In files at the Kings County Museum is a brief history of the various bridges that spanned the Cornwallis River at Port Williams. It was this history that I looked at when putting together the August 29 column on the Avonport covered bridge.

Basically, I was hoping to learn if there had ever been a covered bridge at Port Williams. I assumed after consulting this history – and Eaton’s history of Kings County – that there had never been a covered bridge at the Port since there was no mention of it in either source. In the column I went so far as to say the covered bridge at Avonport was the only one of this type in Kings County.

This was a mistake, an error. I was guilty of not digging deep enough; for example I neglected to check the book on Port Williams where there is a detailed history of the Cornwallis River bridge. To quote from The Port Remembers: “In all, there have been four bridges at this crossing. One had a railing and one was covered. The covered bridge was sold in 1856.”

The Port Williams history doesn’t tell us how many years the bridge at the Port was covered. Was it in 1780, when according Eaton’s history of Kings County the first bridge across the Cornwallis River at Port Williams was built as early as that year? Or was it in 1835 when a new bridge was opened? About all we know for sure is the bridge was covered up until 1885. In that year a new iron bridge replaced the well-worn old one and according to the Port Williams history, the new bridge was built inside the covered one.

There is controversy over when the first bridge was built at the Port, some historians disagreeing with Eaton that it was in place at least as early as 1780. Part of the problem with this is that the bridge at Port Williams may have been privately owned at times, operating with a toll system. Government records show that legislation was passed in 1818, in 1825 and in 1834, allotting funds for the bridge. What happened before that and when the bridge was first covered is anyone’s guess.

While on the topic of covered bridges, I must mention a telephone call I received from Blain Coldwell about the Gaspereau River covered bridge. Coldwell says he has been trying for years to determine how the bridge was removed – was it burnt down according to local folklore, dynamited or taken apart manually?

To answer Coldwell’s question, the answer is that after the covering was manually removed, the remaining structure was dynamited. This took place on January 29, 1952, and apparently boats were on hand to collect the debris that was scattered over the Gaspereau River.

When a spring issue of The Acadian was published in Wolfville on May 23, 1867, there was no hint in its four-page broadsheet that a momentous event would take place in a few weeks.

Earlier that year, on February 11, the British North America Act was presented to Queen Victoria. The Act received royal assent on March 29 and July 1 was set as the date when the Dominion of Canada would come into existence.

Some 150 years ago, Major and William Theakston, the publishers of The Acadian, obviously concerned themselves with filling their paper with advertisements for patent medicine rather than the upcoming birth of a nation. Other issues of The Acadian published in the spring and summer of 1867 also ignored the birth of Canada. Aside from shipping news for the ports of Canning and Windsor, and a list of the newspaper’s agents in Kings County (17 in all) there was little news of any consequence in the May 23 issue – and other 150 year old Acadians I had the privilege of examining recently at the Kings County Museum.

Actually, it’s almost a miracle that any of those old issues of The Acadian survived. They were almost lost. Richard Skinner tells me that for nearly 150 years the papers, along with other documents, were stored in a trunk at a house in Canning. It was Skinner who eventually salvaged the contents of the trunk and brought them to the attention of the Museum.

As the story goes, Karnan Ells of Medford found the chest stored in the annex of a century plus house he purchased in Canning. When he wanted to clean up the property, Ells had the chest stored in a friend’s barn. This building collapsed during the winter of 2014-2015, damaging the trunk and destroying most of it contents. At this point the barn’s owner, hoping there was something of historical interest in the trunk, gave it to Richard Skinner; he in turn contacted Karnan Ells and obtained permission to pass the trunk and its contents to the Kings Historical Society.

Most of the newspapers stored in the trunk were destroyed when the barn collapsed. Only a few of The Acadian newspapers where in good enough condition to be recorded digitally. However, numerous letters stored in the trunk also were salvaged by Richard Skinner. The letters date from 1864 to 1916 but are mainly from the 1860s.

As for Major and William Theakston, they barely managed to keep The Acadian going after Canada became a nation, closing it a few years later when vandals destroyed their equipment. They must be saluted as newspaper pioneers, however, but bad luck ones at that.

If you dismiss a short-lived attempt in 1859 by Campbell Stephens to publish a newspaper in Wolfville, the first newspaper in Kings County was started in Canning. This was the Kings County Gazette which Major Theakston purchased after it was in operation for about a year. When Canning was destroyed by a fire in 1866 (the first bit of bad luck for Theakston) he closed the paper and moved to Wolfville. With his brother William he established The Acadian there. After a report in The Acadian about the conviction of apple thieves, the newspaper’s office was broken into and anything moveable was thrown into a nearby creek.

This was enough for the Theakstons and they left the county. A few copies of their newspaper remain, however, thanks to the vigilance of Richard Skinner. Those remaining copies have been digitalised at the Kings County Museum and saved for posterity.

Richard Skinner looks over a 150-year-old copy of The Acadian, a newspaper published in Wolfville before Canada became a nation. (Coleman)

As a direct result of running its line along what at the time was the northern boundary of Kentville, the Windsor & Annapolis Railway created a building boom. Records show that through 1868 and 1869 at least 200 new homes were built within a mile of the rail lines in the Kentville area. There was yet another boom in 1870 just after the railway moved its headquarters from Wolfville to Kentville.

A change in the railway’s original plan to bypass the town also helped to bring Kentville to prominence. The line running into Kings County was originally supposed to cross the Cornwallis River at Port Williams and run west, skirting the town. We can only speculate but perhaps the cost of building a railway bridge over the Cornwallis River was a factor in the railway’s change of plans – it was simpler and there had to be less expense involved in running the line straight into Kentville from Wolfville along the south bank of the Cornwallis River.

The elimination of a costly bridge, and the fact that, unlike Wolfville, Kentville had land available to build the various machine shops, sheds, turntables, roundhouses and a station that would also house the railway’s headquarters, made the town the obvious choice for the railway’s destination. Kentville prospered and Wolfville lost the opportunity to become the major town in Kings County. A lack of enough available land for the railway to build in Wolfville apparently was the problem. However, newspaper accounts from the period hint that while space was available, the citizens and merchants of Wolfville weren’t willing give up this land for the railway to build on.

As noted in the town’s history, Mud Creek, the railway at first operated out of Wolfville. “In 1869 Wolfville was the headquarters of the W & A. R. The car shops were located here and the two engines built in Bristol, England, No. 1 Evangeline and No. 2 Gabriel, were landed in Wolfville.

This was to quickly change, however. As the editors of Mud Creek observed: “Owing to a lack of co-operation from owners of land (in Wolfville) the headquarters were removed to Kentville.” Later the building of a spur line (the Cornwallis Valley Railway) from Kingsport to Kentville dealt yet another blow to the town when (quoting from Mud Creek) “in 1897 the W. & A. R. removed their tracks from the Wolfville wharf as an incentive to get the C.V.R. (in Kingsport) into operation.”

Wolfville’s loss was Kentville’s gain. Kentville became a major centre (the railway later adding to the town’s lustre by building the magnificent Cornwallis Inn). With its rail link to Kentville, Kingsport became a major shipping port and Wolfville’s role as the railway’s
Bay of Fundy connection vanished.

As mentioned, the building boom in an around Kentville was an immediate result of the railway relocating its headquarters there. As can be seen from scanning the various directories published in the years following relocation of its headquarters in Kentville, the railway also became a major employer. For example, Clarke’s history records that the total number of railway employees in 1921 was 800 in Nova Scotia; of this 800 some 320 lived in Kentville. The railway’s payroll in Kentville alone in 1921 was $400,000.

These figures alone illustrate how much Wolfville lost when the railway relocated to Kentville.

In the spring of 1952 The Advertiser published its annual apple blossom issue with a photograph of a covered bridge on its cover. The caption on the photograph read: “The old covered bridge at Avonport, 1876 – 1952.”

Condemned for various reasons, the bridge had been torn down (or burned down) early in 1952 and replaced with a temporary Bailey bridge. According to the caption, the bridge had spanned the relatively narrow section of the Gaspereau River at Avonport for 76 years; which is a long lifetime for a structure built in a period when wood was the main component in bridges.

However, the covered bridge may have been around longer than 76 years. Before I get into this, it should be noted that the bridge is likely one of a kind, that is, it’s the only covered bridge ever built in Kings County. Local folklore says there was a covered bridge at one time on the Cornwallis River at Port Williams. And there’s a website on the covered bridges of Nova Scotia that says there was one at Port Williams. However, the webmaster of this site tells me this reference will be removed shortly, apparently because there are no valid records to back this up.

Getting back to the lifespan of the Avonport covered bridge, I’ve found several dates for when it was built. In his history of Avonport, Gordon Haliburton quotes a petition that was presented to the government in 1794 for replacement of the “lower bridge crossing the Salmon (Gaspereau) River” which had been carried away by ice and tide. The use of the word “replacement” establishes that the bridge existed before 1794. Haliburton goes on to say that the correct date for building the covered bridge is uncertain and “one source says 1869 and another says 1876.”

Another source, a handwritten history of Avonport (author unknown) is in the files of the Kings County Museum and it says the bridge was built in 1864. A long poem saluting the bridge and lamenting its demise was published in the Hants Journal circa 1953. The author, Harry Reid, estimates the bridge was built in 1874. Reid’s grandfather, Joshua, is believed to have been one of the designers of the bridge and had worked on it as a carpenter.

Apparently the only date that’s likely correct is one of the two Haliburton gives – 1869. In his book on place names of Nova Scotia, C. Bruce Fergusson clearly states that the bridge was constructed in 1869. Fergusson served as the assistant provincial archivist from 1946 to 1956 and as provincial archivist from 1956 to 1977, and as such would have access to valid historical records. From this we have to assume that the covered bridged was built the year Fergusson says it was.

The covered bridge at Avonport was one of at least 15 and perhaps as many as 20 that was built in Nova Scotia, of which there were five in the Annapolis Valley. A covered bridge once spanned the Avon River, connecting Falmouth and Windsor; built in 1836, the bridge was destroyed by fire in 1888. A second covered bridge on the Avon may have been located higher up the river at Windsor Forks.

There were three covered bridges on the Annapolis River, at Bridgetown, Lawrencetown and Brickton. Most of these covered bridge lasted well simply because they were covered. The covered bridge in Kennetcook (the last one in the province) stood for nearly a century until about 1960. The reason bridges were covered was the protection they offered from the elements. This was the main purpose for building them – and the fact that horses often balked at crossing open bridges was a good reason as well.

Today, only people of the senior generations recall Avonport’s covered bridge, and few living today can say they crossed it. If you drove across this bridge, as I did many times, you probably remember the tricky turn at the entrance on the Avonport side. The author of Blomidon Rose saluted this approach to the bridge, Esther Clark Wright calling it an “inconvenient and dangerous angle” that wasn’t corrected when the Bailey bridge went up.

The covered bridge on the Gaspereau River at Avonport was built in 1869 and removed early in 1952. This was the only covered bridge in Kings County.

When Cyril White commissioned artist Edwin Hollett to paint a mural of the Kentville train station on the old warehouse adjacent to his business several years ago, he noted that he’d made White’s Funeral Home the repository for historic town images.

White has continued to do this with yet another mural with a historical theme called Kentville’s Memory Lane. Also painted by Hollett (on the opposite side of the warehouse wall showing the train station) the mural depicts Kentville as it was at various times over the past 150 or so years. Approximately 20 meters long by about 2 meters high, the mural has 15 panels with 23 scenes of old-time Kentville; most of the scenes show buildings that have long since vanished.

Coincidentally, the warehouse the murals grace is also of historic interest. The warehouse was built next to the railway line by the British apple exporter Herbert Oyler when the apple growing industry was booming; the warehouse had it own spur line beside the main track. Later, after the apple industry collapsed, the Oyler warehouse was purchased by the P. R. Ritcey Co. Limited, a grocery wholesaler fronting on Aberdeen Street near the railway station. Ritcey used the spur line to receive shipments into the 1960s. When Ritcey’s store was demolished in the 1980s the Oyler warehouse was converted to a branch of Cleves Sporting Goods; when this closed in 2013 the building was purchased by White’s Funeral Home.

Now that you have the warehouses’ history, let’s look at some of the scenes on the latest mural on its north wall:

The centrepiece of this magnificent mural features the Oakgrove Cemetery, which was established in 1817 when the Peck family set aside a half acre of land for a public burying ground.

The illustration to the right of the centrepiece, the Aberdeen Hotel, was built in 1892. Privately owned at first, it was purchased by the D.A.R. in 1920 and renamed the Cornwallis Inn. The hotel was demolished after a new Cornwallis Inn was built on Main Street in 1930.

The Blanchard Fraser Memorial Hospital – opened in 1938 and serving until the Valley Regional Hospital opened in 1992 – and the Nova Scotia San which opened in 1904, are illustrated on the left on the centrepiece. The grounds of the “San” is now the site of the Valley Regional Hospital.

Little is known about the history of one old building illustrated on the mural – the Kentville Exhibition Building. Louis Comeau, who has a photograph of the building, dated circa 1890, in his book Historic Kentville, writes that it was constructed in the mid-1880s (and possibly in 1879) but gives no other details. The building burned to the ground in 1900.

One of the most interesting buildings illustrated in the mural is the Nova Scotia Carriage Factory, which began to manufacture carriages and sleighs in 1868 and was located where the county municipal building now stands. Few people know that the McKay Motor Car was also manufactured there between 1910 and 1912.

Also illustrated is the three-story post office that was built on Aberdeen Street in 1899 and served the town until 1962. The Bank of Montreal and various office suites, including this newspaper, now occupy the site.

Among the other buildings shown in the mural are the D.A.R. roundhouse, Kentville’s fire station (the building also housed the former Town Hall), the Kings County Courthouse (built in 1904 or 1905 depending on which source you are consulting) which today is headquarters for the Kings Historical Society and the Red Store, which opened in 1828 and operated continuously for 132 years on the corner of Main and Cornwallis Street. Several now-defunct retail stores and car dealerships are included in the mural as well.

All in all, the mural is an extraordinary capturing of many of Kentville’s long gone historic buildings. With this second mural, Cyril White’s intent to make his place of business a repository for historic Kentville images definitely has taken a step forward.

Measuring about 20 meters by 2 meters (60’ by 8’) this mural on the White Family Funeral Home’s storage building has 23 historic images, many of them long gone Kentville buildings. (Ed Coleman)

Kentville’s Oakgrove cemetery is the centrepiece on White’s new mural. The Oakgrove was established as a public burying ground in 1817. (Ed Coleman)

In the early 1950s, potato chips were quickly becoming a popular snack in the United States and Canada. Noticing the trend and discovering how profitable the sale of potato chips had become in New Brunswick, a handful of astute Valley entrepreneurs were convinced the snack had potential here and would find a ready market.

It turns out they were correct. As the story goes, in 1952 those businessmen somehow acquired a chip cooker and bagging machine from the States. Leasing an apple warehouse in Centreville they experimented with producing snack chips from various varieties of local potatoes. The entrepreneurs were M.W. Graves president John Shaffner (later to become lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia) Bridgetown businessmen Harry Smofsky, Dave Hicks and Raymond Bent and PEI potato broker Les Simmons.

Shaffner, it is said, came up with the idea to produce potato chips here after he observed how profitable it was becoming in New Brunswick. Not one of these gentlemen knew how to make or marketing potato chips but a total lack of experience didn’t stop them. The story of the five pioneering entrepreneurs, as taken from a brochure produced circa 1980, tells us that after a few setbacks, including a fire at the plant and some growing pains, they eventually were successful. “On a shoestring investment of $35,000 and a $20,000 government loan,” reads the brochure, Acadia Foods was founded (in 1952) and potato chips packaged in 5 cent bags, under the brand name Scotties, were soon rolling off the assembly line.

Scotties quickly became a snack staple and a household name in Nova Scotia. The chips were so popular that within a few years Acadia Foods found the Centreville plant wasn’t large enough to meet production demands. In 1959 a new plant was opened in New Minas. About a year later Acadia Foods was purchased by General Foods and Scotties was rebranded under Hostess Foods, a GF subsidiary. The Scotties brand eventually disappeared when Hostess Foods partnered with Frito-Lay (owned by PepsiCo) in 1987.

That’s the official version on the origin of Scotties potato chips, as spelled out in the 1980s brochure, but there may be more to the story. I’ve been told that a prominent farmer was the first to bring in the machinery required to manufacture and package potato chips in Kings County and his operation was eventually taken over by what was to become Acadia Foods. While I’ve been told this by several reliable sources, I’ve been unable to confirm it.

Meanwhile, there was another attempt to produce and market potato chips in Kings County. The company was called Glendale Foods and the product was Tom Thumb potato chips. I believe the business started in Sheffield Mills or in Canning. If any readers are familiar with the history of the company I’d like to hear from them.

Sold throughout eastern Canada at one time, the once popular Scotties potato chips are now a memory.

Larry Keddy’s expertise, among other things, lies in the field of what he calls ‘historic photo identification.”

To give an example of how he works, Keddy identifies the photograph of Evangeline Beach accompanying this column as likely taken in the early 1920s. “I’m basing this on the kind of cars shown, the style of the license plate, which is unreadable, but looks like those issued in 1922,” Keddy says.

“Finally, the ‘boater’ style straw hat worn by one of the gentlemen standing near the edge of the bank was popular at summer events of all kinds during that period. My guess is the photo may have been taken by (Wolfville photographer) Edson Graham (1869-1956) who was very active at the time and it looks like his style.”

The photograph tells an interesting story so let’s take a closer look at it: The ladies and men appear to be dressed in Sunday going-to-church clothes rather than for a sojourn at the seashore. There are sunbathers on the beach, people wading in the surf; in the background on the bank are a couple of buildings that could be summer cottages; in the background also is a beach house on what appears to be either a jut in the bank or a man-made extension of the shoreline. A picnic is about to take place. Near the vehicles, picnic tables are set up and a couple of ladies are busy preparing lunch.

There’s much more to be read in the old photograph, which by the way was featured on a postcard. At the time the photograph was taken, Evangeline Beach was one of the most popular summer resorts in western Nova Scotia. Its life as a resort started when Nathaniel Eagles began selling portions of his Long Island land along the shore for private cottages. He also sold land along the Beach Road to one Percy Porter, whose aim was to build a tourist resort.

As the late Douglas Eagles tells it in his Eagles genealogy (published in 1982) around the time Porter was building cottages, a “Mr. Black and later a Mr. Manning bought lands to the east of the Beach Road and developed a thriving tourist trade, with cottages, a dance hall and a hotel. The cottage area became known as Millionaire’s Row and the resort as Evangeline Beach.”

Another source, an essay written by the late Eileen Bishop in a privately published booklet in 1996 has a different version of how Evangeline Beach became a popular summertime destination. Bishop writes that in 1896, Long Island resident Charles A. Patriquin formed a partnership with Franklin P. Rockwell to start a picnic and playground area for the general public near the beach. “The beach grew in popularity and by the time the hotel was built in 1900, a brisk tourist trade had developed.”

Bishop writes that the hotel was situated on the beach front and was three storeys high, contained a store, ice house and storerooms. Later, Bishop says, an Island resident, Alex Fullerton, “built a spacious farmhouse on the Front Island Road and opened the commodious building to summer visitors.” By 1909, Rockwell was no longer in the picture and the beach property was owned by W. Marshall Black of Wolfville. A few years later the tourist area was expanded by Black to contain 20 cottages, a stable for 40 horses, a picnic area and tennis courts. At one time, according to Bishop, there was a small postal outlet and a service station.

Looking at Evangeline Beach today, you wonder why it originally attracted so many people in earlier times. Perhaps it was the vista and possibly this was one of the few areas in Kings County where a natural clearing overlooked an inviting piece of seashore. A 1909 tourist brochure mentions a bandstand, picnic grounds, rental cottages and a large building – “The Casino” – that was available for concerts, dances, private parties. The Casino eventually became the Starlight Room, a dance hall that reached its peak in popularity during the swing band era of the 1940s and 1950s.

The Starlight Room is still there and a few dances are held in it today – two or three every summer. The hotel was torn down decades ago but there’s a motel near the beach, a popular 223-site campground with a swimming pool, canteen and a mini golf course. On the bank overlooking the beach is a viewing station which is popular during the annual migration of sandpipers.

The once attractive beach has changed over time, however. According to residents, much of the sand cover on the beach has been ravaged and swept away by changes in tidal currents after the Windsor causeway was built.

Evangeline Beach as it appeared in the early 1920s. The Beach once was the most popular tourist attraction in western Nova Scotia.

When a public meeting was held in Canning on January 8, 1887, to determine the feasibility of building a rail line westward from Kingsport- what was to become the Cornwallis Valley Railway – it was attended by “various public-spirited men of the vicinity and by J. W. King.”

The quote is from Marguerite Woodworth’s History of the Dominion Atlantic Rail. Woodworth describes J. W. King as the assistant traffic manager of the Windsor and Annapolis Railway. A few years later we find from Woodworth that John W. King had risen to the post of “Resident Manager” of the A & W Railway. What Woodworth neglected to mention is that in 1887, when King was prominent in influencing the direction the Cornwallis Valley Railway would take – either terminating in Kentville or farther down the Valley in Middleton – that this gentleman had in that year been elected the first Mayor of Kentville.

King would play a prominent role in management of the A & W and later with the Dominion Atlantic Railway. At this time he was one of Kentville’s most prominent citizens. When Kentville was incorporated in 1886, the citizens of the town honoured King by selecting him as its first Mayor, in which capacity he served until 1889.

Born in Scotland, John Warren King (1836 – 1922) was a lawyer who in his obituary was saluted as a railway pioneer. At first, he was a legal adviser for the railway, settling in Kentville when the railway made its headquarters here. He was still a resident of Kentville when he died and while I’ve been unable to locate it, there undoubtedly is a tombstone marking his resting site in Oakgrove Cemetery.

Today, most people don’t know who John King is or was. The Kentville chapter in Eaton’s History of Kings County lists him as only Kentville’s first Mayor and this probably is recorded somewhere in the town’s annals as well.

King isn’t entirely forgotten, however. When he was in office, King is believed to have worked at a magnificent ash and birch desk that according to family traditions he made himself. Nothing is known about what became of the desk after King’s death but by the early 2000s it resided at the home of the late Hugh and Bella Burns in Kentville. The desk was sold to a Member of Parliament who then donated it to the Kings Historical Society.

Today, the desk is on display at the Kings County Museum in the Victorian Room. A plaque describing the desk in detail and a photograph of John W. King can also be found in the Museum. The description notes that the desk is “handcrafted in the eclectic fashion of the mid-Victorian era” and is a unique piece of furniture. It also is the sole reminder that a fine Scotsman, who became a well-respected Kentville citizen, also ran the railway and for a time was at the helm of the town.

John W. King, who was the Mayor of Kentville while managing the A&W and later the Dominion Atlantic Railway Railway.

Mayor John W. King’s desk has been hailed as a unique piece of Victorian furniture.

In the pioneer days of the Windsor and Annapolis Railway, writes William Clarke, “ale, porter and other intoxicants” (meaning mostly rum and whiskey) were sold at train stations in Windsor, Kentville and Aylesford.

The W & A Railway officially opened on August 18, 1869, so the pioneer days Clarke refers to must have been the late 19^th century. Apparently serving alcoholic beverages at train stops was common in the early railway days, following a practice that likely started when stagecoaches stopped overnight at various inns in the Valley. In his book, Clarke’s History of the Earliest Railways (published circa 1925 in Windsor) Mr. Clarke indicates that passengers expected refreshments of the alcoholic kind would be available, if not at the actual stations then in nearby restaurants and lunch counters.

During its daily runs, the W & A also made stops at Mount Uniacke and Windsor Junction. At the latter stop at least four places close to the railroad tracks offered a “dock n’ doris” says Clarke. (Freely translated, the Gaelic expression, deoch n’ doris, means a final drink before departing and traditionally it was whiskey).

What made the imbibing of alcoholic beverages possible for train travellers in the early days may have been the long stops along the line for meals. “Previous to 1872,” writes Clarke, “trains stopped 20 minutes for meals.” At most of these stops along the line, “eating houses” were set up to cater to a travelling public that wanted hard liquor and ale.

When a new train station opened at Annapolis in 1891, a “splendid restaurant was also opened,” writes Clark, and this too catered to the belief that a wee deoch n’ doris before moving on was a necessity. The railway sponsored the opening of the Kentville Railway Restaurant, which at first was operated privately. Like other food stops on the line the Kentville Railway Restaurant served liquor, beer and ale, a practice that continued until prohibition put an end to it.

At the train stop in Aylesford the restaurant there became famous for its fish patties. Clarke writes that the “little restaurant recalls memories of the motherly Mrs. Patterson, who won the hearts of the ‘boys’ supplying daily, quantities of the appetizing fish patties.” The restaurant was taken over by Kentville’s Lyons Hotel, an establishment noted for catering to the drinking public, and no doubt certain beverages made the fish patties even more delicious.

When the railway was being constructed, tots of rum were often imbibed daily along the line. The liquor also flowed freely when the railway celebrated its grand opening. In her history of the Dominion Atlantic Railway, Marguerite Woodworth writes that during the grand opening of the Windsor and Annapolis Railway, the train crews celebrated by drinking too much alcohol – if that’s what Woodworth meant in noting that they celebrated the occasion “not wisely but too well.” The grand opening celebration was held in Kentville and Woodworth intimates that alcohol flowed freely.

Rum or whiskey may have been responsible for a riot involving Irish railway workers, who were primarily Catholic, and a group of Protestant rail layers. In her history, Marguerite Woodworth writes that the riot was caused by religious differences, but elsewhere we read that Irish labourers imbibed whiskey often when putting down the railway tracks through the Annapolis Valley.