“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.

“Ralph S. Eaton was descended from the Planter Eatons who came to Kings County after the expulsion of the Acadians, and like most of the Eaton clan, he had scholarly leanings and an interest in the soil,” I wrote in an Advertiser column over a decade ago.

“He was a prominent pioneer fruit grower,” I continued, “and his Hillcrest Orchards were undoubtedly a show place of national repute.”  I concluded that column with the observation that aside from the praise for Eaton and his orchards – he’s mentioned prominently in Arthur W. H. Eaton’s history of Kings County – little information about him exists.

Now, some 12 years later, I’m pleased to report that Ralph Stanley Eaton is no longer a mystery man.  Digging through that massive collection of scrapbooks in the Kings County Museum recently, I discovered a copy of Eaton’s obituary.  But some comments first on his famous Hillcrest Orchards before looking at the obituary.

The next time you see a piece of the now very collectable Blossom Time China, take a look at the orchard depicted on it.  This is Eaton’s Hillcrest Orchards, which were a showplace in the 1920s and 1930s and were said to have once been the largest mixed fruit stand in Canada.  The original orchard was located north east of Kentville on Middle Dyke Road, roughly where the Stirling orchards stand today.  That it was a tourist attraction may be assumed by the write-up and photographs of the orchard in a 1923 tourist guide published by the provincial government.  The government obviously felt Hillcrest Orchards would lure American tourists to Nova Scotia.

As I said above, Ralph S. Eaton is featured prominently in the history of Kings County fruit growing.  Taking Arthur W. H. Eaton at his word, since he included Ralph S. in his list of prominent Kings County fruit growers and pioneers, when it came to horticulture the gentleman was indeed noteworthy.  His obituary salutes him as “one of the most prominent orchardists in the Valley” on his death in 1933, indicating he was a pioneer in his field.  The following, taken from that obituary, offers some little known details on Eaton’s life:

“Mr. Eaton was born in Canard, son of the late Leander Eaton.  He studied at the Canard public school, later continuing his studies at Acadia.  For a number of years he taught school, first at his home section at Canard and for some years at Halifax.  Forty years ago he came to Kentville, and ever since has been identified with the town in all its varied interests.  He was president for a number of years of the Hillcrest Orchards Ltd., this fine orchard property being one of the show places of the Valley, and a popular resort of tourists.

“Mr. Eaton was ever zealous in placing the attractions of the Valley before visitors, and it was he who first saw the possibility of apple culture, and perhaps more than any other man, was instrumental in having the Experimental Station located here.  He was president of the Nova Scotia Fruit Growers’ Association for a number of years and always took a leading part in the deliberations of that organization.”

A man widely known for his outstanding ability and integrity has passed, his obituary concluded.