Internet historian Ivan Smith, Canning, calls him “an important figure in the industrial development of Kings County.” Mr. Smith notes that along with famed Valley industrialist R. A. Jodrey, he pioneered the production of electric power in Kings and Hants County in the early 1920s.

He was a builder as well and many “landmark buildings” exist here as testaments to his accomplishments in this field. He is one of our unsung and little-known heroes, a Kings County native who but for his tragic demise in an automobile accident would now be as recognised and celebrated as R. A. Jodrey.

He was Charles Hemmeon Wright, a native of Canard whose life work will be commemorated in a soon-to-be published biography being written by one of his grandchildren. Daphne Frazee, Gaspereau, already has two historical books to her credit and she’s currently working on a biography on Mr. Wright who was her grandfather.

Built Churches, Gymnasium

“Charles Hemmeon Wright was born in Canard on October 31, 1882,” Ms. Frazee wrote during our recent e-mail correspondence about this remarkable gentleman. His importance as a builder and industrialist is well illustrated in the brief bio she sent me.

“It was (in Canard) that his career as a builder began. He apprenticed as a carpenter under John Borden. While still a teen he struck out on his own. One of his earliest projects was the Canard Baptist Church, with the laying of its cornerstone in 1909. He was responsible for a number of landmark buildings in Wolfville and Kentville, including the Wolfville Baptist Church, St. Andrew’s United Church, Acadia’s original War Memorial Gymnasium, the Atlantic Theatre building, and both the United Church of St. Paul and St. Stephen and St. James Anglican Church. Charles built a number of private homes in this area, including his own at 586 Main Street, Wolfville.

“In 1917 fate threw R. A. Jodrey and Wright together,” Ms Frazee continued. Answering a call from the town of Wolfville for a reliable source of electricity, Jodrey and Wright investigated the possibility of building a hydro station on the Gaspereau River. “This they did with the power station at Stiver’s Falls in White Rock.”

Continuing their partnership, Jodrey and Wright “went on to build dams on the Avon River. The resulting power enabled them to establish Minas Basin Pulp and Power in Hantsport. Charles was the company’s president for the first two years of its existence. The two were involved in many other projects. One was the building of a chain of Super Service Stations around Nova Scotia.”

Jodrey and Wright’s partnership was tragically concluded, Ms. Frazee wrote. “It all came to an abrupt end on July 16, 1929, when Charles’ car was struck by a locomotive.”

(To round out the biography, Ms. Frazee is looking for anecdotes or any information readers may have on Mr. Wright; she can be reached at 902-542-4309.)

I call it history that didn’t make the history books; trivia and other facts that if you’re a history buff you really didn’t need to know, but found interesting anyway. For example, on October 22, 1892, the electric lights were turned on for the first time in the town of Kentville and in the shops and offices of the railway which had its headquarters in the town.

I got this bit of trivia from a newspaper clipping I found in scrapbooks in the Kings County Museum‘s family history section. In fact, most of the following history was collected while I was digging through documents, scrapbooks and other papers on file at the Museum. Checking on the story about Kentville’s lights, I found that Mabel Nichols book, The Devil’s Half Acre, gives the date as 1891 as the year when the town started to construct a steam-operated power house; Nichols said the power house was ready to generate electricity in March, 1892, but the town lights weren’t turned on until November.

Who was the first passenger on the Cornwallis Valley Railway? In her history of the Dominion Atlantic Railway, Marguerite Woodworth writes that work began on the CVR in 1889 and it began operation in 1890 with a passenger and freight service between Kingsport and Kentville. Local folklore has it that when the first locomotive made a trial run on the CVR line to Kentville before beginning regular service, one “Mrs. Loomer,” a Kingsport teacher, rode up front with the engineer, thus making her the first unofficial passenger on the line.

A newspaper clipping from 1938 proclaims that a hotel erected in Kentville some 123 years previously was in the process of being torn down. The Kentville Hotel, located on “the flat” on east Main Street, is believed to have been built in 1815. The hotel served as the headquarters for the stage line in the pre-railroad days.

In a paper on the Mi’kmaq as they were when the French arrived is mention that among the preferred plant foods of the natives, besides berries, roots and herbs, etc., were “wild potatoes” and/or “wild carrots.” I found one reference to wild potatoes in a book on wild foods but no mention of wild carrots.

In 1938 the Kings County Wildlife Association held a fish and game exhibit in conjunction with the apples blossom festival. What would you think would be some of the obvious things to display at such an exhibit? Among other things, trout and salmon flies, decoys, a gun display and similar artefacts associated with hunting and fishing.

You wouldn’t expect such an exhibit to have live specimens and certainly not exotic ones but it did. According to a letter on file at the Kings County Museum, the Association brought in three live alligators – “just as a curiosity” – for the show!

In the summer of 1929, five people died when an automobile was wrecked in a collision with a train near Falmouth. A newspaper clipping on the accident is in the Kings County Museum files. One of the people killed in the accident was Charles Wright, who was a partner with R. A. Jodrey when they pioneered the start of electrical power generation in this area. Mr. Wright will be the topic of an upcoming book by his granddaughter, Daphne Frazee of Gaspereau.

Readers are invited to contact me if they can expand on any of these items.

When work began on the Cornwallis Valley Railway (CVR) in June 1889, a line was surveyed from the government wharf at Kingsport to Sheffield Mills. Passing close to Canning, the CVR line ran through a piece of dykeland between Borden Street and the Habitant River.

According to folklore, railway workers running the line through this dykeland uncovered what is believed to have been a cemetery of Acadian origin. This piece of folklore was related to me by Harold Gates who lives at the intersection of Borden Street and the J. Jordan Road. His property is part of the what he calls the “old Woodworth grant.”

Mr. Gates said the story about the discovery of the cemetery was passed on to him by a friend of his father, Bill Harris. Mr. Harris, in turn was told about the discovery of the cemetery by his father. According to railway history buff Leon Barron, the Acadians had dyked this section of dykeland; it’s known that there were Acadian homesteads in the area, so it’s possible that a burial ground also existed there.

Why an Acadian and not a Planter cemetery? We have to assume that records would exist of Planter burial grounds and that people living and farming here 100 or more years ago would know where they were located. That the burial ground was unmarked and was uncovered on land known to have been worked by the Acadians probably contributed as well to the assumption about its origin.

That’s the folklore anyway and to quote Mr. Gates, “I’m not saying it’s right.” For those interested in such things, Mr. Gates said the cemetery was found on what is now his property.

As for what happened after evidence of a burial ground was discovered, Mr. Gates said that according to his father, work on the railway didn’t stop. “There was a cover-up,” he said. I looked through two railway histories, Woodworths and Clarkes, and there is no mention of the cemetery.

Mr. Gates had contacted me through this newspaper to discuss my column about a tour of Acadian sites near Canning. As well as the cemetery being located on his property, Mr. Gates believes an Acadian church also stood nearby. “My recollection of the folklore said the church was nearer here (and not near Bell Hill) but I don’t know for sure,” he said.

Speaking of churches, Mr. Gates told me about one built in the county in 1904 or 1905. Mr. Gates said he remembers that the church belonged to a religion called the Church of Christ, Disciples. I ran this through the Internet and found that there is a church of that name. It was founded in the United States and one website said that at one time there were eight or nine branches of the church in Canada. However, I couldn’t find evidence that this church existed in Kings County.

Gates said he has a booklet giving the history of this church. “The booklet has it that according to folklore, the church was built on Church Street and moved to Port Williams,” Mr. Gates said. When the church fell into disuse it was converted into an apartment building that is still being used today.

Gates question that the church was built elsewhere before being moved to Port Williams. “My father was born in 1890 and he told me he drove a horse on a scoop to open up a cellar for the church. He was 14 at the time. Take a look at the building, he said. It’s too big to have been moved and the folklore is wrong.”

I’ve contacted the headquarters of the Church of Christ, Disciples and requested some background on Canadian activities. It would be interesting to see if the church once had a mission here.

I’m sure that if someone had the ambition and inclination, they could write a history of the little island that time and the Minas Basin tides created in eastern Kings County.

People would read this history and future generations treasure it. Given that not too far in the future, Boot island will have succumbed to the Minas Basin tides and will exist only in memory, that little history would be a valuable glimpse of Kings County’s past.

Writing that history might be too much of a chore, however since there are few written records about the Boot. Most of what is known about the island exists solely as folklore. There have been tragedies but no great battles were fought on the island. The Acadians may have farmed what is now Boot Island when it was part of the mainland but it had no role in the expulsion other than being near Grand Pre. And as far as we know, no famous politicians, doctors or scientists were born there.

So why would it be worthwhile for someone to pen an island account? Well, I could argue that the Boot is one of the few remaining place names in Kings County of Acadian origin. I could suggest that the Boot is interesting because as prominent evidence of the power of the Minas tides it’s a natural curiosity. Take a look at the maps in the Blomidon Naturalists Society‘s book on the natural history of Kings County and see what has happened to the Boot in the last few centuries. The changes wrought by the tides are astounding.

If a history of Boot Island was ever written, it would simply be a pastoral chronicle about people who farm the land. Perhaps this means that the Boot doesn’t qualify as a place to be written about in depth since no great history-changing events occurred there, and there are no tales of buried treasure and skulduggery.

The Boot was briefly sketched in a book about island life in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Historian Edith Mosher hinted that there is a Boot Island mystery and a few notable historians mention the Boot in passing. But other than a couple of columns I’ve written about the island, that’s it. Little Boot Island deserves more, however.

Closing on that note, here’s a P.S.

After my “Born On The Boot” column appeared on June 24, William (Buzz) Pineo of Wolfville called to correct a typographical error in the obituary I mentioned. This was the death notice of Bessie A. Mitchell and the obit stated that she was the daughter of the “late John and Sara (Davis) Tineo.”

That should have read Pineo, not Tineo, Buzz Pineo said. Bessie Mitchell was his aunt, Buzz tells me, and John and Sara were his grandparents. John and Sara farmed on the Boot until their first child reached school age; then they left the island.

Based on Bessie Mitchell’s age on her death in 1982 – she was 98 – this means that John and Sara Pineo farmed on Boot Island late in the 19th century, until about 1890.

Earlier this spring several members of the “Comite de la Cloche (clock committee) of the Friends of Grand Pre were taken on a tour of Acadian sites near Canning. Lewis Hazel was the tour guide. Mr. Hazel is familiar with many of the Acadian folktales about the area around Canning and Pereau, thanks in part to having a father whose activities as a treasure hunter are still talked about today.

I was invited on the tour and I regret that I was unable to take go; especially after reading the excellent report on the tour by committee member Susan Surette-Draper. Lewis Hazel was able to show the committee what are believed to be various Acadian sites between Canning and Pereau. Near the J. Jordan Road, for example, Mr. Hazel indicated a site that was an Acadian cemetery. Ms. Surette-Draper notes that the railway that once ran between Kingsport and Canning went through the cemetery.

At another site nearby Mr. Hazel pointed out a piece of land that is believed to have held an Acadian parsonage. Apparently, the site now holds a dwelling since Ms. Surette-Draper asks, “would they be interested in knowing that a priest once had a modest living space ands a small sanctuary there?”

Near the Habitant cemetery, Mr. Hazel drew the committee’s attention to a road running beside it. Hazel told the committee that this was known as the “old French road” and started as a wharf on the seashore where the Acadians brought in provisions. Leon Barron tells me that this road is also the beginning of the Six Rod Road, which runs northerly and then north-west from the shore. It’s possible, of course, that when the Six Rod Road was conceived, the already established Acadian road was incorporated into it.

The Pereau Branch Road, which once connected with the section of road beside the cemetery, is said by Barron to have been part of the Six Rod Road. Lewis Hazel says the Pereau Branch Road was originally an Acadian road. It could have been both – an Acadian road and then because it was conveniently already laid out, a section of the Six Rod Road.

One of the most interesting parts of Surette-Draper’s report was the description Lewis Hazel gave of the building of “stone bridges” by the Acadians so they could traverse tidal creeks at low tide. Ms. Surette-Draper writes that Hazel was “able to show us where the Acadians built a ‘stone bridge’ in order to traverse the (Pereau?) river. Here is how it worked. The Acadians would construct a ‘bridge’ of rocks by laying them and piling them to form a road on the muddy riverbed. This was supported by posts and provided a hard surface for passage (at low tide).”

There is much more to Ms. Surette-Draper’s report. Mr. Hazel identified the site of an Acadian church near Bell Hill, for example. Which, according to Mr. Hazel, was pointed out to his father by a gentleman of Acadian ancestry.

One of the interesting things about Boot Island is that old maps indicate it was once part of the mainland. In the Natural History of Kings County, the authors include two maps showing Boot Island. One of the maps, dated circa 1870, clearly shows that the island is part of the Grand Pre dykeland; a contemporary map in the book, with the island standing offshore, has a caption remarking on the shoreline erosion that has taken place in the area since it was settled by the Planters.

Also interesting is the fact that Boot Island was once the home of several families and was the site of a commercial fox farm. The Boot Island Fox Farm Company was incorporated in 1912. A prospectus, prepared to attract shareholders in the Company, described the island as consisting of 300 acres and a “fine grove of 10 acres of wood.” That “fine grove” is long gone, destroyed it is said by roosting birds, and the tides have eroded a lot of the 300 acres and left mudflats.  

In the past decade I’ve written at least four columns about Boot Island (column1, column2, column 3, column4), two on the fox farm alone. The Boot is a well-known landmark, well-known to local people that is, and there are various folk tales existing about the island. The late Hants County historian, Edith Mosher, once told me there was a “Boot Island mystery.” Ms. Mosher promised to send me an account she had compiled about the mystery but unfortunately passed away before writing.

What got me thinking about Boot Island lately are two obituaries Leon Barron showed me. One dated 1981 was on the death of Bessie A. Mitchell. “Born on Boot Island,” the obituary reads, “she was the daughter of the late John and Sara (Davis) Tineo [correction: Tineo should read Pineo].”

The other obituary, for Edwin Leon Card, notes that he was the son of the late Leon and Maude (Bezanson) Card and was “born in Boute Island.”

These obituaries are proof that families once called the island home. Gordon Hansford tells me the Leon Card family lived and farmed on the Boot in the late 1930s and were the last people to live there. Around Wolfville and environs people still talk about Leon Card and his ox team. Another family that possibly lived on Boot Island were the McGregors. According to the Boot Island Fox Farm Company literature, one G. E. McGregor, “an experienced fox farmer,” was named as the manager and he likely lived on the island.

A book on Nova Scotia and New Brunswick islands, written by Allison Mitcham and published in 1987 by Lancelot Press, gives the names of other families that lived on the Boot. These were the Biggs and the Allens and their relatives still can be found here. Several years ago Marion Schofield told me that her grandparents, David and Abigail Hutchinson, started married life on the Boot. It is also said that a DeWolfe family farmed on the island.

You undoubtedly noticed that the obituary for Edwin Leon Card gave a different spelling for Boot Island. I’ve come across a couple of variations in the spelling, the most common besides Boot being Bout and Boute. The island rated mentioned by A. W. H. Eaton in his Kings County history – he spelled it Boot. Dr. Watson Kirkconnell, in his book on Kings County place names, mentions Boot Island, explaining that the Acadians called the place was L’Isle au Bout. Kirkconnell says this translate as “the island at the end (of Long Island in the Grand Pre area).”

When bluegrass started to catch on around here some 50 or 60 years ago, people first called it “hillbilly music,” an affectionate term I assumed was passé and now no longer used.

But I guess it isn’t so passé after all, as I learned to my amazement. Recently I turned on a Spinney Brothers recording of Up And Down The Mountain when my granddaughter was in the car; when Melissa heard Rick Spinney picking on the banjo she clapped her hands and shouted, “Oh good, hillbilly music!”

I haven’t heard bluegrass called anything but bluegrass for ages so I was surprised to hear it referred to as hillbilly music; especially coming from a 10-year-old. I have no idea where Melissa heard the expression, or how she knew enough about music to make the bluegrass-hillbilly connection, but there it was. Obviously, if a child with a relatively limited musical experience connects bluegrass with hillbilly, there must still be adults thinking the same way.

Anyway, what isn’t surprising is that bluegrass and the Spinney Brothers have a new fan in my granddaughter. She starts grinning and singing whenever I play a Spinney instrumental that’s heavy on banjo and mandolin.

I say this isn’t surprising because I’ve been giving Melissa bagpipe lessons for nearly a year and she likes anything musical that has a Celtic flavour. And, in case you didn’t know, there’s a definite bagpipe, bluegrass connection. To perhaps be exact, there’s a Celtic influence in pure bluegrass and the music can be traced back to areas in the United States that were heavily settled by Irish and Scottish people.

And while bluegrass music owes its origins to more than the bagpipes, the contribution of this instrument had duly been noted by no less than the Country Music Hall of Fame. In the Hall’s souvenir songbook, in the write-up on Bill Monroe, pure bluegrass is called that “hybrid of Scottish bagpipes, Negro blues and Fundamentalists hymns.”

It’s likely no coincidence, by the way, that Bill Monroe, who is hailed as the person who created the bluegrass style of music, has Celtic roots.

Having played and studied the pipes for over 50 years I can attest to the fact that the playing techniques used in bluegrass music are similar to the bagpipe. Musical expressions or fingering common to the bagpipe, what pipers call “tachems” for example, are generally used in bluegrass. One of the top bluegrass bands in North America, Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, acknowledge the music’s Gaelic roots in a lot of their playing. Some of the latest releases by Skaggs actually cross over into what is pure Gaelic music played with traditional bluegrass instruments.

Further, I have a collection of some 2,000 old Irish music, instrumental pieces for keyboard, fiddle and Uilleann pipes. Some of the tunes in this collection – and I’ve played most of them – are similar in melody to some of the earlier bluegrass, folk music and gospel melodies.

I don’t know if its convincing proof that bluegrass and the pipes are connected, but a mini-survey I’ve been conducting for the past year is interesting. Whenever I play in public usually someone tells me they’re “crazy over the bagpipes.” When I ask if they also like bluegrass there’s always a big smile and an enthusiastic “yes.”

After that long and depressing rainy spell in May, a history-minded friend wondered if we were going to have another “year of no summer.”

He was referring to the year of 1816 when a dark cloud cover settled over Nova Scotia and most of Canada, lingering for the entire summer and well into fall. As a result, Nova Scotia experienced one of the most drastic periods of weather in its history. Literally, it was a year of no summer; or as one newspaper account called it, the year “two winters joined together.” During that year, snow, ice and frost persisted into August, crops either failed or froze in the ground, and the threat of famine lurked on the horizon.

Actually, it was the second catastrophic year in a row for Nova Scotians. In 1915 huge swarms of mice appeared in many rural areas, destroying entire crops over a wide area before the arrival of cold weather brought an end to their depredations. Newspapers referred to it as “The Plague of Mice” and it was likened to the plague of locusts that struck Egypt in biblical times.

Nova Scotians must have thought they were cursed when summer never arrived the year after hordes of mice destroyed food supplies. But more than Nova Scotia was struck by bizarre summer weather in 1816. That year a broad band of volcanic ash clouded the atmosphere over much of Canada and parts of the States, lowering temperatures and in effect bringing about a mini ice age. Meteorologists attribute the ash cover to extremely violent volcanic eruptions thousands of miles away the year before in Indonesia; combined with abnormalities in the weather and simultaneous solar variations related to sunspot activity, its effect was devastating.

The year began peacefully enough here and the weather for a spell was normal. Records kept in that year indicate that April opened to warm weather but by the end of the month the entire countryside was ice-locked. May began with weather similar to January and Nova Scotians were given a foretaste of what was ahead. May, newspaper accounts say, was much like winter with snowfalls and ice half an inch thick on lakes and rivers. Farmers attempting to plant crops over and over again as seeds rotted in the ground and heavy frosts killed the few plants that managed to sprout.

June was another catastrophic month, the entire month being cold and blustery. The entire Maritime region was hit by a major snowstorm on June 17 that left a foot of snow, followed the Berwick Register reported by “bitter winds and biting cold.” Other newspapers reported that several persons caught in the unexpected June storm froze to death.

There was no respite in July, the month being colder than June. August was colder than July and several reports mention ice still half an inch thick on ponds and rivers. “To the surprise of everyone,” one report said, “August proved to be the worst (month) of all.” By this time most farmers had given up trying to raise crops and people were said to be living on fish and wild game.

Warmer weather finally arrived with the onset of September but the respite was short-lived. By mid-September, it was bitterly cold again. Throughout the remainder of September, through October and November, frequent snowstorms lashed the countryside. In December the weather did a complete turnabout and the month was warm and sunny. The cloud of volcanic ash was finally dispersing and the following year the weather returned to normal.

“An acute cold is very disagreeable and if neglected may prove very serious,” reads a blurb from an 1897 book on family health remedies.

If you’ve been discombobulated by the plague of colds and flu-like ailments rampant during the persistent wet weather this spring, you’ll have to agree with this observation. The old family guide, which I wrote about previously in this column, has numerous observations of this sort, all of which were introductions to sure-fire recipes for cold treatments.

Anyway, from the number of recipes given in the book it appears that a century ago, maladies such as cold and the flu (which they called “the grippe”) were common. The old book has page after page of cold and flu treatments including a few that claimed to cure the common cold.

While we know better today, generations ago they believed that the cold not only could be cured but also easily prevented. Great-grandpappy had all sorts of weird, strange sounding concoctions to treat and prevent colds. At least that’s the impression given in this old family health book. However, our great grandparents must have been naive. For example, if every cold and flu home treatment by itself worked miracles, why were so many available?

Looking at the old recipes I see that a common ingredient in many of the treatments was camphor- as a rub, in poultices and taken internally. Naive or not, great grandpappy may have been on to something here. I looked up camphor in Black’s Medical Dictionary and found that it was an oily substance distilled from a type of laurel wood that grows in Japan and other Asian countries. Camphor, Black’s Dictionary said, has many uses. Externally on bed clothes to keep off fleas and lice, as a rub in liniment to treat bronchitis and skin conditions, mixed with water and taken by the spoonful to ward off colds.

Some ingredients common in cold treatments in the old days are still found today in over-the-counter medications. Cherries and lemons, for example. The old book suggests that “a simple remedy for colds in the head is the juice of a ripe lemon.” The juice of the lemon is “squeezed into the hand and sniffed well up into the nose.”

Flax flour and seeds – and flax seed oil – is highly touted as a health food today and many people swear by its benefits. According to the old family book, our great grandparents were well aware of flax as a health food. Flax is mentioned as an ingredient in various treatments for illness. For coughs and sore throats, for example, the old book recommends hot flaxseed tea with lemon juice, sweetened with rock candy.

Not all remedies offered in the book were as palatable as the flaxseed tea and lemon juice drink. According to the old book, if colds were severe and lingering, some drastic measures were called for. Here’s one: “Doses of oil, cod liver oil, skunk’s oil, goose grease and many other sorts have been found to help certain persons when suffering from colds.”

Our great grandparents not only were naive. They had no gag reflexes.

“Follow the dirt road directly down to the Bay to Connor’s Brook…. Once there, look to the small brook running along the side of the hill to the left; search diligently among the rocks about 20 feet from the tide line and you will find inscribed in the rock face at tide level (the date) 1755. A long ago memento of the Acadians who camped on these shores in the winter under many privations during the expulsion.”

I’ve taken this quote from an article on a rockhound website called Bob’s Rock Shop. Brian Isfeld, who was stationed at Greenwood some 20 years, wrote the article. Actually, the date on the rock is 1775. In recent correspondence, Mr. Isfeld, who now lives in British Columbia, said in effect that the difference in dates is a typo in the article and he will make an effort to have it corrected.

About a year ago, Morden resident Gary Myers drew my attention to the rock that Isfeld mentions on the website. Mr. Myers said the rock is a mystery of sorts in that no one knows who carved the rock, when it was done, or what the date refers to. Most people who frequent the area where the rock can be found are unaware of its existence, Myers said. “I haven’t spoken to a single soul that knows anything about the rock,” Myers writes. “I was at Connor’s Brook a couple of years ago and met a lady from Kingston who told me she’s been going there for 40 years and didn’t know anything about it.”

Mr. Myers has photographs of the rock on his website. He estimates that the rock, that from the photographs appears to have been roughed out in a rectangular shape, is 24 inches wide by 18 inches high. Mr. Myers sent directions on how to find the rock, which as already mentioned is at Turner’s Brook on the Fundy shore. You can reach this site from Kingston by driving up Maple Street to Bishop Road, which in turn runs to the shore.

Mr. Myers adds that there is what appears to be a cross carved into the rock beside the date. Both Myers and Isfeld mention evidence indicating there was copper mining in the area near the carved rock. “People have told me there was some exploration for copper in that area years ago (in the ’40s or ’50s) which might explain the presence of a rock drill,” Myers said.

Getting back to the correspondence from Brian Isfeld, he writes that he’s also surprised so few people in the area are unaware of the dated rock. When he was stationed at Greenwood he often explored the Connor’s Brook area in search of rock specimens. “Few people seemed to know of the existence of the engraving on the rock,” he writes. “My understanding is that it had something to do with the occupation of the area by the Acadians in the time of the Acadians.”

Mr. Myers brought the rock to my attention in hopes that somewhere, there’s someone who knows the significance of the date on it. Perhaps the rock was carved the same year as it was dated, and perhaps not. Obviously, a lot of effort went into carving the date into the rock and roughing out its rectangular shape. If it was done as a prank, someone must have had a lot of time on their hands.