduled to run from Kentville to Kingsport beginning in late morning and returning in the afternoon. It was short-lived, however.  By 1949 the bus was gone.  It hasn’t been forgotten entirely, however, and is remembered by many seniors who lived along or near the old CVR line.  Surprisingly, not one source I looked at regarding the CVR line history mentions the railway bus; apparently as far as historian and railway buffs are aware, the bus never existed.

So, comes the question, why did the railway start a bus run?    One answer may be that trains were too slow for a public that wanted faster connections between towns and villages in the area served by the CVR.

It’s interesting to note that when the Dominion Atlantic Railway cancelled the CVR bus, a train run with the identical schedule the bus used quickly replaced it.    Historian Ivan Smith pointed this out in recent correspondence.  Short-lived as it was, the bus was not a complete failure, Smith notes.  “It seems there was enough business for the bus (running on its late morning eastbound, returning early afternoon westbound) to justify running the train instead of the bus.”   It was, Smith says, “a rare example of replacing an existing bus service by a railway passenger train in rural Nova Scotia.”

Saxon Street isn’t the longest continuous road in the county – Brooklyn Street claims that honour – but it’s historically interesting and may even be considered a curiosity.

First of all, let’s ask why the road is there?  Originally it might have been a trail used by the Mi’kmaq to reach fishing grounds on the upper Minas Basin, the area around the mouth of the Habitant and Canard River; a road later found useful by the Acadians and Planter settlers.

If so, it would seem that Canard Street, which reaches deep into the heart of land favoured by the Mi’kmaq – areas later settled by the Acadians and Planters – would be a more direct route to the head of the Basin.  Most likely, Canard Street became a major thoroughfare because it was a straight forward, high ground trail between two rivers, a trail that led to major, year around Mi’kmaq food sources; also, it conveniently followed a shoreline the Acadians and Planters eventually would heavily dyke.

Saxon Street, on the other hand seems to be superfluous.  It appears to be an unnecessary trail for the Mi’kmaq since it reaches the same area that Canard Street serves.  However, when you take a closer look, Saxon Street is a direct link between Mi’kmaq fishing grounds on the Bay of Fundy and fishing ground on the Minas Basin.  Saxon Street T-junctions with Highway 359 in Centreville and by turning north on this highway from Saxon Street you can travel directly to the Bay.

From Centreville, an area favoured by the Mi’kmaq and Acadians, to the Minas Basin the distance, using Saxon Street, is 11.3 kilometres – an easy one-day walk most of the year, in other words.  Recently I drove the entire length of the street starting in Centreville, crossing Sherman Belcher and Gibson Woods Road, which likely were Mi’kmaq and/or Acadian trails at one time.  Just past the Gibson Woods Road, Saxon Street dips into a hollow and the stream flowing through it runs into the Canard River.

This stream (I don’t know its name) has the distinction of being the first, or one of the first sites the Acadians dyked in Kings County; you can still see faint traces of the dykeing on the upstream side where it crosses under Highway 341 by the Newcombe Branch Road.

Farther along, Saxon Street crosses Middle Dyke Road, so named due to Acadian dykeing where this road crosses the Canard River.  Saxon Street continues on into Hillaton, an area that was part of a Planter grant.  Here, Saxon Street runs parallel to the Habitant River, then crosses Highway 358 and eventually dips down to the Minas Basin shore.  Here, possibly in the early 1800s, a wharf was built to give farmers access to the Minas Basin.  Old-time documents tell of mile long lines of wagons filled with potatoes at harvest time, waiting on Saxon Street for access to the wharf.

Just up over the rise east of Pickett’s Wharf, Saxon Street T-junctions with Canard Street in Lower Canard.  For most of its 11.3 kilometres Saxon Street runs through country of historical significance.  According to the late Ernest Eaton, Saxon Street  was once called Washington Street – after whom it isn’t known – and even earlier was known as Bently or Bentley Path.  David Bentley was a Cornwallis grantee and this may explain the old name for the road.

And for you history trivia buffs, the community we call Hillaton today, through which Saxon Street passes, was once known as the village of Saxon Street and earlier, the village of Washington Street.  Saxon Street may have had some of the early Kings County Irish settlers dwelling along it at one time.  As for whom the street is named after, I don’t know.  Perhaps more knowledgeable readers can tell us.

On February 22 in 1888, some 36 citizens of the recently incorporated town of Kentville met in Chipman’s Hall to organize a “Fire Company”.

The minutes of that first meeting 125 years ago, of the Kentville Volunteer Fire and Protection Company, were recorded by R. L. Masters who was appointed secretary.  Those minutes are still extant; reading them, you’ll find that present were Calkins, Websters, Eatons, Ryans, Starrs and Nearys, all names among others synonymous with the future prosperity of the town.

Actually, you can read those minutes if you wish.  They’re preserved intact in the fire department’s museum along with various souvenirs, handwritten documents, photographs, old firefighting equipment and other artefacts the fire department collected and preserved since 1888.

Yet while the fire department had carefully been saving its records from day one, it apparently wasn’t until 1998 – the 100^th anniversary of the department – that serious thought was given to organising and cataloguing everything and creating a museum.   At the time, most of the collection was simply occupying storage space.

During a period of renovations in the anniversary year the department decided it was time to make room for a museum.  A museum committee was formed with Art Hamilton as chairman, John Durno and long-time firefighters William Horton and Starr Williams.  In the book published to celebrate the department’s 100^th anniversary, Art Hamilton notes that “being new at this sort of thing,” the committee wasn’t sure where to begin.  Assisted by Art Pope, who was curator of the Kings County Museum at the time, the committee started by sorting and numbering photographs collected over the years.

According to the anniversary book, the museum first occupied limited space set aside over the washrooms.   Now, 25 years later, the museum is on the ground floor in spacious quarters and much of the historical material the department amassed in the past 125 years is on display.   From what at first must have been a hodgepodge of memorabilia, the museum has evolved into a magnificent display of firefighting equipment.

I can attest to this after a recent tour of the museum with Cathy MacKenzie.  For the past eight years, MacKenzie has been working part-time at the fire department museum putting some finishing touches on the museum collection. One of the pieces of firefighting equipment MacKenzie showed me was a 1929 ladder truck, used by the department from 1930 to about 1949.  There’s quite a tale behind the truck.  Originally purchased by the department in 1930, the vehicle saw service until 1949 when it was placed with the Nova Scotia Sanatorium fire department.  Sold in 1963 to the Port Medway fire department, the vehicle eventually ended up in Waterloo, Ontario, where it was restored by Don Edwards.  In 2011, Edwards donated the vehicle back to the Kentville fire department where it can be found today in showroom condition.

One of the oldest pieces of fire fighting equipment in the museum is a hand drawn hose cart.  Purchased in 1888 and used until 1920, the hose cart required four men to pull.  Like the 1929 ladder truck, the hose cart stands gleaming in the museum, looking brand new, like it just came out of the factory.

Showroom Condition – The 1929 Stewart ladder truck with Art Hamilton, left, and Carl Knox aboard. The ladder truck, which was restored to like new condition, is on display at the fire department museum. The truck was in use about 20 years before being turned over to the N.S. Sanatorium fire department. (Ed Coleman)

Cathy MacKenzie stands in the section of the fire department museum housing old hose wagons. The wagons were in use at least 100 years ago and were hauled to fires by hand. (Ed Coleman)

“Indignant school children in Kentville struck back last week at what they envisioned as a threat to their juvenile rights,” blared a front page story in the May 8, 1947, issue of The Advertiser.

It was a kids’ uprising, in other words, and they were protesting the demise of the five cent chocolate bar.  Hundreds of kids noisily rallied in the streets of Kentville after it was announced chocolate bars would increase in downtown stores to eight cents.  The kids picketed up and down the streets of the town for two days, carrying signs reading “Don’t buy chocolate bars at eight cents,” chanting slogans and urging passersby and merchants to support them.

The Advertiser reported that even though business was interrupted by the protesters, Kentville merchants “accepted the picketing in good grace.” However, while it was raucous while it lasted, the strike fizzled out in a couple of days.  While valiant, the effort by kids of the town to hold the price of chocolate bars at five cents was an exercise in futility; the price went up and five cent chocolate bars were no more.

But there’s more to the story.

To start with, the kids of Kentville didn’t come up with the idea of protesting the price hike on their own.  Adults obviously were behind it.

Earlier that year the federal government published notices across the country warning the public there would be no price gouging and the War Measures Act was still in force.  In the notice the government published a list of goods and services “on which a legal maximum price remains in force under the provisions of the Wartime Prices and Trade Regulations.”

Guess what was on the list of goods with fixed prices (and I quote):  Sugar, candy, confectionery and caramel; cacao beans, cocoa butter; cocoa and chocolate.

It’s an easy step to surmise that any product containing sugar and cocoa was subject to strict wartime price controls, which were still in effect in 1947.  This would include chocolate bars which had been selling all through most of the war years for five cents each.  Thus increasing the price of chocolate bars might have seemed illegal, or at least borderline illegal.

Anyway, youths in Kentville were riled up over the price increase, and reports The Advertiser, “there was no atmosphere of kidding on the part of the youngsters.”  They were deadly in earnest, the paper says and weren’t appeased, even when a notice appeared in a provincial daily explaining why the price of bars had increased.  “They did not want reasons,” said The Advertiser; “they wanted five cent bars.”

Who rallied the kids?  Probably it was adults smarting from wartime rationing and wartime price fixing.  What better and what sneakier way to stir up the public over rationing and firmly set prices by rallying the kids.  The war was long over but gas, sugar, butter, etc., was still being rationed and merchants still had to follow government guidelines on what they could charge for their merchandise.

Need evidence that adults were behind the protest?  The Advertiser noted that the idea of a “candy buying strike” had started in Vancouver a few weeks earlier and had spread across Canada.  In other words, the youths of Kentville were participating in a nation-wide protest.

The protest rally that started in Kentville soon spread to other Valley towns.  The Advertiser noted that following the protest rally in Kentville, youths in the towns of Middleton and Windsor followed suit and held their own protest parades.

I have first hand memories of the Kentville protest, by the way, since I participated.  I was in the first year of my teens at the time and then a 25 cent piece would get you into an afternoon matinee and include a chocolate bar and a drink.

P.S.  Two years later the price of chocolate bars went up to ten cents.  No one protested, not out loud anyway.

Of all the railway stations the Dominion Atlantic Railway built across Nova Scotia, one of the largest was located in Kentville.  This station housed the headquarters of the DAR, with offices on the ground floor and living quarters on the second.

But while spacious, the Kentville station was barn-like compared to some of the splendid stations built along the line between Windsor Junction and Yarmouth.  For a look at some of these “architecturally interesting” DAR stations I suggest you go to your computer and key in Nova Scotia railway station photographs.  This will take you to the Nova Scotia Railway Heritage web pages where you’ll find photographs of many of the stations the DAR constructed across the province.

I recently did this, spurred on to look at DAR railway station photographs by an email message from Kentville historian Louis Comeau.

Accompanying the email was a really great photograph of the Kentville station and a short message from Louis asking:  “What are the barrels for?”

Take a look at the photograph with this column and you’ll see three barrels mounted on the station roof.  They look like apple barrels to me; and since the railway was built with the booming the apple industry in mind, I assumed the barrels might have been symbolic.  This is what I suggested when I forwarded Comeau’s message to Ivan smith, asking him if he knew why barrels were mounted on the Kentville station’s roof.

Ivan Smith has done a tremendous amount of research on railways, which you’ll discover if you look at his web site, the Nova Scotia History Index.   Railways are one of Smith’s many interests and he covers them extensively, especially the historical aspect, on his site.  It’s the only place, for example, where you’ll find a comprehensive history of the old Cornwallis Valley Railway which once ran from Kentville to Kingsport.

Anyway, Smith replied that the barrels on the Kentville station roof have him puzzled.  “I have no idea, but my guess is they were water reservoirs for quick response to a chimney fire.  Two of the barrels are visibly close to a chimney and the middle barrel could be beside a chimney hidden from view in this photograph.”

However, Smith said, water reservoirs seem unlikely since chimney fire are most likely in the winter “when any water in the barrels would be frozen.”

Thus Smith concluded is a long-winded way of saving he has no idea why the DAR would mount apple barrels on the station roof.

So, we leave it up to you, the readers of this column, the history buffs.  What are the barrels for?  Louis Comeau would like to know and since I’ve piqued Ivan Smith’s interest, he’d like to know as well. We need your assistance, so let’s hear from you.

And by the way, isn’t that a magnificent photograph of the Kentville station.  I said “barn-like” above but that’s not really a fair assessment on my part.  For all its appearance, the Kentville station was probably the most serviceable, if not one of the most picturesque stations the DAR built.

The Kentville railway station with mystery barrels on its roof. (Submitted)

The clippings came from attics, basements and closets; and some, I was told, came from the walls of houses being renovated or torn down.

All the clippings, given to me by readers, are from newspapers published over the years in Kentville – The Western Chronicle, The Orchardist and The Advertiser – and the earliest is dated March 12, 1890.  I suppose in the truest sense of the word “history,” there‘s little that’s historical about these clippings.  They’re simply interesting records of the times, and mundane evidence of what life was like when our great grandparents and grandparents were in their prime.

Keeping that in mind, I’ll tell you what I found interesting as well as mundane in those clippings.   All the clippings, which came from late 19^th century to early 20^th century editions of the three papers, seem to indicate an obsession with bile, bowels, boils and bibles (but perhaps not in that order).

I reached this conclusion from the numerous patent medicine advertisements and the temperance sermons I found in the papers.  In the October 24^th, 1911, issue of The Orchardist, for example, almost a third of a news page was given over to medicinal ads and write-ups about cures for common ailments. Prominent in the two line medicinal ads was our own Minards Liniment. That same issue announced the commencement of Acadia University with the boast that “in 1891 Acadia graduated 43 (!) and this year promises to surpass that.”  In comparison, Acadia awarded 700 degrees at last year’s convocation.

We must have been on the verge of the electronic age around 1911.  In the October 24th issue the Nova Scotia Telephone Company advised the public that the telephone is “no longer a luxury, it is a necessity.”

Now, on to more of the mundane, the all-revealing news clips and announcements:

Travelling dentist – In the Western Chronicle, March 12, 1890, Dentist J. E. Mulloney advised the public he would be in Kentville every Monday and in Wolfville every Saturday.  Over a decade later, in 1906, Mulloney had given up travelling and is now established on Webster Street in Kentville.  Mulloney announced in a February issue of the Western Chronicle that “teeth that fit” was his specialty.  In the same issue, mention is made of a proposal to establish a Canada-wide “messenger pigeon system.”

It appears that the popular community bean and strawberry suppers are far from being a modern day social event.  In the February, 1906, Western Chronicle the Coldbrook Mutual Improvement Society announced that a “bean supper and musical and literary entertainment” given by its members the previous week was very successful.  Beans and music!  Now that’s a good combination, if you’ll pardon the inference.

In a September, 1903, issue of The Advertiser, editor R. G. Harris laments that  mail has been going astray, causing “confusion and inconvenience” due to many “town and communities” in Kings and Hants County having the same place names.   In the same issue, is an announcement in the Hantsport news that Capt.  T. W. McKinley will launch his schooner Bluenose there the following week.  In this issue, McDougall’s Pharmacy in Kentville offers Kodak’s Brownie Cameras for $1 and $2.

While it was dubbed a Kentville newspaper, The Western Chronicle made an effort to present news of nearby areas, such as Berwick and Canning.  In its October 16, 1919, issue the paper announced the opening of the “Movie Theatre of Bligh and Woodworth” in Berwick.  There’s a Canning page in many of the early 19^th century Western Chronicles with community notes giving birth, deaths and visitations (of the earthly kind) plus editorial comments by the “Old Man of Canning.”

Oh, yes.  The paper had it “Old Man of Berwick” as well, and he was bluntly critical of the “unchristian goings on” in the town.

Looking back at the past year, I see I have a lot of readers to thank for their help in writing this column.  So, thanks to everyone for your tips, for providing information on various historical topics and for letting me interview you.  Everything is much appreciated and I look forward to talking with many of you as the year rolls on.

Now, a short review of reader responses to recent columns:

In the column about two rare historical books, Clarke’s railway history and Milner’s Minas Basin essays, I wrote I was aware of only four copies in existence of the railway book.

Thanks to Louis Comeau, the author of Historic Kentville, I can up that total by two more copies.  Louis writes that he has a copy of Clarke’s book and had a second copy that he sold.  “That makes two more copies out there or around here,” Louis said.

On the column about the long gone muskrat ranch in lower Canard, I had a note from Zeke Eaton, a former resident of this area who now lives in P.E.I.  “I just read you’re your piece about muskrat farming in Canard,” he writes.  “Dewey Creek was not far from my home and Ralph Woodworth’s blacksmith shop had a brook adjacent.  There was another brook farther down Canard as well.  They all fed into the Canard River.  I never heard about any attempt at muskrat farming thereabouts. What I was aware of was Whitfield Ell’s fox farm in Sheffield mills.”

Eaton said Ells had a P.E. I. connection through marriage (P.E.I. is where fox farming started in the Maritimes) and “soon added foxes to his enterprise.  The war cut deeply into the profitability of the fox industry and by the early ‘40s Whitfield had given it up.”

Residents of Canard, where Eaton grew up, may remember Zeke.  He’s a son of the Canard historian, the late Ernest Eaton.

Are any readers familiar with a “home-grown, home manufactured piece of footwear” known as a shank?” write Reg Baird of Clementsvale.

Baird writes that shanks were standard footwear for a number of men in the Clementsvale area before, during and after the World War 11 years.  “They were made from the hide taken from the hind legs of beef cattle (or Moose).  The leg joint hide was the heel, the hide going to the hoof was cut off to foot size, and the hide going to the hind quarters was cut in accordance to how high a top the wearer preferred.”

Surely, Baird adds, this footwear wasn’t unique to Clementsvale.  Maybe a reader can tell us more about this unusual footwear.

Perhaps a reader can help with the following as well.  Valerie Brideau writes that she is researching Percy and Eulila Margeson who once operated Cedarcrest Kennels on Prospect Street in Kentville.  Anyone familiar with this shop or with the Margesons, please e-mail me at edwingcoleman@gmail.com.

Where was the Mill Creek shipyard located? I asked in a recent column on the early days along the Blomidon shore.  In fact, I also wondered about the location of Mill Creek, mentioning that local historian Leon Barron hadn’t been successful in pinning down the exact site.  Establishing the location of Mill Creek is important in one sense, it undoubtedly being the site of one of the earlier shipyards in Kings County.

Where was the shipyard located?  A reader calls to tell me in effect that it’s really no mystery at all.  If you know where the popular Huston (Houston?) beach is located along the Pereau shore towards Whitewaters/Blomidon, then you’re not far from the shipyard site.  Mill Creek, the reader said, is located about one mile north of the beach and until five or six years ago the remnants of a wharf could be seen there.  There’s a road out to the wharf, the reader said, which apparently is a government road since it is still plowed.

In an earlier column I mentioned a great forest fire that in the time of the Acadians, devastated the woodlands of what is now Hants County and a great part of Kings County.  When I found a reference to the fire in the book Historic Hants County by Gwendolyn Shand, I contacted various historians, asking if anyone had heard of the great fire.  I struck out everywhere.  I checked several historical books as well and was unable to find any mention of the fire, even though it was devastating, both to the Acadians and the Planters.

Recently I “lucked out;” I found an indirect reference to the fire while reading James Martell’s paper on early settlements on the Minas Basin.  Martell writes that one of the problems facing the Planters when they took up Acadian lands was a scarcity of wood.  “At Horton (township) the greatest complaint was concerned with the scarcity of convenient woodlands and the fact that there was only half as much marsh and cleared land as had been promised.  Forest fires had destroyed much of the wild wood.”

In another earlier column I speculated on who had the questionable glory of being executed on Kentville’s Gallows Hill, thus giving the rise its grisly but unofficial name.    In James Martell’s work I found a reference to a hanging that took place in this area.  Commenting on Planter life, Martell writes:  “Murders were committed occasionally in the settlements.  In 1776, Peter Manning was convicted for the crime before the Supreme Court at Horton.  A special guard was put over the prisoner for 14 nights while the gallows were being erected in the town.”

According to folklore, this hanging took place much too early to be the one that gave Gallows Hill its name.  I’ll look at this in next week’s column on early jails in Kings County.

Who is the “apple king” of Nova Scotia?  I wrote in last week’s column that this honor belongs to William H. Chase of Port Williams.  However, the Kings County Register’s editor, Sara Keddy, questions this.  “I’ve been raised on Berwick-based history, I guess you’d say for the past dozen years,” Sara writes, “and I was always told Sam Chute was the Apple King, recognized in Boston and known by the Governor General himself on sight.  Help!  Do we need to have a battle for the title?”

Sam Chute is mentioned in several accounts of the apple industry and possibly he deserves to be called an “apple king” as much as Chase.  I’ll look at the evidence and present the case for Chute and for Chase in a future column.