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New Horizons Project:
Seniors Interviewing Seniors Valuing and Sharing Rural Narratives
Citation:
New Horizons Project: Seniors Interviewing Seniors - Valuing and Sharing Rural Narratives (268 pp.)
Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute, Kempt, Nova Scotia
2015
Printed on 100% post-consumer paper
INTRODUCTION
Seniors Interviewing Seniors: Valuing and Sharing Rural Narratives was a project
co-ordinated by the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute (MTRI) in the summer and
fall of 2014. The communtiy-based project of provided seniors an opportunity to
preserve the oral history of western Annapolis County and Queens County. The
goal was to reach out to seniors and involve them in interviews relevant to their
past livelihood in terms of their skills, knowledge and experience on topics such
as past land use, lifestyles, forestry practices, farming, wildlife, and concerns for the
future.
Through sharing their memories and anecdotes, local seniors provided a
comprehensive overview of the past lifestyles, communities and biospheres of these
counties. This historical knowledge and information is important to record as it is
in danger of being lost as our population ages and it will help in understanding
changes in land use, and vegetation and animal populations in southwestern Nova
Scotia.
The project also addressed concerns regarding the isolation of seniors by encouraging
their social participation and inclusion. The participants felt respected and valued
as their knowledge, observations and opinions were sought. The information that
seniors shared gave valuable insights that MTRI and others with interests in the
biosphere and history of the area can use in future research and initiatives.
A senior coordinator, Joyce Grant-Smith, was hired and volunteer interviewers were
trained. Local seniors were contacted and interviewed by the coordinator and
trained volunteers. Interviews were digitally recorded, written in text form, and
photos were taken and annotated.
Training session at MTRI for seniors who conducted
interviews
Joyce Grant-Smith, the project
coordinator, and Amanda Lavers,
MTRI’s Executive Director, during
a volunteer training session
NEW HORIZONS PROJECT: SENIORS INTERVIEWING SENIORS - VALUING AND SHARING RURAL NARRATIVES
Learning sessions for seniors were also planned and presented at multiple locations
as part of the project. Seniors in the area became more aware of MTRI and its
projects, and received information about the Southwest Nova Biosphere at
afternoon sessions in the rural communities of Kempt, Maitland Bridge, Port
Lorne, and Caledonia.
Over 100 seniors became involved in Seniors Interviewing Seniors; as coordinator,
interviewees, interviewers and audiences at presentations. There were some
unexpected results from this process. Friendships were formed among the seniors
that took part in the project, and seniors who were isolated enjoyed sharing
conversations with other seniors. They felt respected and valued as they took
part in an important community project.
Transcripts of the interviews will be available to the local community at the North
Queens Heritage House Museum and on MTRI’s website.
Jane Barker, MTRI’s Forest Stewardship Coordinator, at a
presentation to seniors in the beautiful setting of the
Mersey River Chalets
R a l p h D ou g ( ‘ D O U G ’ ) Ad a m s
I was born in Yarmouth on May 2, 1934. Having the same name as my father they
called me by my middle name Doug, rather than calling me Junior.
I was born right in the middle of the depression and like many others we were
very poor and didn’t have too much. We lived in a two story house with three
bedrooms. This home had no insulation and single pane glass [windows]. For
heat we had two stoves, one in the kitchen and the other in the living room
which burned both wood and coal. There was no central heat, therefore the house was not too warm in the
wintertime. During this time a lot of the homes including ours, didn’t have electricity. If the power poles were on
the streets, most people couldn’t afford to have the wire installed in their homes.
Not having electricity meant that there wasn’t any running hot water, just cold water. In order to take a bath, the water
had to be heated on the top of the stove and one had to use the wash tub. Sometimes, privacy was a real problem
but we all managed. Our bathroom, if you could call it that, had only a toilet.
I had three brothers and four sisters all born at home. I was the second to be born of the eight siblings. Not having
electricity meant that we used kerosene oil lamps. They were not very efficient, but they served the purpose.
Without television in those days, we played a lot of board games in the winter nights. Homework had to be done
by oil lamp light; not very convenient but we got used to it. We were not alone. Most of the poor were in the same
circumstances.
My mother was second to none. We had a lot of love in our home. Dad spent a lot of time out to sea, but when we
were all together it was great.
Dad claims that he had a grade eight education, but I would say it was more like grade six. He could read, write and
grasp things well. I guess that was all one needed back in the teens and twenties when you had to go out to work
at an early age. He was a good self-taught mechanic and did a lot of the engineering on the boats that he sailed
on. He went to sea a lot of time on these boats during the depression years, taking salt fish and other goods to the
West Indies and returning with a load of salt. These boats were also used in the rum running trade. He was back
and forth a lot of the time. When he wasn’t doing that he was offshore fishing. At that time they would get 2 or 3
cents a pound for haddock if they were lucky. He made a modest living at that.
During the war years Dad worked in the Merchant Marine, sailing from the eastern United States, mostly New York
and Baltimore to Newfoundland which was a foreign country at that time, carrying supplies for the war effort. He
did that for the duration of the war.
“A lot of the
small birds have
disappeared
from here. There
are not as many
as we used to see
at the feeders.”
After the war Dad got a ticket to be an engineer on coastal boats and tugs. He
worked out of Saint John, NB as an engineer for a tugboat company going as
far as the St. Lawrence River, but worked mostly in the harbour in Saint John.
He worked there in the 60s and 70s.
On his weekends off, Shirley and I with our two boys on our way to Yarmouth
would pick him up at the ferry wharf in Digby and then take him back on
Sunday afternoon on our return to Halifax.
My mother worked in the home all of her life. Mom and Dad were married in 1931.
Mom was a Roman Catholic and Dad belonged to the Salvation Army. They
decided that they would visit the minister at the United Church of Canada in
Yarmouth. They joined the church, were married there and we were brought
up in the United Church.
My mother had very little to work with in those days. With no electricity, she
D ou g a d a m s
didn’t have any of the amenities we have today. Today there are washers and driers, everything you need. In those
early days Mom had a scrub brush and a scrub board and a wash tub. She would heat her water on the top of the
stove to wash her clothes in. In those days there were no disposable diapers. Can you imagine the cleaning and
washing of these diapers by hand? Mom always had a lot of dirty clothes with all those kids. I don’t know how my
mother did it, I really don’t. She kept her house clean and I can tell you one thing. We were not, any of the kids, ever
dirty. We were always well fed and well looked after and clean.
Mom went to school in the late teens and twenties, she wasn’t very well educated but taught herself to do many
things and do them well. She was a beautiful seamstress...in those days flour was purchased in 25lb cloth bags,
Robin Hood, Regal and Purity flour - cotton bags. Mom would wash these bags and make things from them you
would never believe today including diapers and some clothing. Mom also taught herself to knit and she could
knit almost anything. We all took Mom for granted; we really didn’t know what we had back then.
It wasn’t until after the war that people’s situations got better and they could afford to have electricity in their homes.
Then life got a bit easier.
I recall that water was run through lead pipes into the houses. I’m still here, I’m still healthy.... lead is condemned now
but it was quite the thing back then.
In the 1930’s there was no primary, so before you enrolled in grade one you would have to attend kindergarten. In
1938 I attended the John and Douglas free kindergarten on East Street in Yarmouth. I could walk there as a little
fellow, where you would learn new things to ready you for grade one. The big thing was to learn to get along with
and meet other kids.
The week that war broke out in September 1939, I started grade one in Yarmouth South End School. I will never
forget because my first brother was born on September 1st, the same day as Hitler invaded Poland. [I was told of
this war event later in life]
In South End School, we had two grade ones, two grade twos, two grade threes and one each from grade four to eight.
There was a teacher for each and the grade eight teacher acted as principal. A secretary from the center school
visited one half day a week to type whatever had to be done. Electricity was installed in 1946-47. So there was a
large two story building right in town with all those rooms and no electricity. The teachers were strict in those days,
no-nonsense types. You couldn’t get away with anything and they weren’t afraid to use the strap.
I was a bad little bugger, I really was. I started smoking when I was 12 years old as did a lot of my friends. I stopped
when I was 28 when I realized how stupid I was to be doing this.
I was a real pest to the teacher in grade five and was made to repeat that grade. I soon smartened up.
When I was a boy we were always outdoors playing all kinds of games. Nothing was organized. You had to do for
yourself. We made up our own games and had lots of fun. Kids were very active back then, not sitting in the house
watching TV or on computers. [We didn’t have those luxuries back then]…Kids are not as active outdoors now,
like we used to be.
When I was in high school I played rugby football and basketball. Our high school didn’t have a baseball team, but I
was good enough to make the senior baseball team in Yarmouth and played until I left to work in Halifax in 1957.
Kids are not outside playing today like they used to, you hardly ever see kids playing outside in Greenfield unless it
is organized in school.
In high school I was in the sea cadets. In 1950 I was selected to go to sea cadet camp on Gambier Island not far from
Vancouver. We went by boat from Horseshoe Bay. To get to Vancouver we travelled by train driven by steam engine.
It took five days and six nights to get there and just the reverse to get back. After the cadet camp it was planned
that we would go on exercises in the Pacific off Mexico but that was cancelled due the Korean War.
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I left high school in grade eleven because I just wasn’t getting along well and a dollar was worth more to me than
going to school, at least that is what I thought at that time. Having parents with minimum education, they couldn’t
help me with my studies, and with all these kids at home, we all had our problems that way. I did go back the next
year and got my grade eleven which was a big thing in those days.
When I went out in the work force I found that I really didn’t have anything to offer. I ended up taking clerking jobs
in a grocery store and a hardware store.
In 1957 I was fortunate to meet Mr. Arthur Moore, who was the regional director for Canadian Oils or White Rose back
then. He offered me a job as a relief bulk plant manager in Yarmouth and then on to Halifax to train and work at
different jobs with the company. In 1959 I married the former Shirley Freeman from Greenfield. I soon found out
that there was a better life than driving a truck for an oil company. My brother-in-law was working for the CBC in
television and when talking to him he said, ‘I will introduce you to the technical director in radio’, which he did.
I was told that if I went to school and got my grade twelve and a course in electronics they would give me a job, and
they did.
“In 1957 I went to Halifax to work, a year later I met my wife to be, Shirley Freeman from Greenfield.” She was working
at the Royal Bank in Halifax and at this time I was working with Canadian Oil. We were married on October 3, 1959.
A year and a half later we had our first child Stephen and sixteen months after that our second child Timothy. When
I decided to go back to school, our parents were all for it. Shirley and our boys could have stayed with either set of
parents, but she decided to go to Greenfield with her parents. They were there until September 1963.
I came back periodically. I went on to Radio College in Toronto and from there I came back and I did get a job in radio
in 1963 working as a radio technician.
In 1969 the technical director retired and the technical supervisor replaced him. This left the technical supervisor’s
position vacant. This position was posted across the CBC. I was the junior technician at that time so I didn’t even
think of applying for this position. The last day of the competition, one of the senior technicians came and got me
when I was working on a program. He told me to apply for the position and had one of the secretaries waiting to
type out my application.
The application was filled out and I signed it. The next week when the interviews were going on, I was not called in to
be interviewed. The nine other applicants were all interviewed. On Friday afternoon I went home and told Shirley
that I didn’t get the job after all. I wasn’t called in for an interview.
On Monday morning I was told that I had the job even though I had not been interviewed.
I was the technical supervisor until 1979 and when the technical director retired. I was called to the office of the
director of radio and he said “Doug can you do Wiggy’s job?” [Wiggy was the technical director.] I said, ‘Well, wait a
second; what going to happen to Wiggy?’ He said,’ Wiggy is going to retire.’ Once I knew that I agreed to take the
job, which I held until I retired in 1991.
When I went to Halifax for the second time, [working at the CBC] I coached a team from the Dockyard in C ball on
the Halifax commons.
When my oldest son was in cubs he volunteered me to be a cub leader. I went on to be “cub master and district cub
master.” I also coached our two sons in minor baseball and minor hockey.
In 1972 I joined the Spryfield Lions Club and went on to be their King Lion. I worked my way up to become District
Governor for all of Nova Scotia in 1983/84.
In 1988 I ran as a Liberal in Halifax Atlantic against Premier John Buchanan and received 2763 votes to Mr. Buchanan’s
5000. I felt pretty good about that.
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Our son oldest Stephen ran for Halifax City Council in 1991 and still represents an expanded District after 23 years.
He held the position of Deputy Mayor twice.
I retired after almost 29 years in 1991. One of the reasons that I retired goes back to education again. Broadcasting
went ahead by leaps and bounds and it’s still expanding. Computer technology started to take over the industry
and a lot more training was needed to keep up with the changing times. Computers were now an essential part of
broadcasting and continues to be.
I had a good career with a decent salary which enabled Shirley and I to bring up our two boys and fulfil all their needs.
I have now been retired for more than 23 years.
In 2000, a good friend of mine who was the Regional Councillor for District Eight, said he was not going to re-offer
and he asked me if I would run for that office. The District ran from Pleasant River all the way around to the Chelsea
line. I won the first election and was re-elected in 2004 and 2008 by acclamation. In 2012, I thought that I was too
old at 78 to run for the fourth time so I stepped aside. Of my twelve years on The Region of Queens council, I was
Deputy Mayor for eight years. This was a great experience and I received an education in Municipal affairs, finance
and municipal law.
“My marks when I graduated from high school in 1952 in Yarmouth were not that great. I know you can’t, but if I
could do it all over again I would concentrate mostly on education. If you don’t have anything to offer when you
leave school, then you won’t get anywhere.” I now realize that if I had gone to university I would have had a good
chance to have been Director of Radio in Halifax. “I’m still learning and I think it is great.”
We bought an old farm in Greenfield and had the fire department burn the house down for fire practice. Then we
built a cottage on the same site. In 1968 we sold this cottage and land for $3500 and purchased a lot in Halifax for
$3300 and built our home. We still went back and forth to Greenfield.
When I retired from the CBC in 1991, I worked with by brother for a year taking school pictures. He owned the franchise;
he was great to work for but I didn’t like that type of work, so I retired for good.
I could have gone back to the CBC on contract, but I thought others needed the work so I turned it down.
Shirley and I bought a lot and built our present home here in Greenfield. We also purchased an additional 35 acres
of woodland. We cut a lot of wood off this lot by selective cutting. To tell you the truth I don’t believe in clear
cutting.
When we moved to Greenfield I joined the fire department. Shirley and I were involved in just about everything. In
1997 I was chosen Volunteer of the Year for Queens County. At the time I was given the award, I was serving on
eleven different organizations.
In 1976, I spent two months working at the Montreal Olympics. I was in charge of three technical crews, two English and
one French. Our job was to check all the radio broadcast lines from the various venues. This gave me a chance to see
most of the Olympic Games. This also gave me the incentive on my return to Halifax, to join the YMCA, get in shape
and run the New York City marathon in 1982 and 1983. I continued to play softball on the Halifax commons.
“Back in 1968, there was a broadcaster by the name of Paddy Gregg who was a freelance journalist. He also worked
for the CBC. He and I went over to Maine with a tape recorder, lots of tapes and batteries. Back in the 1930’s there
was a start to the Passamaquoddy tidal power project which had failed to develop. There was word that this project
would start up again but it never did come to fruition. We went to do a documentary on this and interviewed around
150 people around the Eastport Maine area. It took about two weeks to do all these interviews. It turned out to be
a good two hour radio program and was aired once.
Once when the Queen paid a visit to P.E.I., I was barely two feet from her.
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I recall that there were seven strikes during my time with the CBC...being a supervisor I had to cross the picket lines.
In the strike of 1981, the technicians were out for four months and they didn’t gain the wage package they went
on strike for. Strikes are not a good thing and tensions run high.
When I first came to Greenfield, back in 1958... There were kiacks or gaspereau, in the Medway river. The locals call
them kiacks. Then you could make one dip and you’d get another adult to help haul in your dip net. Today one
could make one, two, three or more dips and maybe get one or two if you were lucky. Salmon were plentiful in the
river. Today the river in Greenfield is closed for salmon fishing. I remember when we moved to Greenfield to live
in our permanent home, people were catching salmon all along the river. Today you may catch a few trout in the
spring. I will say with the recent introduction of small mouth bass in the lake, bass fishing is good. It has been said
that when bass were introduced in the lake most other species of fish disappeared.
My father-in-law taught me how to plant and have a productive garden. We do have to put an electric fence around
it to keep the deer out. The deer are not as plentiful now as they were back then.
I am really concerned about the birds too. We have always fed the birds and there were many different species. A
lot of the small birds have disappeared from here. There are not as many as we used to see at the feeders. I don’t
understand what has happened to them all. This year we had our usual swallow houses up, but no swallows. There
may have been a few in the spring passing through, but they didn’t stay around.
We always had raccoons and porcupines as well as a few skunks. There are not as many as there used to be; it is hard
to understand just why.
When Shirley and I moved permanently to Greenfield there were still permanent stands of beautiful timber. Now it
is all but gone. Just in back of our house there is a fourteen acre lot, just up from that a thirty-eight acre lot and
they’re in there clear cutting it now. One of my neighbours said “ they may as well cut it, because he said it has to
be cut”. I said it has been here all these years, why does it have to be cut now? He will probably get $15k to $20k.
After taxes, who knows how much? It will take a long time to grow back, if ever.
We always noticed trucks coming down Chapel Hill Drive with good size logs. Now a lot of the trucks are hauling
mostly small logs. I believe they are used for stud wood or they are chipped for pulp or biomass. It is a shame to
see so many small logs being cut.
I can say that there is a great difference in our forest and animal and bird life since we moved to this rural area.
I had our 35 acre forest lot managed by Royce Ford. He had a crew come in and do the work, and there’s still trees
there. It was not clear cut. I actually received more money from this than I had paid for the lot in the first place. I
bought the lot back in 1992. You don’t have to clear cut to make money.
In 1992, I had a father and son go in my lot to select cut 8400 board feet of logs, enough to build a fair size outbuilding
for myself and another for my brother-in-law. Because they select cut, you wouldn’t know today where the trees
had been taken out.
We have to cut back on fossil fuels, and I don’t know just how we are going to do that. It would be nice if all or most
people would car pool…How many times have you witnessed people going to work, four or five people going to
the same place, all in single cars? Not everybody does this, but there are many who do. People don’t walk as much
as they used to, although a lot of the younger people have taken up running which is a good thing. Bicycles are a
good and cheap mode of transportation.
As far as heating your homes, wood, heat pumps, electricity, pellet stoves, as well as oil are commonly used. Oil, being
fossil fuel is the worst for the environment, although most of the electricity produced in our province is generated
by using fossil fuel.
All new homes and those being upgraded should be well insulated to cut back on heating costs.
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D ou g a d a m s
In order to help our environment, wind, solar and tidal power has to be developed further to replace power generated
by fossil fuels.
The 13kw generator that we have is run on propane, which is not as bad as gasoline or diesel but it is still not good
for the environment.
I look at my children and grandchildren and worry that if things don’t change soon, what will happen to them?
I remember when I was a young person growing up, in some years the harbour in Yarmouth used to freeze over
in winter. Today, even in a cold winter the ice is scarce. Yarmouth was always cold with lots of snow. It started in
October and lasted until late March or early April. It’s not that way today. Something major is happening. How are
we going to stop it? I don’t know.
If only we had a government that would make regulations for the good of the environment, the good of the people
and enforce these regulations, instead of worrying about getting re-elected the next time around, we would all
be better off.
I don’t believe in fracking. I think it is short term gain for long term pain. In the long run unless we learn more about
the effects on the environment and rural people’s water sources I believe we’re going to do a lot of harm to
ourselves.
We had a hard life growing up, but a good life. Today it is an easier life, but is it a better life? We, as a population, don’t
want for much, but should it be that way?
I recall my mother cooking cod livers on the stove (not a very good smell) and we as a family took our dose of cod liver
oil every morning all winter long. This was supposed to keep one healthy. I think that most people were generally
healthy in those days. If you had a tooth ache, the tooth came out. A health nurse came to our school once a month
and a dentist twice a year.
If you didn’t have enough money to pay for a doctor, dentist or buy food, in some cases you most likely went without.
In those days it was shameful to ask for welfare.
We didn’t have a refrigerator when we were growing up, but did have a zinc lined ice box. The ice man came door-todoor once a week by horse and wagon.The milkman came by horse and wagon as well. A fish man came door to door
twice a week. He sold whole mackerel and haddock. Small lobsters or tinkers as we used to call them sold for $1.00
a dozen or 10 cents each. Many jobs involved physical labour and perhaps that made people seem healthier.
Being poor we were looked down by other people and most were embarrassed to live in the poor part of town.
Some of the people who looked down on us were no better off. Almost everyone was the same, some thought a
bit different and lived in a different part of town.
Everyone had difficulties during the depression. A lot of men were out of work, then the war started and there was
some work. An army and air force base had to be built and then serviced. We as kids used to watch the army on
their route marches as well as the air force planes flying on training missions. A couple of supply ships that were
torpedoed but not sunk came limping into Yarmouth…this was a sight to see.
I remembered when a relief ship was torpedoed off Wedgeport, the salvage people brought in humongous bags of
flour and they were selling it cheap, very, very cheap especially to the poor. My mother bought two bags and would
have had enough for most of the winter. Once she opened it, there were little black specks all through it. Mom
thought it was mice dirt or whatever. It turned out to be wheat germ... guess what? She threw out both bags, she just
wouldn’t use them. We would get all kinds of stuff from the salvage of some of these ships that were torpedoed.
The military always had good ball teams, and when they would practice and hit balls over the fence, either fair or foul,
we would be waiting for them and then run away as fast as we could.
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D ou g a d a m s
Yarmouth, like most towns back then, was practically self-sufficient. Then it had wood working mills, a cotton mill,
an iron foundry, a thriving fishing industry, farming just outside the town and many more industries. Today almost
everything is brought in by trucks. At that particular time we had two rail lines that served Yarmouth, the DAR
through the valley and the CNR on the South Shore. Freight trains, as well as passenger trains came and went at
all times of the day and night.
There was a ferry to Boston, as well as coastal steamers which brought people, tourists (tourism was always a big
industry) and freight to Yarmouth.
Today a lot of this has disappeared, a sign of the times I guess. Almost everything for sale is brought in by truck.
We were able to go down to the wharf most times and buy fresh fish, there are some places where you can but most
is purchased from a supermarket.
Most of the food we purchased back then was in bulk. Today most of the same is packaged. A lot of what we call junk
food today was unheard of back when I was growing up. For snacks we had all types of candy, peanuts, cracker-jack
and pretzels. During the war most of these items were scarce, the Army and Air force canteens fared a bit better.
Young people especially are leaving the town and rural areas in droves to go elsewhere for employment. After I first
went to council, I attended almost all the high school graduations in North Queens. There were anywhere from 18
- 24 graduates each year. Most of the students went on to University or Community College. I don’t believe many
come back to live.
A lot of young people don’t seem to have the skills in reading, writing and math without the use of a calculator. I don’t
think it is their fault, with computers mandatory in all classes, students really don’t have to think for themselves
anymore. I also believe the education system is failing the students and there are too many administrators.
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G l e n e tta M a r g a rit e Ant h on y
I was born in Swansburg, Shelburne County on February 13, 1931. Both of my
parents were born in Nova Scotia. My mother’s home was in Swansburg and
my father’s home was in North Queens. I lived most of my life in Kempt.
I was married on June 24, 1954.
My home, growing up, was down by the church. The house is still there. My father was a carpenter and a scaler for the
Mersey most of his life. He worked on the ships during the war. My mother taught school for 36 years and died the
year after she retired. She taught in all the local area, including the new school in Caledonia.
“My great uncle, Humphrey DeLong built the store in the early 1900s...And when I came home from Hunt’s Point...
I was fourteen. And the following year I went to work at the Co-op at Christmas. Now I was in school but I went to
work at the Co-op and I worked there with Peter MacKay and Pearl DeLong. Christmas and New Year’s we had to take
stock by hand in those days. I worked there for two or three weeks and then I went back to school. And I finished my
grade eleven and believe it or not in Albany New, not in Kempt. And I took it through the correspondence course.
And I hadn’t quite finished. I got my grade eleven but in a strange way.”
“I left there and I went to Keji to work. And I worked in the dining room from the first of May until the middle of October.
Then I came home and I was home until Christmas and I went back to the store again. And I worked there Christmas,
stock-taking and whatever again. And then I went to Liverpool to work in a hotel as a waitress because that’s what
I had done at Keji. I’d only been there a couple of weeks when they called me...to see if I’d come back to work in the
store. And from that I worked ...until I got married. I worked there about seven years at that point in time.”
I got married and in time the store was sold to Jordan and Betty. They still had Keji. It was the year my younger son
was born, 1961. We moved back to the store. That’s the red building in Kempt. It sold a little bit of everything, like
most general stores. I did that for about five years and then my mother-in-law became ill. She came home from Keji
and she wasn’t able to do anything. Dick and I had planned to build our house but we bought timberland instead
and stayed at the store for another winter, 1965-66. We lived there. We moved into our house in 1966. My motherin-law changed the store to a handcraft shop and I didn’t want to work there anymore.
There was another store just at the end of the Northfield Road that belonged to Gordon and Lilian Hanley. They also
ran the post office. There was a garage where there’s a garage now; Ralph Ringer was running it. And Lennie DeLong
had a store also. That’s the one that’s the craft shop now. Where Luxtons live there was a store.
“I remember the
first bear I seen.
I was out snowshoeing with my
father. And he
pointed this bear
out to me.”
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The school was where Arlene McBride lives. That’s where my kids started school.
Jeanette Rawding was the teacher. It wasn’t very long before they went to the
Caledonia school.
I have two children, both boys. They own the land but don’t work it. Kevin does
cut his firewood off the land.
Baptists Young People’s Organization was where I met my husband, Dick. Dick
lived in Northfield; I lived in Kempt.“When I was in the store, I knew everybody
and everybody’s business...But we had a Baptists Young People’s Organization
and his mother...run it. That’s how I met him...I probably would have met him
anyway because I was in [the] public and I met everybody.”
Dick was a trucker – gravel and construction. We had a lot of timberland and a
sawmill. That’s how we made a living. The sawmill wasn’t commercial but a lot
of houses were built with the lumber. We also had Christmas trees from 1952
until 1992. Dick would make five or six trips a year with Christmas trees to the
G l e n e tta Ant h on y
states. We still have a truck, a grader and a backhoe. He built a lot of forest roads and 35 miles of them on our own
property. We sold wood to Bowaters and to J.A. Turner in New Germany. He sold pit props to Napthal. Freemans
had a mill down by the brook as you go into Caledonia. Jim Smith had a big mill in Harmony, Mel Luxton had one
in Northfield, Rawley Rowter had one in Maitland. There were a lot of sawmills.
“Bowater built the mill in 1929 I think...I can’t remember when you couldn’t sell pulp wood. When I first remember,
my father was cutting and selling pulp wood to Bowaters. They used to dump it in the rivers and float it down...
They had a big slasher in Westfield. And they brought it down from the Medway and cut it there and took it across
to the Mersey. They brought the logs down whole and they cut them up whatever length they wanted, trucked
them across and put them in the...Mersey.”
We didn’t burn wood in our present home until the price of oil went up. Then we put in a wood furnace. “And we’re
still using it....Oil was 16 cents a gallon...so we burned oil.” We still use the oil furnace sometimes.
The area has seen a lot of changes. A neighbour used to keep cattle and he sold milk to everybody. My family got milk
from him. They didn’t sell milk at the store. Nowadays a farmer isn’t allowed to sell milk to his neighbours.
Lou Rawding had a transport truck. He brought stuff down from Halifax. Elton DeLong bought it; he had worked for
him for a long time. They were selling about a case of bread a week at the store, which would be 36 loaves. Not a
lot of people bought bread then. Cigarettes were about 25 cents a package then. They also sold gas, and they had
to figure out the price themselves. They didn’t have adding machines or calculators to work it out. A lot of times
people put $2.00 worth of gas in their tanks on Saturday evening. That would have been 5-6 gallons and that’s all
people needed for a week. It was unheard of to go as far as Liverpool unless someone was sick or hurt.
The roads were gravel. In the winter the main road was plowed. They used graders hauled by ‘dozers. The main road
was paved up to the top of Kempt Hill in 1951. Before that, Kempt Hill, both sides, was lined with lilacs. There was
a maple tree on each corner of the Kempt triangle. People decided they couldn’t see around them and they cut
them down.
I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have a Christmas tree in that spot. It didn’t always have lights on it because
it was there before electricity was put in. Christmas carols were sung around the tree.
Electricity was put in our home in 1948. I remember that my two year old sister, who was born in ‘46, turned the lights
on.
There was a big ice house behind where Wilfred’s garage is. Freemans used to own it and were responsible for putting
ice in. They used to make ice cream in the summer. “If you needed ice, you went and got it. You know, if somebody
got hurt or whatever.”
Painting of Glenetta’s husband’s mill
Painting of Glenetta’s store
15
“Mom and Dad had a cow. And they used a creamer... and they put it in the well, and kept it cool...It was a dug well. I
don’t think there was a drilled well in this country...I don’t think so.”
I think that wildlife is different.“Well, there were no coyotes. Very, very few bear. Oodles of deer. They were everywhere.
More than there is now...Quite a few partridge....I remember the first bear I seen. I was out snowshoeing with my
father. And he pointed this bear out to me.”
There were lots of bats. At the old store, they came out everywhere. Now there are none. The church and hall were
also homes to bats years ago.
Years ago people didn’t pay much attention to turtles so I wouldn’t know if I’d seen Blanding’s or painted turtles years
ago.“Snappers we stayed away from...I know there’s Blanding’s turtles in Kempt Lake and I know there’s Blanding’s
turtles in Georgia’s Lake.” There used to be a huge snapper in Freeman Lake. “They even tried shooting him but
they didn’t succeed. This was years ago.”
I didn’t grow very big because I lived on deer meat, rabbits and partridges.
“Everybody had a vegetable garden...It might not have been a big garden but they had a garden.”
“We skated on Kempt Lake. We coasted down Kempt Hill....in my childhood...Some of the boys had bobsleds...There
was quite a hill down there in front of where Grace Keating lives now and if we could get over that we could go
clear down to the turn.”
When we went skating we’d build a fire next to a white rock, on the ice. We gathered up old tires to build a bonfire.
My children, when they came along, were into school sports, like basketball, and building dune buggies. In the winter
we had snowmobiles and we went to the camp. In the summer we went camping in the trailer. “In fact we sold
trailers for quite a few years. Dick also sold power saws and tires.”
“Wages have changed immensely. When I went to work I got a dollar a day, and I worked Tuesday night, Thursday
night and Saturday night. I still got a dollar a day. Of course when I finished I was making a lot more than that...
That’s the way it was. Men earned three or four dollars a day.”
“I was very fortunate. I never knew what poverty was. I didn’t have everything but I had people. When I was little...if I
wanted a cookie, I went to your house and asked for it...I’d probably get a glass of milk [too]...Everybody was uncle
or aunt. That’s how we did it. I mean, didn’t matter who it was. So you had no money but you were rich. Because
everybody knew everybody and everybody was your friend. And everybody was out to take care of you and see
that you grew up properly. And I never knew any different.” Many of my neighbours are the same today.
My mother and grandmother used to make my clothes. I was warm. I had as much as everyone else.“You didn’t know
you were poor in other words.”
“We didn’t have radios. We didn’t have televisions...We didn’t have a bathroom. We had everything we wanted...You
had everything you wanted to eat. You didn’t have lettuce in the winter. But neither did anyone else. You didn’t
know anything different. You’re only poor if you think you are...My grandparents would have moved heaven and
earth for me.”
“Now if you don’t have an iPod and you don’t have a whatever...I don’t even know what they call them – a tablet, iPod,
computer you’d be right down on the bottom...”
We used to have card parties. We played checkers and crokinole. We read a lot. We made our own life. We went
outdoors to play. Children used to be out playing from morning until night. Now people would be considered
terrible parents if they did that.
16
The one thing we looked out for were moose. If you saw a moose, you got away from there.
“My father liked to pick berries. He picked a lot. Myself not so much. I had crippled hands and it didn’t work so well.”
We didn’t have a washing machine so my mother washed our clothes by hand. She had a pitcher pump to bring water
into the house. After I worked for a while I got my mother a washing machine.
There are still children in the community. Perhaps not as many as there used to be, though. When my mother taught
school, there would have been eight or ten grades in the school.
The Kempt Baptist Sewing Circle when it started out, they didn’t quilt as much. They made things like socks and
mittens. It was always for the benefit of the church. The first church records were in December 9, 1856. First recorded
minutes of a meeting for the Kempt Baptist Sewing Circle were in 1869 in the church book. The hall was a church
in 1820. For years they went to people’s homes for the meetings. Merna Ellis’ grandmother was a member of the
sewing circle as was my grandmother. During the war they made sunshine bags and sent them overseas.
When I first joined, we were hooking mats. We did a lot of knitting and embroidery and then we started quilting. We
moved to the church when an addition was built because it became easier to heat than the hall. The hall used to
have a steeple on it.
I lived in Hunt’s Point during the war. We had electricity but no lights were to be showing at night. We had dark blinds
that we pulled. One night, I was pulling my blind and suddenly the room was filled with light. I opened the blind to
see what was going on.“You’re bound to do that. Well, everybody did the same thing...There was a big searchlight. We
didn’t know what it was. After a while, mother came in and told me to put that blind down. And we went outdoors,
see what it was. It was just a big search light. The next day we found out it was a U-boat had come in there looking
for Liverpool. They got it mixed up. Which was easy to do.”
“I used to go to my grandparents’ a lot. Get on the train at Hunt’s Point, go down to Little Harbour or Sable River.
Everybody smoked, you know, kids and all. I don’t know how old I would have been. Thirteen maybe. Twelve...
And my uncle was a fisherman...they’d torpedoed a boat off there or something and they gathered up whatever
was floating on the water and brought it to shore. And in this stuff was these Cuban cigars. Of course, they were
waterlogged, but my grandfather took those. He liked cigars...He thought maybe he could dry them out...He laid
them on a window...to dry. I don’t know whether he ever smoked them or he didn’t. But I did. I didn’t do it twice....I
can’t stand the smell of cigar smoke...I still can’t stand it. It made me pretty sick. I guess the salt water didn’t improve
them either.”
At Christmas Eve, the store stayed open until all the customers left. That might be ten o’clock or midnight. “That
building would be full of people and .the cash register was over on this side. And I can remember standing there
and looking across and you could hardly see the other side because 90% of the people...basically the men were
smoking...But you didn’t think anything of it. This is the way it was. It would soak in your clothes but you didn’t smell
it. You didn’t pay any attention to it. Just cigarette smoke. But they did; they smoked immensely.
“Usually they brought a memorandum and you filled it. You went around the store and you picked it up. They didn’t.
You did...We still have the chairs. I think they’re over in Frank’s house. There was four or five chairs and people sit
on the counter. They sit everywhere.”
“We had a wood stove in the middle of the floor and had a plaque up over the door:‘Try spitting on the ceiling. Any fool
can spit on the floor’. People would come in a spit on the stove. They’d spit on the floor. You’d have a fit if someone
did that now. We didn’t like it but what could you do?...By the time that we owned the store, they didn’t do that.”
“And everything was on credit...Some people paid you cash but very few...You kept a record of it and they paid you
whenever...Some people would bring eggs and we would pay them for them. There was a bit of butter done that
way but not much. But you paid them for it...I don’t remember ever trading.”
17
The store was a meeting place in the community. I don’t miss the work but I do miss the people. When people came
into the store, they expected you to talk to them. The men in the community would come in the store and they
might buy a package of gum, or spend 5 cents for an ice cream. But they stayed and you talked to them.
When I worked there as a clerk, at Christmastime, I wrapped gifts. The men would buy gifts for their wives and I would
wrap them. Scotch tape was new. The tape came in red and green. I’d take white tissue paper and stick it down
with the coloured tape. We didn’t have plastic bags; we had paper bags and brown paper. Everything was wrapped
and tied with twine. If you sold a piece of meat you wrapped it. The store bought the meat in quarters and you cut
whatever the customer wanted. I still have the knives I used to cut the meat. “And hamburg was just as expensive
then as it is now...Bologna was just coming in.”
“I remember the first ballpoint pen I ever seen at the store. It was more like a crayon...I was bookkeeper, right? So we
had large ledgers and we used a quill pen in ledgers. We weren’t allowed to use a fountain pen for...three or four
years. And then after a while they let us use a fountain pen. But we never used a ballpoint...” Not until about 1961.
We had counter receipt books, little books with the carbon in them. The store kept the top slip and the customer got
the bottom one. There were no calculators. You had to know your multiplication and division. You had to figure it
out. There were scales but they had no figures on them for prices. It told how many ounces you had but you had
to figure it up.
We had a cash register and in fact it’s still at the store. It was only used to keep the money. There was a button to tell if
something was charged. It went into the sales but not into the cash. Everyone had a number.“I remember an elderly
man up in Grafton. He would come in. ‘My name is Donald Dukeshire and my number’s 99.’ Just like that.”
I worked with Douglas’ for two or three weeks in their general store. Lee Douglas was running it at the time. I boarded
in Caledonia. I worked there between my jobs at Keji and the Co-op. Then I went back to the Co-op. Peter Mackay and
Pearl DeLong were running the Co-op then. In the spring we sold fertilizer and seeds and they hired extra help.
I feel the park has had no impact on the area. My father was a guide at Keji for years. There was a huge lodge there.
The dining room seated 100 people and it was usually full. The waitresses had to have their grade eleven to work
there. They used white linen tablecloths and napkins. They had to launder these and iron them with gas irons since
there was no electricity when I first went there to work. They hired local people. Everything came from the area.
The only way to the lodge was by boat.
People who stayed at Keji Lodge were basically Americans. They came to spend the summer, to fish and hunt.
When Keji Lodge closed, Dick moved some of the cabins.
The park has only one local person working there that I know of. Two of the past superintendents, Harry DeLong and
Bill Wamboldt, were local men but most of them have been from away. Milford House used to hire local people as
well.
“I don’t like clear cutting...I don’t like big machines in the forest. But I know that’s the way of the future. We would
never allow it. And I hope our kids don’t... I think some of their ideas are a little bit foolish...If you have a tree farmer,
you’re not supposed to haul it across a brook...I don’t think it hurts the brook...Years ago they put logs in the rivers...
There were more fish in those rivers then than there are now, because they lived off of the bugs on the logs…There’s
just not enough common sense...You can’t do anything because you’re not going to do it right...You go out in the
woods and you cut it off it will come back but it’s going to take it a long time.”
“It takes a long time for a tree to grow from the size of that pencil to a tree that you can put your arms around...Did
you ever walk in an old growth forest? In an old growth forest it’s very difficult to walk...They [trees] fall down, the
rocks come up and get mossy and it’s very difficult to walk in an old growth forest.”
It’s all right to cut, but don’t strip it. “Don’t cut it all off.”
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19
F r e d e ric k ( ‘ Eric ’ ) Ar m s tron g
I was born July 26, 1941 in Caledonia in North Queens Cottage Hospital.
My childhood home was a story-and-a-half house with wood heat and no indoor
plumbing. The house was in Central Caledonia,“which doesn’t even exist now.
But there was a Central Caledonia that started oh, about where Juna Martin
lives....and I’m not sure how far up it extended...There was a school at the end
of the Whiteburne Road...and that was the Central Caledonia School District.
And Melita Ford was very upset. ‘I’d like to know,’ she said, ‘who decided there was no more Central Caledonia! I
was never asked about it!’”
I went to the Central Caledonia School until 1955. My parents moved to Ontario at that time and stayed for two years.
When we returned, I went to the newly built high school in Caledonia.
I feel some things in education have changed. For example, when I went to school, children learned their times tables.
“I still think they’re vital for kids learning math. There was a lot more discipline in schools in that point in time. If
you got in trouble with the teacher in school, when you got home, you were in trouble again. The parents backed
up what the teacher had said and most of the time, they were right.”
In the summers, I used to go swimming, fishing and just hanging around with friends. I’d help out neighbours with
their haying.“A lot less supervision. You’d be turfed out of the house as soon as you were up and got breakfast. We
would walk up to Whiteburne, which was a little over a mile in back of my cousin’s place, back out the road another
quarter of a mile up to where Geraldine Crouse lives now. Back over the back of that hill there’s a place there where
we used to go swimming. So that’s probably another mile. We usually packed a lunch and we stayed there until we
figured it was probably getting close to...as long as we were home by suppertime, which was six for us because Dad
didn’t close the garage until six, nobody worried...The oldest kid there might be twelve. Nobody ever drowned. You
fell off your bicycle, you got some scratches. You fell out of trees, you got some bumps and bruises. Occasionally
someone would break an arm or a leg but not very often.”
My father owned a truck. He eventually sold that and went into the garage business with a partner, Laurence
Wamboldt.
There was a garage as well on the lot across from the pizza shop, owned by Mr. McGuire, but it burned. Mersey had
a lot of trucks in the area, and my father and Laurence picked up a lot of work there. Because my dad wanted to
expand the business and Laurence was content with the way things were, they dissolved the partnership. Laurence
had worked at the garage previous to the partnership for Walter Scott. The oil company felt that Laurence had
seniority so he bought my father out. That’s when the family moved to Ontario.
My father developed a tumour on the brain about a year after the move to Ontario. He wasn’t able to work, so we
moved back to our house in Caledonia.
“I feel the largest
change in land
use in the area
is the logging
industry.”
20
My mother kept house until we moved back to Caledonia. Then she worked in
the post office and then worked in Liverpool at Jones, Milford and Freeman.
“She had a good education and she could type. She could type – it sounded
like a machine gun. She was a secretary for years.”
My mother’s father and grandfather were both deans at Acadia University. Her
father died when she was fairly young. When her father died, her mother went
to keep house for her grandfather.
I did chores when I was a boy. Until we got a pump, I carried water, carried
wood into the house, and shovelled snow. We didn’t have any farm animals
to care for.
Eric Ar m s tron g
I got some experience working in a garage with my father, so when I went out to work, I got a job at Fred Waterman’s
garage.
My parents and I had a difference of opinion about my education. I didn’t want to go back to school because I felt
I wasn’t learning. “I was on my second year of grade nine and I wasn’t learning any more than I had the first year.
‘If you’re going to live under my goddamned roof, you’ll do as I say!’ I said, ‘Okay, I’ll find another place to live.’ So I
turned sixteen in July and in August I joined the army. I spent 7 years in the army.”
I remember that at service stations when I was a young man, they did give service.“When you pulled into the service
station, we checked your oil, we checked the water, checked the tires. We wiped the windshield. And you might not
buy any gas today. But tomorrow you might. So we treated you well. We called you a IWW customer. Information,
Wind and Water. We still gave you full service.” Now, a person has to do their own service, pumping the gas, checking
the air in the tires, and so on. Last week in Liverpool at a garage, “a man asked if they had a compressor. The girl
looked at him as much as if he asked her about a helicopter...So the service stations aren’t any more.”
“There are a whole lot less people. There’s a whole lot less work.” I remember when I was in school, looking out the
window at the log trucks going by. Now there are fewer trucks on the road hauling logs.“The only people who are
left are older. The younger people have had to leave for the most part. There are a few local jobs, but not nearly
as many.” There used to be two garages right in the village of Caledonia, one in South Brookfield, another one in
Kempt.“There would have been five stores in Caledonia. I presume they were all making a living. They all kept their
doors open. Johnny Lacy had a store there at the end of the Devonshire Road; he made a living. There was one in
Westfield, a couple in Kempt, one in Maitland Bridge...South Brookfield. There were little stores everywhere and
they all apparently made a living.” Many of the stores had gas pumps as well.
I remember going to Molega to go swimming. There was very soft sand because of stuff left from the mines.
Lenard Telfer’s mother had the first new Volkswagen car in the area. “She paid $1635 for it. It was a dollar a pound.” I
remember a little beach that lay behind a point near the place the children used to swim.“Lenard and I were down
there one Sunday and Lenard said, ‘You know, these Volkswagens will float.’ And I said, ‘Really?’ ‘Yep,’ he said, ‘They
will.’ So we closed the doors and we pushed it out into the water and around that little point and up into that other
little beach. And then started it and backed it up onto the beach. But that beach, you couldn’t get down to it with a
vehicle. So people would come.‘How the hell did they get that car there?’...When we were ready to leave, we pushed
the car out. I don’t imagine his mother knew that...Didn’t even get the floor mats wet....Lenard was innovative.”
I feel the largest change in land use in the area is the logging industry.“When I was a kid growing up, there were very
few, if any, power saws. Mostly cutting down trees with an axe and a Swede saw. And the only equipment to haul
them out of the woods, maybe a farm tractor, but quite often a pair of horses or a pair of oxen. So (a) they didn’t
cut near the big timber because they had nothing to cut it down with, couldn’t get it out, no way to get it out of
the woods and no way to get it on the truck once they did. So the big timber got left. They didn’t slash everything
they came to.”There was also a limit as to how much you could cut and the size of the trees that could be harvested
and perhaps the species that could be cut.
I recall that there was a large orchard up where Carl Pierce lives. A Grant family bought the place and Joe Shupe
worked for them. “There was one time in the fall…his father dug them out of bed at three o’clock in the morning
because they had sixty barrels of apples in the orchard with no heads in them. It was starting to snow a little bit.
So they had to load these barrels on the stone drag and haul them into the barn..to keep them out of the snow.
But that sixty barrels of apples were on that one little farm. But there were a lot of farms around at that time that
were probably as big as that.”
“North Queens Fruit Packing Company was put in place just for that. And there was a lot of produce.”
Many of the woodlot owners would cut and spilt a cord of wood, cut in four foot lengths, mostly birch, to trade at
the Co-op for sugar, flour, lard, tea, molasses, kerosene or whatever they needed. The area around the Caledonia
Hardwood Company, which carried groceries in the mill office, was called Slabtown. I recall the wonderful smells
in those old stores.
21
Eric Ar m s tron g
I remember being able to hear a horse teamster, Locky Selton, calling to his horses in the woods as he was walking
to school.
“I very rarely see bats anymore...And according to Bob Bancroft, if we have bats in the area who overwinter in a hollow
tree or an old barn ... they aren’t so likely to catch this [white nose fungus] because they catch this by overwintering
in caves where there are a lot of them. Small portions of the species may survive. Hopefully they will.”
“I don’t know when was the last time I saw a barn swallow...But there aren’t any barns...I’ve heard if you build houses
they will nest in them. But I also heard from the same person that you have to clean them out every year....I suspect
they did nest in barns in the same nest for years....You could also build bat houses.”
“If the paper industry hadn’t collapsed and Bowater hadn’t walked away, the provincial government would have
let them cut the last god-damned tree in Nova Scotia. Now they may let Northern Pulp do the same thing, I don’t
know, because Northern Pulp is going into the Medway district now...The provincial government has got to have
more courage. I guess the politicians are locked into this whole thing – well it creates jobs. They are fighting that
whole issue in Pictou with that Boat Harbour cleanup, with the Northern Pulp mill polluting a lot. But it also creates
a lot of jobs.”
“I think the young people are much more environmentally aware. They’re much keener, they’re much sharper. It’s
going to take time for them to swing this thing around. But they will.”
I recall that when I was in the military, when we would do manoeuvres at Gagetown, if we came back from exercises,
and there was any fuel left in the jerrycans, it would be dumped on the ground. They didn’t want any surpluses.
“Because if you brought back gasoline this year, next year you wouldn’t get as much....It makes me think when I
listen to the controversy around Agent Orange spraying and all the other stuff I keep thinking they do not know
the half of it...they never will...of the stuff that was done.”
I have wondered about the area across from the pizza shop, where the Irving used to be. The site was checked as
being clean,“... there have been three buildings burnt and buried there...the vehicles that have been buried there...
oil was dumped in the swamp for years and years and years...Having said all that, the grass still grows in the lake,
the cattails are just as tall...I know it’s not good but nature’s awfully strong. It’ll heal itself.”
“When I worked at the park we cut an area around the park boundary...We went down into a place called Square
Camp. And three, four of the guys that were on that crew, at that time had worked at... Square Camp. And when
they left there, it was pretty much a barren. It had a sawmill, big piles of sawdust. They cut everything...They didn’t
recognize the place, it had grown up so fast. That was over a period of about 25 years...The trees had grown up and
everything looked tickity-boo.”
“We can destroy nature but we have to work hard at it. It will heal itself awfully fast...if we give it half a chance.”
“I think that MTRI – I was working at the park when that first got going – and that was a great thing for the area.”
22
23
M a r g a r e t ( ‘ P e g g y ’ ) Ar m s tron g
I was born in Weymouth, Nova Scotia. I grew up in a large Victorian home. My
father was a bookkeeper. My mother was a house-gal, as were most women of
her period. I was a sandwich in between two brothers. And that’s how I learned
to run fast because they used to pick on me.
I went to a four room school. From there I went on to Kings University in Halifax. “That was like Alice in Wonderland,
going from Weymouth to Halifax...Weymouth was a bi-cultural community. The Catholic kids usually went away to
university but I was probably the first one in my generation to go to university from a Protestant family.”
“Basically I guess I had an ordinary childhood. Loved sports. Stayed outdoors all I could.” I skied and skated during
the winters. We played ball and Cops and Robbers and all those things.
Weymouth during World War II is what I remember. It was a shipbuilding community. “It was very exciting because
they were building war-time vessels – Fairmiles - for the United States navy...I don’t know what kind of craft for the
British. So our community grew. It was a lumbering community to start with. And a shipping community.”
My grandfather had a store with a wharf. Some of the vessels were launched there. The LeBlanc shipyard was very
prominent during the war. There were lots of sailors which was a great boon to the community. I was a little young
– I was around twelve years old. But for the teenage girls, it was quite exciting for them.
“When the vessels were ready to be launched, the community changed entirely because the officers would start coming
in. The naval officers, from England, from the United States and so on. So it was kind of an exciting community. A
very busy community.”
My grandfather was in the lumbering business. He sent lumber to Europe.
We used to have a scout hall and a cricket field. We had dances at Father Frecker’s Hall. It was the Catholic church’s
hall.
There was a French and a black community in Weymouth. Our school was quite interesting because it was very multicultural with the black community, and very rural communities. There were some native children attending. This
was before consolidated schools.“And we all got along. Nobody told us we should hate each other or anything. We
were all friends. It was just a natural thing.”
“Time was measured
by the train whistle
and the mill whistle.
Nobody bothered
with clocks or anything...”
We had a French Acadian teacher. During the war, every morning, in our
classroom of grade fours to grade eights, we stood at attention and we
would sing “God Save the King.”There were pictures on the wall of King
George and Queen Mary and Winston Churchill. We all saluted the flag
and nobody thought anything of it. We were just kids. Then the teacher
would turn on the news. If the news was bad, which it usually was, we
would all stand at attention and sing “There will Always be an England.”
None of us had ever been to England and some of us probably never
would. But here we were in this little school.
I won a writing contest from the Digby Courier for my story about
Armistice Day and war experiences as told by me as a twelve year old
girl. I won a pewter flag.
“The consolidated schools changed everything, which was wonderful for
rural communities because it got the kids out into a larger area...They
24
P e g g y Ar m s tron g
had more associations with different people and different ideas and so on.”
“We walked to school, of course. We didn’t have school buses and so on and kids who lived outside had to board in
town...And the poor teacher. I remember in our high school, grades nine, ten, eleven and twelve. And our teacher was
the principal. He had to manage the school and the other teachers. Once in a while there would be five classrooms
but basically there were always four. He had to teach. Grade eleven and twelve we had to do provincial exams; we
had to prepare for that. Along with that during the war we had a defence course, which was a federal course and we
had to write an exam on that. Things like aircraft recognition. I don’t know how many subversive planes were flying
over Weymouth, but anyway, we had to learn everything about the different ranks in the military and anything you
can mention. And...the local doctor had to come in and give us first aid in case of all these emergencies so we were
really trained. And then the principal also had to do... sea cadets and there was no end to his responsibilities. And
if he didn’t like it you soon knew it and you weren’t in school anymore...There were some kids there – you know,
seat warmers in the winter and they were not interested in the classroom.”
When I was in grade seven, one of the young fellows was too young to go in the armed forces, so he went in the
merchant navy. “And he was killed. He was gone. The ship went down and he was gone. And that was the way it
was. But they could hardly wait, these young fellows, to get out and to get into the action.”
“I knew one fellow. He was sixteen and he ran away so many times, his father just signed the papers, that he could
join. He was going. He did come back, that one. But some of them didn’t.”
“I have scrapbooks I’ve saved up in my storeroom...art classes were all about battle ships, and scrapbooks with the
king and queen, and the royal families of all of Europe and the countries that fell...We just kept up with it in our
little school. It was quite amazing.”
“In the community, one of the young men was taken prisoner of war. And the whole community was in sympathy
with the family. If anyone disappeared in action, it was really a community thing. And the women all made duffel
bags and even in Weymouth there was a cigarette club, if you can believe that, where they raised money to buy
cigarettes to send to the guys overseas. And it was the Cigarette Club.”
“Time was measured by the train whistle and the mill whistle. Nobody bothered with clocks or anything...Our school
was near the railroad tracks. And there was a freight train that went through Weymouth at 3:15. And that would
blow the whistle at Sissiboo Falls. That was a little way-station...and we would just pick up our books and were out
of school. We were never dismissed in high school. We just left. That was the signal.”
“And everybody went to work in the morning according to the mill whistle. When we were out skating as kids, when
the mill whistle blew at 5:00, or 6:00, whatever time it was, you had to head for home. And in those days we walked
miles to go skating.”
“We used to play spies...And then we did have a real one
in Weymouth. And he happened to be living – boarding
– next door to my home. And it did turn out that he was
a real German spy because he was doing diagrams of
the shipyard...So it all paid off, all this speculation. A lot
of people never knew it but we, of course kids, you know
what kids are like. We were everywhere...we just ran free.
Now, why, we’d probably be in jail. We’d steal cherries from
everybody’s cherry trees. And nobody minded because the
other kids were in our cherry trees.”
Peggy’s pewter Canadian flag, a prize for her
WWII Remembrances
“We used to live on the shore – the dear old Sissiboo River. My
friends and I, we would pack a lunch or two lunches and we
would swim on both tides and we would just spend all day
on the shore. And we would pick mussels. Now probably
the health authorities would be after us.”
25
My friend Anna and I would read these crazy old novels by Mrs. Southworth and she would be reading the novel and
I’d be acting it out on the shore. We had our little stage. I was like Anne of Green Gables. I had to be the writer.
We didn’t have much in Weymouth but we had a theatre. Well, we had the cricket field and I played ball on the girls’
softball team. I was the shortstop until the day I got hit in the forehead with the ball. I was twelve or thirteen. I
literally saw stars. Blue, white, red. And it was my brother who did it. He stood there laughing.
Guess what our name was. The Weymouth Wharf Rats. We played against the Weymoth North Mud Turtles. We had
a lot of fun.
“I did write an article once... called “Robin and Me in the Sweet Cherry Tree”. Oh, we had fun...We did raids. We did
organized raids and we had everything mapped out in the village, you know, where the cherry trees were. And
whose cherry tree was ripe at this time...And then the police caught up with us once. Most of us got away but two
or three of the boys were nailed.”
I used to go pick blueberries with my grandfather. He used to own a lot of mills and woods property. He’d go back
cruising timber. “I was such a nosey little creature. He would take me and my cousin Gerry, who was a girl. My two
brothers were not interested. We were his four grandchildren. But the two of us girls, we were everywhere. Back in
the woods and back of New Tusket...We knew where the cranberries and blueberries were. At the cookhouse at
one of the mills, the cookee and the cook would see us coming and they’d give us these enormous cookies that
were as big as pancakes.”
Grandfather caught us swimming in the millpond one time. “That was not a good thing.”
Cousin Gerry and I were partners in crime.“She was known as the pretty one and I was known as the smart one...We
went swimming on Sunday afternoon. We didn’t want our grandmother to know. We didn’t care who else knew,
but Grandma Wagner must not know that we were swimming on Sunday.”
“We belonged to the Church of Christ which was an offshoot of the Presbyterian Church. There was one in Southville
that was about seven miles in back of Weymouth. And of course my grandfather and all of his old relatives – his
brothers and that – they were all deacons and elders in the church and very strict...We had to go to church twice
on Sundays, go to prayer meetings on Wednesday nights. It didn’t do me a lot of good! But it was what we did. It
was our life.”
There was the day that my grandfather almost divorced me. “He was into politics. He and one of his confreres, it was
after church in Southville, and they were sitting in my grandfather’s car. They didn’t know that I was supposedly
asleep in the back seat. And they were discussing their strategies and so on.” I realized they were going to discover
me and they did. “I was sworn to secrecy.”
“They started a Masons in Weymouth and my grandfather was one of the...whatever they are the Masons had…head
honchos. And he had a store and a warehouse and another building attached to his store...The Masonic Lodge was
upstairs in...part of one of his buildings. So of course, my cousin and I, one day, we thought we’d have a lark. We went
up and got into the secret chamber, tried on the regalia...and started citing the book. And then we heard footsteps
on the stairs and there was Grandfather! He said, ‘If this goes no further, we’ll never discuss it again to anyone.’ And
that was it. And now I’m going on tape after...70 years...I’m 85 so that’s how far back we’re going.”
“When I first came to Granville Beach...it was basically a farming community. David [my husband] grew up next door
to this place. His mother and her generation were basically farm wives. They did everything. And they also ran the
community. They were very community minded. The church was very prominent in the community. And the social
club, I think “The Helping Hand” it was called here.”
There was no school in Granville Beach when I came here. This community and Port Royal were in the original
consolidation. None of my kids went to school in Granville Beach or Granville Ferry. They went to Annapolis Royal.
“I think consolidated schools changed the whole picture of the community.”
26
I went to Acadia and took my B. Ed. in 1950-51. “Guess what community we were studying in Small Communities in
Action. It was Ed. 4. It was Annapolis Royal. Because Annapolis Royal had started with a community center. After
the war, the Cornwallis had given...the Legion was their Rec. Hall, and it was deeded to the town. They had no use
for it. So then a whole group started the community center. There were 19 communities involved. And everybody
was pitching in...the little community halls were closing and everyone was going to town because consolidation
was the thing...We studied that in Ed. 4 because it was so new. And we were going into...Adult Education and all
that...We had to go out into the little communities and do all these things and teach them how to square dance
and do all this community stuff.”
“When I came here and Fred Fry showed up in town, we’d both taken Dr. Marshall’s course at Acadia and we solemnly
promised to each other... we swore we’d never tell anyone that we had taken folk dancing. But that was the trend...
Twenty, twenty-five years later, it switched around and the community halls wanted to come back...and there was
a Little Red Schoolhouse program. It’s interesting how sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the
same.”
“One summer, God help me, I had to run the swimming program. That was Shirley Kerr’s project. Nineteen communities
went swimming down at Cornwallis. And every community had to have a representative and we had to hire
instructors…because our kids wanted to learn to swim. And we had to have a bus...That was all done through the
community center.”
I met my husband the first year I came here at a Hallowe’en party.“I came to Annapolis to teach the fall of 1951...There
were two new teachers in school that year. Me, I was the senior high teacher...They needed two classes for grade
nine. And then they gave me all the courses the other teachers didn’t want to teach – grade eleven Economics,
grade twelve World Problems, which the kids had to pass for their provincial exams, grade seven, eight and nine
French. And this was my first year of teaching. It was quite an eye-opener.”
Technology has advanced so much. My granddaughter, who lives in Moncton, is pregnant and at four months along,
she sent me an email with a picture of her ultrasound. “Isn’t that incredible?!... These things are beyond anything
you’d ever imagine.”
“I remember ‘way back when we got our first refrigerator. Our first radio. Television wasn’t even heard of, you know...
The ballpoint pen…When I took my B. Ed. at Acadia, Dal and Kings...I had a brand new coat. At exams we had to have
a fountain pen and a bottle of ink with you. Nice new grey coat, coming out, spilled the ink well all over the front of
the coat. A year or two later the ballpoint pen was invented. I thought, ‘ Where were you when I needed you?’”
“It’s totally amazing, the changes in transportation. The internet, for heaven’s sake is kind of scary, isn’t it?” I do a lot of
writing and I have to get that on. I do use it for email and for research. I find you have to be wary because you can’t
100% count on the research. I see mistakes so you have to check the sources carefully. After my husband passed
away, I would spend evenings using the internet to go to places we had visited, like the Louvre or West Edmonton
Mall. I did a virtual tour of my son’s new apartment. I use it for education or for fun. And I play Solitaire and Bridge
on the computer.
Well, I had to get on the internet when I was working on my seafaring book because the Nova Scotia Museum wouldn’t
deal with you any other way.”
Kids learn how to do all this stuff in grade two these days. “All the things I belong to, The Writer’s Federation and
everything is online...Of course, I forget all the passwords.” I listen to my granddaughter sing to me on YouTube.
27
Effi e B a l l
I was born in Springfield, Annapolis County on March 29, 1926. I was the fifth child
of a family of seven. My family moved to Caledonia when I was a preschooler.
My father had a farm.“He sold vegetables, and beef, and pork.”The farm was three
hundred and some acres in size.
He used horses and oxen, a pair of each, to do the heavy work such as hauling out wood or putting in hay.“Fall a tree
and limb it up and had to have something to move it.”
The wood my father cut “went to pay for the place. That went to an old fellow, James Crouse, Sr., an old guy that he
bought the place from.”
If we had to go get groceries, we would take the horses. The horses were also used to bring in the hay from the fields.
“I drove them to trip the fork....They had a big fork and they hauled [the hay] in by wagon and you had to stick
this big ...fork into the load of hay and...you pulled one string to buckle it, to hold the load on and then there was
another one you pulled when it was in the right place in the barn and [that] other one...was the one you pulled to
trip the fork. The horses and oxen usually hauled it in the barn.” Then the men tramped the hay down to settle it
in the mow.
We grew “potatoes, carrots, turnips, cabbage, parsnips, broccoli (very little of that)....most everything.” The vegetables
were stored in the cellar of the old house. It stayed cool down there because it had a rock floor.
The house was heated by a wood furnace, that was in the hallway, and a stove in the kitchen.
My mother “had plenty to do, feeding that gang. There was seven of us kids. She knit a lot. She sold socks, mittens,
and she knit sweaters and sold them... She had her hands full.”
We never had electricity when I lived with my parents. I had left home by the time electricity came.
I worked in Caledonia at various stores when I left home.“I started at Charlie Cushing’s. I should say Mr. And Mrs. Frank
Cushing’s then. But she wasn’t living. It was Frank and Charlie, Frank and his son.”
“I was in Liverpool and I worked in a store in Liverpool for...about fifteen years I guess. That’s where I bought my car...
my first car.” It was a little Chev. This would have been in the ‘40s. “The car was older than I was so to speak.”
“I recall seeing deer
and moose when I
was a girl. I would
see them in the
woods when I was
walking to school in
the mornings. ”
28
She went to school in Caledonia. “It was a two room...part school. One
from one to six and the other was from seven to twelve.” She liked
school. But “it got too much for me after a while, ‘cause I had arthritis
since I was a kid....”
We walked to school.“We only had about two and a half to three miles....
Snow banks to your knees.” They didn’t plow the roads then. “My dad
had a place cleared out with a plow pulled by the oxen through the
woods out our road a ways...not going out to the road....He cleared a
path through there for us to travel back and forth to school. Saved us a
mile. He could get through there with the oxen or the horses.” We used
this path when we needed to get groceries as well.
My teachers were “Mrs. Foster Ball....she taught school in the primary
E F F I E B ALL
part. Grace Scott taught in the advanced part. Grace Scott taught there as long as I went to school. She was a good
teacher.” She was also the school’s principal.
When I got married, I had one child. “He is now 62 years old.... He was the first one I had...I didn’t have a whole big
whack of them.” When my son was born the doctor told me I shouldn’t have any more because of my arthritis.
I was proud of the work I did at the Liverpool Dominion Store. “I could do the manager’s work at the store where
I worked. Danny MacLeod was floor manager and Jackie MacLeod was produce manager. Harry Pike was meat
manager. And I was the head cashier.”
My husband, Robert Ball, helped my father work his farm. They sold beef, pigs and produce.
I saw a lot of changes in Caledonia over the years. When I returned from living and working in other communities, I
noticed a change in the people who lived in Caledonia.“There was hardly anyone there I knew. Just a few that lived
next door to my mom.”
Businesses had changed as well. Stores that used to take whole meats required it to be butchered and halved. “In
two pieces so they could handle it easier.”
My mom sold “eggs, chickens, pullets and whatever.” Charlie Cushing took any animals we sold for meat. He then sold
the meat to the stores.
I recall the old warehouse, the Co-op store.“Nelson Douglas store....Cushing had sale for beef... You could go there to
buy it or go to the store. You’d get it a few cents cheaper at Cushing’s because it wasn’t wrapped...”
Mrs. Ashton, Mrs, Cook and Mrs. Bell also had stores in Caledonia when I was just a girl.
For fun, I liked to play hopscotch. Many of the children played baseball but my arthritis prevented me from taking part
in the sport.“I stuck mostly to knitting, socks and mittens for Mom.You know, not for her...if they turned out okay they
could sell them. I made some doll clothes. When I was going to school, the teacher was teaching sewing in Home
Economics. I made a blouse...that took first prize. And I wore it for years.” It was white with red flowers on it.
My mother bought yarn and fabric from one
of the stores in Caledonia. “You could buy
most everything you wanted in one store.”
Groceries and dry goods.
My father liked to deal with the Co-op because
he could sell his produce, eggs and pullets
there.
Effie and her sisters Margaret, Debbie, and Olive and her sisterin-law Jean
For travel, most people had horses. Some
people had big trucks for working for the
Mersey. “But they wouldn’t be supposed to
run them around for their pleasures and
use... We had a train that went through three
days a week.” The line ran from Caledonia
to Bridgewater and then on to Halifax. I
often travelled the train to Bridgewater
for treatments for my shoulders and back.
I would see Dr, Marcus. He would make up
medicine for me himself to treat my arthritis.
He would give me the treatment in a quart
bottle; I had to take it three times a day. It
29
e ffi e b a l l
tasted very strong but it worked to dull the pain.
I recall seeing deer and moose when I was a girl. I would see them in the woods when I was walking to school in the
mornings. I remember one morning, I was walking my younger sister and brother, Olive, and Merv to school. Merv
was teasing Olive. I scolded them. “I gave them the devil this morning. I said, ‘If you fellers don’t stop this arguing
and crying, and going on,’ I said, ‘I’m going to take you both and turn you around and walk you right back home.’
...That was a promise ‘cause I made it.”
“This particular morning...Olive threw a rock and hit Merv in the face.” When I scolded her, Olive started to cry. Finally
I “said, ‘Come on, we’ll run away from him.’ We didn’t get that far and we ran into a moose...He was standing right
there with his head down...and I was looking him right in the eyes.” I wasn’t scared because “I remembered Dad
saying,’So long as you’re looking a wild animal right in the eyes, they’re not going to bother you. They can see you’re
quiet, not moving and you’re not dangerous and if you don’t bother them, they’ll take off the first chance they get.’
And he was right. We never said a word. We just stood there. I could have reached out and given it a slap on the
butt...it was that close to Olive and I.” After a bit, Merv got up to us and asked, ‘Well, what stopped you?’ Then he
saw the moose too. He had never seen a moose with such a rack as that one. The moose “covered the whole width
of the path. You couldn’t have got around it.”
I remember that money was tight in those days.“You didn’t get a big pile for nothing.” My father made $3 a day, and
had to raise a family on that. “And that was big money then. I mean, he was one of the better workers, you know
what I mean? He could do most everything that was required. Like, he could cut pulp wood or logs or cord wood
or whatever...I think when I started with Dominion Store, I got $50 a week.” I worked Monday through Saturday. I
worked from eight o’clock in the morning, until “any time at night. Sometimes it would be from 8 to 10, supposed
to be...But you hardly ever got out of there at that time.” We had to stay until the work was done.
30
31
C ly d e B a lt z e r
“I was born in Kentville in 1947. My mom and dad resided in New Minas at that
time and in ‘53 Dad started a dealership - a Pontiac-Buick dealership – in
Annapolis and we moved. And all of my growing up years were basically in
Annapolis Royal.”
I had a great home. I couldn’t ask for better parents than I had. And I had a great time growing up. It was a wonderful
community to grow up in. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at school. I was not a stellar student. There were things
that interested me a lot more than school; almost everything.
“Then I graduated in ‘65 and went to Acadia. I got my B. Com. and Bachelor of Education and started teaching. Later
I went back for my Masters and I taught for 32 years. And I took a couple of years off and I went back and ran the
Digby Area Learning Association. Then I took a couple of years off and got my realtor’s license, which is what I’m
now doing.”
My family included my parents, my sister and me.
“My dad was on the town council. He was on the school board at one point. He had his business, of course. He was a
member of the Masonic Lodge. Mom was very involved with the church, the guild - a couple of guilds – and various
aspects of the church. My sister and I both went to Sunday School regularly. And then when I got to be about eleven
or twelve, they conscripted a whole bunch of boys in the community that belonged to the Anglican Church into
the choir and into altar serving, so we were all confirmed early and put to work. Good thing, too. Kept us out of
mischief...That sort of gave me my foundation for my spiritual education and I’ve appreciated that throughout my
whole life.”
“My friends and I, when we were very young, spent a lot more time outdoors. Of course, there were none of the
electronic toys we have today. We didn’t get a television until 1957 and even at that point we had a crank telephone,
which was hooked to an operator in the middle of town. When Dad went out for the evening, he called the operator
to tell her what number he was going to be at. She’d forward all his calls to there. What you call real service.”
“We spent a lot more time outside and we spent a lot of time making our own fun. My friend Graham and I both wanted
to build boats to play on the French Basin so we used whatever tools we had. He was lucky to have a father that was
the industrial arts teacher. I had a father who had a hammer and a saw. Very supportive, but he wasn’t a carpenter.
So we both built boats and we went down to the basin and played with them and had a wonderful time.”
“You spent a lot of time playing games with your friends and coasting at the fort and doing things that were outside.
Nobody worried about you being around the community because everybody else in the community kept an eye
on you and if you got out of line, first you go it there, and when you got home, you got it again. It was being raised
in a community which I think is a real benefit. Everybody recognized that
they had a responsibility to bring up the children in the community and
everybody did. I think we were very fortunate for it.”
“I think this move
back into smaller
farms and organically grown things is
another thing that’s
very good.”
32
“School was great. I had wonderful teachers for the most part. They didn’t
necessarily think of me that way, I’m sure. Given my experience later I
realize that you go through times when you’re not quite the genius you
think you are.”
“One of the things I see is...I don’t know if you are familiar with the whole
concept of essential skills. Service Canada has a list of what they call
essential skills and they established these by going out to businesses all
over the country and coming up with a list of fourteen or fifteen items that
all people should have to become employable. When we were in school,
of course there were academic skills like your math, reading, writing and
document use. But the rest of them were all soft skills and every one of them was inculcated in the school system.
They were part of the way you had to live within the school system. You were made responsible for things, you had
to meet deadlines, you had to behave in socially acceptable fashion.”
“All of these skills are not being inculcated at this time in children which is very unfortunate. I think it’s an awful waste
of youth. And when you look at the fact that we have 20% unemployment in our youth compared to 7% in the
rest of the population, and they can’t figure out why. But we haven’t given those youth the skills they need to be
employable. And when I was running DALA, of course, we had a career resource center and we kept hearing from
employers – ‘Look, don’t send me anyone under 35.’ I had one guy, he hired 25 or 30 people and he said ‘Don’t send
me anybody under 50.’”
“When I was 35, I applied to become a chartered accountant and they said, ‘You’re over the hill.’ And now, 35 is a time
when they’re starting to pick people up and they want to work with them...It’s a sign that these skills that we’re not
giving students. We’re looking for political correctness. We don’t want to hurt their feelings or they’re not supposed
to fail...However, failure is a fact of life. We should be teaching them to deal with failure and the lessons that it has
for us. We should be teaching them all these things that are life skills that they’ll keep forever, regardless of what
they do. We’re not doing that, which is very, very unfortunate. And I’m so glad that I am not teaching now because
I would have an awful time with that.”
“We’ve got communities now that are paranoid. They’re afraid that there’s all kinds of pedophiles out there and they
can’t let their children loose in the community. Our parents sent us out to play in the community and we might
be gone half the day, maybe all day. They wouldn’t worry about us because the whole community looked after
us. If I got in trouble at school, I’d be disciplined in school and when I got home, I’d be disciplined again, to make
me understand that this was necessary. Now, if you have a child who gets in trouble at school, they go home and
Mom and Dad threaten to sue the school board and all this other foolishness. Again, we’re not building that set of
skills that that child needs.”
“I went home from school one day ... I’d had trouble with this teacher all year long and I was in grade eight so it must
have been his fault. I told [my mother] if he comes on me again, I’m going to tell him where to go and how to get
there. My mother said, ‘Oh no, you’re not. You’re going to keep your mouth shut. This is a life lesson. You’d better
learn it.’ And I did and I thank my mother for doing that for me. You can’t always express your views on things. When
you’re fourteen or fifteen years old, you look at things a little differently. And sometimes you need a little touch of
correction.”
“Everybody is in a tear about anybody that will discipline their child or have anything to say to their child when
in fact, often times if they co-operated with the individual who was upset with their child, the child would learn
important lessons that they really need to have. It concerns me the direction I see things going, particularly when
you see the amount of time children are spending on various kinds of electronic equipment. And I found even at
the end of my teaching, fifteen years ago, that I used to play role-playing games with the children. I found in the
last two years they were losing the capacity to sit down and function as a group in dealing with a problem in a
role-playing situation. I know it will be worse now because their whole life is spent twiddling their thumbs on a
piece of electronic equipment, or in front of a video game or something. They’re losing those personal skills that
we had to develop because that was what we had.”
“We had to be able to create our own fun. You never heard kids say, when I was little, ‘I’m bored.’ But you hear a lot of
children saying that today...Either they’re in a totally structured situation or else they’re home playing electronic
stuff. They never have to do what we had to do. If you wanted fun, you had to go out and make it. If you wanted a
toy, you had to go out and make it. You know, there wasn’t a lot of money, which I think was a good thing, and it
required a lot of creativity.”
Graham Dalton and I got back into model railroading after 50 years. We’ve done a lot of research on the Dominion
Atlantic Railroad that ran from Halifax to Yarmouth and into Truro. It was interesting to see how many industries that
railroad serviced 100 years ago. Almost all of them have disappeared. There were trains designed for transporting
barrels of apples from the valley. By the end of WWII, that was gone. You watched industries disappear, farmland
turn back into forest. In the community where I live, if you look at a photograph taken in 1930, you can look across
open fields. Now there are trees so even from a high spot, you can’t see the village. The advent of the vineyards is
an interesting thing, though. We’re seeing a new type of agriculture and I find that very exciting because some of
the farmland is coming back into production.
33
“I think this move back into smaller farms and organically grown things is another thing that’s very good.”
When I was a teenager and young man, the fishing industry was going strong. Some people are still able to make
a living at it, but not like they were 30 years ago. Paper mills, except for two, are gone in the province. So lumber
mills have closed.
“There are a lot of changes economically but on the other hand, I look at the advent of wind farms, the beginning of
tidal power – we’re going through a period of change – I think that’s going to be interesting. I’m not going to see a
lot of it in my lifetime...But I have to say when I go to visit my children in the city...I am so thankful I live in western
Nova Scotia....You try to talk to people on a city street, they look at you like you’ve got a cog slipping in there.” Here
we have a friendliness that people appreciate.
I’ve been involved with the Wharf Rat Rally in Digby. I don’t like crowds, but two years ago, I did go down around the
crowd.“And it was the most amazing atmosphere for the number of people...there was no bad language, there was
no fight, there was no mess. Everybody was having a good time. It was a delightful five days.” The rally has grown
since then. I volunteered to co-ordinate the volunteers for it and that was a fascinating experience. People like to
come to the event because of the atmosphere in this small community and how welcoming it is. People travel from
Alberta, B.C., New Zealand, France and a lot of Americans. “We have something that’s very special here...I’ve got so
I appreciate it more as I’ve gotten older.”
At the rally, there’s one part-time paid employee and the best part of 200 volunteers, including a volunteer board,
that puts it all together. It’s quite a statement to the community to see the number of people coming in and how
smoothly things are run.
“I get people coming to buy houses from other parts of Canada and that’s one of the things you see in them. They
see something here they don’t find in other places. I think you find it in the Atlantic Provinces. Something that is
unique in Canada...I don’t think you find it anywhere else. And it’s a really delightful thing. I wouldn’t trade all the
extra money I’d make in Alberta for that.”
“When I was a boy, I never saw a raptor. And now, we see them all the time. Hawks, eagles, owls – so that has changed.
Now, maybe they just stayed further back in the woods.” When my wife and I go to the city, we watch the trees
along the way to watch for hawks or eagles.
Once I went up in a small plane with a friend. We could see a bird circling above us. So we went up 2000 feet and there
was an eagle. We circled with the eagle and then we saw one up another 500 feet so we went up with that one. We
could see all the way to New Brunswick and to the South Shore from that height. What a wonderful panorama the
bird gets from up there.
On that trip we spotted moose and bears. It was fascinating.
I see a lot more deer around. Some of the small birds aren’t seen as frequently. “We used to see evening grosbeaks.
I haven’t seen an evening grosbeak in years. Lots of the pine grosbeaks. On the other hand, we are seeing rosebreasted grosbeaks, which we never saw before...I think there’s a change in the make-up of that population.”
There may be more raptors here because of the end of spraying with DDT. It had an effect on the egg shells. With
the eagles, I think they are here because they are feeding them chicken offal over in the Canning area. I went up
to see them and it was wonderful. “We were parked under an old dead elm tree and there were 17 eagles sitting
in the elm tree. I couldn’t believe it.”
“I’ve seen a sharp-shined hawk out in the bush at home. We often see red-tails and some other raptors.”
We see quite a bit of wildlife, even an occasional coyote.
34
A lot of the sewage has been cleaned from the Annapolis River. “When we were boys playing down there, there was
a sewer outlet down this way and there was one up that way and we played in the middle. All the sewage from
Annapolis Royal went into that river. In fact, I think every community up that river dumped the sewage into the
river. In that way, I think the river is a lot healthier. At the same time, they went and put the causeway in and that
changed the whole ecosystem up to Bridgetown, I would say, where the last of the tidal was. There have been
different things there, positives and negatives.”
I think wind power is wonderful. I can see the wind turbines going over there – they’re marvellous. I marvel at people
who complain about the noise. I drive down the Neck and I don’t hear anything. If you’re living next to the road,
you’ve got 18-wheelers driving up and down past your place making a heck of a lot more noise…They’re beautiful.
Such elegant structures. We’ve got to look at it, you know. There’s no way around it. We’ve got to start looking at
alternatives and I think that’s one of them.”
I’m excited that we’ll have serious tidal generation and it looks like the service of them will be in the Digby area and
I’m very excited for that.
“I think we have to look at the alternative, green energies. There are going to be people who complain about it but
I’ve found in any community you’ve got that certain group of people that, it wouldn’t matter if you did what they
wanted, they’d complain about it. I think we need to be prepared to go forward, complaints or not, and find ways
that we can move away from burning fossil fuels and move into more eco-friendly systems of power generation.”
“Last winter I went and got heat pumps for my house. So, since that I’ve used the furnace one day... I was burning a
lot of litres of diesel fuel and furnace fuel to keep my home heated and to heat my hot water. These are very good
in terms of the electricity they use; the cost is significantly less than the oil and it’s a much more comfortable heat
for my home than the oil was. So I like it all the way around.”
“When we were expanding the nursery school, at the end of my time at DALA, I put in a geo-thermal heating system...
and we retro-fitted the old building...It has just been hugely successful there. I think there are a lot of potential
things, you know.”
“My friend, Doug Potter, has a small plane and he did a lot of flying for the group doing research on fish and turtles
in Keji and the Tobeatic. He had an antenna so all of their transponders would transmit to the plane – they’d follow
the transponders on the fish and find out where the fish and turtles were going. That, I thought, was a pretty cool
thing. He thoroughly enjoyed it.”
“In my community, Reg Baird spent years and years and years...working on the trout population and the salmon
population and so forth. So there’s a fair amount of interest in the community I live in. I just have never had the
time to do it to this point.”
A young fellow who was a student at the adult learning center goes faithfully to do work with the Banding’s turtles.
He spends weeks out there.
“We have to live in the now. Things are different now than they were when I was a kid. You know, we had one telephone
in the house. Nobody made long distance calls unless they absolutely had to, and God forbid you’d have a long
conversation in that long distance...We had a television that had one station, and I think we were better for it. On
the other hand, I wouldn’t want to give up my computer, my email...Last night, for instance, I was Skyping with my
daughter in Rochester, Minnesota...We don’t get to see her very often because she’s been working so hard with
her medical degrees...She calls us because we can never figure out when to call her. The technology is wonderful
because I could send her a text message or I could send her an email or we can Skype back and forth. I’m not against
technology. I think it’s wonderful.”
“I’m just kind of worried about the effect it’s having on people. When you see some of the aberrant behaviours that
kids have today and I really think a lot of it’s due to the games they play...We were forced to be social creatures
35
because if you weren’t a social creature, you really would have nothing to do. And now you can entertain yourself
and never leave your home...It’s hitting all of our community organizations. Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, lodges – almost
every kind of community organization is getting euchred and it kind of worries me because some of the things
we take so for granted – fire departments…You know, if you have people who aren’t willing to leave home and
participate, what are we going to do for a fire department?”
“The whole community is my neighbours...I leave all my doors open. I don’t lock my cars. It’s a wonderful way to live.
That, I hope, doesn’t disappear.”
36
37
G e rtrud e ( ‘ G e rt ’ ) B e nt
I was born in 1940 in Carleton Corner, where the hotel is now. That was the Bridgetown Cottage Hospital. I grew up
in a family of eight.
We lived in a small home until I was eleven years old and then we moved to the farm. My parents worked at Graves’
Apple Company before we moved to the farm. The farmhouse had 16 rooms. We lived off the farm. “We had our
beef, we had our pork, we had our milk and our eggs. You never went hungry. You had your gardens in the summer.”
My father did the farm chores and when the boys got old enough they helped him. My father also did woods work.
The work was done differently than it is today. They used a horse and power saws rather than a big harvester.
“I can’t remember us ever having a farm tractor. We did the haying with the horses. Mowing...Farm equipment was
probably very expensive and the ordinary person couldn’t afford to have it.”
My mother ran a nursing home for a short time. There were usually 24 people sitting at our table. And my mother
did all the work.
I attended Clarence West School from primary to grade seven. I walked a mile and a half to school each morning.
Then we moved to the farm and my mother was pleased that the school was right across the road. She didn’t think
she’d have to pack any more lunches. But that was the year that Bridgetown Regional High School was built. I was
a member of the first class to go into grade seven there and go through to grade twelve.
“When I went to school,...the one room school house, of course, you were together. I think that you learned from each
other. But when we got to grade seven...when we got to high school we had to buy our own books. And when I
was thirteen years old...it was a large family, I worked for Walsh’s restaurant in Bridgetown for 25 cents an hour to
earn enough money to buy my books...They couldn’t afford books for all of us.”
“When I went to school, you didn’t think of university. ‘Cause if you lived in the country, there was a discrepancy
between town kids and country kids. We weren’t all told that we could go to university. Town kids were always
told. We were the bus kids and they were the town kids. And I never knew that I had the marks to go to university
because no one ever told me. So what did I do? I went out and got a job and then later in life...I found out I could
go to university. So I didn’t graduate from university until I was 48 years old with a B.A., B.Ed...I always thought the
ones in town had a lot more than I did because we lived on a farm and we thought that the store owners all had big
money. But come to find out…speaking with one of my friends, she said she was always jealous of us. We appeared
to have more than they had. So what you thought and what was really true...could be a mixed bag.”
“Years ago if you
changed the oil in
your car you just
dumped it. Today
you don’t do that.”
38
I think there is more going on in the schools today for students. “But I think
that’s because your communities have shut down. Now, when we were
younger, we didn’t have to have someone to plan that we go skate at
an arena, or we go swim in a pool...We used to go swimming in Jackson
Brook. Part of it was dug out and that’s where we swam. We...walked up
the mountain to Rumsey Lake.” We’d go coasting on the mountain down
the old sled roads. We used to go skating below the Zwicker place, across
the railroad tracks. We had to walk quite a way to get there and we had to
clean off the ice.
“Everything is planned today for children. They have no imaginations on how
to do things. And like today, when you’re sixteen years old, you get a car. We
were lucky between the three of us to have one bicycle. When we got our
work done on Saturday mornings, my mom would give us 25 cents each.
And we’d go to Movie Matinee in Bridgetown. That covered the matinee,
your popcorn and your pop. And we had to walk. We walked down the old
Saunders Road, across into what is Chipman Hill and down into Bridgetown.
And then we’d have to walk back.”
GE R T B E N T
My father used to take them to all the hockey games. I think I was about eight years old when he took me to a hockey
game in Bridgewater on the Blueberry Special. We did it as a family.
People were more family oriented. On the weekends, people gathered at your house or you went to someone else’s
house. Your grandparents were close by. You weren’t spread all over the countryside. Today people don’t even know
who their cousins are. We knew all our cousins because we played with them.
There were enough children in Clarence - we called ourselves the Clarence Gang - that if we wanted to have a baseball
game in a field, we could have two teams. Families are smaller today and people are leaving the area. There are a
lot of vacant homes in Clarence now. Young people have moved out and there are mostly seniors left.
“I think there’s more opportunities for children today...We had one straight route we could go in school. You couldn’t
branch off this way or branch off that way...We all went through the same thing. If you didn’t pass it, you didn’t
pass it. You stayed and you had to repeat and repeat...if you couldn’t make it. Which was very wrong. But...if they
couldn’t learn in a book reading atmosphere and they were good with their hands, they could find a job.” That
has changed today. When they got rid of vocational schools, where students could go after grade eight and learn
a trade, we lost a lot of children in education. They need grade twelve to go to there now.
A lot of the land in the area is owned by people who can’t farm it, and its value is so high young people can’t afford
it. “It’s all growing up in trees...You look at Belleisle Marsh just as an example.”
When I was growing up I can remember seeing deer and rabbits. The deer used to come to the orchards that were
in the area.“I never saw a bear alive in the wilderness until two years ago. And I was coming out from Young’s Lake
and there was one in there. And he followed my car right up the road and went in by the tower.” Recently I saw a
bear in Beaconsfield in the road.
There weren’t such things as coyotes here. There weren’t skunks then.
I feel the change in wildlife has to do with the food chain. Animals go where there is food for them. I heard that coyotes
will produce as many babies as they can feed in the area. “So if the food’s there, they’re there...We don’t have the
coyotes we had three or four years ago. But now you can see the wild rabbits coming back and there’s a lot more
deer because those coyotes aren’t here.”
“When we were children, everybody had their own dump. And having everything picked up beside the road is saving
our environment.” I think the decision not to have fall pick up was a big mistake.
“I think we have to be very careful with things like oils and gases...in the ground. Years ago if you changed the oil in
your car you just dumped it. Today you don’t do that. Or if you had a leaky gas tank you didn’t think much about
it. It would just go on the ground.” There are strict rules about anything environmental now.
“I think they have done a great job to the Annapolis River. When you think that years ago everybody’s sewer that
was near the Annapolis River went into it...We used to swim in it, and everybody’s sewer was going in there. And
when they speak about the banks eroding...my husband tells me the banks always eroded. It’s not something that’s
new. Every time the tide went in and came out, it took something with it. Yes, I think they’re doing an excellent job
with the Annapolis River clean up.”
To help the environment, I try to do what I can. “I don’t litter...and I don’t spill gas. And I feed the birds.”
39
B e r y l Eudor a B e rrin g e r
I was born in 1921 in South Brookfield. The remains of my childhood home is on
the Berringer Road.
“Our home was a happy home.There were four of us [children] and my parents and
my grandmother. We had pets. We lived on a farm. We had all kinds of, you know,
gardening. Fruit trees was my father’s hobby. Pears, cherries and plums.”
“We had pigs, cattle and a horse. No sheep, but we had poultry. Just about everything else...We probably had the
largest farm of mixed farming...What changes. Things just petered out.”
My father worked in Lunenburg in the foundry prior to coming to South Brookfield. Then he became a farmer. My
mother was a stay-at-home mom. “She was a child’s nurse in Boston before she came here to live.”
I attended a “little red schoolhouse until grade five which still exists, after a fashion. When you go down through South
Brookfield, the road that goes down around the lakes...there’s a dilapidated building there and that it what was the
school house...It was moved there later. First it was up opposite Waterman’s, in that area.” It was a one room school,
heated with a wood stove. It had grades one to eleven. Then I went to the school that became where Jean Mosher
lives. That was the South Brookfield school on the hill at the corner. “That had two rooms. The first five grades and
the primary in one.” The upper grades were in the other room. If the family was willing to pay the teacher overtime,
he would teach grade twelve. So I took grade twelve in the South Brookfield school.
When I graduated from grade twelve, I was too young to go to Normal College. “You had to be eighteen to go to
Teacher’s College...I finished school, I was sixteen.” I was seven when I started school so I completed more than
one grade a year.
The South Brookfield school “for those days, it was modern. The French people came in and those Bienvenues were
very rich...The Bienvenues operated the bucket factory in South Brookfield. They were from Quebec. They had the
school established. So they had sports and activities.” They were responsible for building the two room school. The
French people had electricity on French Street. And anyone who was willing to supply their own pole they would
have electricity installed. So naturally they immediately got poles and the electricity at the school. The school
building was heated by two furnaces.
My first teaching job was at Albany New. “They had a school there...and I loved it. It had a stove and an Oickle guy
came over and made a fire bright and early.” He was a grade eight student and he came early to put on the fire.
“Farming used to
be the key thing.
Nobody does much
farming now...Pastures are almost unheard of.”
40
I have kept some dolls. One was my grandmother’s. As a girl, I wasn’t
allowed to play with it too much because it was very fragile. It has the
date 1799 on it. The other doll was mine when I was a girl. “I got that I
think when I was nine years old...Santa Claus brought it...I thought she
was very precious...I didn’t play dolls as much as my sister did. I only
played sometimes to amuse her. I’d rather read.”
South Brookfield was a very busy area when I was growing up with the
French factory. And once they left, there was another mill there. “They
called it the foundry...Lumber mills scattered around everywhere...five
lumber mills over here at the corner...They had stores…a blacksmith
shop...And they had a restaurant ‘way back then built on the side of
the store...a post office, at the corner... I think it had to be taken down
because of the highway structure...garage, ice cream store. On this side
there was a Tupper house and they had [ice cream] in the summertime,
where they got ice cream from I don’t know...and they’d have these
suppers and serve ice cream.”
B Er y l b e rrin g e r
The road from Liverpool to Caledonia was the same route in my time as it is today. ‘Way, ‘way back it ran from hill to
hill. It was in back of Zeta Smith’s, ‘way back where the Watermans live was the original road.
“Farming used to be the key thing. Nobody does much farming now...Pastures are almost unheard of.”
When the trains were going through, the bridge was on their property, down over the river, back of the hill. “That
was a big occasion for us. The train engineer would come out and wave to us on the hill. We had to be up there a
certain time. Five o’clock in the evening, for example.” I have pictures of the 1963 train crash when the bridge went
out, and of the train station in South Brookfield. It was opposite where Ken Wiles lives, at the end of the Berringer
Road. When the roads were bad in other communities, I would get on the train to go to the South Brookfield station
and travel to my home. The train shipped milk and cream out for the farmers. The train travelled from Bridgewater
to New Germany and then switched over for South Brookfield and Caledonia. From the valley a train came from
Middleton to New Germany.
My family used to shop in Bridgewater.“We got a car. When I was seven years old, I think. There weren’t many around...
Probably a Chev.” There were two garages that sold gas in South Brookfield. One was where Gaudets lived. They
had a store that had a projection that went right out over the water. And there was another garage just across the
road from that.
My father had cows and sold cream. He would give the skim milk away to anyone on French Street who was having
difficulties making ends meet.
My grandmother was a seamstress and my aunt, Carrie Freeman, was also a seamstress in Milton before she trained
to be a nurse. She used her sewing to get enough money to get into nursing school in Boston. She went to Boston
and then became a matron in a hospital in New York.
Wildlife when I was young was different. “Foxes used to come up to the apple orchards and help themselves...Very
seldom saw more than one at a time...No bears. Deer were quite common.” Chimney swifts were quite common.
I remember seeing bats around the house. “Once in a while one got in the house. I’d nearly go crazy...go chasing
them with a broom.”
The environment “it’s drastically changed and it’s not going to get better... More things polluting the forest.” The
spraying that takes place is terrible. “Poisoning our wildlife. Our beauty. Polluting the air.”
“I think they are picking up on it some. I got that impression when we were up there [at MTRI]. The young people
might be picking it up more.” I was enthused to see the young people getting involved.
Beryl’s mother’s harp
Cars in South Brookfield
41
E m e l i e R o s e ( n e e A m e ro ) B l inn
I was born in Plympton, Digby County, N.S. in 1923.
My mother was married twice. She had eight children with her first husband.
He died when he was just 37. The community got together and raised funds
by having pie socials to help support the widow. After two years, my mother
remarried. I was the first child of the second marriage.
We lived in a large white house. My father cut wood and dug clams to sell for a living. My mother worked in the home,
raising 14 children. “We had a very good family life...He was a good father and we had a good mother.”
“As we grew up, everyone helped.”The older children looked after the younger ones and did chores. I baked bread for
my mother, starting when I was thirteen. My father built a box for me to stand on so I could reach the cupboard.
I learned to cook on a wood stove. “You just had to do the best you could and cook the things the best you could.
After a while you got to learn everything. You’d have to put three or four sticks [of wood] and keep looking at it
and if it went down you’d have to put another one in and like that.”
My mother lived to be 80, but my father passed away when he was 62.
The children walked to the school in Plympton. “It wasn’t far.” It was a one room school and had just one teacher. I
thought the teacher was nice and I enjoyed school. “Some days if it was stormy, we’d take our lunch. Like in the
winters.” The teacher also stayed at the school during the lunch hour.
The students ran around outside at noon hour. There wasn’t any play equipment in the school yard. “If we played
anything, it was tag or something like that.”
I worked for Roberta Potter, making bread and helping with housework. Roberta worked in the store so “she didn’t
get around to doing much cooking. So I did a lot of cooking.”
There was a store about a mile from where we lived so we bought groceries there. We shopped as we could afford
it. “Never could really pile up a load of stuff. Didn’t have the money to do it. So we had to do it as we could. The
money would come in and go out for the groceries.”
My father didn’t go hunting. “He liked to go fishing. He’d do that. Oh, mackerel or something like that.” He would go
in someone else’s boat when he had the chance. He couldn’t afford his own boat. “We was brought up poor. Poor
but good.”
“ L i f e wa s f u n . I
wish we could go
through it again.”
I have noticed some changes over the years. “For instance, if it would
storm, snow...The men was called out to go shovel the road. If they
didn’t go they had to pay a fine. That’s what it was like then.”
My father was a religious man. When we children went up the stairs to
go to bed, “he would come to the door and say, ‘Good night. Be sure
to say your prayers.’ Different from today. You don’t notice kids doing
that today.”
I remember when we got electricity in our home. I was quite old before
we got it since we couldn’t afford it. I recall using kerosene lamps before
we got electricity.
42
e m e l i e b l inn
To heat the house and to cook, we had to “get the wood out of the woods. You had to cut it. Then you had to carry it
to the...stove.” It was a lot of work.
I wrote a letter to the younger children to describe our mother’s life. I felt it was important for them to know their
family history. I felt that they appreciated my effort.
I don’t think there is a big difference in the wildlife of the area from when I was a girl. “You still see deer and moose,
rabbits and squirrels and things like that.”
I lived in Plympton my whole life. My grandfather kept a store.“He had a little store for quite a while, after he got done
working in the woods and that...He used to buy blueberries that the kids would...[have] picked. He paid them 5
cents a quart.”
I was the post mistress in Plympton for 30 years. I had to walk up to the post office every morning and make up the
fire to heat the building. There was no electricity in the post office when I first started to work there.
My younger sister was in a sanatorium for five years with TB. “It was only her got it...I never got it. The other girls
didn’t.” The sanatorium was in Kentville. She recovered. “She had one lung out, she came home from the san, got a
boyfriend, got married, and had seven kids.”
My sister-in-law was not so fortunate. She had TB and had to go to the sanatorium. “The doctor told us he could
have helped the TB but her heart took her” when she was only 25, leaving her husband, Donald to raise their two
children.
I remember the children in my family would catch diseases like measles or chicken pox. Our mom looked after them.
If they got really sick, the doctor would come to the house. Doctors came from Barton or Weymouth.
I recall when I was married and going to have my first child, the doctor came. There was a couch by the kitchen stove.
“He would lay down there and rest until it was ready to be born...They was born in the home. They wasn’t born in
the hospital...I had two sons and they were both born in the house. Twenty-five dollars the doctor would charge.”
“Women would come to the house and help the doctor.”They were midwives. My mother-in-law was one and my sister
came to help with my second child. Someone would always stay and help out until I was able to get up and look
after the house. “We wasn’t allowed to get up until ten days. You’d have the baby. You had to lie still for ten days.”
I recall my 90th birthday party. It meant
a lot to me when my priest said to the
people who had gathered,“I want to give
a blessing to this wonderful woman of 90
years old.”
“Life was fun. I wish we could go through
it again.”
Plympton Post Office
43
W i l l i a m ( ‘ B i l l’ ) B ut l e r
donn a L e e ( n e e H e nd e r s on ) B ut l e r
Bill: My name is William Butler and I was born in Annapolis Royal in 1946.
Donna: I’m Donna Lee (Henderson) Butler and I was born on August 16, 1947 in Saint John, N.B.
Bill: My first home was a big farm on the end of the Parker Mountain Road. My Mom and Dad ran the farm for Irvin
Sarty. We had milking cows and gardens. For the first four years of my life, that’s where I grew up. After that we moved
to a house that is just down across the road from our home now, in Granville Ferry. That’s where I lived until I was
old enough to go off to Teacher’s College. We left the farming when we moved here. Dad was a general labourer.
He cut pulp wood and ran tractors and bulldozers.“He had a hand in everything. He was one of those people who
was a jack of all trades.”
“I can remember as a teenage boy going back in the woods with Dad and we were peeling pulp wood, like, in the
summertime. That was our summer job...We would peel the pulp wood and stack it. That was even before they had
power saws.” At first Dad used the Swede saw and axe. “I can remember when we got the first power saw. The gas
tank had to be held upright, but the power saw, you had to turn the blade sideways to get it to cut the tree...It was
an old MacCullauch power saw and we thought it was a great thing but it was certainly very hard to use.”
A Swede saw was an ordinary bow saw. It just had a saw blade and one guy would saw with it, back and forth, to cut
the tree down. You notched the tree first with an axe and then cut it down with manpower on the saw.
Donna: Didn’t he drive the euclids at the tidal power plant when they were building that?
Bill: That was much later.
“Dad went from working in the woods...which he really enjoyed and then he started working with Lovett Bohaker doing
mechanic work on tractors. And working with the tractors, he learned
to use a front end loader and stuff like that. He ran a bulldozer for a
while. And then from there, when the bridge went out in Annapolis,
he went on driving trucks on the causeway.”
Bill: “I can see the loss
of farm land. In this
area is a huge, huge
downturn. And it’s
leading to the downturn of the whole
economy. There used
to be farms all up and
down this area here.”
44
Donna: “He worked on the highways for a while.”
Bill: “Yes, he was a linesman on the highways...He did a myriad of
different things. He worked as a carpenter for years and years. He
built our house for us.”
Donna:“When Bob Patterson came and bought the Amberman house
here, he worked with Danny Karnes restoring that.”
Bill: “So that’s my dad. My mom was first a stay-at-home mom. She did
everything, even to making her own butter. When Donna Lee and I
first met, she was a city girl and when she first got to make her butter,
she thought it was the best thing in the world.”
B i l l a nd D onn a B ut l e r
Donna: I grew up in Rockwood Court in Saint John until I was four – almost five years old...Dad joined the navy and
was transferred to Halifax. So we moved to Shannon Park. He was on ship and gone six to nine months of the year
and we stayed in Shannon Park for the whole time that he was at sea. I never knew there were places in Nova Scotia
that didn’t have running water, didn’t have indoor toilets, that had wood heat.”
Bill: “That grew their own food.”
Donna:“Well, I knew about growing your own food because my grandparents did that. But not on the scale that Dad
B. did...I mean, we had a television, a telephone, all that stuff in Shannon Park. It was city...And I got down here and
got in trouble with his dad because when I stayed over one weekend in December, and oh, it was cold outside and
snowing, and I had to go to the bathroom. Got up in the middle of the night. Walked out. No shoes because I forgot
had to go outside to the outhouse. And Dad B. was waiting at the door when I come in. And he said, ‘Don’t you ever
do that again.’ ...Because I wasn’t wearing any shoes. But I didn’t...twig that it was the middle of winter and I had to
go outdoors. So it was a learning curve. It was a culture shock.”
“Because my dad was away so much, Mom did all the banking, all the looking after the kids, all the things that had to
be done outside the house to keep the family going, without ever having a job...And I got down here and Mom B.
had her job in the house and the two girls helped with whatever had to go in the house. But if there was something
going on outside, Dad B. would say,‘Come on, I need your help outside,’ and they’d have to go outside. But the boys
weren’t allowed to help inside, with the dishes, the sweeping, the cleaning and all that kind of stuff. That annoyed
me no end, let me tell you! Because we were brought up [that] everybody had something to do in the house...But
then, we didn’t live on a farm. We didn’t live where there were animals around and where there were gardens and
things like that. So I understand where they were coming from but, man, for a sixteen year old, that wasn’t fun. And
Dad B. and I had some...conversations about it.”
Once we moved from Shannon Park out to Lower Sackville for about eight months. Then Dad was transferred down
here and we moved to Cornwallis in 1962. It was his first land base since the war.
“Dad was in the seamanship school. He was a quartermaster....There was also the communication center so that
anybody in the armed forces who was a communicator, like on the radios or the semaphores - at that time they
were still using semaphore between ships with flags – and all of that stuff was taught at the base as well. And there
were several thousand men and women in for anywhere from two to eight week sessions, depending on what
course they were taking. And then your basic training was six weeks.”
Bill: “I thought it was more than that when they started.”
Donna: “The basic training was six weeks and then
you went on to a course you were taking. So if
you were going into the communications, you
moved to the communication center. If you were
going to be a quartermaster, you moved to the
quartermaster course. So you were there for
probably ten weeks. But your basic training, which
you learned everything to do with the navy was
there.”
Bill showing his woodworking projects
“They had a big recreation center that was available...
for the sailors, but also to family members. So we
could go down and we could learn how to swim.
We could play any of the sports that the center
had available – the weight room, floor hockey,
badminton, squash – any of those things. There
were playing fields for football, baseball. A big
library – a gorgeous big library, and a theatre. So
the families lived on what they called the Married
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Quarters, which was across the road from the main base...When we first moved down, we lived in the old nurses’
quarters. And that was a building that was probably 200 feet long and it was apartments, basically, for the nurses.
They turned it into family because there wasn’t a house big enough on the base at the time for us. There were seven
of us. Mom and Dad and seven kids. So we needed a little larger than your basic bungalow. So they put us in there
and we had the whole top floor...Made a great place for the little kids to play – you know, run up and down the
halls, ride their bicycles or their carts...Then we moved into one of the duplexes...”
Bill: “I thought it was Martingale.”
Donna: “Oh, Martingale. Right. Yes.”
Bill: “Which is just a single unit.”
Donna: “It was a single unit but two floors. So it had...four bedrooms.”
We said Mom had a set of four families because 14 months between the first two, the second set were five years later
and another fourteen months between, then two and a half years later there was another set and then two years
and another set. And she had a bad fall when she was carrying the third child and ended up not being able to look
after the baby for the first little while and Dad wasn’t home ‘cause that was during Korean War and he didn’t get
home until the baby was 6 months old. So I ended up being chief cook and bottle washer at seven for the family.”
“We each had something to do. I had to teach the others as they came along and got to an age - how to do the dishes
properly, how to clean the house properly with the vacuum cleaner. Kids just loved the vacuum cleaner ‘cause the
little ones could ride on it and it could be pulled around and they were entertained...I also was responsible for Dad’s
uniform when he was home. I learned how to iron his square collars properly, iron his ‘round rig’ properly so the
crease was just exactly in the right spot. And no crease at all in the jacket. And how to iron his dickies properly.” The
oldest boy, Wayne, did the polishing. He did the shoes and he cut the lawn. But he also had to do things like wash
the dishes and make the beds. Mom and Dad believed if you were living in the house you should be responsible
for some of its maintenance.
Bill: I went to school here, from primary to grade four in Granville Ferry. At grade five, I moved over to the school in
Annapolis.“That was kind of a new thing ‘cause before, up until that point, it was primary to six in Granville, so I was
part of the first wave that went early. There were so many young children around that we had to go to Annapolis.
They were the only place that could accommodate us. They had just added the new wing onto the Academy and
we went into that. In fact, they were still building it when we moved in. You could sit there and look out the window
and watch the cranes go up and down, building the gymnasium part of it.”
Donna: I went to school in Shannon Park and that was a service school. We had a nurse on call. We had all our shots
and everything automatically. All our school supplies, like scribblers and pencils, were made available to us so our
parents didn’t have to pay for them. It was a real shocker when we moved to Cornwallis and Mom had to buy all the
school supplies for eight children. We were able to use all the facilities, so we used the rink and were taught how to
skate as part of our gym program. We were able to use the football, soccer and baseball fields. We had a beautiful
gymnasium. The school had primary to grade twelve. I attended that school from primary to grade nine and then
I took grade ten in Cornwallis. Even the city schools didn’t have what we had at Shannon Park.
Bill: “Here in Annapolis when you got to senior high school, you could rent your textbooks instead of buying them.
That was part of the cost saving. I remember when I went from grade eight into grade nine, grade eight you were
provided them free. But grade nine you had to pay for your rental books. When I graded from grade eight to grade
nine, I had a high enough average that they gave me a free set of books for grade nine...It was looked on as quite
an achievement.”
Donna: Some of the books and courses would have been pilot courses at Shannon Park for the general schools later
on. “We got to try out new things. The same as with the medical stuff. If there was a new drug coming out, service
families got the chance to be guinea pigs... None of my friends got into any difficulties with any of the stuff we were
given so I’m assuming it was all right. Other than the polio. When they first gave us the polio shots, the first time we
46
got it, it was in a sugar cube. And we lined up and we each got our sugar cube. And the next time it came around,
it was a shot...I had two grandmothers who were excellent knitters and/or seamtresses. And when I started school
that year I had a beautiful outfit. One grandmother made the skirt, the other one knit the top. And I happened to
be wearing that outfit the day they did the shots and when they gave me the shot, the needle broke...The serum
went all over my outfit. So it ruined the outfit. It sort of frightened the other kids because I was like within the first
ten students and the ones behind saw that the needle broke so they weren’t sure they wanted that.”
Bill: In education when we were young, “we had to earn what we got. And I mean we had to earn it...If you had 49
points at the end of the year, you had 49 points. You did not go on. There was no coddling. It was just ‘this is the
line. You make it or you don’t.’”
Donna:“And you were expected to put your best effort into something. You weren’t allowed to slide...That’s the thing I
see that is out of whack. This idea that you can’t tell a child they failed at something or they aren’t doing something
the right way – you can’t tell them they’re not doing it the right way. You have to say it in such a way as to not make
their psyche feel that they’ve been hurt. Well, sorry, but life isn’t going to be a bowl of cherries. You’re going to run
into times when there’s going to be somebody says, ‘You’re not doing that correctly,’ or ‘I can’t hire you. You don’t
know how to spell.’ And that annoys me no end.”
Bill: “When I started teaching, I had 32 students in the classroom in grade six...They were basically a homogeneous
group. There weren’t too many above or below grade level. But by the time I retired, you had a huge spread. And
you were expected to accommodate everybody...And the expectation changed tremendously over that time too.
The idea that you had to meet certain performance levels to go on disappeared...It helped a lot of people but it
also hurt a lot of people in my opinion. It hurt the upper end students. I was always trying to find ways to challenge
the upper students...they could stay home three days of the week, gone two, and still get everything.”
Donna: “I worked with the learning disabled students. When I started, you took them out of the classroom and you
worked with them for a half-hour or twenty minutes or whatever the assignment was, and then they went back
into the classroom for group work. And then they changed that. They said we weren’t allowed to take them out of
the classroom. Well, most of the kids I worked with, one of the main reasons they were taken out of the classroom
was because they couldn’t work with all the extraneous noise in the classroom. They couldn’t concentrate on what
they had to do...They were too distracted...I lasted about a year...I don’t have any patience with that kind of thing...
If you’re going to help the child, then help the child. Do what’s best for him or her. Don’t do what’s easiest for you
and the system.”
Bill: I didn’t have any time to volunteer when I was at school because in the morning when I got up, I came up to the
farm and helped milk 50 head of cattle and then went home and milked the cow in the barn and then came in and
washed my face and hands and had breakfast and then headed off to school. Went to school, came back home,
got home at 4:00. Up to the barn. Started working, milking the cows and stuff again. Got home about seven o’clock.
From there, ate, did my homework and by nine o’clock I was dead.
“Any of the neighbour kids in the community, if they wanted to put wood in or something like that on the weekends,
we always gathered together. The boys and girls would gather and go over to their house...help them out. I can
remember putting wood into the wood house and giving every stick of wood a different name as we threw it in.
Made a game of it. We would help the seniors get their wood in and stuff like that.”
Donna: “Or draw water. Mrs. Amberman was in the house up there by herself. I was down here at that time so on
weekends he’d go up and drew her water.”
Bill: “I did it every day of the week...That was just something that you did. You didn’t call it community service or
anything.”
“I see a tremendous difference. Four or five years ago we had a young neighbour move in to the house next door.
We kind of thought they might come over and introduce themselves...They didn’t so I went over one afternoon
and introduced myself. I saw the father out stacking wood. I immediately pitched in and started stacking wood
with him. He said, ‘I’ve got to build a cover for this woodpile.’” I asked him how he wanted to do it and he explained
47
what he wanted to do. A couple of weeks later, he was out putting tarps on the wood pile and nailing them onto
the wood. I suggested the nails would pull right through the tarp. Something had to be put down to sandwich, and
distribute the tension on the tarp. I showed him how I would do it and he thought it was a good idea. But that’s the
only time we had contact with them.
“In years gone by we used to help each other mow lawns. You know, if I was out mowing my lawn, a neighbour would
come over with his lawnmower and help mow it. I’d help mow his. But that’s all gone”
Donna:“It’s like the people who are moving in now haven’t lived with that kind of community. They’re not attuned to
it.” Our next door neighbour is away for most of the year. It took about a year before she responded to me offering
to check the house when she was away so her insurance would still cover it. “Now, when she’s home, she drops in
and says, ‘I’m home, I’ll be here X number of days’...I’ll tell whatever has gone on in the house.” Last time she was
home she forgot to turn off some lights. I emailed her and she asked me if I’d go over and turn them off.“They don’t
expect people to...give them assistance where it wasn’t asked for.”
Bill: “I do the same thing with Tim Roan’s. At his house, they’re here in the summertime. But during the winter, I go
check on his house...During the summer when they’re home, we go over and talk once in a while...But that stems
from a twenty year ago start. It seems like the new neighbours are so to themselves that they don’t want to meet
anybody in the community...They don’t seem to have the feel of community.”
Donna: “At Shannon Park there were always what they called Youth Groups. So, we were involved in the church. We
were involved in Brownies, Guides, Cub Scouts, sea cadets – your choice, not necessarily all of them. When you turned
fourteen if you were involved in youth groups; recreation part of the armed forces would train you. You’d go for two
weekends and you’d be trained on how to be a leader with groups. And you would be taught your first aid, how to
swim...and basically how to lead a group of younger kids...” In the summers, 14-18 year olds would be the youth
leaders and they’d take the younger children in the community and do daily activities with them. Children were
encouraged to take part in the youth groups. We had games, arts and crafts and swimming. The duty boats that
took sailors to their ships in Stadacona would take the youth out to Stadacona for activities or to McNab’s Island.
From an early age, I worked with younger kids, not just at home but also in the youth program.
Bill: When I started teaching, she started volunteering...we did a puppet group here in Annapolis, Brownies, and all
kinds of craft things...Every Saturday we would be out doing things. I arranged to have the gymnasium at the high
school through the Community Schools program. We could use the area to play floor hockey...So the kids could come
in on the weekend and play floor hockey. It was just a volunteer type of thing. There was no formal organization to
it. Whoever showed up, showed up. We just had a great time.”
Thinking about land changes, “I can see the loss of farm land. In this area is a huge, huge downturn. And it’s leading
to the downturn of the whole economy. There used to be farms all up and down this area here. The milk truck
would have to make two or three runs to pick up all the milk and stuff. If you wanted meat, you’d have fresh meat.
Eggs – whatever you wanted. It was all local. Fruits and vegetables and stuff, it was all local...And just over the hill,
there was a little dairy...a local dairy and they sold to whatever customers they had. But piece by piece...they were
legislated out of existence...There were certain rules that came in they couldn’t meet so they just had to fold and
that’s the way it’s gone. I think there’s one farmer between here and Victoria Beach. There used to be 50.”
Donna: There aren’t the farmers anymore in the communities...Once the father lost the quota...then the kids didn’t
stay on the farm. And now we’re missing a generation of people who actually know how to farm. You have to teach
them all over again.”
Bill:“I always had my own vegetable garden. Our kids always...did the weeding...They appreciated the fresh vegetables…
Now to try to find fresh vegetables, you’ve got to drive ten, fifteen miles to find a vegetable stand on the side of
the road. And I was to one last week and I wouldn’t have sold the stuff they had there. I brought stuff home and I
almost threw it out, it was so bad...We’re going to be in serious trouble...We’re not going to be sustaining ourselves,
food-wise.”
Donna: This is the first year since we were married that we didn’t have our own garden.
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Bill: “I grow grapes, but my gardens are down across the road. This year I had so many weeds and stuff from the last
two years with the extra rain...So I said this year I’m just going to farrow the land and try to get rid of the weeds. So
hopefully next year I’ll be back in production.” We usually grow enough in the garden that we don’t have to buy
imported fresh vegetables except things like celery. We have potatoes, corn, peas, beans and beets. I had as many
as 100 bottles of preserves done up and stored in the basement. We do our own jams and jellies.
“I can remember as a young boy, my parents always had a garden...We had a barn. We had three or four head of cattle.
We had a horse...we cut our own hay…we had a pig. In the fall, when it got cold, we’d butcher one of the beef and that
was your meat for the winter. And the pork was smoked. It was fantastic...It was tremendously self-sufficient.”
Donna: Our daughter and son-in-law gave us our bird feeder for Christmas three years ago.“We’ve been feeding the
birds for a number of years, since we retired...Our son got us a bird cam. Unfortunately there’s no way to fasten it
to the house so it doesn’t blow off. I take pictures of them with my little camera.”
Bill:“I’ve got a file on my computer there of all the birds that have come in and we’ve got about 70 different varieties
of birds that have come in...Any wildlife – the deer that walk across the front yard...We see them and snap a picture
of them.”
Donna: “We had an indigo bunting blew in. We had a storm a few years ago and a single little indigo bunting came
in.”
Bill:“We have our book and when we spot a bird, we put the date that the birds are in and a regular visitor, the Downy
woodpecker which is in almost every day. The male and female, they come back as regular visitors. We have the
hairy woodpeckers come in but they don’t come in at the same time as the Downy. They almost have a scheduled
feeding time. If they’re seasonal, we put in when we first see them.”
Donna: “Like hummingbirds, when they come in.”
Bill: “Redwing blackbirds, cowbirds...male and female. Some of the regular birds, we don’t bother keeping track of
them. The cardinal, now up until about five years ago, we didn’t have any cardinals. And now the cardinals are in
all year long. They are definitely coming back. Redpolls were common but I haven’t seen redpolls since in January,
2013. We saw snow buntings but they’ve only been spotty. February 2011, a flock came in and then - poof , they
were gone.”
Donna: “And the cedar waxwings come in and they go to the neighbour’s house over there and they’re in her tree.
It’s got orange berries on it. They strip it and they’re gone.”
Bill: “Last winter we did the Canadian bird count during the winter.
Our daughter-in-law signed us up for it. Two days a week we would
count the maximum number of each type of bird that came in and
send it in on the computer. And it kept the record of what we saw
and it gave you the total at the end of the season…it was really very
interesting...We would count them very religiously. All they wanted
was the maximum number that were in a group, which made it very
difficult sometimes. But luckily, they seem to have a certain feeding
time that they come in in a group and we would count maybe 15
chickadees or juncos...and blue jays...I think I had 22 different species
of birds; that was the highest I had for any one day.”
Donna: And of course we have our squirrels and chipmunks.
Bill: The squirrel knows the routine well now. All I have to do is go to
the door and rap on it and he goes. I used to chase them away with
my little broom.
Donna: “We used to
have gorgeous spring
water in our well. In
a dug well. And when
they clear cut up on
the mountain, the
next year, the water
went sour.”
49
“Monarch butterflies, we’ve had a few around. Bats – there used to be quite a number of bats around but not anymore...
Our neighbour, George Boudreau made a little bat house and hung it because they used to have a lot of bats when
they first arrived here seven years ago or so and now there’s none. We just don’t see them. We used to be able to
sit out in the evening and they’d be swooping and diving around. They’re now gone.”
Donna: Chimney swifts, we didn’t have them here.
Bill: A friend of mine, Joe Kellogg, who lives up in West Dalhousie had a family in his chimney this summer and they
actually came down from Acadia to see them. Of course they decided they were going to come down, the family
didn’t show up to go back in the chimney. But he’s got pictures of them, a video, going down the chimney. But no,
we haven’t had chimney swifts here...Swallows – I can remember growing up, there were lots of barn swallows
around here.You would go outside and they would dive bomb you, because there were always clouds of mosquitoes
around you. They were after the mosquitoes, they weren’t after you.”
Donna:“But now there’s not the barns that were around...and they lived in the barns...There used to be two barns up
here. They’ve been gone for years and once they went the habitat was gone.”
We used to get pheasants. The male would bring the hens in. For five or six years they’d come but it’s been two years
since he brought them. They are still across the road but they don’t come up here anymore.
Bill:“There’s lots of wildlife around. We often see deer and...we had rabbits out on our front lawn...Racoons, they come
up and…try to get up in the feeder. Skunks, they’ve been out in the back yard, tearing up the turf.”
Donna: “But no snakes. We used to have snakes...They lived underneath the concrete out here. In the summertime,
they would come out. One year, they didn’t come out in the spring when they normally come out. Haven’t seen
them since. Four years ago.”
Bill: “And I don’t know if that’s because of a change in the moisture or what it is. They just disappeared.”
“The actual animals around, it’s been pretty stable in this area. If anything, it’s grown a bit. Because the old farm land
is all growing up in bush...so there’s a lot more cover for them. A lot more habitat for them. We could walk back in
the woods in the wintertime and there’s all kinds of rabbit paths.”
I have a photo of a group of thirteen deer next door…taken about five or six years ago. On a moonlit evening, or
under the old nursing home floodlight out front, we can see four or five deer feeding under the apple trees. There
has been no shortage of deer.
To help the environment for future generations, stop clear cutting...To me, that is the biggest problem. I know that
when you get a bug infestation...the only cure is to clear cut. But that doesn’t give you full rein to go everywheres
and clear cut. I know that when they clear cut up behind here, for the first two or three years, there was no deer
around.”
Donna:“We used to have gorgeous spring water in our well. In a dug well. And when they clear cut up on the mountain,
the next year, the water went sour. And we had to drill a well.”
Bill: “The only change that we could see was that clear cutting.”
Donna:“But there was a pond up here at the back, just beyond the fence there and the kids used to row a boat in the
summertime in there. And in the wintertime they skated on the pond. And once they clear cut, it dried up.”
Bill:“To me, that’s the biggest problem with the forestry...My mom has a piece of property back in the woods here and
for the last ten years my brother-in-law and I have gone back and we’ve harvested individual trees here and there,
mature trees. Cut them down, brought them out and had them sawn up for lumber or cut them up for firewood...
50
You go back and you hardly know where the trees have been taken out...And I have a tendency to plant trees. Since
we bought the property here...almost 50 years ago, I’ve planted about 150 trees and shrubs...Whenever we cut an
area in the woods, I’d take a bunch of seedlings and plant them. Well, when I was teaching school, when they had
the trees for Arbor Day, any leftover trees, I’d take them back and stick them in the ground back in the woods. In the
last 13 years, I’ve taken pine and spruce cones back and thrown them out on any areas we’ve cut over, just made
sure there was an extra bunch of cones put out and Mother Nature does the rest.”
For us, it’s just natural to keep track of wildlife. “Being brought up the way I was, you had to realize what was going
on around you and use your judgement to what you were going to do.”
Donna:“The thing that really tweaks my handle is that we were brought up so differently, so differently. Like we could
have come from different worlds. Basically we did. And yet we’ve been married 48 years and other people we grew
up with, including my own sisters, have had three and four partners over their span. And we’re still together...We’ve
known each other since 1962. September 28, 1962.”
We met at teen town in Annapolis Royal. Mom and Dad thought it would be good for my oldest brother and I to go
since we were new here. My brother, Wayne, was sure he’d seen Bill somewhere before.
Bill: “Being a typical male, I had a pack of cigarettes and was standing outside, handing out cigarettes to everybody
and Wayne comes up to me and says,‘I know you.’ I says,‘Well, you look familiar,’ so we started talking and he started
naming off places where he had lived...’Never been there, never been there.’ He says, ‘Well, I’ve got an older sister
inside. Would you like to come in and I’ll introduce you so you can dance with her?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t dance.’ But
anyway, we went in, he introduced me and she taught me to dance. And we did dance, and we did dance, and we
did dance. When it came time to come home, my brother and I had a taxi...and asked Donna Lee and Wayne if they
wanted to come home with us. They said,‘No, Dad’s coming to pick us up.’...Sunday afternoon, a friend of mine from
high school called me and says, ‘Do you think we can pick up a couple of girls somewhere to go bowling?’ I said,
‘Well, I met a girl Friday night.’...I didn’t have her telephone number but I stopped at the house and her mother said,
‘Oh, she’s gone with her father to Halifax. I’ll tell her that you stopped by.’
“Monday morning, I got on the school bus to go to school. I was sitting in the seat by myself and Donna got on the
bus...She said, ‘Sorry I missed you yesterday. Can I sit here?’ And that was it. After school, we sat together and that
was it.”
“And where Wayne had seen me was just after the launching of The Bounty.”
Donna: “The day after The Bounty was launched, we were down there. Dad and Mom had driven us down.”
Bill:“And my Mom and Dad and my aunt and uncle from
New Ross went down and were there at the same day
and we’d parked side by side.”
Donna:“Mom and Dad had a picture of The Bounty, and
Bill’s parents had a picture of it, and they were within
feet of each other.”
Bill: “We were standing and taking the same picture.”
Donna: “The guy wire from the telephone pole – the
same guy wire, the building the way it was, the whole
thing. They had to be close when they took the
pictures. They had to be standing side by side.”
Bill with a bird identification book
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E l i z a b e t h ( n e e M a cM a s t e r ) C h i s h o l m
I was born on the 4th of June, 1927 at the newly built hospital in Middleton.
My husband’s ancestors came from Northern France and then went to England
with William the Conqueror in 1066. I take it this Chisholm was a pain in the neck
‘cause he was sent to the very north of Scotland, north of Loch Ness. He must have been as tough as he sounded
because the Chisholms stayed there for a thousand years. The last chief of the clan moved not too many years ago
to a quieter place.
Growing up, the Depression hit four years after I was born. Many of the people had been in the states to work. It was
like what Fort McMurray is today. There was no hiring going on here for young men so they went to the states for
work. When the Depression hit they had to come home. People were helpless for economic reasons.
My family was in the states then; my father worked there. Being a saving Scot, he sent money home from the states to
Nova Scotia. Then he packed up and came home. Unlike most people at that time, he had enough money to start
his farming business. He took over the farm that he’d been brought up on. His father-in-law owned the adjoining
farm.
“When they left the states, they gathered up their furniture, things that were of any size and put them on a boat
and shipped them back up here. But then they had this old Model-T Ford which was as good as having a tractor. It
was a wonderful, wonderful thing my dad got second-hand while he was in the states. And then he packed all the
household things, clothing and that kind of thing, and three kids, one of them just a baby not yet a year old and
drove up on the week before Christmas from Framingham, Mass...to Meadowvale and arrived there on Christmas
Eve, having gone through a major blizzard...and made a crossing of the Bay of Fundy that would make your hair
stand up ‘cause the ferry then had no stabilizers. My mother was desperately sick...but I had a lot of fun. And my
father had even more fun. You could not make my father motion sick.”
“To drive, particularly from St. Stephen to Saint John in the middle of a heavy blizzard in a Model-T Ford...burst one
tire on the way over in a little tiny French village... And he was trying to change this tire – mend this tire.” A family
sort of adopted us. They took Mother and us kids into the house, looked after us and fed us and the men went and
helped Dad with the tire.“They were such nice people and we couldn’t understand a word they said. And they didn’t
understand a word we said. Didn’t matter.”
When the tire was fixed we headed on to Saint John. Dad had to get gas and he didn’t have enough money to buy
the ferry ticket and the gas. He explained his situation to the man at the garage. The bank was closed so he couldn’t
cash a cheque. The garage man came out to look at the car and the family and he said, “No problem. You can take
the gas and go home. I’m sure you’ll send me the money.” Dad said, “You don’t know I’ll send you the money.” The
man said, “I’ve been in this business a long time. Yes, I do know.” So we got on the boat in a bloody gale.
“I don’t know what DFO would think about that trip nowadays. I don’t think they’d care for it at all.”
“What I was doing
was not popular in
the neighbourhood.
For a girl to work like
a boy on a farm...”
52
“I remember being in Mother’s cabin and looking at the porthole...and
it was clear green. The first thing, I looked at it and it was blue sky. She
was just rolling. And Dad standing out on the bow and that didn’t
suit him. He had to head for the stern and see what that was like, too.
I went upstairs because I couldn’t stand it downstairs anymore shut
up there.” I sat in a seat in the lounge in the bow by a man who had a
basket beside him. And the basket went, “Meow.” He said that it was
his cat and it was seasick. “I know Mother felt like the cat.”
We got to the other side, got our car off and within about an hour and
a half, we were home.
Elizabeth Chisholm
My father hadn’t been fired from his job in the states. He’d been working on a big dairy farm and they were laying
off men. Henry Ford owned the farm.“He was a very strange man to try to work for...He knew nothing about cows.”
He had invented the idea of working shifts on these long conveyer belts. He also invented doing everything by
time. Cows do not work like that. “It was just insane the way that worked out on a farm...Things rotted in the field
because...the foreman wouldn’t pay attention to the timing. He didn’t know what the timing would do...He thought
the men were just making excuses to get out of doing a certain harvesting...And the fact that cows will quit giving
milk if you don’t milk them on time – they had never heard of such a foolish thing.”
Dad’s farm was a mixed farm. Our farm was called Meadowbrook Farm. A small river ran down from the mountain
and through the farm. “A dairy farm, some beef, quite a lot of cropping. I was just old enough by then to be very
involved - to be mixing into things. Fortunately, my father was good at describing things or answering questions
– very good at technical answers...so I learned a lot of things in details about farming. I was rather sorry I wasn’t a
boy because I’d have more fun out of it but I managed to make quite a bit of fun out of it. What I was doing was not
popular in the neighbourhood. For a girl to work like a boy on a farm – I guess they pulled my father’s leg quite a
lot about it.’ He would reply by asking, “Do you have any other girls producing as much as she is?”
I couldn’t get clothes to suit what I was doing...I had a brother who was three or four years younger than I. And you
know how men and boys wear their overalls – you wear out the whole front of the thigh from picking up hay and
all that kind of stuff. You don’t wear out the back. I got hold of his old overalls. I patched the back from one pair and
patched the front in another and that’s what I wore.“This was a scandal...I was wearing pants.” People would ask if
my father couldn’t afford to get me decent clothes. He said that I was too busy hopping over barbed wire fences.
“So I was very busy on the farm and I enjoyed it a great deal...We had a piece of equipment called a pulper.” You drop
whatever you want to have cut up down a chute onto circulating knives. The knives are turned with a crank. It was
turnips, chiefly, that we pulped. We had a good herd of dairy cattle and turnips have good things going for them.“We
usually planted two to three acres of turnips. That’s another skill that I learned – how to weed turnips.” The pulper
sliced the turnips into very thin slices. I’d eat the turnip fresh from the pulper. It was good. We’d pulp turnip every
afternoon for the cattle. I noticed when the turnips started to be fed in the fall, milk production would go up.
“We had chores to do. We burned wood of course. We were the ones that carried the wood in. I had a sister, and
the brother was the youngest. There was only about 3 1/2 years between the batch of us.” That was the standard
lifestyle then.
“We didn’t go to school, by the way. My mother was a school teacher and she taught us at home until I was in grade
eight. By the time I got to school, I do feel so sorry for my school teachers. They couldn’t deal with that...It was a little
one room rural school with twenty-odd pupils in it and they went all the way from primary to grade ten, I think.”
This was in Meadowvale, close to Middleton, between Torbrook and Tremont.
“I was very, very ill when I was fifteen and I simply couldn’t handle it [school] at all.” My mother was also badly injured
in a car accident while we were in the states. Although she recovered, up to a point, she needed all the assistance we
two girls could give her. She was very capable but had trouble getting around. I did one grade by correspondence
course. My brother and sister did go to high school.
My mother was very busy. She had a trick when washing the clothes, using a plumber’s force cup. There was a handle
and a rubber cup on the bottom. She’d hold the handle and force it up and down. It forced the soapy water through
the clothes. While we would help her do this, she taught us to count. Then she taught us to multiply the same way.
It took some of the boredom out of “punching the clothes.” There weren’t just children’s clothes. There were the
men’s clothes, dirty from working on the farm and bedding and she had no such thing as a mechanical machine.
This was her invention.
“There was such a thing as a hand-operated wringer. A crank turned the wash through two rubber rollers. In England
they called it a mangle. I think it was brought from the states when they came back.
My father got a fairly generous gas ticket. This was during the war. He bought a 3/4 ton truck and fitted it with seats.
There were no school buses then and many children lost out on schooling because of transportation. He was able
to take five kids to school in the truck. My brother was just old enough to have his permissive licence so he drove
53
Elizabeth Chisholm
the truck. The policeman in Digby knew he wasn’t completely legal but he waived it so those kids could get to
school.
Teenagers who lived on the mountain near us managed to put together enough money to buy an old jalopy. They
got it on the road. They were farm boys and they knew how to fix things. They headed for Digby. That was about
12 miles and some of the road was very steep. None of it was paved; it was muddy. But they made it through. They
never would have gone to school if they hadn’t done that.
I came to Bear River when I got married.“I lived on my father’s farm until I was thirty...and I also married a farmer. That
was an even more mixed up farm.” We had a greater variety of critters.
“Most people in the community, they were living...moderate lives. They weren’t starving or anything like that, but it
was hard. It was close. There was nothing extra.” You might do better if you got an education and got a job when
you were in your twenties.
“I think about the things we did to make our lives work…it wasn’t pretty. It was very hard. But it was so interesting.”
When I was growing up, Kingston was the nearest town. It was just graduated from being a village. It was about 4
1/2 miles from our home. We didn’t think anything of walking to Kingston. The first jobs I had were in Kingston and
I walked.
If you get acquainted with how things are in eastern Europe, like Russia and Romania, they are at a point now as it
was then for us.
At the end of the war, we had two sets of buildings on our farms. We rented them because we were close to Greenwood
airport. The people who rented had come from Saskatchewan. They had lived through the drought, and they did
have people starve. It was much harder than it was here in Nova Scotia. “I can remember being quite horrified by
those stories.”
For fun, I used to climb trees. We played outdoors. There weren’t a lot of other children around. The houses were a fair
distance apart. They weren’t big families as a general rule.
Now you don’t see children playing outdoors. And children don’t seem to play together. “They don’t make teams,
they don’t make up games. They don’t make their own toys. A big cardboard box was one of the most wonderful
things to get your hands on.”
We didn’t feel that the work on the farm was slavery.“We thought we were a part of a big deal. We were important...We
had a very specific role in this turnip business. I learned the weeding quite young.” We had a weed called cadlock.
It is a very prolific wild mustard. As it comes up as a seedling, it looks almost exactly like a turnip. The difference is
that cadlock has a kind of fuzz on its first two leaves. Otherwise they are the same colour, shape and size and they
come up at the same time. The men would go along the rows of turnips and use a hoe to clean the turnips and space
them the right distance apart. But then someone had to go along and pull the weeds out by hand from around the
seedlings. That’s what I did. One time I left a clump of cadlock and my father pointed it out to me. The men working
with him had a good laugh. “She left a bunch of cadlock and there was no turnips there.”
When it came time to harvest them, they were gorgeous big turnips. The small ones were fed to the cattle without
being pulped. They’d be set in their own little piles. We kids got to handle all those turnips. The small ones were
called the kids’ turnips. A horse-drawn, iron-tired wagon was used. The men threw on all the big turnips and we
kids would throw the little turnips on. We had a special place to put our turnips.“We were an important part of the
operation.”
I helped out at haying time. “I had the longest handled rake – long tailed rake – that they used for cleaning after the
men put the hay on the wagon. All the scatterings had to be raked up. So I think it was thirteen feet, the handle of
this rake...A young kid could do that work.” There were all kinds of jobs where young people fitted in.
54
Elizabeth Chisholm
Of course sometimes we would have preferred to go fishing or go down to the river to watch turtles lay their eggs.
“We had an immense amount of natural things going on around us to watch...I remember horrifying an elderly
friend of my mother’s. We all came in from up off the meadow and each one of us had a great big green turtle under
our arm. She thought they would bite.” We told her these turtles wouldn’t bite; they were nice and friendly. We had
snapping turtles in the river, but these weren’t snapping turtles. These were a placid sort of turtle. The meadow was
always damp so there were always turtles down there.
I’ve never seen a Blanding’s turtle, although I’ve seen pictures of them.
In the community there were two community halls and three churches. “That was a very important part of your life.
That was the social core for all the communities for getting together, you know, for picnics...In Tremont, they had
a small agricultural fair there every year. They’d have horse pulls and they’d have competitions. And 4H would be
as busy as they could be.”
In the land use,“everything has changed completely...It’s in the way it is handled.” Things are done mechanically and
in immense amounts.
“My father was an artist with a scythe. He could do cleaner work on a piece of land with his hand scythe than you
could do with a machine. He always went around and trimmed the edges, the ditch banks. And we had quite a
few ditches on our farm ‘cause it was quite a moist farm...He would trim in close along the bushes so the bushes
wouldn’t come out into his field.” His hay was very high quality.
We had about 20 acres of apple orchards. That was also the way he mowed his apple orchards. He loved the beautiful
rhythm of it.
He was very aware of weeds and he tried to prevent them from taking over the land.“If he didnt, the cadlocks would
actually outgrow the turnips. So this was a major preoccupation, but it was also major art for a good farmer.”
On Sundays we’d take the horse and wagon or the old Model-T Ford and go for a drive. My father thought how he’d
redo every farm that he passed.“Fences weren’t straight enough, furrows weren’t right...” When they started using
limestone, which is very easy to see, Father would notice fields that didn’t have any limestone and he’d wonder if
he should talk to the farmer about it. The limestone balanced the pH of the soil. Dad was one of the first farmers
to use limestone in the area and it was like a miracle. Other farmers would take their Sundays to come see Dad’s
fields. Farmers did that - visiting a lot to see what someone else was having success with. Any farm operation, no
matter how small, was vital. “You couldn’t afford to have anything fall flat on you.”
I’ve seen some land prepared in a hurry which concerns me. I don’t believe you can crop land in a hurry. People who
are farming like this have lost their actual contact with the land. “Now, grapes aren’t too terribly fussy, but they do
have their needs.” You can grow acres of strawberries if you know how. Our climate is excellent for it. You can grow
raspberries, clover, apples, and so on. Nova Scotia is a great place for growing things but you need to know what
each crop needs and you need to know what the soil is. You’ll take many years trying to get a crop going instead of
taking a couple of years.“It’s not a simple thing at all, but it’s absolutely necessary...There’s a lot of caring about what
happens.” There’s an old saying: When the farmer leaves the land, it should be better than when his father had it.
It used to be that a ton of limestone per acre would sweeten the soil. Now farmers use two or three tons per acre and
sometimes lime more than once a year. That’s because of acid rain. That’s just like pouring vinegar on the land.
There are hungry deer around. They seem to like practically everything. “In a way, I feel sorry for them because they
did a huge clear cut up here on the hill just above us on an old growth piece of property. That would be the deer’s
headquarters. Now they have nowhere. So they’ve come down around here...as many as six or eight at a time...I
told my son, George, he was just planting a salad for the deer.”
Deer can tell by the smell that a plant has been well tended and will eat that.
55
Elizabeth Chisholm
When I was growing up we rarely saw deer. There were lots of birds like partridges and pheasants. We saw porcupines
and racoons. In the river we had fur-bearing animals like mink. There are some of these animals around now.
To preserve the environment for future generations, we have to “get our kids up off their ass...I think that’s one of our
biggest problems, both for adults and for our children. They’ve come to the conclusion that you can have a good
life sitting down. They need to get involved. Now, I have the greatest respect for the 4H kids...I went through 4H
and my kids did too. It’s a splendid...opportunity...But you’ve only got one or two kids in a neighbourhood.” So for
improving the situation, there’s not enough.
“4H families work awfully hard to support the 4H. And the one thing that 4H needs...outside of members, is money...
I mean hundreds of dollars. So I started an investment fund.” I put it in for 4H, under the name of a young fellow
who was active in 4H until he was killed in an accident. This money is for 4H kids to do special things and to send
them to exhibitions. People in business and retired people should be supporting these kids. The competitions and
exhibitions are big experiences in their lives. With the money I put in the fund, someone will get to a competition
who otherwise wouldn’t have got off the farm.
“This is what concerns me about the young people. I have two gorgeous granddaughters, and smart and competent...
but they don’t stop and think about these simple, basic things. They’re thinking [about] getting ready to go to
college...but the ones going to college can’t cook...Learning to do a number of things and learning to do them
reasonably well, you’ve got a chance to get a number of jobs when you need them.” I don’t know how many jobs
I’ve had but I always needed the money and I was able to do jobs that were available.
One job I had was reading contracts. “Do you know how many men don’t know how to read a contract? I was only
18 and just off the farm. We were all great readers, and we learned to see what was there on the page and what
wasn’t there. It’s important to read what isn’t there.
I spent quite a bit of time working on the Tobeatic committee. We started out with 7 or 8 people. They had a lot of
knowledge.
“I’ve always loved maps, and boy, did I ever get maps! Nova Scotia maps are really something. I forget how many
lakes they told us we have – two or three hundred. A huge number of lakes...The middle of Nova Scotia is basically
one big bog.”
I think the handling of the environment is not being done well. I don’t think they should be scaring us because I think
we can handle it.“We’ve been handling it for how many thousand years? And we’ve always managed to still come
up alive. We’re a very tough and resilient species...I don’t like using the fear of things...we’re going to have floods
and fires and environmental things...It’s not coming - it’s here. Well, of course it is. It’s always been here. Things do
change and that’s normal. But we can and do change just as much, as people. That’s our special thing...most species
can change but not as fast as humans can. And I don’t like this pounding people over the head about it. I think
they could do a lot more by making the possession of the environment, this responsibility, an enjoyable thing and
a thing to be proud of. Just like the kids’ turnips.
My oldest son is an enthusiastic canoer. His first trips in canoes were worse than my trip across the Bay of Fundy. He
went on a 4H exchange to Alberta. When the kids from Alberta came to Nova Scotia, they were treated to a picnic
out at a lake. One young fellow from Alberta looked at a canoe and said he wouldn’t go out in one of them.“Them’s
drownin’ gear!”
When the young man showed George his woodlot in Alberta, he was very proud of their stand of poplars. When he
asked what George thought about the woodlot, George replied,“We call them weeds.” George has been a forester
since he was twelve. He has his silviculture contractor licence. He found it very interesting to take the fellow from
Alberta through his woodlot to show him the variety of trees.
“I had a hard life, in most people’s opinion, but I had a wonderfully interesting life.”
56
57
J udit h ( ‘J U D Y ’ ) E l a in e C o l e
I was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts on April 10, 1943. When I was three months
old, my family returned to North Queens, on the Rosette Road. We settled in
what is commonly referred to as The Daley Place. Six generations of my family
have lived in that house, including my children. The original owner of the house
was James Daley, who settled on the property. The oldest part of the house was
built in 1818-1820. There was a house, a barn and a mill in 1823.
“I couldn’t have grown up anywhere better...There were many of my friends and even relatives who figured I was
underprivileged because actually there was no electricity in this house until 1965. So when I grew up in this house,
we had no amenities whatsoever. And I certainly did not feel deprived. My brother and I were nature children, I
guess. My mom brought us up with a love of nature, a love of history. She took us on long nature walks and taught
us about all the plants and different things that you could eat that were in the woods and uses for them. My mother
had studied botany and zoology at Acadia University so she passed those things on to us. My brother and I just
loved reliving history in our heads. We’d alternatively be native people and building wigwams and making bows
and arrows. Then we’d be settlers to the area and we were always in the woods and on the water and doing things.
I guess our mother trusted us because one of the things that she allowed us to do was take her two galvanized
wash tubs and use them as boats in the little Hen Lake.”
“The river and two lakes near us were abundant with fish back in the fifties....Tupper Lake is behind our property. The
small lake, just starting up the road toward Westfield is Hen Lake. And out of Tupper Lake runs what is sometimes
called the Wildcat River but more commonly the Westfield River which connects with the Medway, near South
Brookfield. This head water that starts at Tupper Lake goes down and connects with our Medway River.”
“It was three miles to the nearest community. Westfield is three miles in one direction and North Brookfield three
miles in the other direction. Often, friends from North Brookfield or Westfield would come to visit and we played all
the kids’ games – tag and Red Rover, and Barney Over which was throwing the ball over the roof of the house. We
made rafts and floated them in the lake and went swimming. One little aside: my brother and I had lots of chores
to do here. My mom had a small farm operation and my dad had died when I was thirteen. He was only 46 years
old. So my mom and my brother, who was two years younger than I, had to do all the work, to look after the couple
cows and the pigs and the chickens and the gardens. And so Phillip and I always had chores. And one of them in
the early summer was picking wild strawberries. And we would be able to hear the kids from Westfield swimming
over across Hen Lake. But we had to pick our requisite amount of
wild strawberries before we were allowed to go...Mom preserved
them for winter use.”
“My mom brought us up
with a love of nature, a
love of history. She took
us on long nature walks
and taught us about
all the plants and different things that you
could eat that were in
the woods and uses for
them.”
58
“In our teen years, we both had bicycles so then we would ride to
Westfield or North Brookfield to visit friends and we would meet
our friends and ride all the way up the Moose Pit Road to what
we called the mountain country up there. We’d take sandwiches
with us and go on picnics and roam the woods again and learn
about the animals and birds.”
“Up to grade seven when the high school started here, my mother
taught my brother and I by correspondence course and the
lessons were sent to Halifax. I did, myself, attend primary and
part of grade one in Westfield because we lived for a very short
time with my grandparents in Westfield. So I had a little bit of
experience with school...It was a one room schoolhouse.” The
old school burned and they built the community hall on the
property. There were two schools in Westfield before that. One
exists where Wendy Whynot lives on the Rosette Road; that was
the second school in Westfield.
judY co l e
So our schooling was at home until we went to the North Queens High School.
At the Westfield school, I remember playing the traditional games of Ring Around the Rosie, tag and skipping. “I do
remember us getting into trouble for climbing trees. Girls don’t climb trees.” Our teacher, Mrs. Eunice Douglas, told
us that ladies did not climb trees. It didn’t stop us!
Girls weren’t allowed to wear pants at the high school. I found that dreadful because I was a tomboy and loved to
wear my denims. I had to walk from my home to the Harlow Road, a little over a mile, to catch the school bus.“And
in the winter, it was pretty cold with bare legs.”
“Rosette Road exists but at one time it was an actual community. In fact in my grandparents’ time I have some letters
that were sent to them and they are addressed to Mr. And Mrs. Harold Daley, Rosette. But gradually the name was
lost...On some records we are listed as living in the Westfield school district but the North Brookfield voting district.
So I guess we’re just sort of misplaced in the wilderness.”
There were few changes in the area that was Rosette. “A few of the houses are gone now. But other than that, very
little change on the Rosette Road. And still, the power line only comes to this house. It doesn’t continue on up.”
“There’s much less farming now. Although I am noticing that people are starting to plant kitchen gardens again. But
for many years, there was definitely a decline in the farm properties – small farms. Nearly everyone had chickens
and a cow and so on for themselves. And back in those days, when there weren’t all the laws there are now, people
were allowed to sell milk and eggs and butter and things. My mother sold butter to the local people. They would
come for it.”
“In the last fifty years, not only has our ecology changed...but North Queens itself has changed.” The population was
twice what it is today. Every village had its own store and garage.”
My mother kept records about wildlife and I have continued to do that. “There is a dreadful decline in just about all
wildlife .My mom would say to my brother and I, ‘Go down and catch some fish for supper.’ Not ‘see if you could
catch something.’”They fished for trout and salmon in the river. Once my brother was standing on the old mill dam
on our property and got so excited when he hooked a salmon that he fell into the mill pond.
“Everywhere in the North Queens area, fishing was wonderful. Hunting was wonderful. People always got food from
partridge and rabbits and deer. And again, it wasn’t ‘see if you could get one.’ All wildlife flourished. We had so many
types of birds we no longer have. We had bobolinks and I haven’t seen a bobolink in years. And Canada jays seem
to have disappeared for some reason.”
“I never remember seeing a Blanding’s [turtle] right here in this
area. Many, many painted turtles and snappers. We always
saw otter and mink which we haven’t seen for a long, long
time either.”
I saw a moose right in the field below the house, probably in
1953 or 54. It was a young bull moose, walking through the
lower field. My mother took a photo of it. About fifteen years
ago, my husband Eric and I saw moose tracks at the back of
our property.
“There were always bats in this house, my whole lifetime, until
three years ago. And as we know, the bats have disappeared.
And it is sad. We also had flying squirrels which lived in this
house from the time I was a child.”
Judy’s maternal grandmother’s wedding gown
(1902)
59
jud y co l e
“We used to see chimney swifts all the time and we had chimney swifts in a chimney that we no longer used. That
would have been during the ‘60s and ‘70s when my children were growing up here. The swifts actually came to
that chimney that we weren’t using any longer. And there were many chimney swifts at the old pulp mill on the
Harmony Road, there was a chimney there and it used to be fun to take the kids up to see the swifts when they
would go in at night...I have seen no swifts in probably ten years.”
“Nighthawks have diminished terribly as well. The last time there was any amount of nighthawks that we saw here
around the property would probably be close to ten years ago. Now we’re lucky to see two or three. This summer
we saw one. When I was a child here, we had whip-poor-wills. You could hear them at night. But those are no longer
around, I think, probably by the mid-60s.” Other birds that are rare are king birds, bittern, common snipe, barn, great
horned and saw-whet owls and swallows. Clear cuts and the abandonment of barns have been factors.
“The lynx has disappeared. And the bobcat and fox are rarely sighted. The deer population seems healthy but they
are being pushed into residential areas and farmers’ fields as the forests shrink. Bears are turning up on people’s
decks looking for food which in former years was easily obtained from the woods and waters.”
Ticks, earwigs and coyotes are new additions since the fifties. Fireflies are rare now as are cicadas, katydids and
grasshoppers.
We have seen the monarch butterflies every year. We have kept a butterfly garden so the monarchs stop on the way
through. But their numbers have diminished horribly as well. I saw seven this summer…other butterflies and moths
are fewer and fewer in the past five years, and this year I saw almost none.
Clear cutting and creatures losing their habitat are big reasons for the decline of species. The use of poisons and
toxins is another big problem.“Use of poisons, toxins and sprays and so on, I think, have impacted on both fish and
wildlife. We have fewer and fewer loons, fewer and fewer ducks. In the early nineties when Eric and I came back
here to live, we had blue herons nesting on Tupper Lake. There were five heron nests. We had black backed gulls
and terns. I used to send cards to Sussex NB where they were doing nature studies and I did nesting cards and we
had seventeen tern nests one year. Our theory on why the terns and other waterfowl are diminishing as well as
their eggs being sterile is because of toxins. We now have quite a lot of eagles in the area. And we have witnessed
eagles killing both blue herons and ducks. Whereas, if we had the bald eagle many years ago, they ate fish. But
then again...since they have started feeding chickens to eagles in the valley, the generations are learning to eat
feathered creatures.”
Acid rain impacted both the forests and the rivers and lakes. The effects can be seen in the dead spruce and other
trees in the woods. “Another victim of acid rain is the frog population. Around Tupper and Hen Lakes it is rare to
see green or bull frogs. Pickerel frogs have disappeared. And leopard are scarce. Peepers however are still plentiful,
probably because they do not live in the water. That water, that once we drank without hesitation when I was out
in nature.”
Climate change has impacted both flora and fauna. “We must wise up and take measures to prevent the loss of as
many species as possible. And restore some balance to nature. Our governments seem to turn a blind eye so it
is up to us to open them in any way we can. We are so lucky to be home to MTRI, Their staff and volunteers work
unceasingly to preserve and restore our share of this beautiful planet. And hopefully the knowledge they pass to
future generations will result in a North Queens more like the one where my mother took my brother and I on many
a woodland learning journey and taught us to love and respect Mother Nature and her many gifts.”
“People have to start really waking up to the fact that we’re almost at the brink of losing so many species and our
natural environment is so impacted. We just have to keep trying to get through to people who don’t use less
poisonous substances in their gardens. Our recycling programs and the things we can do to protect our whole
environment. Not using aerosol sprays, which we know harms the ozone layer.”
“I am a little encouraged in the last couple of years that I do feel that more people are beginning to pay attention,
especially some of the younger generation, which is encouraging.”
60
jud y co l e
“My grandchildren especially...maybe mine are more aware because I made their parents aware and they in turn are
making their children aware...I do have hope that the generation who are in elementary school now may pay more
strict attention to saving our world.”
“My husband and I have been members of MTRI since the beginning. And we do studies for them...I think MTRI has
been a wonderful addition to our area and I wish more people would take part...Appreciate what they are doing
because they work hard.”
61
Art h ur C onr a d
I was born in Middlefield, Queens County in 1937.
I was an orphan and I lived in several homes as I was growing up. I was in homes
from St. Catherine’s River to West Caledonia.
“When I lived as a little gaffer in St. Catherine’s River, a ship run in by Little Hog Light on the shore, in on the beach.
The name of that ship was Wicklow Head and she was filled with canned goods. And the Port Moutoners and the
people of that area ate canned goods for years afterwards ‘cause near as I knew the crew just walked away and left
her, eh?” A fellow in Port Mouton has the ship’s clock. “The houses were standing overlooking that beach – that’s
now Keji Adjunct. That area was also used for cattle pasture for years...They think that area is so delicate but if that
area could stand farming on it and these cattle on it and didn’t hurt it I don’t think a few people’s going to hurt it...
Why didn’t they put a road down there so people could drive in sight of the beach and then walk the last couple
of hundred yards to the beach and go swimming or have their picnic? But you have to walk – how long’s it take
– a half hour?”
The ship “just stood there and let Mother Nature look after it...Iron ship...Back in those days, there was no such word
as ‘environment’ And they didn’t have the means to go and take a ship apart. So they just left it and let the salt
water take care of it.”
I wasn’t very old when the ship went aground. “I remember selling lobsters there for 40 cents a pound at that
period.”
I attended several different schools. They were all one room schools.“Each one was different...I remember at Port Joli,
again they didn’t have the gear they got today to work on the roads. They used to come get me out of school to
help sand the roads through that area. They did so.” I think I was probably about ten years old. “Had to do it all by
hand, them times, eh?”
At the Port Joli school, I’d go and make the fire in the stove. I earned enough money doing this to get my first
bicycle.
When I left school, I worked locally in the woods for a while. “And then I went to sea when I was about sixteen or so
old.” I worked for the Mark Lane Shipping, a company that later became Bowater.
“This was gravel road. This was quite a while ago. And I borrowed a balloon tired bicycle, pedalled to the office [of ]
the Mersey mill, which was again Mark Lane Shipping and applied for a job. The guy there that done the hiring
said, ‘How’d you come in?’ I said, ‘I borrowed a bicycle.’ He said, ‘Anybody that’d pedal from Caledonia to Liverpool
deserves a job.’ So I went to sea for four or five years. And then after that I guess
I went to Ontario. Worked a little bit. And basically that was too crowded. I didn’t
like that at all. So then I guess in ‘65 I got a job doing the park boundary and then
I guess I went on steady from that time and retired from Keji.”
“I can see a
big, big change
in the weather.
Not as much
snow, and
warmer.”
62
My first job while at sea was mess boy. They called it peggy for short. After a year,
I got on as deck hand, ordinary seaman. “We hauled paper from the Mark Land
Shipping mill...Bowater’s, down to, oh, everywhere down...Miami, Galveston,
Brownville Texas, you name it...We’d probably be gone a month or so but...I think
it was twelve days from Liverpool to Houston if I remember right, providing good
weather.” I enjoyed the travelling and seeing a lot of people.
When I worked in the woods, I cut with a Swede saw. It was a one-man saw.
A R t h ur conr a d
“I got off the ship in Newfoundland and I went to work there in the woods. I think there were sixty guys in the camp.
And they all had Swede saws. And you could cut four cord a day with a Swede saw in Newfoundland. It was good
wood. A lot of people might not believe it but there was good wood and you could cut four cord a day.” We were
near Grand Falls. We cut all softwood. That wood was sluiced into Deer Lake and then on to Cornerbrook. Then they
made it into paper.
I have a small woodlot. Last winter we had people in doing silviculture work. I had planted trees all my life and we had
a mixture of everything, both hardwoods and softwoods. I just had the poor stuff cut out and it is a good woodlot
now. “A big machine in there would ruin it, because we’ve got stands of all different ages, eh?...You’ve always got
something to cut, providing you go in with small gear, eh?”
With the big machines “that’s the way they do it today. But the trouble is, say the neighbour next door only had thirty
acres. He put a big machine in, he stripped it and I tried to tell him, I said, ‘ There’ll be nothing on it in your lifetime
or your kids’ lifetime.’ See? And that’s the wrong way to do it.”
“I’ve seen a lot of changes. One thing...I’ve seen a lot of changes in the people, eh? The people and their attitudes and
things like this. That’s a big change, you know. Good heavens, back fifty years ago, sixty years ago, people would
come ahead, give you a hand, help you. If you lost something, they’d find it and they’d return it. But it’s completely
different in that respect. And as far as Caledonia goes...it’s gone downhill in the last forty years.” When the Credit
Union and the bank closed, I thought people should have “hollered bloody murder.” Should have gone to the
government and said we want that bank here. Because the sad part, the banks, their profits have just been going
up every month, every month and they could afford to carry these little banks, eh? Now it hurts everybody, again
because what do we do?...“We go to Bridgewater to get a stupid cheque cashed...And if you’re there you do your
shopping...So everybody loses out when these things happen.”
“We had the Shell garage...just across from the little canteen that just opened. They sold it to, guess who? Irving.
Two years at the most they closed it. Now down around the turn, you had an Irving garage but they also tore that
down. And down below, just below the Westfield Road there was a storage facility there for oil and so on. Irving
owned that. They took that out. So there’s three prime pieces of land right in the heart of Caledonia that they won’t
lease and they won’t sell. It will always be that way. So you see what happens when you sell to these people? The
government should get off their laurels and intervene in these cases.”
“We attend the farmers’ market every Saturday and we don’t get too many people going too far out of their way...
One of these areas would be ideal. But we can’t even lease them.”
“There was probably twenty businesses in Caledonia back...in the ‘60s, at least...We had a woodworking shop there,
which was the last one to go. We had a hardware store, right on the very corner, we had two Co-ops. As far as gas
facilities we had...must have been six or eight gas tanks in the local area...Now again, multinationals got control of
all that.”
“There’s people in the area, retired people who right now
has got their place for sale because there’s nothing here.”
Sometimes I wonder if I should leave too. “If you want
an ice cream here after 7 or 8 o’clock you can’t get one
in the wintertime.”
My wife and I built our home in West Caledonia in 1966,
48 years ago. I started raising the Black Angus cattle in
1971. “Went to Ontario and bought our first breeding
stock...The prices weren’t terrible high. And we’ve been
doing it ever since...I took to showing cattle...pretty well
from Halifax to Yarmouth.” I’ve got ribbons that I won
with my cattle. My son was involved in 4H and he won
prizes at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto.
Ribbons Arthur has won with his black Angus
cattle; some at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto
63
A R t h ur conr a d
There was a big livestock sale in New Brunswick. They were going to bring in buyers from New Zealand to B.C.“That’s
a good place to take an animal then to sell it. So we took this heifer up. You see we got first prize with her. But we
was offered on the phone...$3500 for her...from a guy in New York. And I said no. I figured this sale would be a yearly
thing. I said, ‘No I want to go to that sale.’ Anyway we had the highest selling heifer there but we didn’t get $3500
for her. They never had that sale since.” The government had advertised for this sale but that’s all it amounted to.
“Soon’s we get some dollars ahead I want to hook up with some solar power because you people [MTRI] were a good
example that it would work, eh?...Speaking of solar power it makes me wonder where our government is with all
this. As you probably know, Germany is the leading country in the world in solar electricity right now, right? But
those people are ‘way more concerned about climate change to what we are here in Canada. The governments
here are just sitting back on their laurels...Germany plans to be self-sufficient I think by 2016 from fossil fuels, gas
and nuclear power. If they can do it why can’t we all do it?...It’s going to take a major catastrophe for people to
wake up...Did you see that rally in New York? A hundred thousand people calling on government to do something?
That’s what it’s going to take to move people. If this climate change holds true... it’s predicting it’s going to be a dire
thing for [those]...coming behind us.”
“Isn’t it stupid that we destroy our own house that we need...?”
“In many, many cases, we’ve got to take a step back. But there’s so many things that we can do that won’t cost us a
lot of money. For one thing – gas. You drive 60 versus 80, you can save 20% of your fuel...But I see on the internet,
in the west they’re talking about increasing the speed limit. If they do that all it’s going to mean is more accidents
and more fuel to burn.”
“Keji Lodge was noted, I won’t say all over the world, but all over Canada. And it was a great place to go.” The park
was supposed to have horse riding stables, boating, a campground on Indian Point, and so on for vacations. Now
they are trying to get little housekeeping units around the area. If they had kept the lodge going they would have
had a different clientele. Now they seem to be going in the hole every year. And they are closing Keji in the winter
months.
“We’ve got mink running around here everywhere. I never seen them before in my life. And there’s a lot of deer. Whether
you can attribute that to the park, I don’t know...I’d love to go up to Lucifer Brook and go up to that country again
where we went through in ‘65 just to see how it’s grew, eh? But that’s another thing. Twice, doing the boundary, we
walked over that country because...it was February and we’re talking four feet of snow or more and it stayed on
that country ‘til pretty near April, eh?...I can see a big, big change in the weather. Not as much snow, and warmer.”
There was a thermometer on one of the stores in Caledonia. It showed 30-40 below in February for a week or more.
That was in Fahrenheit.
I remember when I used to work in the woods as a young man, the Canada jays would come and eat out of my hand.
They used to be in the woods everywhere. But they’re disappearing. But watching films on TV, I saw that the Canada
jay was still up north. I thought since they are a cold weather bird, they moved further north because of climate
change.
Bats, chimney swifts and nighthawks - they are all disappearing. Another bird I rarely see any more are meadow hens.
“Another one I used to love is the bobolinks. When I used to make hay up there, they’d be sitting on the fence and
I was probably disturbing their nest...But I used to love the sound of them. I haven’t seen them.”
I think things that are contributing to the birds disappearing are acid rain and pesticides. I’d heard that apples were
number one of being sprayed.“You spray an apple tree before it comes in blossom., you spray it after you get apples
on them, you spray it for every week up until August. And then, come September, if the apples start to drop you can
spray them again with some kind of stuff that will keep the apple on the tree for another week.”
“This summer we’ve seen quite a few [bees]...I started paying attention and there was quite a few around...This spring
I couldn’t see any but this fall there was.”
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A R t h ur conr a d
“Being a farmer, living on the land all your life, you see these things...You can’t come out of college and make decisions
on the land without some background. I said, ‘You got to grow up on the land. You got to live with it. And see the
changes before you start making decisions’”
“I trapped for quite a few years...You see all this stuff and you notice it, eh? And if you’re a farmer you depend on the
weather and you’re looking for this.”
“I often wonder if the coyotes is causing it [deer coming out]...But there is a few more deer.”
I’ve thought about making a farm that is self-sufficient. “Grow our grain, make our own fuel.”
With so many people leaving the country it puts a strain on taxpayers. Look at the Mersey land. It was nice to have
it but we couldn’t afford it and who will maintain it? I feel that Nova Scotia is losing tax dollars every day. We need
good paying jobs here.
I think about hemp.“You can grow as much tonnage off an acre of hemp as you can like 4 or 5 acres of forest, eh? And
there’s so many things that you can make out of hemp...from medicine to you name it – clothes, eh?” This could
be a good industry for the area. The hemp could be grown on the abandoned farms. “It’s an industry just sitting
there for somebody to do.”
“We can’t always depend on other countries for our food and all that stuff...3000 miles. That’s the average our food...
comes...That’s a lot of gas...That’s not helping our carbon footprint at all. And we could be producing all this stuff
here.”
“We were pretty well self-sufficient. I think there were 6000 cattle in Brookfield area alone. I think we were pretty well
self-sufficient in beef in that area...The government bends over backwards for these big multinationals and what
do they give a [hoot] for you and I?...People should be more involved in the local government...If they don’t do a
good job, who’s going to pay for it, hey?”
I remember the river drives. I did them when I was a young fellow and I didn’t mind getting in the water, so I didn’t
mind it. Each fellow had a channel to keep watch over to make sure the logs were flowing.“You were given maybe
a bag of dynamite and whatever else you needed – your caps and your fuse and I don’t ever remember anyone
asking if you knew how to use it or not...If you had a plug on the drive why you had to take your dynamite and
blow it. And lots of times, a good many times, of course this was in March, I was soaked through and through
because I’d fall in, eh? But I enjoyed it just the same at that time. I keep saying how things change and now all of a
sudden I think it’s outlawed to have a river drive. And we had more trout back there where we used to river drive
than there is today.”
I think that acid rain has reduced the trout stocks. But they are beginning to come back now. Some people brought
in other species that were driving the trout out. But I didn’t understand bringing in other fish species since there
weren’t better fish than the speckled and brown trout. I don’t think Turtle Lake has these other species of fish. I
wonder if a gate could be put up to keep the other fish out.
“The other day, I seen three pheasants. The first time in years and years that I’ve seen pheasants... They must have
worked their way down from the valley. I don’t know of anybody that’s raising them.”
“Partridge is another one. When we did the boundary in ‘64-’65 there was a birch tree out beyond Liberty Lake that
had so many partridge in it you’d swear it was leafed out. And when you hunted on these old farms...it was nothing
for twenty or thirty partridges to fly out of a tree. And last year, I might have seen two partridge all year...Did you
know that during a heavy storm partridge will be in a tree at night feeding and they’ll fly out of the tree down into
the snow and that’s where they’ll spend a snowstorm.”
“Back here in the field we generally have a pair of red tails, and of course there’s always an eagle up around the
lake.”
65
A R t h ur conr a d
I’ve seen twenty loons come in to Turtle Lake in the mornings to socialize. They stay an hour or two and then leave.
One female loon that is often there hasn’t raised a chick in several years.
We had a barn raising at our place around 48 years ago and people came in horse and buggy to help put up the barn.
One fellow who came with a horse came from South Brookfield. They stayed just for the day to work.
There was almost no traffic on the road back then. There were only two cars owned by people on the road. Everybody
had a horse and wagon.
As a young man, I drove the mail with a horse and wagon. The mail came in on the train.
I’m interested in history. It’s important to keep skills like stone work alive. The native people were very respectful of
the environment.
“People should pay more attention and be more vocal about what’s going on. Because after all, who’s got the upper
hand if we stand together?...The occupiers – they had a thing going there. I think they should have kept that up.”
I’d like to see meetings held where issues could be discussed and ideas could be shared...“I sometimes wonder who I
could contact to throw these ideas at them.” I’d like young people to get involved and learn to respect other people,
respect animals, respect the environment. “I think people – kids - who come off farms are better people for it.”
“If it continues another twenty years without some kind of slow-down what kind of planet will we have that’s fit to
live on?” I noticed my squash this summer would wilt in the sun every day. They’d pick up some through the night,
but the next day, they’d wilt again. I don’t remember that happening before. The sun’s heat seemed to penetrate
right through my shirt when I was working outside. I also noticed that the sun is destroying the plastic around my
windows.
One of Arthur’s prize winning heifers
66
67
B l a nc h e ( n e e M a h on e y ) C onw ay
I was born on April 15, 1926 in New Grafton. Then my family moved to Maitland
Bridge.
I started school in Maitland Bridge. I went there until I was in grade two. Then we
moved back to New Grafton and I went to school there up until grade seven.
The school building still exists and it was used for concerts and things like that.
Now, they don’t do anything with it.
My first teacher came from Shelburne; her name was Ruth MacLaren. She boarded at the Weare’s. They had the first
house on the right going into the old Caledonia Road, which is now the Corkum Road. Then Robert Smith taught
at the school.
My mother, Iris (Weagle) Mahoney, had diabetes and we had to watch what she ate. She wasn’t allowed to eat any
sweets or she’d go in a coma. “The only way we could get her out of it was with orange juice with sugar in it.”
For entertainment, “We could play checkers and...Chinese checkers. We played just plain 45s or opposites 45s...Tag
or anything like that...We used to play dress up too...if we could get any old fashioned clothes, that’s what we liked
to put on.”
We sometimes went into the woods to play. “We weren’t supposed to, but we did, because they were so scared of
[us] getting hurt in the woods. At that time they had a big tower up on the hill in Grafton. Like a fire tower.” They
used to man it in the summer and fall. This tower blew down in the early ‘40s.
I went to Clarence DeLong’s dance hall and a canteen in Kempt when I was younger. It was on Minard’s Lake. The
dance hall is gone now.
I married at the age of seventeen on June 29, 1943. My husband and I lived in Whiteburne for twelve years. We had
cattle and three horses; two work horses and a driving horse. My husband, Francis (Frank) Eugene Conway, worked
at the Whiteburne gold mines. He and Guy Armstrong were the last two men to work at the mines.
“At the mines themselves they had a hotel. The remains of it were still there. The only one that lived there when I
arrived was Fred Boyle – he still had a cabin back there that he lived in sometimes but they moved out to what
they called Central Caledonia. They even had a school house and like I said a place for...to keep their horses. Anyone
that was visiting the mines could keep their horses there.”
“I remember seeing
fireflies when I was
young. I used to see
them all the time.
They looked like little flashlights.”
68
“When I lived there in 1943...the gold mine closed down in December
of 1939, I think it was. The school house was still there but my children
didn’t go there. They went out to Central Caledonia.” My two oldest
started there. They taught up to grade twelve there at that time. Then
my younger children went to the West Caledonia school. It was just
down from the church. Grades primary to six were taught there. There
was one room but two cloakrooms; one for the boys and one for the
girls. My daughter, Margaret, went to North Queens high school for
grade eleven and twelve. I feel that young people today have a better
chance because they can get a better education.
There were several families in Whiteburne at that time. My uncle, who
was also my godfather, Robert Weagle, lived across a stream. There was
a walking trail between our homes. To drive along the road it would
be a two mile drive. MacBrides lived out there as well and they had
five boys.
B l a nc h e conw ay
My family moved from Whiteburne to West Caledonia. I lived there for 53 years. I was very happy there. We had a
garden and our own fruit trees. We preserved the fruit for the winter. “I did everything, from cleaning out the stalls
to the calves...We made a good living. The most money we had was the sheep...The oldest sheep went [for] mutton
...We bought them from Oran Veinot and Dorothy and we kept them for twelve years and sold them back to them
and we made money there.”
We also raised pigs, chickens and sometimes geese and ducks.
I recall that in the winter, hens wouldn’t lay much, so my mother-in-law would pack eggs in salt and that kept them
from spoiling.
“I think during the war it was a big difference. He had a big farm so ...they took them down to the Masonic Hall in
Caledonia to enlist. And when they found out that he owned a big farm and had horses and cattle they said, ‘No,
you’re better staying on your farm.’” He also had a medical reason for not enlisting.
“My husband did okay selling firewood and selling logs to Freeman’s mill. That’s where we got the money, from him.
We bought it. [the house in West Caledonia] He went to Mr. Freeman and told him he had a bunch of logs on the
Russell Lake that he wanted to sell. He asked him why he wanted to sell it and he said, ‘I have a chance to buy a
house in West Caledonia...They won’t drive my children to school as long as we continued to live in Whiteburne.’
Well, then after we moved out there to West Caledonia, the next year VanDyk’s moved out there to West Caledonia
and they bused their children and the Donnellans out to school.”
When my husband worked in the woods, he had a pair of oxen that he used in the summertime. In the winter, when
the snow was deep, he had to use the horses.
Working in the woods they were either cutting pit props
or logs. “The pit props they made shingles out of. They
had what they called Norway pine. That was a higher
price, if they sold any amount of that. He sold enough
one spring that he had three thousand and three
hundred dollars....He had a certain way of doing wood
and a certain way of doing logs. Now, some of the logs
had to be peeled and have all the bark taken off.” One
of his daughters would help with that. He got a job up
at Bowater Mersey tending the gate up in Albany New
for 14 years. When he turned 72 they gave the job over
to me. I did that for seven years.
Frank didn’t believe in clear cutting. He said, ‘If you clear
cut then you wouldn’t have any.’ He thought it would
take too long for a small pine to grow to be big enough
to get any money out of it.
There were two farms in West Caledonia.“An old bachelor
owned one, back at the end of the Whiteburne Road.
It would be about eight miles from where the school
was.”
Blanche’s mother-in-law’s brown suede
purse with a small silver-plated clip
to attach the purse to your belt, and a
penny from 1909
There were still some pastures in the area. The last couple
of years that Frank was living, he bought a field that was
in back of their house, that belonged to Ritchie Coade
but Cleeve Annis and his sister owned it for years.
69
B l a nc h e conw ay
There were farms back on the Turtle Lake Road. Rosella (Winters) McQuire and her brothers Steve and Harry were
brought up in that area. I believe that Arthur Conrad owns that land back there now.
I remember first seeing a moose right after I moved to West Caledonia. I looked out a kitchen window and saw it. I
don’t see them anymore.
I sometimes had bats in my house. We had a cabin at Turtle Lake Road and we stayed there while bats were cleared
out. I haven’t heard of them being mentioned for some time.
I remember seeing fireflies when I was young. I used to see them all the time. They looked like little flashlights.
I remember seeing a huge turtle, as big as a table top, as some of my family were going to visit my parents. My
daughter Francis wanted to go touch it. My husband grabbed her by the back of her skirt to hold her back. He said,
“That could take off one of your toes.”
I feel bird hunting, such as pheasant, and clear cutting are affecting animals. My husband didn’t believe in killing
animals unless they were going to be used for food.
Her first teacher came from Shelburne; her name was Ruth Maclaren. She boarded at the Weir’s. They had the first
house on the right going into the old Caledonia Road. Then Robert Smith taught at the school. “That would be
Zeta Smith’s son.”
An old lantern and Javex bottle
70
71
Edit h ( ‘ E D I E ’ ) C oo k
I was born in Aldershot, England, thirty miles south of London, on February 12,
1926.
My father was a mechanic “until he got a brick on his head and had a fractured
skull. Then he couldn’t do it no more. The guy who was up the ladder dropped
it on his head...He had a plate put in his head.” He worked off and on after that,
but he couldn’t do too much or he’d pass out. “It was hard on us all.”
When I moved to Canada with my husband after the Second World War, “we had no lights, we had oil lamps, we had
no water – we had to go to the well. We had wood for a fire....I made bread and cookies and everything after I got
used to it.”
“When I first came over here, things were not that easy.”
“There was no washing machines, there was no hot water. You had to boil it on the top of the stove to get hot water
to bath with.” The bathtub was just a galvanized tub.
I remember that it was three years after we got electricity in our home before we got a washing machine.
I didn’t like the kerosene oil lamps. “I wouldn’t light them...My husband had to do that. I was scared of them.”
I was a war bride. I was married to my husband, George, for a year before we moved to Canada. We met in Aldershot,
England. “We were both stationed there at that time. He was on one side of the street and I was stationed on the
other side.”
We settled in the community of Lequille, outside Annapolis Royal.
My husband found it difficult to get work after the war. He went to work cutting wood. He didn’t have a power saw.
He used a cross bow saw and an axe. Eventually, he was given a government job in Lequille. “They hired people up
and he got on that. Then somebody from Cornwallis came down and saw him and asked what he was doing there.
He said, ‘I have to earn money somewhere.’ He said, ‘Come down to the base.’ They needed someone for medical
stores. He had been in the medical corps in the Second World War. He got an interview and was hired. “After that,
things went easy.”
“Because they’re
taking too much out
of the woods. And
the food is not there
for the animals. So
they’re coming out
to get the food.”
72
Then the Korean War started, and George went to Korea for a year. “He
didn’t have a very nice job. He had to look after them [the wounded] in
the front lines, too...And then he was left with the hospital by himself.
And he had to diagnosis what was wrong with the patients ‘cause the
doctor had to leave. So he was left to do it....He was a changed man when
he came back. But we got along.”
George stayed in the army until he retired.
We didn’t move around as much as some. We didn’t have too many postings
because our youngest daughter was very sick. “They wanted to keep us
near the children’s hospital in Montreal.”
I was a homemaker and looked after the family. “My husband said he
married me to look after me. Not to work. He’s one of the old fashioned.”
When our youngest daughter was twelve, I took a job outside the home.
EDIe COOK
I worked in a friend’s restaurant as cook for a couple of years.
Our first child was born in England. The two oldest boys were born in Annapolis, the youngest boy was born in
Winnipeg and the youngest girl was born in Montreal. All six of the children were born in hospitals. I was kept in
hospital for ten days after each birth.
When we lived in Lequillle we had a small garden and raised our own vegetables. We kept a few chickens and a
couple of pigs. “One to sell, and one to get the meat.” We didn’t have a fridge in those days. My husband put the
pork down in the cellar in a pickle barrel. I have to admit,“I did not like it. So we had some Indian people that lived
handy. And used to come up once in a while and knock on the door. ‘Mrs. Cook, have you got a piece of meat or
have you got a loaf of bread?’ And I was only too glad to [give them the pickled meat].... He [my husband] asked
me one day, he said, ‘How come the pork is going down?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘We must have used it.’ I don’t
think my husband ever found out where all the pork had gone.
I don’t feel the community’s buildings have changed a great deal since I first arrived in Lequille. There were a few
newer buildings. But “around here, it seems to be the way it was when I came over....The same hospital, the same
church...no difference.”
However, people have changed.“It’s not as friendly as it used to be, I find. When I first came over here, the teapot was
at the back of the stove at all times. And you could go to a friend’s house and sit and they would say, ‘Would you
like a cup of tea?’ If they had squares or cookies, that went on the table too....Once TV started coming in, that was
the end of that sort of thing.”
I liked to go fishing and hunting. “Hunt for deer and fish trout...or bass.” I recall fishing at the causeway in Annapolis
with my husband. “He gave me his rod to fish and I caught a ten pound bass. But I was scared to bring it in! I was
scared it was going to take me in. I threw the rod at him and he took it over.”
When asked about the wildlife in the area, I said I have definitely seen changes.“We can’t even grow a garden around
here now, or else the deer are into it. And then you’ve got the racoons. They get up in your apple trees...Where I
lived, we had apples. We planted apples and pears and plums....Because they’re taking too much out of the woods.
And the food is not there for the animals. So they’re coming out to get the food. It’s sad really.”
I remember people taking wood from the forests for firewood.“And once in a while they did it for... pulp wood. They
used to get that. Not like it is today. You see two or three trucks with two or three loads on them.” They are just
taking too much.
Edie (right) and her husband George (left)
Edie’s son Rex
73
L . J AMES ( ‘J i m ’ ) C roo k e r
II was born in Caledonia, Queens County on March 6, 1945.
I have a 45-70 Winchester gun that belonged to my great-grandfather. He had
also owned a 44 Henry, a model of gun that was used in the Civil War in the
United States. He was a woodsman and he owned quite a bit of land, which is
now being used by the Mersey Community Forest Co-operative.
My great-grandfather was cruising his land with a couple of other men, and one of the men got up in the night to get
something for an upset stomach. “A bear had been bothering the food supply so my great-grandfather thought
this was a bear going into the food supply and he took a shot at him. And he just creased him along the belly and
didn’t really hurt him. But my great-grandfather would never use a gun again. I don’t know if it was the guy that
he almost shot or a friend-some other friend- giving this 45-70 so he’d have a gun to use because back then it was
quite essential to have a gun to carry with you in the woods. There were moose...they hunted moose, and shot
bear that bothered the livestock.”
There were no coyotes or white tailed deer in the forests then.
My father worked a farm and my mom was a stay-at-home mother. She had gone to Boston to study nursing. She
taught one year in Middlefield before she was married. Then they had the farm and they raised 7 children there.
My great-grandfather had 11,000 acres of land in South Brookfield and surrounding area. There was a recession in
1891. He cut a lot of logs. He couldn’t get them out of the woods because of the weather. He ended up having to
sell off land and ended up keeping about 1000 acres. That was divided up among the four boys in the family. I have
some of the original land that had belonged to my great-grandfather.
I went to agricultural college in Truro and then to MacDonald College in Montreal, which was part of McGill University.
I took a job with the federal government for three years. I wanted to return to the land in Nova Scotia and farm. To
supplement the farm income, I got an education degree and taught school for 29 years.“It’s interesting to have 30
and 40 year old people around that you taught at one point.”
“For a while there
were no barn swallows around but I
see they are back
this year... But if you
think about it, there
aren’t many barns
for them to nest in
anymore.”
74
I’ve noticed changes in education. “...there weren’t even calculators. I
taught mainly math and I remember teaching kids how to use slide
rules...and then computers. Calculators came in first...The very basic
calculator was quite expensive.” A calculator that would only do adding,
subtracting, multiplying and dividing would cost around $50 back then.
When he was finishing his teaching career you could get one for just
$10. Records had to be kept up, such as cum cards. “I can remember
hand-writing out exams. You could get the secretary to type them up
for you, but they didn’t really want to do that, so you’d write them out
by hand. And then you’d take them to a gestetiner and crank them out...
The first photocopiers were quite difficult to work.”
I went to a two room elementary school in South Brookfield. It had grades
primary to five or six on one side and up to grade eleven on the other
side.
I remember that students looked after themselves. There was no such
thing as reporting a fight to the teachers.“I don’t recall there being very
many fights. We got along quite well...Some of the things we did for
amusement around the school, recess and noontime, would probably
be frowned on today. We had snowball fights. We had coasting down
ji m C R O O KE R
over the bank...I think the teacher did tell us not to go down on the highway, but we came close to it. Some of the
coasting we did, I don’t know how we survived...I think kids were a little tougher then because…we never had a
broken bone.”
“We had a pretty modern school for this area. It was built quite a while before I started. But the Frenchmen came
there in the ‘40s and they required a bigger and better school so they built another school. It had a furnace...a big
furnace in the basement. That was quite an honour to be given the job to go down and stoke wood in the furnace.”
It was always one of the students from the high school side of the school that got that job.
“After the new high school in Caledonia was built in 1954, I was in about grade four or so. Then the school was divided
up differently. They only taught to grade six there. I went to grade six and then I went to high school. I got the job
of looking after the furnace for one period of the winter anyway.”
Students tended to listen to the lessons being taught to the older children, especially after an assignment was finished.
“The stories, you know, you’d hear them talking about things. And the next year, you’d be doing the same thing.”
There was lots of homework.
My siblings and I played a lot among ourselves since we didn’t have any close neighbours. We played softball. We had
an unstructured game called Canny. It was like Hide and Seek, but we had to knock a can off a rock to avoid being
“it”.“I don’t know who invented this game. Probably some of my older sisters or brother. Maybe even my parents. I
can remember spending a fair amount of time playing that.”
My father had dairy cattle and we children liked to teach the calves how to lead. I had a couple pair of oxen that I
raised.
We fished in Horse Lake, behind the farm, and in the Medway River. “I never really enjoyed fishing. I wasn’t patient
enough...too many flies or it was too cold.”
“I did enjoy hunting. And then I’d follow my father around…shortly after I learned to walk, it seems. He was quite
a hunter.” When my father would put the gun up to shoot, I would cover my ears. My father would be using the
big gun that was my great-grandfather’s. It made a terrible noise. “He’d never get a deer when I was right there, it
seemed.”
One change that I’ve noticed in the community is
that people used to visit one another frequently.
Neighbours would visit several times a week,
talking and telling stories. They’d have a cup of
coffee and doughnuts.“They all seemed to enjoy
Mom’s doughnuts.”We children would try to eat
the doughnuts as fast as she could cook them.
“She didn’t seem to mind.”
“My father was quite stern but he was never into
any severe punishment. I mentioned that to
some of my older sisters and they said, ‘Well,
he punished us and we passed the word down
so you learned that you’d better do what Dad
said.’”
My father was 95 when he died. “I thought I’d lost
my best friend.”
“They had something that was very interesting to
me. A program called Farm Forum...It was on the
radio every Monday night. Mainly in the winter,
Jim Crooker with great-grandfather’s (William Sebra
Crooker) gun
75
ji m C R O O KE R
they would broadcast this program – I think it went all over Canada...Various groups would discuss it and kind of
report their findings or their discussion back to the radio station which would report the findings the next week.
Only certain groups would have been picked for that.” Maybe a dozen local people would meet in our community,
including the school principal and some of the teachers. I would be upstairs doing my homework and would listen
to their discussions, if people were meeting in my house.
My siblings and I were all involved in 4H. We held meeting at various homes in the community. ”There was one
particular house, I enjoyed going to. It was Elaine Smith. That would be Gary Smith’s grandmother. She was very
musical. We’d have a 4H meeting and we’d always have a lunch afterwards...She would play the piano while we
were eating...we enjoyed that.”
When I retired from teaching, I purchased some hay equipment and made and sold hay. I made hay on several farms. I
recall when I was a teenager, there were families on each of those farms, working their own fields.“Since I’ve stopped
making the hay on them, some of them are not being used very much at all and are growing in bushes.”
“There used to be quite a dairy industry around here. Superior Dairy from Liverpool bought milk, and there was a
truck that came out every day and picked it up.” I believe there were about 12 different dairy farmers in the area at
that time. I think there’s only one left in all of Queens County and the milk now goes to a dairy in Halifax.
“My father had dairy and that’s quite a lot of change there. He sold cream. Most of the farmers sold cream....They’d
only have half a dozen cows maybe and milk them by hand. And then Dad got in with Superior Dairy and before I
was old enough to help with the hand milking he got a surge milking machine which they hung on the cow. Still
very simple compared to what they do today. There was no pipeline or anything like that.”
“It was kind of neat how the milk truck would pick your milk up in cans. And we had quite a long driveway. We’d take
it out of a cooler and take it down the road. In the summer, my father had an old ‘47 International truck, half ton
truck. We all learned how to drive on that, all seven of us, by taking milk down the road. And we would all ride on
the truck.” I was driving the truck when I was about ten years old. Of course, it had a standard shift. I have never had
a serious accident in a car and I feel learning to drive the old truck early on has stood me in good stead.
There used to be sheep in the area but there aren’t any sheep farms now. There were horses on the farms too. I
remember that my father was one of the last farmers to get a tractor.“I wonder how we could raise a family of seven
children with one horse...He [Jim’s father] always got the work done....I remember one year, I was still going to high
school, he was all finished haying by the first of July...We had some dry years back then, in the early ‘60s.”
My father used a horse-drawn mowing machine. It had a five foot cutter bar. “I think my grandfather bought that in
1926. And Dad used it until it was totally worn out. It still worked good when I was young but later on it was getting
pretty shaky.”
People worked ten hour days for $1 a day. At that time they got ten cents a pound for beef. A person would have to
work for an hour to earn enough for a pound of beef.
There have been changes in wildlife.“I noticed there’s no bats around recently...I haven’t seen a bat all summer...Just
the last couple of years they disappeared. For a while there were no barn swallows around but I see they are back
this year... But if you think about it, there aren’t many barns for them to nest in anymore.”
I feel these changes may be caused by several things.“Some of it is chemicals...sprays and whatnot. I don’t altogether
buy into that theory because look at during the war what they were doing. Not right here. But the First and Second
World War was just complete destruction in parts of Europe and the wildlife...I guess, survived...It seems strange to
me if a tanker goes down off the coast of Nova Scotia it makes national news but during the war they were blowing
up tankers...It still made the news but it wasn’t considered an environmental hazard, I don’t think.”
“Climate continually changes and as you get older you see it. Like I mentioned, back in the ‘60s we had a real dry spell.
And then we had some cold winters. Then we had some warm winters. I can’t really see there’s much change in global
76
ji m C R O O KE R
warming but I guess if you keep records of the temperature every day you would probably see that better.”
“We had a teacher in South Brookfield. I don’t know what grade I was in, maybe 3 or 4 or something like that and
she thought it would be neat for us to get to see the Fort Anne and Port Royal....Half the school, probably 40 of us.
Quite a few....She hired a local man that had a pretty good truck. But what he did with it...one thing he did was haul
slab wood around so he had high side boards, homemade side boards.” I don’t remember there being a tailgate,
but just a chain across the back. “So we all got in there with the teacher and away we went to Annapolis...There
were no permission slips or anything like that to have signed...Coming home it took to raining. It was in June and
it was just torrential rain. So by the time you got home, you could feel rain running down your back. Boots were
full of water.”
My sisters taught in Milton. When they’d come home for a weekend, the family would pile into the back of the truck
for a drive to take them back on Sunday. One winter day, I put on a buffalo hide coat and climbed into the back of
the truck. “Coming home, the cops stopped Dad for some reason and came up beside the truck with his flashlight
and I laid in the back of the truck very quietly and then I jumped up. And I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t make any
noise. I just jumped up. The policeman jumped back and screamed. He thought I was a bear. Good thing he didn’t
have his weapon out. He might’ve shot me.”
I try to use my woodlot in the same way my father did. “I don’t really like the idea of clear cut, so I selectively cut.”
“My dad went to agricultural college in the ‘20s so he kind of farmed in a progressive way, I think. He liked using
good seed.” He helped to get veterinary service in the area and worked on other programs. The government was
supportive of farming back in those days. Using limestone was encouraged; they’d give it to farmers if they’d use
it. “Now you need to apply to get some assistance on trucking... and you’re very lucky if you get it.” Big corporate
farms tend to get the assistance. In that way, farming isn’t as easy as it was 50 years ago.
I hope for things to change.“People are going into local food. In the New England states there’s something like a 300
percent increase in local markets in the last few years.” In the Queens County area, there are markets in Liverpool
and in Caledonia, but I don’t think there are enough food producers to keep the local market going. “It takes a lot
of effort to get a good garden.”
“There’s not many young people to hire.” My father used to be able to make some phone calls on Sunday night and
have a crew of workers Monday morning. “I’ve been trying for the last three years to get a few people to help and
I can’t get anyone....The ones who really want to work have jobs...A lot of them have gone to Alberta or out west
somewhere.”
I remember after haying was finished for the summer, the men would go to the woods and cut and peel hemlock for
railway ties. My father hauled the logs out with a single horse. “It was always lots of fun to get in the woods after
haying because, you know, the hot weather in July wasn’t too much fun in the open field but when you get in the
woods, you’ve got some shade...I always appreciated that. I guess, probably, that got into my veins ‘cause I still enjoy
it. Now, I was in the woods just the other day and I wanted to stay there...It’s not work really. It’s fun.”
77
T h o m a s ( ‘ T O MMY ’ ) F r a n k l in C u s h in g
I was born on May 19, 1939. I grew up “here on the farm on the outskirts of
Caledonia. The house was built in the 1800s.”
“My great-great grandfather Charlie, and then his son Charlie lived in the house,
and...then Grandpa Frank moved in the house from here over on the other
side....This was a two story, two family house, and you knocked on the door if
you were coming...over to visit anybody,...Grandpa Charlie or whoever.”
“Then great-great grandfather passed away. Then grandfather Charlie and his ...wife ...took this side and Grandpa
Frank took the other side, and then when great-grandmother...died Grandpa Frank and his wife moved on this
side and Dad and Mum and my brother and I lived on the other side. And that was the way it was. Then when my
great-grandfather passed away and Grandpa Frank’s wife passed away, my Dad and Mum...moved over here with
Grandpa Frank to keep him fed, and then the other side was opened up so that we went back and forth, but the
old people you had to knock before you approached this side of the house.”
On the farm,“why, we had seventeen milking cows which we delivered milk and churned butter from the cream and
then we went from milking to beef cattle.”
The farming took place in the 40’s and 50s.
The milk, we “delivered it in the community with horse and buggy and then in the winter, milk on...sleds. We delivered
milk with the one horse on sleds and come back and washed the bottles and got ‘em all ready for that night.”
“We delivered milk from here down to Randall Dukeshire’s old place in Hibernia...There’s the cemetery, we came back
and went up to Chester Douglas’ which was up West Caledonia road and turned there. And then we went back
down Caledonia to the...exhibition grounds and turned down over to old Mr. and Mrs. McInnis. Old Mr.and Mrs.
McInnis. And then we came back home and washed bottles and got ready for the next day.” We used the hand
pump for water in the kitchen and the hot water was heated on the side of the wood stove.
“I was twelve when we quit delivering milk and then we went into beef cattle and farmed with beef.”
Mr. Bernie Chute also delivered milk. “He delivered up West Caledonia road up to Lorimer Boyle’s and back down, and
Broham Road and that was as far as he came down,”
“We sold directly to the people... but then stores started selling milk.” People used to say, ‘Oh my, oh my, we’re gonna
lose you people delivering milk...again.’
“Back in the early
days they used
horses and oxen
and the land was
looked after much
better. ”
78
Milk was sold in “glass bottles, pint bottles, and quart bottles, then the jill
bottle was just a little, well, not much taller than that, that was cream, it was
separated milk and had the cream in these little jill bottles and sometimes
they’d say ‘Tomorrow I’d like a quart of cream.’ Well, and
wede-livered
stuff and give ‘em the quart of cream and a quart of milk. Most people...
wanted a quart of milk or a quart of cream. The little jill bottles, they were
a little bottle...smaller than the pint.”
“And Grandpa Frank, why, he delivered milk, too. He’d go in the morning and
if I was lucky, I’d go with him. Then I’d get off down to the school house in
Pine Grove and he continued down selling milk and then come back for
me.”
T o m m y C u s h in g
I had chores to do. “Get wood in, and when I was 6 years old I milked a cow and when I came 7 years old I ...milked
another cow, and when I got 8 years I milked as many as I could. Grandpa would start on one end of the barn and
I’d start on the other, and we’d go till we met.”
My milking days are over. The last time I milked a cow was 1963. I had a jersey cow and my girls drank cow’s milk
from a jersey cow.”
I had all girls. Three of ‘em. And then when Elizabeth, my last girl, come along there was no such thing as milking
cows. I took over beef after Grandpa Frank and Dad give up the dairy cows.”
My mother was a stay at home mum like...the women back then and my father worked for the Mersey paper company
and was a farmer.
“Yeah, he came home from out west and in ’35 he came home and my brother Charles was...born out in High Prairie,
Manitoba. Mum was from High Prairie. Dad went out on a grain excursion. And then, when he came home, why,
he went to the Mersey to work, and...then he went from working out in the woods down here to Caledonia to the
stables, and he went out to Ontario, Quebec, Montreal buying horses for the Mersey to work in...the woods. When
he come home, from out west, they had oxen in the woods. When he saw oxen being used, they sent him out to
Ontario to buy horses. He brought back 17 horses in a train car that delivered them right to Caledonia.”
“I went working for the Mersey, and down here at the barns helped look after the horses and then I went to the woods
and drove a team in the woods. And then I came home out of the woods and I worked down here until the mill
started up in ’64 and when they built that I went back to the Mersey mill behind Lake Mary and worked. And then
in ‘74, I left the Mersey and went to Kedge to work up to the park for two years. Run a power saw, gravel trails, built
trails. I worked up there until ... when did I go to the school? I put 28 years in up at the school.” I was custodian at
the school for 28 years. I started at the school in 1976 and I retired in 2004.
All along, I maintained the farm. I did fire-wood, cut logs. I have 600 acres. I don’t have that now, I gave ten acres away
to Liz.”
Now, “I just own a pair of horses. No cattle. It will be 11 years next spring (2015). Why I say that, I quit the school at
the same time that I broke my leg in the woods…I retired, yes, you could say that, because I broke my leg and when
I got out of the hospital, I broke it the 22nd of June and the 2nd day of September I came home from Halifax and
the cattle were gone, just a pair of horses. Liz looked after them. She was into the hospital and the doctor said, ‘I
got you today,’ and I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘Your daughter’s setting there and I’ve got some things I
want to say. You have to stay off of the tractor until six months is up.’ Anyway, I said to Liz after the doctor went out
of there, I said, ‘What have you got to say?’ She said, ‘You’ve been told what you can do and what you can’t do and
you got two pair of horses and you got 15 head of cattle.’ She said, ‘You can’t look after them.’ And I said, ‘If you’ve
got to do anything, do it before I get home.’ And when I got home, I had one pair of horses left!”
Photo of Tommy’s house
Cushing Road signpost
79
I went to Pine Grove School...We had wooden toilets out back. Two - one for the girls and one for the boys. And they
set about 20 feet apart. Then at recess time we’d go back behind the toi-lets on the wire birch and swing from
one tree to another, for entertainment. Yeah. But it was fun. Some of ‘em got broken arms, broken legs, but it was,
you know, then...Yeah, and then we played baseball and played tag. Right at the school, that’s the place where the
swimming pool is.”
In the school there were two rooms.“Downstairs, and then there was a workshop upstairs. Six to primary was on the
left hand side and on the right hand side was grade 7 to 12.”
“The girls, they had the classroom when we went upstairs, they had the whole downstairs on one side.”
I remember some of my teachers. “Yeah, Grace Scott was grade 7. We had Adelaide Cole who was Mrs. Ted Cole and
they lived where Richard Atkins lived. And Mrs. Foster Ball, she taught us. Beulah Freeman, she lived over by the
cemetery where Dick Donnellan lives. And we had - she was our first teacher, primary…Anyway, she lived down
here at Florrie and Clint Dukeshire’s, where Terje Rogers lives. She stayed there. She was from down in Lunenburg.
She came up here to teach... Adelaide Cole, she tuned us up with the strap. We got the strap! If we done something
we weren’t supposed to, the strap came in...We stood in the corner. You stood looking right at the corner of the
room.”
“Once a year in the spring we’d go to Bear River Cherry Carnival. You sat on the back of a truck or stood on the back
of the truck and went to Bear River. It was a big festival back then and then you’d come home and sometimes you
had cherries down your neck. We went through and picked cherries off of trees and the teachers would buy a tree
and that tree was ours to pick.”
For fun, we’d play “hide and seek, played ball. Skating. Down here on the mill pond, near Lake-view Canteen. This little
one down here behind Terje Rogers. It was the mill pond for Freeman’s. They sawed lumber and they made groove
and tongue. They had a shop called Freeman’s work-shop. And the mill was Freeman’s mill. The shop was on the
other side of the brook across from the sewer. And this side was the sawmill. In the winter when the lake pond
was froze over, we used to go over on top of Clint Dukeshire’s field right up to the top. Two sleds, put ‘em together,
and a barn door, we’d go down across the hill across the pond right up into the hollow up where the big saw was.
Well, if you didn’t pay attention you might get a scratched up nose or chin.”
There have been some changes for the years. “Well, I’ll start at the barbershop. When the bar-bershop was running
with Randall Dukeshire, next was Az Hunt’s blacksmith shop, he shod horses, he shod oxen, and he made ironwork
for sleds and that was the blacksmith shop. And across from that was the big Jack McGuire garage, and then when
you went from the blacksmith shop was a little store, Robert Crooker’s store, and then on the turn, on the corner
was my great-great-grandfather’s store, and his wife would run the store. A little of everything. You could go in and
buy mitts. I’d say it was a general store because they had everything, and then next to that was Dr. Lent, the dentist,
and he ran that till Junior Canning bought the place out. And Junior had the store, power saw shop. This building
is now an apartment building near the NSLC store, Then next was Maurice Scott’s store which he sold hardware,
clothes, jewelry, a little of every-thing. And then the Hunt house; Mr and Mrs. Az Hunt’s place, which burned down
and is now the site of the Miriam Hunt Park. ”
“Then next was the United Church parsonage which has been sold as a home, then was Gert Carver, Muriel Canning’s
father. He had a shop where he done repairs to people’s boots, made boots, and sewed harness, and then next to
that was Dusty Miller’s store...and he sold food and then next was Mrs. Bell, Charlie Bell. That’s still standing. Dusty’s
is gone. That Bell one is still standing. Mrs. Bell sold a little of everything, brooms, mops, dishes. Apples, we’d buy an
apple or an orange. Then next to that was the band hall. That the credit union bought...and next to that was Mr.
and Mrs. Penney, Don Penney, would be the father of all the Penney boys.”
After the Penneys, Harris Charlton and Mrs. Charlton lived there. Gerry Lohnes lived in that building years later, then
tore it down to build a new one. Westhavers live there now. She still lives up in the senior citizens. And then was
the Kirk Fraelic house. It’s one of the old houses. And then next to that was Phil Wamboldt, Lockie Seldon’s...Old
Phil Wamboldt owned it and he rented the back part to Lockie and Jean and he lived on the front part. It was
torn down years ago. Then was the pink telephone house... and next to that was Ashton’s family. They lived there
and rented the downstairs. Harris Martin tore that down and built a new house. The barn is still there behind the
Hollow Log.”
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“After that was a strip of woods and then Mr. and Mrs. Freeman lived there in the house next to where Jeanette McGinty
built, and now Mary Jo Conway, her daughter, little Mary Jo, bought Jeanette’s house.”
“So, then to start on the other side of the road was, uh, they built that house, it was a Vienot house then. Mervin and
Shirley Acker live there now. And then the next one was Carver’s house. Theresa was a hairdresser. Then there was
Scott’s house, Walter Scott and Grace. Grace was the schoolteacher.
“And then Esther Penney bought the house that her son Eugene lives in now, next to Walter Scotts’s. And then come
to the Baptist parsonage who still lives there. And then the house up on the hill that Jimmy Rogers owned burned.
It was right on the corner. There where the telephone office is now.”
[Jimmy] got married to Jean and they built a store and garage - across from the old pink tele-phone house was on the
right hand side going back down. And then next to that was the Gold Hunter...and then you went up to Maurice
Scott’s house where Tom Leger lives in...And then next to that after you went by Maurice’s there was a little yellow
house who was Mrs. Freeman and her sister run the Parker House...Next to the little yellow house, Mrs. Luxton’s.
And then she passed away and then it was turned over to Mrs. Freeman who was a schoolteacher. She taught grade
primary. Christine (Tom Cushing’s daughter) went to her and when Christine started school there was 49 showed
up the first day for primary in the old elementary up on the hill (burned in 2006).”
“Next to that was Nettie Benedict’s and Don Benedict’s house. Nettie and Don Benedict, Sha-ron’s father and mother…
And then it’s the Masonic hall, and the Masonic hall to the Bank of Nova Scotia then to the Credit Union. And now
it belongs to Georgie Uhlman. So, when you get to Douglas’ store, Blair Douglas was the last owner.” He sold it in
2010. It is now the Phar-masave Drugstore.
“Then, there’s the house there on the corner, the Alton House, and up behind that was Florence Telfer’s house and
across on the other side was Wilbert Telfer’s and Kay’s house. Kay Oliver is the little old lady who lives up there now.
The Jack McGuire house who owned the garage. And on the corner was Herman and Berna Douglas’ store. Herman
and Berna. She just passed away at 102. And then after Jack McGuire was Dr. MacLeod’s back in the olden days
and Dr. Harry Smith owned the little white house on the corner and then there was old Dr. MacLeod’s house and
he run his office out of this little building. Dr. MacLeod and Dr. Harry Smith owned that little white house where the
post office is...And next door was Dr. MacLeod’s big house where he lived...Next to that was the post office, Beulah
and Clark Murray.
“Now, before we go any further, Herman Douglas’ house and Berna’s store. They had the store in the house there on
the corner, by the stop sign. Also, was old Mr. Isiah Hartlen had the house, this house, and in behind it was his barn,
and there was another little house here....and kept a horse and a couple of cows and pigs this side of the church.
So and then came the church”
“It didn’t smell real good when you went to church because of the pigs next door. And then was Mr. and Mrs. MacKay,
Peter MacKay’s father and mother, Emrin MacKay. And Delia. They owned the house next to the church which
became Bobby Holdright’s. And then it came to…Robert MacKenzie. His mother-in-law is Doris MacInnis.”
MacKay’s had a restaurant. “They had seats and you went in and Delia would serve the meals...It was good food. I
was only a little fellow. And then the next was ...the nursing home, where ... Amy Tufts and Alfie Titus live there. And
then came the Billy Douglas house, that’s a small modern house...Amy took over that and then she sold this piece
so Billy Douglas and his wife Lillian could move in there. And then the next one was Clarence Crooker’s, where
Randall DeLong lived later.”
“When you come past Herman Douglas’ was Anson Hirtle’s woodworking shop. That just got tore down here a month
or so ago. And then was Dean Assaf clothing store ...right next to Anson’s shop... then came Harris Martin. Rayworth
and Mollins had the drug store there, and then the next one was Bobby Holdright’s store - sold groceries, feed, you
name it. You remember that next to the Irving Garage.”
“The old highway road came up right straight by [our] house up past the barn which blew down in the year that the
Catholic church burned, in1976. It went back over the hill. [The road went] right by here, by the big barn, down
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over the hill and come out up there at the ball park. When it came out from the ball park it swung out a little bit
and went up Harmony. That was the old road. And then in the late 40’s or 50’s, they put the road around under the
hill, and done away with this road.”
“And it went up that way and out and then they built the road this way and went up past Beryl Selig’s and the Cushing
road. The old fellows built that road to haul pulpwood ...My grandfather and my great-grandfather helped build
that road to cut off going up the old Harmony road. And the Cushing road branched off of that and went to the
pulp mill where they hauled out pulpwood with oxen and horses. Back near McGowan Lake Fish Hatchery.”
Concerning the train, “well, the box cars, they hauled pulpwood out and loaded it on box cars with oxen and horses
and then it went to Bridgewater and up to Brooklyn.”
“I went to Ottawa from here on the train. Helen and the 3 girls, Christine, and Darlene and Char-lene, and I went to
Ottawa to visit Charlie and his family.”
“Well, it was cheap transportation and so on, good view.” Lots of people rode the train “back in the olden days...[to]
Bridgewater, and then from Bridgewater to Liverpool, then to Shelburne.”
“There was one [station] in Pleasant River, one in South Brookfield and this one down here...Went down to Simpsons
Corner, through Hemford, down through New Germany and then jumped the track and you could go to Middleton
or you could go to Bridgewater.”
“And right now you can go on a four-wheeler to New Germany, you cross the road and go in the junction, then you
can go to Middleton or you can go to Bridgewater, the track trail. That took you down to the junction and they go
that way, switch the track and then they’d go to Middleton or they’d continue on to Bridgewater...And down here
the station was the old train house down here on Lake Mary. That came up, they went up to Bridgewater, they
had something to shunt into the Co-op store, why they’d switch tracks and do that. They used to take cattle to the
slaughter shop in the valley, ship pigs, they’d go to Moncton on the train. Cabbage and turnips and all that. They’d
sell to the Co-op store. The Co-op…would ship ‘em...They had lots of apples and pears and this kind of stuff. They’re
part of the history because there’s not very many of them old apple orchards left.”
“They’re all these old buildings that we had talked about. History. And now they tear ‘em down and you know, it’s a
shame that they demolish all these old buildings. But that’s a thing of the past.”
“Well, it’s gone downhill because a lot of people don’t want to farm or build, or work the land and it’s going downhill...
Back in the early days they used horses and oxen and the land was looked after much better. This day and age
of the processors and harvesters if anything gets in the way, they run over it. And it destroys a lot of young land.
But I don’t agree with it, if the horses would have stayed in the way they should have, why, there would have been
more work.”
As for wildlife…“there’s not too many moose around. Back here ten years ago there was a cow here and she hung
around all winter. And the next spring she disappeared. But the olden days was moose, and lots of them. But then
the woods got harvested and young stuff got smashed down and the deer and moose don’t have the feeding like
they used to have.”
“The swallows? This year was the first that we’ve seen them for quite some time. They were here on the hill flying
around.”
“There should be people higher up should be stricter than what they are. Because a lot of people, as I said, machines
smash it down if it’s in the way and that shouldn’t be...I use horses and I don’t smash very much down. One horse will
take a narrower route and take a pile of timber out that road where machines is ‘way wide and it destroys land.”
“They should set up a plan that takes this much timber and silviculture so it’s going to grow up. But these machines
goes through it’s some time before it will ever grow up.”
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83
G l e nwood ( ‘ G l e n ’ ) M ay n a rd D e Mond
I was born on February 10, 1935 at the Caledonia Nursing Home, with Dr. A.C.
MacLeod attending. My home has been in South Brookfield, NS. Of course,
being named by my parents, Lawrence and Gladys, they told me later in life
that they wanted my middle name to be that that of my grandfather Maynard
DeMond. I have two brothers, Murray born in 1930, and Lowell born in 1936,
both well and active, as am I.
My father was born in the village of Molega Mines, (1897), and his parents moved to South Brookfield in 1903. I recall
Father saying his mother did not want him working in the gold mines when he became of age. My mother was
born in Caledonia. Her maiden name was Gladys Thompson.
My grandfather died in 1908, leaving my grandmother, my father and his two sisters to carry on operating the small
farm. They had some cattle, a few pigs and a number of laying hens. Dad was eleven years old when his father died
and I believe he bought a working horse shortly thereafter to work the farm.
Dad’s sisters went to the U.S.A. One, Aunt Mabel, became an RN at Boston Hospital, and Aunt Edna worked at various
jobs in Mass. This left Father and Grandmother to operate the farm. Father and Mother were married in 1928, and
within a few years we three boys arrived.
Our house was of the old type. The main section had a living room, bedroom and front parlour downstairs. There were
three full size bedrooms upstairs, with a hall-way and stairs connecting the two levels. The kitchen, small pantry,
entrance porch, and wood house were in an addition at the back section of the house. Also there was an entrance
to the basement (we called it the cellar) through a hatch door in the pantry, with cut granite stone slabs as stairs.
We had electricity from when I can remember -I believe in the time period of 1932 - 34. I believe the reason we had
electricity in South Brookfield somewhat earlier than other villages, was that business men from Disraeli, Quebec
had built a large box factory here. And of course, the Mersey Paper Company had established their mill at Brooklyn
beginning 1928, with power dams to generate electricity on the Mersey River shortly thereafter. I understand some
of that power became available to the box factory here, as well as to the village homes in South Brookfield at that
time.
“However, I have
concerns with the environment changes,
especially noting fewer
birds, especially swallows, nighthawks and
sparrows. Also only a
few bees have shown
up the past two years.”
Our house was not insulated. It was heated with a large cast iron
heater in the living room, and a wood range in the kitchen. This
wood range was replaced in 1938 with a three burner and water
tank Belanger (President) model made in Montmagny, Que. This
range I still have in my kitchen. With the two stoves (1938 onward)
the home was comfortably heated. The upstairs bedrooms were
somewhat cooler in the winter, but plenty of homemade blankets
kept us warm. The hallway doors were kept open through the
nights. I remember we used to heat large sea rocks (the smooth
ones) to put in bed as hot water bottles.
I began school in 1940. World War Two was raging in Europe, and I can
remember walking home from school watching for airplanes, being
somewhat afraid they might be German planes.We lived about one
mile from the school house on the hill at the village centre.
This was a two room school house, with grades primary to grade 5
in one room, (one teacher for all grades) and grades 6 to 11 in the
advanced room, also with one teacher.
My first teacher was Marguerite Saulnier from Meteghan in the
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French Shore area as we formerly called it; now it’s called the Acadian Shore. She was an excellent teacher. I don’t
know if I was special to her or not, but I graded primary and grade 1 all in my first year. I also had her as my teacher
in grade 2. She later married Homer Bailey, a mill worker at the box factory. Years later, they retired in Dartmouth.
My teacher from grade 3 through grade 5 was Zita Lorgere, from Eel Brook, Yarmouth Co. (now Saint Anne de
Rousseau). She was an excellent teacher, as well, and she was well-thought of by her students. During this time of
her teaching, she met, and married Emery Smith, a farmer in the village.
Then to the advanced room, as we called it, the teacher was Mildred Shoulds from Port La Tour. She was an excellent
teacher, but a very strict, no nonsense person. The boys often tried her patience. However, as I recall, all students
passed with reasonably good marks, thanks to her drive and encouragement for all to work hard. She taught grades
6 to 10 inclusive. The final grade, 11, was taught by Velena Conrad, from Harmony Mills, through to April 15. She
resigned because of health problems. Velena later was married to Randall DeLong . John Frauzel from Chelsea
finished the term, and he was a great teacher and great personality. John had been in the war, returned and went
to Acadia University, graduated with his degree In Education, then came to our school to complete the year.
I completed school here in June of 1951. Grade 12 was not taught here.
School was not only studying in those days. We had some sports. Volleyball and softball were played.
The village had two small stores that carried a wide variety of goods. At age 6, I can remember watching Lou Rawding
unloading from his freight truck a barrel of vinegar, and a keg of molasses to Tom Carten’s store. The other store was
owned by Valentine and Marie Gaudet. Gasoline was sold by them. The gas would be hand pumped into a glass
dome at the top of the tank, which was marked in gallons. From here it would be pumped to vehicles.
I remember walking to the corner for the mail at the post office, and buying a bottle of pop (usually root beer) from
Tom Carten’s store. The cost was 5 cents when I was 7 years old. The post office building was located on the corner
across from Carten’s store.
Recalling the farm and family home, from the late 1930s to 1945, father had a beautiful herd of Ayrshire milking cows.
They were hand milked. The milk was poured through strainers into large milk cans, cooled by being lowered into
the large barn well water to the depth of the neck/covers of the cans, and hanging by ropes attached to the handles
on the cans. Each morning, Randolph Silver (Henry’s and Michael’s father) would pick up the milk and take it to the
Queens County Dairy at Liverpool.
Father won many prizes with these cattle at the Caledonia Farmers Exhibition (Now Queens County Fair). He milked
about 12 cows at that time, which was not many compared to today, yet a good average in those days. Father taught
myself and my brothers how to milk, and we assisted with the barn work most times.
We had a fairly long chicken house, where father kept about 350 to 400 laying hens. He would buy the young pullets
in the Valley from major growers, housing them in outside pens until they were of laying age. He graded all of the
eggs, candling each egg with a homemade mechanism made from a large coffee can with a light bulb inside, and a
round hole in the bottom of the can. This can, or candler as we called it, was placed on its side with the hole facing
the person. A quick spin of the egg would show any blood spots or things wrong. A scale for weighing, that had
3 holes at different distances from the weight unit at end of scale, would determine whether the eggs were large,
medium or small. The eggs were sold to two stores in Caledonia; E.H. Douglas (Herman), and Bells Store (Charlie).
My brothers and myself also delivered eggs each Saturday morning to homes throughout the village. The price
was 40 cents per dozen.
The hen houses would be cleaned frequently. We spread the manure on the hay fields by hand, using our old truck
tractor and homemade trailer. Following this, clean mill shavings were emptied from jute bags over the floor. We
would get these shavings, bagging them ourselves at the Caledonia Hardwood Co. mill in Caledonia, and hauling
them home stacked very high on the trailer, pulled with the old truck tractor. This would have been about 1950 or
so. I don’t think either Lowell or I had a licence to drive, at age 14, but we had been driving the tractor from about
age 10, with probably more experience than many others. One unforgettable memoir was the day we upset a load
of shavings in the centre of Caledonia corner. It took us a while to get them re-loaded and on our way. Good thing
traffic was light in those days.
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Caledonia Hardwood Co. saw mill and finishing mill was located at the water dam on the outlet of the lake opposite
and across from the septic plant. The mill was was mostly water power driven. The dam was rebuilt some years ago
by Paul Freeman and Leon Robertson, but the buildings have all been taken down.
To make the hay, father used a single horse, named Doll, and a single horse mower with a seat to ride on. It had a 5
foot cutter bar. Later on, from the 1950s onward, we used the truck tractor and a double horse mower with a 6 ft
cutter bar, which proved much faster. Lowell drove, and I operated the mower.
After the fields were mowed and the hay was dry enough to rake, we would rake it with the large iron-wheeled trip
rake. One person would drive the tractor and one would sit on the high seat of the rake operating/tripping the
rake. Later, in the mid 50s, Father bought a side delivery rake, which again sped up the operation, especially as only
the tractor driver was required.
When the hay was ready to be put in the barn, we would load it on the trailer, which then had added side wings
and head and tail end stakes brackets. The hay would be loaded on the trailer with hand pitch forks. In the barn,
there was a series of pulleys and ropes and a grapple fork which would take the hay to the loft. The grapple fork
had a trip rope attached, which would dump the hay in a pile when tripped. The main rope would be hooked to
the tractor to pull the grapple and hay to the loft. Then my brother and I would have to fork the hay back into the
corners, which was really hot work.
Making hay in those days was vastly different than it is today. Today hay is being made directly from a tractor with
one person, to completion. Other than fastening the attachments to the tractor, such as a set of rotary mowers,
controlled from the cab, hay tedders, rakes, and either square balers or round roll balers, hydraulic arms to lift
the rolls on a trailer when they are ready for the barn - all are controlled from the tractor. Technology has made
farming much easier for man physically, but much more costly. As with most industries, farming in those days was
labour intensive making it a profitable operation, whereas today the heavy machinery required to operate to be
competitive is very costly.
In 1954, Father built a new pig barn, bout 30 ft. by 60 ft. When completed, he raised about 70 to 90 hogs twice per
year, getting them from breeders at 6 weeks old. When fully ready for market (150 to 170 lbs hot dressed weight),
he would ship them to Larsens, at Berwick. Although I was only home at various times, I would help him with the
pigs whenever possible.
In addition to my father farming cattle, hens, and pigs, he planted crops to sell during the middle 1930s and through
the early 1940s. The Mersey Paper Company had up to 23 logging camps in the Lake Rossignol-Tobeatic country.
Each camp had a cook house and sleeping facilities. Father grew potatoes and turnips to supply many of these
camps. He also grew a half acre of strawberries for years until about 1955. These, he sold mostly locally to the stores
and individuals.
In the winter seasons, Father did logging, and cut our firewood for the coming year. My brothers and I would help
with this work when we were old enough to handle an axe and a Swede saw or large cross-cut saw. I was about
10 years old. Dad would say to us when we were on both ends of the Swede or cross-cut saw, “Boys, don’t dig that
thing in so hard; pull it freely and lightly”. We finally caught on.
I remember when I was about 6 or 7 going to the woods with father, Lowell went along also, with our horse Doll, and
the bob sleds. The weather was very cold, and it began to snow before we arrived back home with the load of fire
wood. We were warmly dressed, and father had a heavy horse blanket which we put over our laps.
In 1952, Father bought a new chain saw. They were just coming on the market. It was an IEL Pioneer. It weighed about
35 pounds. It had a swivel handle, by which the blade could be changed from a vertical cut to a horizontal cut for
sawing off trees from the stump.
He had two hired men to help him log at that time. During the 1940s and later, he sold pine logs first to the Nova
Scotia Woodenware, and later, after the former mill had burned, to Raworth and Mollins. Both mills operated in
South Brookfield.
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My parents were both very economical. In addition to the food grown, the poultry, pork and beef, basics were all
that was bought, such as flour, sugar, salt, and shortening. We had our own milk and cream, as some of the milk
was separated with the milk separator. We had a hand crank one first, then an electric one. The cream was shipped
twice weekly to the LaHave Creamery. I yet have 2 of these cream cans in the upstairs workshop.
Mother was a home maker. She never stopped baking. She baked and baked, all sorts of cakes, cookies, pies, white
and brown bread. The meals were great, and there was always a variety of food.
Many of the horse and oxen teams going to the Mersey Paper Co. logging camps would come by from Lunenburg
County near 6 or 7 p.m. Father would tell them to put their team in our barn come in for supper, and stay overnight
in our spare bedroom. Mother would have a big meal prepared for supper.
My parents were very generous and enjoyed being hospitable to others. In earlier years, we had to carry water for the
hens and chickens, and the cattle. Mother looked after this work, assisting Father at times. Later, Father had water
pumps and automatic water troughs put in. He did much of this work himself.
Father was also a life insurance agent with North American Life during the Second World War and into the early 1950s.
He still had his herd of Ayrshire cattle until 1945. However, he became ill with spinal problems or back problems
which caused him to lose his ability to walk. He therefore sold his cattle.
After a number of trips to Halifax, where specialists advised him to have a spinal operation at Montreal, Dr. Bennett
at Bridgewater advised him to have some of his gold capped teeth removed, as infection from them may possibly
be causing his back problem. This he had done, and within 2 months he recovered and his health was normal. My
brothers and I looked after the chores during the time he was ill, with mother’s help.
My parents were both Christian, church people. They were United Baptist, and never missed church on Sundays.
Father was superintendent of the Sunday School for over 40 years. They both sang in the church choir. Mother sang
alto, and Father sang bass. There were about 12 in the choir, 6 women and 6 men. Ronald Chute had a beautiful
baritone voice. His wife Brenda was the organist. As a note, Ronald was the manager of the North Queens Fruit
Packing Company; later it became the Queens Co-operative at Caledonia. I also sang in this choir from my high
school years until I left home two years later. I could read music, and followed in Father’s steps by singing bass. From
as far back as I can remember, we boys went to Sunday School every Sunday with Father and Mother. Attendance
was about 60 in number.
We always wore a suit, with shirt and tie when we went to Sunday School and church. Father would take us to
Bridgewater to Rofies Men’s Wear store, and buy us new suits as we out-grew our present ones. Mr. Rofie would
have us try them on for fitting.
When I was 10 years old, I began taking piano lessons. The piano teacher was Rev. Parker, the United Church minister
at Caledonia. I continued taking lessons for 3 years, and have since played piano for my own enjoyment. To be able
to read music has been an asset for me. I played the church organ for a few years, around the time I was finishing
high school, for the Sunday School and occasionally for church services. I was always nervous playing in public.
Going back to around 1941 or thereabout, mother would have a lady come once a week to help with the house work.
Her name was Annie Baker, wife of Raymond Baker, of the Baker Road in North Brookfield. She was an excellent
seamstress, and mother would have her make denim suits for brother Lowell and myself, shirts and short pants.
We could not wait to get into those in April as the spring weather came and go bare foot. We were about 5 and 6
years old at that time.
I can very much remember the Bucket and Box Factory of Nova Scotia that Woodenware Company built in 1930.
It was located on the north-west side of what is now highway 208, near the Medway River bridges. It was a huge
mill, 2 stories high, with a steam plant, drying house, milling shed and a very large warehouse. There were railway
sidings connecting along the side of the shipping warehouse. The factory built pine boxes, crates and barrels plus
other items. I remember Father saying they employed 100 people or more. The owners came to South Brookfield
from Disraeli, Quebec and of course were of French descent. Their surname was Bienvenue, a father and two sons,
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I believe. They built three beautiful homes, along with 10 or 12 smaller homes for their French employees. These
were located on French Street.
The plant burned in late June of 1944, and I can well remember that day. The mill was shut down that day for the
Caledonia Hospital Frolic, at the Exhibition grounds. Our family was attending. We were shocked to hear of the fire,
returning home to find only heavy smoke. The mill was gone.
As kids walking home from school, we were always interested in watching things happening at the mill, that we
could see from the highway.
The French folks from Quebec, and the English residents here, really associated well, taking part in community
activities as one large family. Two of their children of my age were John Charles and Celine Bienvenue and were
in my class at school.
Following the fire, the French families moved back to Quebec. Later, other saw mills were established on the site.
In 1948-49 Atlantic Construction Co. were building the fill and gravel base work on highway 8 in preparation for
later paving. They had huge steam operated crane shovels, that were coal fired. Black smoke would pour out of the
stovepipe-like stacks. As school boys, we would watch these steam shovels work with amazement, never before
seeing the like. In the summer of 1950, just after I graded from grade 10 at school, I hired on with Coast Construction
Co. They were doing road construction; fine gravel on surface, shoulder construction and building stone walls to
protect the ground banks from falling into the ditches in spots where this was likely to happen.This was just a summer
job before going back to school in September. .As well, brother Lowell and George Mansfield were with our crew,
Randall Lowe being the foreman. We picked rock and stones from the road shoulders, all the way from Middlefield
to Cameron Lake, piling them in bunches along the top of the road shoulder. From there, we loaded them on Foster
Ball’s dump truck by hand, and he hauled them to the places where the stone walls were being built.
Laurie Frail from Westfield, and a helper built the walls. He was a great stone layer. These walls are still standing 64
years later. They are located along Route 8 from Cameron Lake to Bear Trap area.
During that same year, 1950, my father made a major change to our home. The small section that I had mentioned
earlier, which housed the kitchen, pantry , etc., was torn down. There was no running water or bathroom to this
time, and a hand pump only to draw water from the dug well. In this space, a two story addition, 30 ft. X 30 ft. was
built. It had a large kitchen, bathroom, pantry, porch and wood house on the lower floor. The second story had a
large hall with stairway, a half bath with a toilet and sink, one large bedroom, and a workshop across the upper back
section. The house was re-wired. A new water pump, new sinks and full bathroom facilities, enabled us to have tub
or shower baths for the first time. This was a major and delightful change for the family.
In June of 1951, I graduated from grade 11. Through the summer, I worked with Father on the farm. In late November,
Clark Murray, the postmaster at Caledonia phoned Father to ask him if I could help him in the post office for the
Christmas season. This I did, through December to Christmas, enjoying a new and different job and learning much
about shipping parcels and mail.
During the winter of 1952, I worked in the woods with Father, cutting pulpwood and logs.
In 1952, Warren Maritimes Co. from New Glasgow secured the contract to pave the No. 8 highway from Cameron
Lake to Kempt. I worked with Warren from May until November, when the job was completed. Their asphalt plant
was set up where the legion building is now located. I worked at this plant fueling the two large diesel motors as
required, and fueling the tanks on the service truck which took fuel to the machines working on the road.
In early February of 1953, I applied to Canadian National Railways to train as a student to become a telegrapher,
and station agent. C.N. advised me they were not hiring students at that time, but would call me when I would be
accepted.
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Mel Waterman from South Brookfield was in Toronto at this time, and invited me to come to Toronto, as there were
plenty of jobs, with good pay. Wages were $1.25 per hour, compared to 65 cents per hour here. I decided to go.
Father took me to the train at Liverpool, February 15th, and I proceeded by train to Halifax, making connections to
Montreal and Toronto. Once in Toronto, I met Mel, stayed with him for a few days, and shortly, was hired with Canada
Packers Ltd. to work in their fertilizer plant on St. Claire and Keel Streets. The work was dusty, and not one of my
favourites, depending on what job they assigned to me. It varied on different days. There were showers and lockers.
It was great to have a change of clothes going in to work, and shower and clean clothes following the day’s work.
In August, C.N. called me to report to study telegraphy if I was still interested. I was just beginning to enjoy Toronto
city life; I had a nice boarding family home. I took a week to decide, as the superintendent at the Canada Packers
plant told me they had “better things” in line for me if I would stay. He told me that the Maritime Boys were great
workers and they wished to keep us hired with them. However, I gave them a week’s notice and came home to
begin training with C.N. Railways.
I began my training at Caledonia station, with agent Byron Leslie in mid-August. Caledonia station was busy for a small
station. There were three trains a week, from Bridgewater and return to Bridgewater. Inward carloads of feeds for
the Co-op, gas and oil for N.F.Douglas bulk storage, limestone for farms, and outward all lumber products. Carloads
of lumber, all loaded by hand in box cars, pulpwood, and pulpwood chips for Mersey Paper Mill at Brooklyn, N.F.
Douglas poplar logs to Halifax to export to England for match wood. There were an average of four to five carloads
inward and 16 to 18 loads moved out on each train. Byron taught me the station work and accounting, and he
would practice telegraph, sending messages in Morse code, for me to copy. I would practice sending at the station,
as well as on my practice set at home.
In November, Byron would take leave, because he had no love for doing the billing and customs papers for Christmas
trees. Fred Burke, 1st relief agent from Truro came to Caledonia, and he was an expert agent, knowing all about
shipping trees. It did not take me long to learn the tree work with Fred, and that month we shipped 39 carloads
out of Caledonia. These trees were all hand tied (baled). We had to prepare the rail billing, plus about four sets of
different customs papers for each carload for the shippers.
Then in April of 1954, the Chief Train Dispatcher at Halifax ordered me to Liverpool to complete my training. I should
have noted that at Caledonia, we handled shed freight and express, as well as it was a commercial telegraph office
for sending and receiving telegrams for businesses and individuals.
Liverpool was a much larger station, employing an agent, two telegraph operators, a shed man, a car checker because
of many carloads in and out for Mersey Paper Co.. There were three scheduled trains per day, and frequently one
extra freight with pulpwood for the Mersey. Also there was passenger train service.
On December 14th, 1954, I passed all of my exams, establishing my seniority date with C.N.. I did not receive any
pay while a student, so now I was on the payroll. I took my telegraph exam at Halifax, and my station work exams
at Moncton. Freight, express, passenger, and baggage, and my train order operating rules which were extremely
important to know well for train movement orders and dispatching. I was then assigned to the bottom list of
telegraph operators on a spare board assignment, as required to relieve employees, for sickness, vacations, or other
vacancy requirements.
My first assignment was at Rockingham Yard, as operator from 12:00 midnight to 8:00 am, relieving a fellow on two
weeks vacation. This was over Christmas and New Year’s, my first time not being home for Christmas. Following
my completion here, I went to French Village Station for three weeks, filling in for George Braden, the agent who
was taken with appendicitis. Through the next two years, 1955 and 1956, I relieved positions at eighteen different
stations, various time shifts, some daytime and some night time, some just train order operators, and other agencies
doing express, freight, carloads and accounting.
At Truro Station, July and August of 1955, the train order operators, 2 on each shift, were extremely busy. There were
three passenger trains daily passing through Truro, going from Halifax to Montreal and three Montreal to Halifax.
By name, which I would like to share was (1) the OCEAN LIMITED, (2) the SCOTIAN, and (3) the MARITIME EXPRESS.
In later years and up to the present, as the number of passengers travelling by train declined, more people were
travelling by air. C.N. Rlys closed down the Maritime Express first, and later discontinued The Scotian. There were
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also passenger trains to and from Sydney, and one to and from Kentville, the Dominion Atlantic Rly (owned by C.P.
Rly). Freight trains were also many in number through Truro. There also was a Truro Yard station with around the
clock operators, where freight trains were marshaled. Truro operators responded to 3 train dispatching offices,
at Halifax, Moncton, and New Glasgow. At Truro Station I was able to practice and increase my typing speed by
practising following my regular shift. I found this very helpful when copying Morse code being sent with what we
called a Bug. The dots were automatic, rather than being sent with the key which was individual by hand.
It was during 1956 that the diesel engines began replacing the steam engines, first on the passenger runs, and later
on freight trains. Steam engines were all retired by 1960.
In the fall of 1956, the agent at Caledonia, Byron Leslie became ill, and took a leave of absence for an indefinite time.
The chief dispatcher asked me if I would like to work the station, knowing that I had trained here, and that it would
permit me to live at home with my parents. I accepted, and was here until August, 1957 when Mr. Leslie passed
away with cancer. The agency then came up for bid from any agents or telegraphers who wished to apply. The
most senior applicant to apply was Gerald (Gerry) Lohnes, then working day operator at Yarmouth. In succession
Tom Leslie was working a swing position at Yarmouth/Shelburne/Liverpool, and was successful in getting the day
operator’s position that Gerry had, and in turn I applied for the swing and was successful in getting it. I remained on
this swing until April of 1964. This swing, a regular relief position, was set up to relieve two operators at Yarmouth,
the agent – operator at Shelburne, and two operators at Liverpool. Gerry Lohnes remained at Caledonia for a few
years, then resigned and became manager of the N.S. Liquor Commission store at Caledonia. Gary Tipert from New
Germany took the Caledonia station, and remained there until it closed in the early 1980s.
During my seven years on the swing, I met and married Nancy Gray from Hebron, next to Yarmouth, and we established
our home in Hebron. We bought a 40 ft mobile home, and had it set up on her grandfather’s property. The year
was 1961.
Being away 3 weeks out of 6 on the swing began to wear on both of us, so in 1964 I applied for the position of agent
– operator at Barrington and was the successful applicant. We sold our mobile and moved to Barrington, renting
for a few years. Barrington station position was really quiet, compared to the swing, but was busy with commercial
telegrams and cable messages, as it was the only commercial telegraph office between Yarmouth and Shelburne.
From the Canada Packers Company sales rep., I would every Wednesday evening, send by telegraph a meat order
he would bring in, all in code (example-WJZD etc.), and of about 400 words in total. The second year I was there, a
teletype was installed for this purpose. This was the beginning of the end of using telegraph and Morse code for
message transmission.
In March of 1966, Nancy and I adopted our daughter, Daphne. She was 3 months old and our pride and joy. Life
became busy for us then, but very enjoyable. Then, in November of the same year, the station at Barrington Passage
became open for applicants. My bidding on this position proved successful, and I shortly took over duties there.
There was more work there than at Barrington. The village was growing rapidly business-wise and brought freight
and express volumes up substantially. With the carload traffic in and out, as well as express and shed freight, the
average monthly balance sheet was about $160,000. We did not move from our home, being only four miles to
Barrington Passage.
While at Barrington Passage, 1966 to 1974, notable changes gradually began to occur within the company, in cutbacks
in operations and consolidations. Some of the smaller stations on the line between Yarmouth and Halifax were
scheduled for closing, i.e. Tusket, Port Clyde, Port Mouton, Chester Basin, Hubbards, French Village, and possibly
others. Seniority would determine who would hold a job with agents and operators in the Transportation Dept.,
with these closures, and I became worried as to whether I would remain. I made the decision to accept an offer from
Freight Sales and Marketing for the position of Customer Service Representative. This being a middle management
position, it would also give me an increased salary and benefits. The new station building at Bridgewater was
completed in September, and I began work on September 15th. We elected not to move our home at this time, as
another move seemed evident shortly down the road.
Because of more trucking via highways, new technology developing through the 1970s onward, freight was being
handled on pallets, with fork lifts loading and unloading. Carload freight formerly handled by hand from railway
stations to trucks and hauled to the receivers, was now being delivered to the receiver’s door by truck. Within a
short period of time, this change resulted in fewer rail car movements, which in turn resulted in fewer trains and
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elimination of rail lines and stations.
In 1977, all but the immediate train crews and remaining few staff at Bridgewater were transferred to Halifax, together
with the same positions being brought in from Dartmouth and Truro. I was Customer Service Rep. at Halifax until
1979, when I was appointed Sales Rep. for Import /Export traffic. The next year, 1980, I had the territory of Burnside
Industrial Park.
In 1981 I was assigned to Lakeside Industrial Park, Bayers Lake Industrial Park, and the highway to Brookfield, N.S.
From 1982 until I retired in 1990. I was then Sales Rep. for the entire South Shore (CNR) and the Annapolis Valley
(DAR) for rail traffic remaining, and Piggyback trailer loads. Piggyback was trailer loads of freight traffic, loaded by
shippers, and CN trucks to Halifax, then the trailers were loaded on flatbed rail cars and shipped to their destinations
in Upper Canada or the West. This gave CN a competitive edge with the trucks.
As a result of these changes, and CN’s consolidation, all of the stations on the South Shore, Yarmouth to Halifax were
closed. The rail line from Yarmouth to Liverpool was taken up in 1984, the Bridgewater to Middleton and Caledonia
branch was taken up 1985, and Liverpool to East River in 1987. The remaining portion to Halifax closed about
1990.
The Canadian Transport Commission held a number of hearings with C.N. Rlys and shippers and receivers prior
to the closures. At Caledonia in 1981, a hearing was held about the Caledonia Branch line. Shipper, Willis Forest
Lumber, agreed to ship lumber in carloads, and wood chips to Bowater Mersey, and needed the rail line to remain.
Imperial Oil (N.F. Douglas bulk storage) received 2 carloads of oil and gasoline per week, and required the rail. The
Commission agreed to holding
the line operative for four years.
Within one year, Bowater began moving the wood chips by truck, lumber orders by rail dropped substantially, and
Imperial Oil decided to move the fuels by highway trucks, because they had to pay a daily lease on rail tank cars
not moving out from Caledonia for seven days. The line closed in 1985, following the end of the agreement with
the CTC.
One major decline was the movement of Christmas trees, dropping in number from 500 or so carloads, to about
50 or60 within three years. Rail to the U.S.A. because of train connections was taking 7 to 8 days to destinations,
whereas trucks loading directly from the tree lots reached their destination overnight, for delivery the next morning.
We could not compete at CN. Other types of traffic,
carloads both received and forwarded, faced similar fate. Because of the fear of closure, major companies such as
Bowater Mersey Paper, Michelin Tire, and National Sea Products elected to move to truck handling of their traffic.
The CTC permitted C.N. to close of this portion of the line in 1987.
As I could visualize, and from what C.N. was aligning for future operations, only mainline traffic being handled to and
from Halifax-Montreal-Toronto-Winnipeg and Vancouver, for major customers was in their planning. They indicated
great dollar savings could be realized by eliminating small rail and branch lines, and handling small sized traffic by
Piggyback trailers.
At Halifax, a new Piggyback and container terminal was built at Pier 9 in 1987, and all freight offices, as well as the sales
offices and staffs, were relocated from the C.N. station to Pier 9. The passenger offices, ticket office, and passenger
trains remained at the C.N. station, operating as VIA Rail.
I enjoyed the sales position, meeting many great people in business and industry who used our services. My only
complaint was driving in the winter snow and messy highways.
I retired in August of 1990, having worked 37 and a half years, from 1953 to 1990. I sold the home at Barrington and
returned to the original DeMond property at South Brookfield. My father willed the property to his three sons
equally, and I bought my two brothers’ shares at that time. Since then, for ten years, I have grown a half acre of
strawberries, grown and sold Christmas trees every year since retiring, and have been logging. I have been involved
with community organizations and the church. I have been field treasurer of three churches, president and worker
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with our cemetery association, and a director and member of the North Queens Board of Trade. I’ve done all these
things since retiring to the present time. I am following in the footsteps of my parents who were very active in
community affairs during their lifetime.
My daughter Daphne, her husband Brian, and my granddaughter Brianna live in Upper Tantallon. Daphne has her
Comm. Degree, and human resources, and works from home.
Brian also has his B. Comm and is sales manager with Cape Cod Siding Co. at Hammonds Plains. Brianna is 13, in
grade 7, plays clarinet in the high school speciality band, and has been in sea cadets for one year, all of which she
greatly enjoys. We get together every few months in winter, and week-ends at their cottage in Waterloo during
the summer.
Many changes have occurred through my lifetime, some I have written about, many more could be told. Schools
consolidated, small stores closed since they were unable to compete with the large ones.
We have developed and improved our immediate homes to a much higher level of comfort, than they were 60 years
ago. Progress has been made in many aspects. Computers, and technology has made gains in leaps and bounds.
However, I have concerns with the environment changes, especially noting fewer birds, especially swallows, nighthawks
and sparrows. Also only a few bees have shown up the past two years. This could be the result of too many pesticides
and sprays.
Another concern I have is with the economy. The jobs available in North Queens as well as provincially have declined
substantially, resulting in our young people having to go west to secure employment.
Along with the construction of the new fire station, a new innovative centre is being built and attached to the station.
Our Board of Trade is most anxious that new business and industry will be developed through this initiative.
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E l l i s D ou g l a s
I was born on June 8, 1930 in my parents’ home in Caledonia. I was the oldest
child in the family. I had two sisters and one brother.
I grew up in a big house built by my great-grandfather, Milton Douglas. Milton
had a family of 8 children, 5 girls and 3 boys. The house was passed down to my
grandfather, and then to my father. It is now a museum – The Heritage House
Museum in Caledonia.
My father mostly did woods work. We had a small farm with some milk cows and chickens. There was a creamery that
would buy the cream. There was a creamery in Liverpool and then one in Bridgewater, called LaHave Creamery.
“Almost everyone had some cattle then.”
I have worked in the woods and sawmills. “I always cut my own firewood.” I worked for the N.F. Douglas sawmill and
for Willis Forest. I have seen a lot of changes in the equipment used in the sawmills.“One time, when building a barn
they hewed the timbers out by hand. In fact, that old barn of mine out here has got lots of timbers that were hued
out by hand. You can see axe marks on it. Big square timbers.”
I attended the Pine Grove school when I was a boy. It was a two room schoolhouse. In one room, grades primary to
six or seven were taught and from there up to grade eleven in the other room. “I think people learned more than
they do now. Now they say they don’t even learn to write...At least we learned to write.”
For fun, my friends and I played ball in the summer. We used to coast down the road in the winter. “Never seemed to
be bothered by traffic or no worry about cars then. The road wasn’t paved and never salt or anything. When it was
good going,..start at the end of the driveway and coast down that hill right there.” We’d go skating on the lake and
make a fire.
“One of the biggest changes since I was a young fellow a lot of people travelled with horse teams then. Road wasn’t
paved. Most everybody had small farms everywhere. People had livestock...Wintertime there’d be sledding ...no salt
or anything then...You used sharp shoes [on the horses] in the winter…so they wouldn’t slip on the ice.”
The land is “not used anywhere near as much as it used to be. Old farms are growing up...land growing up in bushes.
Too bad too. All the work people put into clearing fields and they’ve just been abandoned, grow up.”
I remember that there were lots of volunteers for the fire
department. I was a member for quite a few years.
When asked about species in the area, I thought “I haven’t
seen a bat in a long while. Never seem to be many bats
around here.” The deer seem as plentiful but they seem
to hang around people’s fields instead of keeping to the
woods.“Maybe the coyotes might have chased them out
of the woods, I don’t know.”
The government passed a Small Tree Act. Woodlot owners
had to have a permit. Someone came to inspect it before
you could cut and get the permit to sell wood.
Ellis’ grandfather and grandmother, Richard and Ethel
Douglas, his father, Laurie (standing), Lilian and
Chester
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“I think the forest lands are being over-cut. I don’t think
they’re going to last. When they do cut, they destroy
everything. There will be generations before there will be
anything worthwhile.”
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ron a l d ( ‘ R on ’ ) C h a r l e s e aton
I was born on January 25, 1945 in India. My father and uncle were both working
as dentists in southern India.
I had a friend who worked at the park when it was first opened. I came to Keji
several times in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. After I married Connie, we were living
in Wolfville. We decided we wanted to live in a more rural area. Because of my
friend in the park, my wife and I started looking in the North Queens area for
a home. We happened to drive by the house on the Northfield Road that we live in now. We liked the look of the
house although it was in need of work.
I had torn a ligament in my knee so I wasn’t in a position to do a lot of looking around. We made an offer and bought
the place. Once we had purchased it, we asked around to find out who could help us with starting to fix it up. My
friend recommended Joe Rogers. Joe had a construction company. This was in 1979-80.
The house needed a lot of work. The back wall was falling in, the front veranda and kitchen were kind of falling off.
There was a hole in the back where a kitchen sink had leaked and leaked over the years. Joe looked the situation
over. Connie, Connie’s dad, Joe and I sat down to discuss what should be done. “Joe took a box of matches out of
his pocket and tossed them on the kitchen table. In good humour, I think. Anyway, we got a good laugh out of that.
In retrospect, maybe we should have taken his advice. But we didn’t.”
I am happy that we did fix the house. It’s a very old house with a classic stone basement. “It does have a drain that
seems to take most of the water away.”
I heard that the house was built around 1890. We met a fellow who was in his 80s or 90s. He came to visit with his son.
“His story was his father or grandfather – I think it was his grandfather – got the grant of land and built the house
in around the..1890s...He had grown up here…They raised cattle and had a classic sort of farm with the barn on
the hill and he remembers haying and that sort of stuff as a kid...He went to school here..and when he graduated
from school he worked briefly in the bank and then sort of moved on. I think he ended up, actually, in Cuba prior
to the Castro thing. And he ran an antique shop, a used furniture sort of place there and then had to leave when...
the revolution occurred, and had moved to Florida. His son was working for a big company in Florida...And he had
come up here to see the old homestead.” At that time my wife and I had begun the restoration of the house.
We spent the best part of a year coming down from Wolfville to work on the place before we moved in.
“We were taken in
fairly quickly...they
looked out for us...
If you needed anything, people were
there. And I think
that is the feeling of
community.”
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The house had both hand-hewn timbers and rough sawn lumber and it
wasn’t built by contractors. So it was an interesting place and a lot of
work. I do recall coming here on March break to spend the week with
Connie’s parents and our two girls. Snow was actually blowing through
the pantry wall. We had only our old wood stove for heat and spent the
week huddling around it, planning the renovations. Thirty years later it
is still a work in progress.
Connie managed to get teaching assignments with the Queens Co. School
board in Caledonia and South Queens. Thanks to Scotty Wamboldt and
Bowaters, I got a contract building a couple of outhouses for the little
park at Mickey Hill near Annapolis Royal. Then I did some carpentry work
with the N.S. Power Corp.
I feel that Kempt is a very active community. “There are some very
interesting people...When we first came here I met...Shawn Rawding’s
dad, Robert [Jeanette’s husband] and he was really nice. Shawn was a
R O N EAT O N
young man at the time...He was in the process of getting some lumber together to build a house. And I actually went
to work for a week in the woods with them...They were really good to me. Because I was not a skilled woodsman. I
had an old chainsaw and they set me to the task of sort of cutting out a little bit of a road, you know, just the small
stuff. They worked on the big trees. I wasn’t really paid for it in money.” They’d cut some large pine trees and gave
some of the lumber to me. I still has some of the 2 by 20 planks. I used some of the planks to make desks for my
kids.
We hauled the logs to Dick Anthony’s sawmill in Kempt. Most of the logs we sawed out were used to build Shawn’s
house. This was in the mid-80s.
Another sawmill that had been operating in Kempt was owned by Floyd Luxton and his dad, Roscoe. It was on Mill
Lake. Floyd Luxton used to have a convenience store when Connie and I first moved into the area.
I thoroughly enjoyed Roscoe Luxton. Another interesting person I knew was Jordan Anthony; he lived right at the
end of the Northfield Road on route 8. His place used to be a shop. The ladies’ sewing circle used to do quilts at his
place.
Wilford Ringer had an Esso service station in Kempt and there was another station in Maitland Bridge when I moved
to the area. Wilford still runs an independent full service garage in Kempt.
People we met in the area were so important. We got our flooring locally from a fellow who had a kiln, drying hardwood.
A local friend helped rewire the house. Another helped fix the foundation and rebuild the chimney. The pine for
the finish and cabinets was local and our firewood comes from neighbours. There was a lot of co-operation. “We
were taken in fairly quickly...they looked out for us...If you needed anything, people were there. And I think that is
the feeling of community.” We also have the best community suppers in the area.
Years ago, Robert Rawding raised cattle. He had a big barn on the property. It is no longer a working farm. Leon
Rawding also had a cattle farm. Leon used to mow my fields for hay. My place used to be a working farm prior to
us taking over the place. Hurtles, until a year or two before we bought the place, had it as a working farm. It has
changed. There used to be lots of open fields.
“Caledonia has changed dramatically.” There were three grocery stores when I first came to Caledonia. “There was
the co-op, there was the IGA or the equivalent of, and there was another little grocery store, I think owned by
Holdright or something on the corner. Plus N.F. Douglas’ general store....and you could buy groceries there....And
now we have one.”
The land where the Co-op used to be went to the exhibition.
An old grinder-sharpener estimated to be about
100 years old
An old garden shed on Ron’s property, over 50
years old and still being used
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“There was an old hotel, called the Parker House.” It wasn’t long after we moved to the area that the Parker House
stopped being used as a hotel. There used to be three garages in Caledonia, as well as one in Kempt and one in
Maitland Bridge. Now there are no garages, although you can get gas in two places. Both the Bank of Nova Scotia
and the Credit Union are gone. There is an ATM in the grocery store but you can’t cash a cheque in Caledonia. A lot
of the old buildings have been torn down.
There were three stores and a garage on the corner and they have been ripped down. There was a hall on the other
side of the corner that is also gone.
Caledonia was sort of a sawmill town, with forest all around, but there is no sawmill in town anymore.
On the brighter side, we still have an excellent liquor store, post office, a fire department, a great hardware store
and building supplier, a year-round restaurant, a good grocery store, one of the best drugstores in the county, a
community health center, a great little convenience store and gas bar, an excellent nursing home and a toursit
bureau. Nearby we have Kejimkujik National Park.
Thinking about wildlife, I remember, “I did see a moose. We were driving down through Middlefield, you know, and
there’s an old church…[with] a field beside it...I was working for the power corporation...and we were going down to
work at Rossignol at the main dam and there was a young moose browsing in that field...That was 20 years ago.”
I’m not sure that the deer population has changed a great deal. There is the park where it’s a sanctuary. We used to
see deer in the field on the hill when it was being mowed.
“We had bats galore. Oh, we had huge numbers of bats. We almost never see bats now...Last year we counted maybe
a dozen.” It used to be we would have around 200 bats.“We could watch them flicking out of the attic. And we were
sort of delighted about that because everyone knows they love to eat insects...We have plenty of mosquitoes.”
Unfortunately, a fungal disease known as “white nose” has decimated Nova Scotia’s bat populations.
“I do remember seeing chimney swifts in the valley when I was a kid, but not here.”
“I remember Jordan Anthony saying that he bought a piece of land – about 100 acres of land – and he cut wood off
that land... his whole adult life...and he said there was as much wood on the land when he was seventy as there was
when he started out...Because they selectively cut it...They didn’t go in with big machines. They went in with horses
and oxen and they cut for firewood and they cut for building materials...but that’s the olden times...The demands
were less on the product and on the resource. Now I think it’s just insane the way we harvest. It just doesn’t make
sense to me.”
I think that harvesting whole trees to burn as a source of power and calling that sustainable is far-fetched.
I try to encourage the trees that are growing up in my fields to be diverse. There are white pine and I’m clearing some
space for other types of trees to take hold.
Nova Scotia is a small province and we are harvesting so much that it is having an impact on habitats. There was hope
that the Bowater lands would become a community forest. But it doesn’t seem to be happening. But the wood is
still being shipped out, smaller trees, and they are going for biomass fuel. “Harvesting for biomass is nuts...All they
need to be cutting is glossy buckthorn. We need to be harvesting that...We need to have a sustained effort to rid
ourselves of that infestation.”
“This province is a little bit hurting. We’re losing some of our best people, best students...most creative people to
the west, you know, because that seems to be where all the action is...You look at the tar sands...and you think ‘Oh,
God, our economy’s being driven by this?’ Well, that’s pretty scary...And Nova Scotia is like Caledonia. It’s a small
area in a place where big is what seems to count...I think we have to be really creative and really active...We need
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to participate more...in expressing our anxiety about what’s happening. And trying to come up with some kind of
creative way of generating income for people and businesses and alternate energy sources so that we can survive...
Otherwise we’ll just become a retirement place.”
“I’m forever hopeful...We may have to adapt a bit to the realities that we’ll have to face in the future....I think eventually
the reality is going to hit us that you just can’t send huge machines in to maintain our forests. And cut them and
let them grow back and cut them. And you certainly can’t go in and cut them and rip them out by the roots and
leave that devastation ... they’re heading for a sort of lunar landscape...I think the time is not that far in the future
when people are going to start...demanding that we stop.”
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M e rn a E l l i s
I was born at Lake May. This lake is now called Pretty Mary Lake. I lived with my
parents and grandparents on a small farm. We raised chickens, cows, horses and
pigs. I remember that we had 13 young cattle one year; I recall this because I
had to tend them.
My father worked in the woods as well as looking after the farm. My grandfather
used to look after the garden. “That was his thing.”
I moved away from home when I was 17. I went to Halifax and did office work. I took typing and shorthand courses
through correspondence. “I never used the shorthand, which was a good thing.” Going to Halifax was a big thing
for me. I stayed with friends until I was able to get a job. I got homesick sometimes.
I went to both the Northfield and Kempt schools as a girl. My family lived in Northfield in the old house during the
winters so my father could be in the woods. I “went to Kempt until Christmas, Northfield in the winter, and back
to Kempt in the spring.” Northfield school had quite a lot of students. “We were sitting three in a seat.” When I first
started to attend Kempt school, there were 35 students there. I did well despite the moves, except for the geography
of the United States. “They’d have it in one school while I was in the other one, every time.”
The neighbours had three girls who were around my age. We all went to school together.
I was an only child and I did a lot of handwork with my mother. I learned how to knit using sucker sticks for needles.
I started my first quilt when I was twelve years old, and finished it when I was married. I still use it today. Several
years ago I tallied the number of quilts I’d worked on and it was over 100. Now the tally would be over 200 quilts.
My quilts have gone to Ontario, Quebec, France, Germany and the United States. I have been going to Kempt Circle
since 1950.
“I used to go ‘way back in the pasture when we lived up on the hill all by myself to get the cows and I never worried
about anything [like bears]. There was always deer around, in the gardens.”
When asked how the community has changed, I could sum it up with one word. “Shrinking.”
“I started my first
quilt when I was
twelve years old,
and finished it
when I was married. I still use it
today.”
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When my husband and I were first married we lived in Clementsport, and
then in Port Maitland. We built our home in Kempt in 1950. Today there are
hardly any children in the community any more.
The land is not being used much at all. “As you can see, it’s all grown up... It
was all field, now it’s all woods. They’ve logged the woodlot. There’s not
much wood left on that, I guess.”
“I’m glad that the Mersey moved out, really.They used to go up through there...
it was just plain destruction...Not too many years ago. Back in the ‘90s. They
just cleaned everything. There was nothing left but what you might say a
plowed land...not a bush or a thing. Could look for miles. Now what grows
up...hardwood bushes I suppose, they’ll be trees someday. But then, how
many years does it take to...grow logs?
M e rn a e l l i s
When asked about species at risk, I think, “There don’t seem to be any bats around now.” I recall that a house in the
area, that was recently torn down, used to be full of bats. Bats got into my house only two or three times. Once
when Stephanie came to spend the night. “she was sound asleep in bed. First I was lying there waiting...this thing
was swishing around my head. I came to the realization it was a bat. I took chase to it with a bath towel. I caught it
in there in the living room on the drapes. So I wrapped him up and took him outdoors and let him go.”
Merna’s father
Lay May school house
Paul and Merna Ellis on their wedding day,
August 4, 1945
Merna with twin calves in 1944
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H e l e n Fa nc y
I was born on June 5, 1935. My family moved from Lunenburg County to North
Brookfield when I was three years old.
My parents had a farm.We used a horse and oxen to work the farm. I can remember
my father plowing the fields.“He had a garden. He had to do it with a harrow...
a cultivator. I remember he used to do that with oxen.” The vegetables went
into the cellar or were made into pickles,“like beans and cucumbers and ‘kraut.”
We had to make up the vegetables ourselves. The family couldn’t just go out and buy them. “They didn’t have no
money to do it.”
I recall spending evenings shelling dried beans.
I was the youngest of a large family with eight children. Several of the older children had left home by the time I
came along.
When I was asked what we did for fun, I remembered, “Whatever we thought of! If we could think of anything, we
done it.” I had a hand-me-down doll that was given to me and I recall playing with it.
I don’t remember having a lot of chores to do. “I should have but maybe I didn’t do them; I don’t know.”
The one room school in North Brookfield that I attended didn’t have many new things.“When we were in school, we
took what we had, if it was old or new or whatever...” Most of the teachers were young women. The grades went
from grade one to twelve.
The students all walked to school, and they went home for lunch.“You could walk, or you could run....just according
to what we were going to have for dinner.”
The school was heated with a wood stove. They hired someone to get the wood for the school. Someone often
donated their time to cut it.
The school building is no longer there. It was torn down.
“If I got two dollars,
I really thought I
had a lot of money...
I used to stretch
it, like, if I wanted
something from the
Eaton’s catalogue...
save up.”
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When I finished school, I did housework for people “for a dollar and a half
a week or sometimes two dollars....If I got two dollars, I really thought
I had a lot of money...I used to stretch it, like, if I wanted something
from the Eaton’s catalogue...save up.”
I recall walking home from working one day, and it was a long way. My
father happened to come along with the horse and wagon and picked
me up. I was very glad to not have to walk the whole way.
My father sometimes sold blueberries, taking them to people’s homes
by horse and wagon. We picked the berries off his fields. He sold them
in kettles, “big enough to hold what you’d need for a pie.”
I remember a couple of stores in North Brookfield. There was one that
sold some jewellery as well as groceries. I liked rings. I saved for them
by keeping my “money in a matchbox.”
h e l e n Fa nc y
No one in the community was better off than anyone else. “Nobody had more than the other fellow.” If someone
acted like they were better off, “we never paid no attention. We just let them go.”
One of the old stores in North Brookfield is now a craft and art shop, called the Peppermint Store. It only remains
open during the tourist season. They also sell ice cream and pop. They didn’t sell ice cream in the store when I was
young.
I married when I was nineteen. My husband and I lived in Westfield. I lived there as long as I was able to live in the
house on my own. Now my son owns it and rents it out.
My husband worked at “whatever he could. Woods work – he done a lot of that. And he done fishing. He loved to
fish...Trout or salmon.” He worked in the South Brookfield sawmill.“It was called the Frenchman’s Mill at that time...
Frenchmen come in and run it...It burnt down in the end. I think it burned in 1945. That was the end of that.” There
was a French Street, and it is still there.
My husband also liked to hunt.“He liked that best.” He hunted deer, moose and rabbits. There aren’t as many of these
animals in the woods as there used to be.
I used to do a lot of “baking and cooking. And I used to knit some.” I knit socks, mittens and gloves for my family and
to sell.
I feel that young people today can get money so much easier than my generation could.“Maybe 50 cents – whatever
they could get back then. Probably do it [work] for a favour. But now they want so much. It’s changed altogether.”
103
R ay m ond F r e d e ric k F i s k e
I was born in Middleton’s Soldiers Memorial Hospital January 20, 1952. I grew
up in Lower Clarence in my grandfather’s home. My great-grandfather and
grandfather both lived in the house, and they had a sawmill and a farm with
dairy and beef cows, which employed many people. In later years the sawmill
and farm were sold.
My grandfather went to work for the province as an apple inspector. My father eventually became a DHI (Dairy Herd
Improvement) technician. That was working with milking cows and holding records of the cows in Nova Scotia. My
mother was a stay-at-home mom.
My first year of school was in Clarence in a one room schoolhouse. When I reached grade three, I went to Lawrencetown
school as the one room schools were closed. I graduated out of the Lawrencetown Consolidated High School.
I helped on my father’s farm, working with beef cattle and horses. “Money wasn’t really great...but we always had a
happy home life....Small things meant a lot to us. Not large things as of today.”
“I played hockey... I ended up being fairly high up in hockey. I played in different leagues throughout the valley. And
enjoyed it right until I was 18. And I sort of stepped down out of hockey.”
“Today they have a better chance of playing hockey in different categories than I would have because the artificial
ice wasn’t available...like they have in the arenas today.”
I met my wife, Deborah and we married. “We’ve had a very happy marriage and brought up two girls.” We have four
grandchildren.
I had two brothers. One passed away in 2004 from cardiac arrest. The family has a history of heart disease. My parents,
my surviving brother and myself all experienced heart surgery.
I worked at Mountain Lee Lodge, a home for long-term care in Bridgetown which has 110 beds. The administrator
of the facility came to me one day and said there was a job opportunity in Queens County. It was a small facility, a
good place to start out in this field.
“Farming was very
important. People
had to rely on
their gardens and
on their poultry,
their beef and their
dairy.”
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Deborah and I were interviewed by Warden Archie Smith and we
started work on August 4, 1978 to operate Queens County Home
for the Aged in Middlefield. I gained an education in Long Term
Care in Business Administration while working at Hillsview Acres,
Home for Special Care.
In 1981 the Queens Manor was built in Liverpool as a level 1 and level
2 long-term care facility for nursing. Queens County Home for the
Aged was changed to a level 1 residential care facility, which became
known as Hillsview Acres. We continued for ten years living in the
facility and it was really an eye-opener and a great experience for
my family. The residents just loved the kids around...We had three
large gardens in the field that the residents would proceed to look
after and do a fine job…go into the woods and cut wood. I guess
what I’m saying here, it was the original poor farm. In 1967 the
province cost-shared the facility and in 1981 the home was licensed
as a Residential Care Facility.
r ay m ond fi s k e
People today still can’t get away from the stigma of the old poor farm. It served Queens and Lunenburg Counties well.
In the thirty years that they were there, about 1000 residents have been admitted to Hillsview Acres.
A big renovation in 1988 helped to ease the stigma. The renovation cost about 250 000 dollars. Some people at this
two level facility needed heavier care. The home required support of the council to install an elevator at the home
to provide a better service to our residents. They had been under Community Services and then were under the
blanket of the Dept. Of Health and Wellness
When Deborah and I retired, I was asked to run for council. I won the election and so I became a councillor for District
6 in the region of Queens Municipality. “I totally respect the council and totally respect my constituents.”
“It’s funny that I am living here in Queens County now. My great-grandfather and his brother had a gold mine in
Melega Mines. And they sold it and I can tell you the price. It was just $6000 back in 1893.” My great-grandfather
Busby and my great, great-grandfather (grandfather Amasas) loaded up their wagon and headed to the Annapolis
Valley, where they settled in Clarence. My great-uncle Raymond headed to Musquodoboit. One of my neighbours,
told me that I had relatives here in Queens County. I went out to South Brookfield graveyard and checked it out.
My great-grandfather and other family members are laid to rest there.
“When I first came to my community, there was a lot of senior people in the community at that time...They kept their
properties neat and they were gardeners.... They took pride in what they did.”
“The salmon fishing was very strong when I first came here. And as you know, they were quite competitive.... I didn’t
want to get involved because I was scared they’d throw me in.”
“The equipment they have today just goes in and destroys the woods... They used to use a lot of horses and they
used to use power saws...I think that’s the way of life and hopefully down the road there’s a consensus on how to
bring the forests back. And to be fair about everything, I think people are trying.”
Farming was very important. People had to rely on their gardens and on their poultry, their beef and their dairy. I used
to work on a family farm to earn money as a young lad. There were 100 milk cows.
“With the forest being hammered to death, I notice there is a great change in the wildlife. They are coming out in
residential areas. The population of deer has declined compared to years ago. I can remember when there would
be twenty deer in the field at Hillsview and now you would see the odd one.”
“We have to try to get the forest back to rights because it’s really being hammered to death....The fishing industry
we’re trying to get that back in sources. We have to work together...to keep the environment clean...I really do think
people are making efforts to do that.”
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John Foley
I was born on November 4, 1944. I was born in the Cottage Hospital and lived on
what is now the Roxie Frail and Lloyd McBride property in Caledonia.
I went to school in West Caledonia. There were about 32 students at that time.
Helen Charleton was one of my bus drivers. Foster Ball had the contract to do
the bus work. They started out with a car and then ended up with a panel truck.
“The panel truck wasn’t the best. The car was getting damaged so he switched
to the panel truck. And the panel truck, the floor was bad in it. Gravel roads at the time. The inside of the bus at times,
why you couldn’t see the one sitting in the back end of it. The seats consisted of a bench with a throw throwed
over them or part of a blanket. And sat side by side and face to face on the bus. I can remember in the spring of
the year walking from West Caledonia school that was located next to the cemetery – on the north east side of
the cemetery the school was built that was there...There was a hall that was set about half a kilometer from the
Devonshire Road. Pick us up with a three ton truck and drive us part of the way back to the Lake Rossignol where
it turned off. There was two families lived farther back. They walked through the woods to the Lake Rossignol Road,
the Devonshire Road. It couldn’t get through...He couldn’t get from where the hall set across to where that school
was. Three ton truck wouldn’t go through it. Muddy. The road wasn’t paved.”
The panel truck-bus used to make two trips because there were so many students living along the road. There were
about 63 homes on the West Caledonia Road and several of the families were large. The Chutes used to keep foster
children.
“I can remember Lyle Weare had lived on West Caledonia Road. People used to go to church in West Caledonia. He
used to come out, park his truck. That was a big muddy spot there...he used to pull people through both ways
through the mud hole. I don’t think he ever charged anybody anything. He’d just do it.”
The school was a one room school. Once students got to grades eleven or twelve, we’d go to the school in
Caledonia.
“My mother, she went to West Caledonia School. And she walked four miles one way...When they closed the school,
everybody was moved up here to North Queens. North Queens High School was going in 1954.”
My father worked at one time at the Whiteburne Mines. “He was a fireman. It was run by Mr. Douglas...He was the
head of it...The old boiler that was there was, in the gold rush days, was moved from Whiteburne – it was still in
there – the building had fell down around it... It went to the park in Annapolis. I think you’ll still find it to this day
– Upper Clements. It had iron wheels on it and a smoke stack. There’s part of one down where they call West Mine.
It’s pretty well wrecked. There’s rocks piled around it...Different people went in with cutting torches, took pieces
out of the side of it...used for making snow plows for on vehicles, tractors, whatever.
‘Cause it had the roll in it. The last time I was down there, which was probably a couple
years ago, there was still quite a bit of it still there. And the old safe was still there...that
they used to keep the gold in.”
“I remember
they used
to haul logs
across Lake
Rossignol on
the ice.”
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“They used to get a brick a week out of it with the equipment they had at that time.”
“It was all run by steam. There were shafts there. An inspector come. My father was
working at that time. No one was allowed down in the mines, only the crew that was
working there. His story was that they used to travel, climb up the ladders. Now this
one pipe that the water was hot in, the steam equipment underneath the ground run
some of the shafts that was down in there and another one was cold water that they
were pumping out of the mine...you’d guide yourself up – take a hold of the pipe that
the cold water was in to...pull yourself along as you went in. And there was a lift that
had...a bucket that they brought the rock and stuff up out of the mine...Down in the
jo h n fo l e y
mine they had what they called rat holes that men would crawl in on their stomachs following the veins. Punch
a hole in with the drill. That was done by steam. Put the charge of dynamite in, light it and get back out of there
again. And then after the blast...a man would crawl in and keep pushing the rock that was blowed out, out behind
him, kicking it out so that another feller could get ahold of it and bring it the rest of the way out. There was just
enough room for one fellow to get in. And he also told me the story that there was a McInnis man went there to
work and he went down and he went in what he called the rat holes to get the core and stuff out. Anyway, he got
in there, he got panicky and when he got panicking, he got bigger...said that they used grease and whatever to
put on him to try to get him out because he was running out of air. There was no air in front of him. I guess they
used the word hyperventilating.”
The steam boiler they had before the one that was eventually taken to Upper Clements Park started to get foam in
it and started to back up. My father managed to get it settled down and cooled off and got it working again. In the
training he had taken, they warned him that if he ever saw that happen, to try to give the men time to get away
because it was going to blow. They continued to use that boiler but it did eventually blow. My father was at home
that day. It blew at lunchtime and there was nobody near it. It blew the boiler out into a nearby pond. It broke
windows and dishes in the house where they lived; it was about two miles from the mine site. Clifford Donnellan
and his son were cutting wood over two miles from the mine and they had stopped to eat lunch. It knocked the
cup out of Mr. Donnellan’s hand. There was that much concussion from the blast.
Douglas had a truck that he used to haul wood and gravel at the mine. It had a hand crank to dump the body. The
haul up was later used at the mill that Nelson Douglas had near where the Caledonia sign is today. It was used to
haul the logs from the pond up into the mill. It was run by a diesel motor.
My family had a small farm in the same place I live today. We used to grow vegetables in our garden for the mine’s cook
house. We had some milk cows and I started milking cows when I was about eight years old. My mother used to sell
cream to LaHave Creamery. She’d take the horse and wagon and deliver the cream twice a week to the Caledonia
train station. We kept the cream in wash tubs, down on the dirt floor, to keep it cool. We’d let the milk set and we’d
scoop the cream off the top with a soup ladle. When we got ahead a bit, we got a cream separator. It had a hand
crank and a large bowl that would hold about 50 litres of milk. The skim milk was fed to the pigs and the calves.
Later, MacKenzie Creamery in Middleton sent a truck around to pick up cream and that made it easier because the
farmers didn’t have to do the delivery. The MacKenzie Creamery sent around a truck twice a week. My mother would
usually have five cans each delivery. The cream was graded when it got to the creamery and my parents tried to
get a “special” grading, which they often did. It gave them 2 or 3 more cents. The cows we milked were Gurnseys,
Jerseys and Ayrshires. When I was going to the North Queens School, I remembered that we were milking about
20 cows by hand. “Sometimes you’d get a little fringe benefit – a cow would kick you... Probably lost a pail of milk
and a bruise went along with it. But the cows had to be all washed in the morning then we went over the udders
with towels to dry them off to make sure the milk was clean...All the pails had to be washed after the milkings. The
cream separator had to be taken apart, washed out and there was a lot of work to it.”
My father was a fireman at a mill called Miner’s Run. He used to walk to work in the summer and it was about five
miles one way. There was a McGinty man who worked at the mills and he travelled with a bicycle. He would have
been travelling about 14 miles a day. There were a few cars going to the mill at that time.
“I didn’t get to go to school a lot. I ...got to go to grade 9 and then I had to quit and stay home. Which I didn’t want to,
but I had to. I was fourteen.” I had to work at home.
We grew a lot of potatoes. Everything was done by hand.“They used the horse for cultivating, the plowing was done
with the horses. The garden prepared then the weeding started by hand.” We got over 1000 bushels of potatoes
one year. “All dug by hand.”
Bowater and other contractors that cut for Douglas or the Mersey, Mullens and Eddy Match were in the woods, working
mostly with horses or oxen. I recall hearing the ox bells from out in Rossignol country. I can remember them moving
the horses. One man would lead the front horse and there would be 20 or 30 horses behind tied together with the
horses’ lead ropes tied to the next one’s tail. “The horses knew where they were going. Some of them would be
squealing. Getting out they took them down to Caledonia where Home Hardware is today. One of the barns that is
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jo h n fo l e y
still...there, a long building, that was one of the horse barns...They would take them there. And if the horses needed
treatments – a lot of them would be cut up – they would treat them, doctor them up. And when the roads cleared
up that they could travel again they’d go back out in the woods.”
“The logs was moved by log drives. I never did get in on them. Arthur Conrad was in on them. He still lives up here
in West Caledonia and I can remember him telling me he was a dynamite man, blowing up around log jams. My
father used to work on the drives. He used to talk about that they used to stay in tents and they went to bed with
their clothes on to get dried out.”
“There was a boat on the Lake Rossignol...in later years...It was used as a tug boat that took, when they got the logs
out where they could get it, they took them down to the mill site.” The mill site was in Brooklyn. The wood went
for paper.
“Douglas had a saw mill in Hibernia...[the wood] was brought down from Whiteburne area where they’re clear cutting
now.” They would dam up the rivers and then open the sluices to let the logs go through.
I remember they used to haul logs across Lake Rossignol on the ice. When the water was low, there was a small island
in the middle and they’d haul with trucks to the island. “I can vaguely remember the pile of truck doors that used
to be out near Los Landing. They took the doors off that if the truck went under, broke through the ice and went
under, the driver could escape.”
When the war started, Douglas cut Norway poles. They went to Halifax to the waterfront. The government was paying
for them. The men working in the woods were considered too old to enlist. A bonus was given to the men who
had children.
When I was born my father was about 50 years old. He and my mother had a daughter and me. He didn’t marry until
he was in his forties. He was from County Waterford in Ireland. He was in one of the last groups to land at Pier 21.
This was shortly after the explosion and Halifax was being rebuilt. He wasn’t interested in working construction so
he and another guy walked out to the valley. My father boarded at a place called Wheelocks in Clarence. He worked
at a warehouse in Bridgetown, packing apples. While he was there, they had an earthquake. This was around 1929.
Some of the apple barrels fell down.
The area reminded him of home and he became homesick. He left and went out west to work on the grain farms. He
ended up as a fireman there. They fired the boilers with straw. “He witnessed small tornadoes while he was there.
And he got caught out in one...He was out plowing in the field when one hit. The trips were long enough, when they
were plowing a section – this was 640 acres – in the morning they made a trip around with six horses and when
they came back, they would have lunch, change horses...and make the other trip. When they got back it would be
pretty near dark...I don’t know how many furrows that the plows would be turning.”
“His boss told him if he ever got caught in one [a tornado] to unfasten the horses because they would get all tangled
up...He said one come...He seen it coming. He quickly unhatched the horses. The horses knew what was happening.
They all turned head to head. He said their noses were all touching. He said he laid on the ground and covered
his head with his coat...to keep from dirt and stuff getting in his eyes. So when it passed, hooked the horses up...
continued on plowing. The horses never left.”
He hauled grain to the grain elevators in the winter. It was a full day trip. One morning they were waiting for it to get
daylight and it didn’t seem to come. They checked the time and it was noon. They crawled out through a window
and the house was completely covered with snow. They dug out the upstairs window. They figured out where the
barn was because it was covered in snow as well. They dug in and put snow in for the horses. They felt the pigs were
safe and warm since they could burrow in the straw. In a couple of days, a chinook came through and the ground
was bare. They could watch the snow disappear.
When he got some money saved, he decided to head back to Nova Scotia. He met a fellow on the train who invited
him to join him as he went to work with Lloyd Colp. Lloyd Colp was looking for a fireman. There was a train stop in
South Brookfield. The house they’d been told to go to, to look for a place to board, the woman slammed the door in
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jo h n fo l e y
their faces. She said that she didn’t take in tramps. They went to a house that had stood at South Brookfield Corner.
The woman there invited them in until Lloyd Colp came along to take them to the mill. That woman’s husband used
to drive the mail with a horse. Lloyd Colp came the next day and paid for their night’s lodging.
There was a lot of lumber at the mill and somehow a fire got started. Over a million feet of lumber was destroyed.
They battled the fire with water hauled in barrels by the horses and with buckets but it was a total loss.
Lloyd Colp lived in Pleasant River, and moved to Hibernia. He set up a mill there with a cook house and a bunkhouse.
My father worked for him for quite a few years as a fireman.
When they moved from Hibernia, they moved the boiler from Hibernia to Round Hill, near Annapolis Royal. “They
had six pair of oxen on the boiler to take it through. They got to Mickey Hill, they broke camp. They had food, a
supply wagon and set up camp at the bottom of Mickey Hill. Anyway, they spent the next day getting to the top
of Mickey Hill. They got to the top of...Mickey Hill. It took them a day to get up. They would give a pull on the boiler
with the oxen, then they would chalk the wheel to hold it, then the oxen would take another pull. And move it a
couple more feet. And they were all day getting it to the top of the hill. They left it there, they went back to camp...
The next day they moved the boiler down the hill to the bottom. When they got to the bottom, the day was over;
back to the camp again. That next morning they packed up everything, hooked onto the boiler, and they started
for Round Hill...to Mill Road. Back there they had the sawmill.” There is a house on the corner that was called the
Mill House. Ruins of the camp still exist. I thought it was funny that my son’s girlfriend lived on the road next to
where the mill was.
They ended up in West Caledonia at Cannon Lake with a sawmill there. That’s where my mother and father met. She
was a Cashman and she lived at Kill Forty Hill. She used to walk from their small farm to West Caledonia to school.
A lot of the farms had a horse they called a driver. A Mr. Canning, my uncle, owned a moose. In the wintertime people
used to go down to Caledonia Lake. For entertainment they’d have races. “The moose would always come out on
top. Something happened to the mother and he [Mr. Canning] took the calf in and broke it as a horse. My uncle
used to tell stories about the moose.” He had to slow the moose down because he’d go so fast, the wagon would
come apart.
Mr. Canning died from a gunshot wound when he was hunting. He had fallen and the gun went off. They took him
by car to the hospital but he’d lost too much blood.
My uncle had a model T Ford, one of the first cars in the area. He and some friends went to the Caledonia Exhibition.
The boys that were drinking at that time, they were dry. They argued which was the shortest way to go – to Liverpool
or to Annapolis – to find a liquor store. They decided that Annapolis was handier, so at nine in the morning they
went for the liquor store. They got to Mickey Hill and
the motor had a gravity feed and it wouldn’t go up
the hill. They ended up backing the car up the hill.
By the time they got to the liquor store in Annapolis,
it was closed. They turned around and drove back
to Caledonia and by the time they got there, there
wasn’t a soul left at the Exhibition.
“If somebody wanted to go to Bridgewater, it was
usually on the train.” People would go down one day
and come back the next. Travelling was slow.
My mother liked to go to dances. She and her friends
would leave early in the day so they could walk to
Grafton or wherever the dance was. They’d stop off at
someone’s house that they knew, and then go to the
dance. After the dance they’d either stay at someone’s
house or they’d have to walk all night to get home.
Mr. Canning’s moose in a harness (1904)
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jo h n fo l e y
A neighbour, Tom Boyle, played one time with Don Messer.“They used to hire him to go to a dance.” He had a car with
no headlights. So he’d get one of his sons to sit on the front of the car with a lantern.“And they’d head for Maitland
or someplace around there was a dance and he used to play the music. And they would pass the hat around...for
a collection. He sometimes ended up with some bolts some washers, quarters or dimes.”
Something else that was popular were pie suppers. My mother used to go to them and carry her pie, sometimes as
far as Caledonia. Whoever bought the pie got to sit and have the supper with the woman who baked it. “A dollar
or two was big money at the time. Usually it was fifty, maybe seventy-five cents. One girl was quite attractive. She
was a Donnellan. One guy wanted to eat the pie with her. He paid 18 dollars for the pie. And he got his pie and he
took all the money he earned probably a month, month and a half’s wages.”
My father used to make a dollar and a half a day as a fireman. The other men got a dollar. They didn’t get straight time.
If the mill broke down, they didn’t get paid. And they had to pay their board.
“Today they go into a piece of property. They just take in a bunch of machines – flatten everything. And God knows
when it will ever grow up. Everything is ruined. It will never, never come back like it was. I worked with the Lands
and Forests. Back in the late seventies I was on the fire crew...We used to cut in the summertime...and everything
was spaced. We took a large crop of wood off it...and today you could go back in and take another big crop off it.
As I remember there has been three cuts taken out of there.”
We cut a piece at the end of Mill Road, located out at Lake Rossignol. We trimmed 50 acres of pine. We hauled it out
with skidders. We cut from November til mid-April. We earned our wages. I found one of the pay slips and I made $75
for two weeks. I had to supply my own saw, gas and oil. And I thought I was making big money. Lands and Forests
were happy, they had a profit of $6000. Money to pay the Milton fire crews came out of what we made.
“Back around home, the place is unreal. The bears that is coming out. I was probably twenty before I ever seen my
first bear out in the wild. But now it’s common to see them. And coyotes. I worry about that ‘cause they’re going to
get hungry. They have a lot of dog in them. I’m afraid they’ll come after somebody. The habitat is destroyed. They’ve
multiplied unreal...They’re a lot larger than the original coyote...I’ve seen them following me in the woods...Around
where I live, there’s bear scat under the apple trees. Bear claw marks where they climbed the apple trees and it’s
very common to see them.”
“We also have some of the other animals that’s not native. They’re showing up. Like cougars. There has been a pair
of them seen on Lake Rossignol Road. I’ve seen them in the hayfield. I’ve seen them...near the fire tower in West
Caledonia...There’s a pair so there’s got to be young around.”
There was a deer on the side of the road that had its back broken. It would have been done by a large cat that jumped
from a tree onto the deer. Probably the person who reported the deer scared the cat off. Natural Resources checked
it out.
“I’ve been up close. I can definitely say it was a cougar...black bushy tail and they can run.”
My son used to have a dagon ox. He would lead it down the road a couple of miles, pulling a wagon. Then he’d turn
the ox around and hop on the wagon to ride home. When the ox got sick and died, my son dug a grave that was
8x8x7 feet for it, by hand. He would still help me with the cattle, but he lost all interest.
At one time, I had 300 cattle. I rented all of Lew Phalen’s property for pasture. We used the old railway track to take
them to a corral. We loaded them on ten or twelve trucks.
We had twelve trucks in a row, heading to Bridgetown. The trucks were spaced apart. A motorcycle started to weave
in and out among the trucks.“The guy had a real nice bike. He was weaving in and out between the trucks. We was
kind of watching him. He come up behind the van Dyk truck. The cow had a bowel movement. It came right through
the tailgate of the truck and it just covered him, bike and all. We didn’t stop...he was lucky he didn’t get run over
when we seen what was happening...By the time we got finished laughing we started unloading cattle.”
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J o h n W i l l a rd F ord
I was born on the 5th of July, 1938. I resided in Kempt. I was born in the same
house I live in presently.
My home was built in 1902 or ‘03. There had been another house on the property;
it burned in the 1880’s. The land that the house sits on is one of the original
land grants of 200 acres. I still own all the land that was in the grant.
My father, Harry, did carpenter work during the summers and he worked in the woods during the winters. He also
ran the farm. “We always had a pair of horses and a barn full of cattle.” He farmed just for the family’s own use. He
didn’t sell any produce.“We always had lots to eat and we always had vegetables. Every year my father raised some
pigs and beef and so we had meat all winter until the next spring, as long as it would keep.”
I think about what it was like to work when my father was a carpenter, making doors and windows. He had no power
tools. Everything was done by hand. Planing, sawing and corners were all done by hand. He fitted sashes with tenon
and mortise. He’d order the glass by the case. He puttied the windows in himself.
My father also redid canoes. He’d re-canvas them. He’d stretch the canvas, then tack the canvas on the ends of the canoe
with half inch tacks. He mixed up his own filling, with white lead, whiting and linseed oil. That substance never really
hardened, so it would give if the canoe struck a rock or something. It would take a year for him to repair a canoe.
My chores when I was a boy were to bring in the wood and kindling for the fire when I got home from school and to
do whatever barn chores I was able to do. I’d pitch down the hay and feed the cattle and carry water for them.
The firewood was cut on our property. When my father was in the woods cutting pulp or logs, if he came to a hardwood
tree that was big enough, he’d cut it and bring it out for firewood. “As a rule, by spring there was enough for the
next winter.” My father used the horses to haul the wood.
I attended the one room school that was on the end of the Northfield Road. The grades went up to whatever grades a
teacher was qualified to teach. It would vary from year to year. Some students had to take correspondence courses
until the new high school opened in Caledonia in 1954. And then
we went there for high school. The school in Kempt closed in the
‘60s for the elementary grades. I had a walk of about 3/4 mile to
get to school in Kempt.
“I believe that the
changes in wildlife are
due to the changes in
the weather. I haven’t
seen many mayflies
when I go fishing lately. It used to be that
there were mayflies
all over the water.”
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When I first started school, they were having trouble getting teachers.
Sometimes they’d have three teachers in a year. “As fast as they
found one, why, they were here for a month and the old ones
[students] would run them out and they’d have to go find another
one.” I do remember a Miss DeLong, and a Mrs. Wellwood. She
taught for a couple of years in Kempt. A woman from Buckfield
taught there for a bit. One year, we ended up with a man teacher
after Christmas, a Mr. McBride.
The school building is still in the community. It was made into a house.
Allison MacBride lives there.
We used to play catch at recess time at school. “And that was about
it.” After school, my friends and I would visit back and forth at our
homes. We had trails through the woods and we would run around
in the woods in the summer and build little camps. In the winter
jo h n F O R D
we had bobsleds and we’d go coasting on the hill where Joe Shupe used to live, about 200 yards north of my place.
“It was clear and steep.”
Stormy nights if we had our studying done, we played cards sometimes. The community would hold card parties at
the hall. Young and old attended. There would be snacks served like ice cream or cake.
“When I was growing up, there were three stores here in Kempt and a garage. Roscoe Luxton built the garage in the
mid-50s. Wilfred Ringer bought it from Roscoe. One store, at the end of the Northfield Road, was owned by Lillian
and Gordon Hanley. A post office had been kept there for a long time, also. Across the road from that was another
store owned by DeLongs and then Co-op owned it and then Jordan Anthony bought it. There was a blacksmith’s
shop at one time where the garage is. Dukeshires ran it. The building that is now an art gallery was a store belonging
to DeLongs.
George DeLong ran a small dance hall in Kempt. It was on the road down to Kempt church. Another dance hall was
up toward the county line. Clarence DeLong ran it.“It was kind of rowdy.” He used to serve hot dogs and hamburgs.
A school teacher and his two sons used to play at the dances and they acted as their own bouncers. If people got
too rough, they “cleaned house and started again.”
On Friday nights, people didn’t go to Caledonia. They’d stay at Kempt Corner and do their shopping there. This would
have been in the ‘40s and ‘50s.
Now, the only businesses left in Kempt are Ringer’s garage and the gallery.
The road from Caledonia to Kempt Hill was paved when I was a boy. Through Kempt the road was gravel. The flats
were corduroyed, with logs.“They had to do that in order to keep the mud under control – it was swamps- they had
to do that to keep the horses and cattle from going down through. Then that was covered with gravel. And in the
younger years when we were going to school...in the spring and even during the summer they graded the road
(which was not very often) you could see the wool from where the grader had been digging at these logs and they
looked wooly.” If someone was riding a bicycle, he had to duck around the holes or the sprocket would drag.
There was a lake nearby and some brooks in Albany New where we went fishing.
There were a lot of farms in Kempt. “There were farms everywhere...Pretty nearly everybody here...they had their
own cattle. They raised their own pigs and their own beef...hens and the whole thing...It’s changed to the point
now that you might say it’s non-existent...This
field here all grew up.” I cleared it and planted
it in grass again, even though I no longer have
cattle. A big percentage of fields have grown up
in bushes and trees. ‘There’s no meadow hay cut
for as far back as I can remember...Meadow hay
was very poor feed.”
These days it’s difficult to buy firewood. I supply
myself with firewood off my lot. A lot of people
who used to sell firewood over the years can’t
get the wood. “Because of the government rules
and regulations, the wood is not there to get...it’s
driving the price right up through where it’s not
feasible anymore...to buy it. $250, $350 a cord.”
Clear cutting has come about in the last twenty
years or so. “I worked up in the Mersey country
there when I was still going to school. We went up
there in the summer, cutting and peeling hemlock.
There was places up there where we used to clear
cut pretty well but it was only on a small scale...
John’s father, Harry Ford, made these windows over 70
years ago
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jo h n F O R D
here and there. The clear cut where they go in with their processors now we’d not even heard tell of. And a lot of
places where they use the processors now was not feasible to cut back in those days...They cut everything there is,
big and small. Back in them days we cut what was biggest...A lot has changed in the last 10 or 15 years. Like back in
here I always just cut a few trees here and a few trees there...and let the rest of it stand. And there was a lot of big
spruce back in here. But the trouble is...there’s so much disease in our forests.” On my neighbour’s place there is a
lot of old spruce that are dying. He cut out the old wood and left the smaller trees that still seemed healthy. But in
two years time, those trees were diseased.
“Back here now a whole mess of stuff should be cut. You look at the trees and they look just the same as a shaggy
dog...If you look at them at all, it’d just make you sick because it shouldn’t be happening. It’s not only in our spruce
but it’s in our pine, it’s in our hardwood...it’s disease.” I believe this is caused mostly by climate change. Years ago
the winters were cold. When the temperature dips below -28, the bugs produce their own antifreeze. They can’t
freeze until the temperature gets below -28 or -30 for a week at a time. The warm winters we’ve been having have
allowed the bugs to survive.
I feel diseased woods should be cleaned out, the same as you do with a garden.“And maybe then that new generation,
something might change.The bigger timber that is back there now if I could find somebody I’d get another bunch of
it cut because within three or four years it’s going to be dead. And it’s no good laying on the ground. Some people
would disagree with that. It’s feed for the birds and stuff like that but I’d rather feed my pocketbook. That’s what I
got it for. I hate to see it laying because that’s just a waste the same as anything else. The hardwoods are not doing
good – our maples, our birch...So clear cutting in certain cases it is good but not the method they’re doing to a lot
of it. Years ago we used to go in the woods...you’d pick out a little corner - there might be half an acre, 3/4 of an acre,
you cut it. You go here, you cut another bunch, you go there and cut another bunch. This here starts re-growing...
This in-between is only halfway growing so in a few years time you’d pick some out of that. But you can’t do that
today with the way the economy is and so on. Fuel is so high, wages are so high...in a lot of cases if you’re going to
get anything out of your wood at all, you’re pretty well going to have to cut it with a processor....It’s disgusting.”
When I was a youngster, after they put the power line behind the house, there were moose that used to be down
there. Sometimes I’d see three, four or five of them. The last moose I saw there was in the mid-50s.
“The deer population has gone up, it’s gone down, it’s gone in every direction...When I was...about 18, 19, I went
trapping with my uncle one fall. There’d been all kinds of deer around here before that, and they were gone. We
trapped around Rossignol, we trapped up the Medway country, down around McGowan Lake, all around this part
of the country. The second week in November, going across the old Corkum Road up there, a deer went across the
road and I shot that. My uncle he went, took two or three days off the last of November and he got a big old buck.
That was the only two deer we seen all fall. And we travelled before daylight in the morning and after dark at night...
Then they built back up again. If you read the history on the white tailed deer, they do that. They build up and they
die off...and I’m not too sure that that’s what happened to the deer...with the deer and the coyotes. Whatever it was
got in the deer and about the same time the coyotes hit was one reason why the coyotes made such a big inroad
in them...Between that and the jacking, it did a job on them.”
One family killed 60 deer one fall. The next season, they only got 40. There was another family that moved in that fall
and they got thirty. That’s really hurting the deer population. “You can’t completely blame it on coyotes.”
I remember at Kempt Hall and the church there used to be swarms of bats around. But I haven’t seen any bats for
two or three years.
I have seen chimney swifts. “I come home from work one night and I heard something in the stove. I took the cover
off and this sooty chimney swift flew all through the house...That was twenty years ago.”
I noticed we used to have a lot of nighthawks. They made a screeching sound. But I haven’t seen or heard them for
a long time.
I believe that the changes in wildlife are due to the changes in the weather. I haven’t seen many mayflies when I go
fishing lately. It used to be that there were mayflies all over the water. Mayflies need good clean water. Maybe that
has something to do with it.
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jo h n F O R D
In the lakes up around the Mersey, I used to be able to catch good sized white perch. But they haven’t been caught
in a long time. When a species like that “starts disappearing it is not a good sign.”
To help the environment, “this here spraying is not doing them any good. See, they sprayed up the Medway a lot in
the last few years...when Bowater still owned it.” My brother-in-law and I have a camp in the woods. The first fall we
went to it we spotted nine deer. The next year they sprayed in that country with herbicide. And the next fall there
were no deer. Where they sprayed, the prevailing winds took the spray into that country. It could have affected the
mayflies, too. “It all adds up...until it’s not feasible to exist.”
A difficulty I see is that companies don’t ask their employees to do things, they tell them. So they have no choice. The
people who make rules and regulations and enforce them don’t really understand what they are doing.“Things they
should be looking into are passing through the cracks. And things that should be done are not getting done.”
I think one of the reasons some of the rules and regulations aren’t being enforced is because of the oil sands in Alberta.
If rules and regulations were enforced here, they’d have to enforce them there. And they aren’t.
I got a copy of the bylaw about wetland use from the municipality and from the provincial governments. I couldn’t
get any from the federal government. The definition of what a wetland consisted of and what are sensitive areas
were different.
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V ivi a n K at h l e e n ( ‘ K at h l e e n ’ ) F r a i l
T h o m a s ( ‘ to m ’ ) N e l s on F r a i l
Kathleen: I was born on January 21, 1920 in Westfield in my grandmother’s home.
Tom: I was born on February 13, 1958 in the old Cottage Hospital in Caledonia. I was also raised in Westfield.
Kathleen: “My Dad was a miner in Whiteburne.” This would have been in the late 1800s. He also did some
lumbering.
My father came from Nictaux Falls in Annapolis County. His family had come to Nova Scotia from Scotland.
There were beverages that they drank that had a marble in the neck. It was ginger ale. “All we could think of was
getting the bottle.” We weren’t allowed to break the bottles. When we took them back to the store,we’d get some
money back.
Tom: I remember the little store that was just over the road. “I could go over there with twenty-five cents and get a
pop and a bag of Scotties potato chips and a chocolate bar and have a couple of cents left over.”
Kathleen: I attended Westfield School as a girl and then went to Caledonia. “I had to walk out there to take grade
eleven. They didn’t teach it here.” I walked about two kilometres to get to Pine Grove School.
At Westfield school, “it would be one room with all the grades in that one...It was different in that you were hearing
all the classes taught. I guess we fortified a lot of things.”
I worked in Halifax for a while before going to Normal College for teacher training in Truro. Then I taught school for
about 35 years. I taught in Westfield, and then in Caledonia and South Brookfield and Albany New.
Tom: “I was working over
in Hibernia ...probably ten
years ago, at least. And I
was sitting there eating
lunch. One [Monarch butterfly] came down where I was
cutting wood and in fifteen
or twenty minutes, there
were hundreds of them...”
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Tom: I went to the two room Westfield School for my early
years of schooling, until 1965. They closed all the small
schools but they didn’t have the new school ready.
“So when September came they put a whole bunch of
people in Pine Grove and they put a bunch of people
in South Brookfield School. And then as they finished
classrooms they’d take some out. We were just stuffed
in there...When we did get there it was the middle of
the winter.”
Kathleen: I remember we’d be on the playground. “So
we’d play hide and seek.”We skipped rope and the boys
played ball. We played hopscotch.“The kids drew out the
diagram, hop in the blocks.”We’d scratch the hopscotch
blocks out in the dirt. We didn’t have pavement. On
rainy days, “the teacher would allow us to use the
chalkboards.”
“Of course,“I came from a family of six....With that many in
the family there was always activity going on.”
K at h l e e n a nd T o m F r a i l
“We’d follow trails where somebody had been cutting wood and we’d walk down to the bridge.”We would go fishing.
“It would be trout.” Trout can still be caught down by the bridge. “We used to build camps.”
Children today,“they still skip of course.” Children playing computer games today “broadened their horizons...I think
the children do get a certain amount of education” from using the new technology.“There’s always something new
coming along...I think that limits their activity because they’re sitting.”
“You had to make your own entertainment...You had to come up with what you were going to do.”
We played cards a lot. And then we would do these games like Tic Tac Toe. The boys played checkers. We played Snakes
and Ladders when I was a teenager. I think my grandchildren like to create their own board games.
Tom: When I was young, we played cards a lot as well.“And with my great-uncles, checkers...When I was a kid, I learned
to play cribbage. My great-uncles came here from the States. And as soon as you could count you learned to play
crib. And if you beat them, they didn’t want to play with you again.” I still like to play crib.
People were more dependent on people to be social.“If there was something in the community and someone didn’t
go, they probably must have been sick.”
Kathleen: Visiting “was so special because we’d hear so many stories.”
Tom: On Saturday mornings, in Dad’s garden, there would be about 8 people congregated on the benches, talking.
“We used to go up to Harmony Bridge when the salmon were coming up the river and there were only a few people
who fished but there were 20 there to hear the stories.”
“Years ago the fishing was more the trip than catching the fish. And we went out and stayed a couple of nights in
tents or camps. And now people can get on an ATV and go there in five minutes and be back in five minutes.”
“People don’t really hunt today.They sit with apples and carrots and cameras and electronics and wait for the animals to
come to them. Where years ago, we just walked and hunted. And people [are] more now sitting and using electronic
things to tell if the deer are coming during the night...And they know the deer’s patterns.”
Kathleen: “That makes me laugh because I used to go with my older brother and I wouldn’t let him shoot a deer. So
I didn’t get to go too much.”
“In those days we’d just see deer coming out anywhere...and even moose...They were everywhere.”
Tom: There are moose up on Shelburne River.“Up in Tobeatic,
I’ve seen moose.”
Kathleen: I used to see fox. There are still some fox but they
aren’t as plentiful.
Tom: Since the coyotes came they haven’t been as plentiful.
“Up at the Lands and Forests, we used to watch them
play.”
The coyotes have been around for about 25 years. The first
coyote I ever saw had mange. I have seen them chase my
cattle. “But now they are much larger. I have noticed that.
They are supposed to be 85% eastern wolf now.”
Kathleen’s mother, Effie
Kathleen: “There were a lot of bats around outside.”
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Tom: “We did see a few this summer. Last summer we didn’t see any. But I know of one place where the guy said he
did have bats...They’ve really gone down. If I went out to my pasture at night…you’d see them swooping through
the cattle. [Now] you hardly see them.”
Kathleen: “If you go around to an old camp, you’ll see them.”
My granddaughter, Kelsie, used to see Blanding’s turtles when she was going to school. She’s now in her late
twenties.
Tom: I’ve seen Blanding’s too. I know some of the people who were doing the protection of the nests.
There used to be chimney swifts up where the fish hatchery is.“They used to go in that big chimney at the blacksmith’s
shop. That was 35 years ago...People used to go up there at night and they’d come across the lake and it was like
a rope and they’d all go down that big stone thing there at the blacksmith’s shop...That was there from the 1800s.
That used to be a pulp mill.”
Kathleen:“A couple of years ago there were quite a number [of monarch butterflies] around.‘Course I’d see them out
around.”
Tom: “I was working over in Hibernia one time on the land, probably ten years ago, at least. And I was sitting there
eating lunch. One came down where I was cutting wood and in fifteen or twenty minutes, there were hundreds of
them...That time was just exceptional.” It’s been a few years since I’ve seen any.
The changes in wildlife could be attributed to “maybe the food sources...Maybe environmental things have changed.
Of course, with this influx of coyotes it’s really changed a lot of things. It’s changed a lot of things for the smaller
mammals and the foxes. It’s changed things probably for the birds of prey. And of course now we have these
mourning doves which is something that we never, ever had here before. And we’re getting a lot of changes in plant
life here, too. I even can notice them...Wax leaf buckthorn. The glossy buckthorn. North Queens, we have it in all the
communities....You don’t see the hazelnut bushes like you used to. And it’s choking out the maple. It is not good.”
“They did do an experiment...’cause there’s a big part of the province that doesn’t have them and then up in Pictou
County they have quite a bit. And they tried...they’ve actually got a group that was going to go out on weekends
and try to destroy it and stop it and it seemed to make it grow even faster...I think they were trying to cut it off and
dig it out.”
Kathleen: “Well, when I was growing up of course every home did a certain amount [of farming] because you raised
your own food...Potatoes were the main crop...the carrots and turnips.” We had apple trees.
Tom:“North Queens…we actually had 28 varieties of apples that were shipped all over the world at one time.” When
my father was a child he picked apples by hand. They made wooden barrels to put the apples in with some straw
and those went to England. The story was that the apples went to Buckingham Palace and someone came over to
watch the harvest and they followed the apples to Halifax to go on a ship.
The North Queens Fruit Packing Company used to buy beans from small farms, then take beans to people’s homes
and people hand-snipped the beans, washed them and dried them and they went back out there to be put in cans...
For a while the rail bed went right past it. That building actually became the Co-op.
Kathleen: One change in the community is “there aren’t the gardens...Everybody depended on that.”
Tom:“And they all had a cow. If they had a cow they had to be able to produce hay...And they had milk and their own
pigs.” In the 60s and 70s that’s when people left the farms. “The government picked those fields up and planted
them full of trees. Probably 70% of the farms in this area were planted full of trees...The old Annapolis Road was all
farms, Whiteburne was all farms. The old Farquahr farm has all grown up.
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Westfield used to have a taxidermy shop. There were three stores and a restaurant. The stores have been converted
into houses.
Kathleen: A Johnson family had the first car in the area. “I remember they were Studebakers and they were big, long
cars.” That would have been back in the ‘20s and ‘30s.
Even when Tom was small, we had a crank telephone. “That was modern.”
We had one of the first TV’s in the area and people would come over to watch.
Tom: When I was a boy my father used to listen to the ball games on the radio.
When Kathleen’s uncle would be away, her grandmother would chop the radio wires if there was a storm. She was
afraid of being electrocuted. We needed quite an extensive antenna to pick up the signal. The radio was battery
powered because we didn’t have electricity yet. The uncle had all these wires going with through the window, to
the antenna.
Tom: Thinking about the environment, “if there’s anything out there that’s worth money, they’re going to go get it...
You just have to look at Western Canada...In Nova Scotia there’s big craters being created all over and at one point
they’re going to want our water. And they’re going to come and get it.”
Kathleen:”We are more or less taking things for granted.”
Tom: “I think we’ve made one hell of a mess of it in a couple
hundred years I’d say...Look at the things people have to buy
every month. And look at the things twice a year that they
put out at the end of their driveway to be hauled away. And
years ago, I know my dad could take something and make ten
things out of it over a period of years. Everything had some
sort of a use. And people also tried to give each other things.
Where today people don’t really wish to give other people
things. And it’s just this total thing of buy, buy, buy. People put
out electronics, barbeques, put lawn mowers out that actually
function. That’s life today.”
Kathleen: Flour came in cotton sacks. They were used for sewing
all sorts of things. We could dye the cotton.
“Of course, things back then were made to last.” Even the first TVs
were made so they could be repaired. Now electronics aren’t
fixed; they are just replaced. Things only have a short lifespan.
Replica of St Jerome’s Church made over 60
years ago
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Mary (Nee Frank) Frail
I was born in North Brookfield in 1945 in a house that is just four doors over from
where I live now. My nephew lives there now. He inherited the house from my
mother. Stanley Frank was my grandfather and he lived in that house.
“We grew up thinking that we were poor...But we always had lots to eat and lots
of activities to do. I grew up after the war so it was the Depression period. So
that’s why we always thought that we were poor...I grew up with three brothers...
well, really two brothers because Peter is younger than I am. So they would go out and they’d cut a few sticks of
wood and make wheels and they’d make a cart. And of course being the only girl, they’d push me down over the
hill to make sure it was safe.”
“Christmastime, we always had a great Christmas. But wasn’t a lot of things under the tree. There was like fruit and
vegetables, stuff like that.”
“Dad always had the farm...He had cattle, pigs, horses. He grew beans. I can remember picking beans off that hill over
there because they used to take it up to the canning factory up in Caledonia.”
My parents were Evelyn and Oliver Frank.“They did everything in partnerships. Mom looked after the home most of
the time but she was also out in the barn cleaning out the cattle. She had a few cattle of her own. Dad had, when
they raised the pigs,...he raised them after they were weaned from the sow...Then he took them out to the Larsen’s
met packing company in the valley. And Mom had the old sows and looked after them until the babies were
weaned. That was her part of it.”
I attended North Brookfield School. “It was enjoyable, actually...I remember getting hung up in a snowbank..Willis
Ritchie had to go pull me out because I was only short at the time. It was a two room schoolhouse with a stove on...
either side. I don’t remember much about being on the little side because it was only primary, one and two. But on
the other side it was three, four, five and six...It’d be cold in there and we’d cuddle around the stove to get warm.”
The students came from Brookfield Mines and the whole way up through.“You weren’t lugged around. You walked.”
Some students would have to walk four or five miles.“I was lucky. I only had to walk about a quarter of a mile...The
teacher usually lived with Mrs. Carmen Fancy over here and she was always there. No, we didn’t have storm days
back then.”
“...and I can remember laying in bed
listening to the chimney swifts or something. You could
hear them in there
flying around and
beating and chirping
and going on.”
120
Education was more basic. “Education has changed so much now. Like,
we had the math and the English, science and geography, stuff like that.
Things that we needed back then. But now, I don’t even understand
the math and stuff now. I can’t help my grandchildren...But I did learn
a lot in one year after I graduated from high school. I taught school
over here. One year. The same school I went to. And I had to study every
night because I had to learn everything that I had forgotten, teaching
that many different grades.”
I went to high school at North Queens Rural High School.“That was a big
adjustment,” getting used to the bigger school.
“At school, we used to play Barney over the Schoolhouse Roof.You’d throw
the ball over. You’d have some kids on one side and some on the other
and you’d throw the ball over the roof. And whoever caught it, then they
would say ‘Barney, Barney over the roof’ and they’d run and whoever
had the ball could tag somebody on the other team and you had to
stay with their team. So whoever won was whoever got everybody on
their team...It was high. You really had to throw to get it over.”
m a r y fr a i l
“We used to play baseball. I guess it was baseball. We found a ball and we had sticks and made bats out of them and
played ball. We went skating and coasting and stuff like that.”
In the summer, we’d go swimming at the lake.“We’d have to help Dad with the haying. Then after we’d get done with
the haying he’d say, ‘You fellers go up to the lake and enjoy yourselves.’”
The community has changed a lot. “There used to be two stores. Like, Ellis Meisner’s was over here where Larry’s
convenience store was. And then right next door here to me there was just a little store and I don’t remember what
the name of it was. I remember when we got a penny we could go over there on the way over and we’d get these
jawbreakers. It was enough to last us all day...This was more or less just junk stuff.” It was a candy store.
The other store had almost everything.“You could buy yarn, you could buy material, you could buy almost anything.
Kerosene...Well, it was convenient. We didn’t go anywhere at that time. I mean, when growing up, why...the vehicle
that was on the farm was meant for the farm. We weren’t allowed to...you didn’t take that to just go anywhere. If it
was being used, it was for farm purposes. So it was handy if you needed a bag of flour, sugar or whatever...It was
our job to run over to the store and get it.”
Now, things are closing down.“We have no stores here now.” The last store we had here was L.B.’s Convenience Store.
It had gas and oil, some canned goods and milk.
“There are no young people anymore. They don’t even have Sunday School at the church anymore. Not enough
children around. It’s a community with old people. They’re seniors...If you took all the children in North Brookfield,
you might have fifteen, twenty,”
“There were a lot of farms around here like Earl Crouse’s. They always had a farm up there. They produced everything
that you could need. Right now they produce...they have dairy cattle so they produce milk. Theirs is still going...The
other hill up here, that used to be a farm. That’s not being used anymore...There was probably eight or ten.” Now
only two farms still exist. “Crouse’s and my brother. He still has cattle.”
“We went fishing...It’s harder to catch fish now. Used to take a stick and put a line onto it and a hook and a worm and
you was set for the day. You could go and catch all kinds of fish. But now, you don’t go fishing with a stick and a
worm.” The older people will sometimes go up to the lake and go fishing for perch and trout. Sometimes we’ll go
off mackerel fishing in the ocean. It’s great fun. But we didn’t do that back then. We had no way of going.
We used to see deer and bear in the woods. “I never noticed coyotes and stuff. Coyotes is bad around here now.”
Photogragh of the North Brookfield School
(c. 1900).
Mary (Frank) Frail is the last student, bottom
row, on the right, dressed for a music festival
(c. 1955)
121
m a r y fr a i l
There’s no bats anymore. There used to be loads of bats. All you had to do was go outside the house when it was
dark and they were flying around everywhere.” You’d have to duck because they’d be flying all around your head.
“If you got one in the house, the cat usually looked after that...I remember we used to have the old brick flue...one
of them wasn’t used. And of course it wasn’t blocked off on the top and I can remember laying in bed listening to
the chimney swifts or something. You could hear them in there flying around and beating and chirping and going
on.” We don’t see them now. “But the swallows are coming back...My grandson put a bird house up over here and
the swallows are in that. And they’re building on the hall and on the church. I noticed them just this year. This is the
first year I’ve noticed them.”
I’ve seen lots of bees and hornets’ nests. There are butterflies around but not many monarchs.
The changes in wildlife, “I think a lot of it is what’s coming down out of the atmosphere...Killing off your bees, your
butterflies, all these birds and stuff you used to have, I don’t see anymore.”
My grandfather used to work in the woods.“It’s all managed forest now. They more or less come in and tell them what
they can and can’t cut. In a way it’s good. They don’t strip the land like they used to, which is good. But things have
changed in the fact that...if you had a cleared piece of land a lot of places have Christmas tree on.” Christmas trees
used to be just wild and you went out and cut a tree.
“A lot of the land has been stripped and it’s going to be years and years before it’s ever grown back.” They leave a
strip of woods along the road and then clear cut behind that. In this community not so much clear cutting has
been done because it is mostly private land and people take care of their woodlots. The clear cutting is done by
big businesses.
When I drove the school bus I used to take the kids up to MTRI, and sat through the talks with the kids.
I put up wooden plaques on the telephone poles around the community about the Blanding’s turtles and the monarch
butterflies. I do it to brighten up the community. Judy Frank helps me do some painting. MTRI gave me a T-shirt
with a butterfly on it and I went from there. I’ve done it for three years. I started with the Canadian flag and then I
went with the turtles and then I put up the monarch butterfly. This winter I want to do Frosty the Snowman.
122
123
Loui s O l ivi e r F r a n k
I was born on May 26, 1941 in North Brookfield in the home that Justin Frank
resides in. Justin is my brother’s son.
My parents farmed. At first we had beef cattle. As time went on we changed to
dairy cattle and we shipped milk to the dairy in Liverpool. My father also worked
around the woods.
I attended the school in North Brookfield. It was a two room school. Grades primary to five were in one room and
grades six to twelve were in the other. There would have been around 30 students in the school. I had a short walk
to school each day. The last teacher I had in the North Brookfield School was Mrs. Norma Freeman. I went to the
new high school when I started grade seven. Louis Waterman was the first bus driver to take students from North
Brookfield to the new high school in Caledonia.
The bell of the old North Brookfield School is sitting beside the church. The school I went to was originally across the
street. Years ago, it was torn down.
As a boy, I played ball in the spring and fall. Sometimes someone would hit the ball and break windows out of the
church. “And that wasn’t good.”
I used to bicycle a lot. I used to go to Little Tupper Lake to go swimming. Sometimes I would go fishing.
In the winter, we coasted on the hills.“There would be 10 or 15 of us in the evening, after dark, coasting. And some of
them was upward of 20 years old that would come.” For indoor games we’d play cards.
There was a place to see movies in South Brookfield. It was a long red building just before you’d turn into French
Street. The priest in West Caledonia used to show movies there on Saturday nights.
“Ever since I was probably five to six years old, I had chores to do in the barn, after school.”
“I’ve done a lot of different kinds of work...I’ve worked around the woods. I’ve farmed. Grew Christmas trees. Butchered.
I even shod horses for a while.” At present I am operating a beef farm, butcher, grow Christmas trees and harvest
wood. I always enjoyed farming.
I recall the blacksmith shop that used to be in North Brookfield and remember Mr. Henry Harper. There was a store
in North Brookfield too. It sold pretty well everything, including feed. Later on, the owner, Ellis Meisner, had a gas
tank put in.
“I used to go to Little
Tupper Lake to go
swimming. Sometimes I would go
fishing.”
124
“There was a lot more people who kept animals back ...60 years ago.
There used to be 37 people who kept animals on highway 208, which
runs by my place, between the Molega Road and where you turn to go
down route 325 to Bridgewater. Today there are only five or six people
who keep animals.” That would be South Brookfield, North Brookfield,
Pleasant River up to Colpton.
“I can remember going back to Brookfield Mines and getting on the train
and going to New Germany and to Bridgewater...It would leave here in
the morning and come back at night. And it stayed in Caledonia.”There
were train sidings in Caledonia, South Brookfield, Pleasant River and in
L O U I S fr a n k
Colpton. A train siding was an extra track where train cars could be parked for loading and unloading materials. The
station in Caledonia was bigger than the others. “Sometimes they’d bring limestone in onto the cars, sometimes
they’d load pulp wood on the cars to go to the mill.”
Working in the woods “has changed a lot. Using an axe and a Swede saw and hauling it out with either horses or oxen...
Then they came along with chain saws and tractors. And now wood processors to big harvesters...a big change.”
Nowadays, I use my chain saw and tractor to do woods work.
“I’ve clear cut some of mine. But most of mine are small clear cuts and they’re either planted or it seeds in by itself...
keep cutting in strips...and then thinning it after it’s up fifteen feet in the air.”
“I think when they harvest and it’s wet, the big machines leave big ruts. It’s going to wash the topsoil away.”
I don’t remember seeing moose when I was a boy but after I moved into my present house, I saw one down in the
field. That would have been thirty-some years ago. Locally, I believe the deer population is about the same as it
had been. “But the further back in the woods you go, it seems to be decreasing there. I don’t know if it’s from the
coyotes or what.”
I haven’t seen bats lately. I remember that there used to be quite a few over at my neighbour’s.
I have seen Blanding’s turtles, some right in my pond. “They had aerials put on some of them.”
I used to see chimney swifts. They would nest in my parents’ old chimney.
I saw a few monarch butterflies during the summer.
The crew of the Nova Scotia Woodenware
Factory in South Brookfield, Queens County
(c. 1935)
An old Nova Scotia token coin found by Louis in
his field while he was ploughing more than 40
years ago
125
L e on a Gr a nt
I was born in Upper Kennetcook, Hants County, on May 24, 1930. I moved to
Granville Center, Annapolis County in 1946 because my father hadn’t been
well. His job became too much for him, so we decided to move to a different
area and try something else. When he saw the property in Granville Center, he
liked it so well, he bought it and he moved us there.
The property was made up of around 75 acres of cleared land that ran down to the Annapolis River and about 125
acres of woodlot that stretched to the top of North Mountain. The property has changed very little over the years
except that the dykes on the marshland had gone out during the Second World War and so the tide coming up
the river flooded much of the cleared land twice a day. When the causeway was built between Granville Ferry and
Annapolis Royal, the tides no longer flooded the fields. So now it’s good hay land.
When the fields did flood, before the causeway was built, we pastured our cattle on those fields. Marsh grasses grew
and the cattle liked that. It was too wet for hay land.
“When the tide was coming in over the land we were pasturing we sometimes had to wade water to our knees in
order to round up the cows to the barn.” They were milked every day. It was a small farm so we milked four or five
cows. We “separated the milk from the cream and shipped it to a creamery where it was made into butter.” That
provided a little extra income. We had all the milk we wanted for our own use and the “skimmed milk was taken
back out to the barn and the calves had that. It was a bit of a task to teach the calves how to drink out of the bucket.
That was always fun. Usually you got some milk spilled over you. And sometimes got pushed down in the gutter
and what not. It was always an exciting time.”
Also on the farm, we had strawberries.“We grew our own garden but nothing for sale.” Because of my father’s health
issues, we didn’t farm commercially, but many of the surrounding farms planted at least one cash crop. “Many of
them had orchards.” The apples were shipped to Kentville. The apples were graded. The best ones, which gave the
farmers the best price, were eating apples. The others were used for applesauce or pie filling. The poorest ones were
made into apple juice. “We didn’t have a big orchard. We had a few trees...We just used them for us.”
At the time I was growing up, the apples were trucked to Kentville. But not too many years prior to that, “they were
shipped by boat. Boats came up the Annapolis River and stopped...there were little small wharves here and there
and they stopped and loaded the apples on.”
“The Belinda, I believe, was the last one [ship] to make the trip up as far as Bridgetown. I think it had to be careful
that it went up at high tide.”
“Coyotes were unheard of in this part
of the country when
I was younger. They
are more prominent
now.”
126
“There was a railway that went down through our property but it was not
used after we came here. And hadn’t been used for some years before
that. But that was the railway that ran from Torbrook Mines to Port
Wade. It took the iron ore from Torbrook mine to Port Wade where it
was loaded on ships and was taken to foundries...When we came here
that railroad had...the tracks had been taken up, there were no tracks
there...The line had closed. It ran as far as Bridgetown the first few years
we were here. But it also had a branch line that went from Bridgetown
at that time to Bridgewater. And that ran for a few years after we were
here.” Then the line stopped at Middleton and “then that petered out
as well.” The line to Bridgewater was used mostly for farm produce.
“The farmers here wanted to ship things to the South Shore... They
had a passenger car on it and freight cars.” Grain that was stored in a
warehouse in Bridgewater came from the Annapolis Valley.
LE O N A G R A N T
“There must have been a fair amount of ore in Torbrook mines...”
since they built a railway to take it down to Port Wade.
The Canadian Pacific Railway ran down the other side of the
river, through Round Hill. It passed through Annapolis and
went on through to Yarmouth. That was used until the 1980s.
The dayliner used to run on that line.
“They had a huge snowstorm one year and the train got down
almost as far as our place. And it got stuck. And they had... the
men tried to shovel it out. The train happened to be just about
opposite the school. So the teacher had no big boys in the
school that day. They all went to shovel snow. They shovelled
all day...before they managed to get it out of the drift.”
The marshland on Leona Grant’s property used
“I lived near a railroad when I was growing up and they had
to flood twice a day
a snowplow...it was quite the machine. We didn’t have
snowplows on the highways but they always had a snowplow
on the railroad so that to my knowledge the trains on that line were never caught in snowdrifts. I’ve never known
them not to get through... That was the line from Windsor to Truro. It went up through the Kennetcook Valley. It
was a spur line. It was called a DAR which was a subsidiary of Canadian Pacific.”
My life work was teaching. When I first started teaching the consolidated schools were just beginning to be built.
“There were many one and two room schools throughout the country when I started. And the first year I taught
was in a one room school. I had from primary to grade ten. The next year I was in a two room school and it wasn’t
until 15 years later that the schools were consolidated in my area and children were bussed to school.”
“They could be anywhere from primary to grade eleven. Grade twelve students had to find a way to an academy
or a high school somewhere. But you didn’t usually have all the grade levels. You might have 25 students but you
wouldn’t have all the grades.”
“It’s changed greatly. The consolidation was one big change. There are many more things to work with. Programs to
choose from. More equipment to work with. In most cases you have one age level instead of having all age levels
up to fourteen. You have other people with which to share the responsibilities. When you were in one room schools
you would be the only figure of authority that was there and you had no time off. You didn’t have any free periods.
You didn’t have any lunch hour off. You were literally on duty all the time you were there.”
The teacher in a one room school was also the principal of that school.
The school day usually started at 9:00 in the morning. The younger children went home early. Depending upon where
they lived, they might go home late in the morning and come back in the afternoon, getting a nice long break over
the noon hour. Sometimes the little ones went home at noontime for the day. All the children but the oldest ones
were out of the building by 3:00. Grade ten and eleven students stayed later some days. “That’s when you got a
chance to work with them.”
Some students went home for lunch, but some of them had a two mile walk and “that was just too far.” Those stayed
for lunch. In some schools, I supervised the students during the noon hour. In others, the trustees decided the
teacher could return to the home where she boarded and have lunch there.“And the children were on their own.”
In that case, the older students looked after the younger ones.
When I was a girl, my friends and I “did a lot of outdoor things. In the summertime we swam, we played ball, we
played hide and seek, we played cops and robbers.” Inside we played board games, listened to the radio, danced,
read. “There was no TV.” TV came to rural Nova Scotian communities in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There were
perhaps two channels, and “you took what you got.”
127
LE O N A G R A N T
“Communities were very much an entity on their own, back when I first came down to this area. Each community had
its own school. They had their own churches. Each community had a community hall. People in the communities
belonged to such groups as the Women’s Institute. There was usually a very vibrant Red Cross group working in
the community. They had used their community hall for things like concerts and teas and suppers and meetings
and sometimes dances. The community as a whole made its own entertainment and pretty much looked after its
own problems and it was an entity unto itself. Today I see very little of that. There are no longer community schools;
no longer, very often, community halls. People, they tend to go to town for their entertainment. There is very little
visiting among neighbours. The communities are just not cohesive as they were at that time.”
The land is used differently. There were many individual mixed farms. Each farm was independent. They grew their
own food. There are fewer farms and they are much larger. And more specialized. Where there might have been 6
or 8 farms in the community, now perhaps there’s only one.
Woodlots have changed. It was used to cut firewood and perhaps a few cords of pulpwood or a few logs to make a
little extra money during the winter. Now the woodlots are usually just clear cut when somebody comes in to buy
the wood that’s on the land. There aren’t any small woodland workings going on in the neighbourhood.
I have noticed some change in wildlife in the area.“I’m not seeing any bats for the past year or two. We used to have
a lot of bats when the sun went down. I have seen fewer rabbits.” I’ve seen very few signs of them at all recently. “I
haven’t seen a turtle for a long time. I haven’t seen a snake for a long time.”
“Coyotes were unheard of in this part of the country when I was younger. They are more prominent now. I don’t know
about squirrels. I’ve seen some chipmunks lately. I haven’t seen as many squirrels I don’t believe.”
I think that having coyotes in the area has lowered the rabbit population. “And perhaps some of the others as
well.”
“We are certainly changing the woodland habitat and it’s bound to make a difference in the animals that we’re seeing.
The way they’re able to live.”
To help the environment,“First of all, I don’t think clear-cutting should be allowed. We desperately need to go back to
managing our forests...considering them as assets rather than just getting rid of them. We need to be more careful
to limit the number of cars that are using gas. We need to have more ecological ways of producing power. I think
we need a lot more education dealing with the pollution of our waterways.”
The Wade family cemetery on Leona Grant’s
property
128
129
R ut h h u m p h r e y
I was born in Halifax on December 14.
My life was mixed up.“I spent half of my life with my grandparents and the other
half with my mom and dad... My father was a fireman for the city. He was a
fireman all his life.“I can always remember him in his uniform...I can remember
him coming home many times with his clothes froze on him. I used to be terrified
to see him like that.” He was a good dad. “He was the best.”
Mom stayed home. She loved dogs and cats. Dad’s uniform used to get full of hairs. That made him mad.
My grandparents lived in the country. They lived in Antigonish. “They were so good to me.”
I went to Bayfield school. All the grades were taught there. Education is altogether different now than it was then.
“It was a country school. There was one teacher, from grade one to grade twelve. She was wonderful... It was quite
a school. I remember the stove – the old-fashioned stove. A round bellied stove – one stove to heat the whole
place...We had chalk boards. That was a long time ago.” I had lots of friends.
“We played ball. We’d throw the ball over the schoolhouse. Some would be on one side and some on the other and
we’d throw it back and forth. We called it Anthony Over.
“I had a pair of skates but I wasn’t much good at it.”
“I had a hard life, I think. Hard times and I was so young. I had to be taken out of school to help my mother. That was
awful.” My mother had five kids. “She had nobody to help her...I was the oldest.”
“There was no yes or no.” You just did what you were told.
When I grew up, I went to Labrador to work as a cook. “I loved it up there.” The weather was cold. I cooked for
commanding officer, Captain Verner, much of the time. “A girlfriend of mine told me they needed help up there.
They needed a cook for people who would work up there. I applied for it and I got it...They had good food up there.
They had to fly it all in. I guess it must have been [from] Halifax.” I stayed for two years.
There are not as many farmers as there were. They had horses
when I was a kid. I loved horses. I rode one that was golden
brown.
“We had a milking cow. When the old people died, they gave
me the separator...It was for separating milk.”
“I’ve got lots of good memories and lots of bad ones.”
The valley is a beautiful place. I like it here. I have a house
just outside Annapolis. It’s a huge house. “There’s five
bedrooms in it.”
Ruth’s grandparents
130
131
V ivi a n R o s e m ond ( n e e D ur l in g ) Li g h tfoot
I was born on March 6, 1926 in West Inglesville, up on the South Mountain. I was
born in my home. There was a lady who we called Aunt Sadie Daniels, although
she wasn’t really my aunt, and she was midwife for my mother. “She assisted
my mother in delivering me. And she said when she delivered me...I was just
an infant, and my eyes followed all down her blue dress...The colour must have
been bright or something.”
My home was one and a half stories. “In olden times, we had a parlour downstairs. And upstairs we had a guest
bedroom...when I was very young, we weren’t supposed to use those, except when company came, or the minister.”
Upstairs there were two front single rooms. One was the guest room and my grandmother slept in the other one.
The back held two big double rooms. We were a family of eight, four girls and four boys. My brothers slept in one
of those bedrooms and in the other, there were two double beds. Mom and Dad slept in one bed and three girls
slept in the other. I slept on a cot in the room. I put a curtain up and I had a private space.
“We had a big iron cook stove in the kitchen...And then in the living room/sitting room we had some sort of a heater
to heat that room...The one in the living room heated the living room...and up the stairs to the bedrooms.” They
were both wood stoves.
We didn’t have a furnace back then. The bedroom doors were closed in the winter. There would be frost on the
windows and that would be there all winter. At night, we’d undress by the kitchen stove. Mom would heat flat
irons or bricks and they’d be wrapped with newspaper and that would be put in the bed in a towel or with flannel
around it and placed by our feet.
“I had a great father and mother. Dad was a farmer...I liked to be in the kitchen with my mother. I liked to be around
her as she was baking and everything. And I had a sister two years older and she was sort of a tomboy. And she
liked to be out with Dad, helping him do the chores around the barn.”
My father had a big woodlot so we had lots of wood. He had prize oxen. He did all his heavy work with them. He
put them in the exhibition. He was in charge of the ox teams in the exhibition in the fall when the Lawrencetown
Exhibition was on. Dad moved to the exhibition grounds. He slept above the oxen. My mother baked for him and
sent the food down with one of us kids.
“We had cows...and hens for our own eggs...And we had a pig always...to be slaughtered before Christmas.” The lard
from the pig would be fried out for the fat. Then my mother could make doughnuts and things for Christmas.
“The maple trees
were tapped in the
spring to make
maple syrup. They
set up a place to boil
it outside.”
132
I went to a one room school first, until I was in grade eight. Then there
were so few students that they closed the school and we were driven
to Lawrencetown. My brother drove us. I graduated from grade twelve.
“When I was about to graduate, John Schaffner came to the school
and he talked [to] my principal and he wanted a young person – they
would give them a course, a business course – to work...at Graves and
Company in Bridgetown at the office. So as soon as I finished school, I
was sent for this business course. And I went to day and night school
all summer...When I graduated there in September I went to work in
the office for M.W. Graves and Company.”
“Everything has changed...I started with a typewriter. But that has changed
from an old fashioned typewriter...I worked my first few years [there], I
would say four or five years.” Then I got married.
V ivi a n Li g h tfoot
When I first started school, like I said, it was a one room school. The teacher taught all the grades from primary to
twelve. The older students helped to teach the younger ones. I always had good teachers. I loved to read and to learn
and my parents encouraged that at home.“My mom would be ready in the evening to sit down to help us with our
lessons. And Dad was a great reader and he was interested in community affairs, like being school trustee.”
“And of course we had outside toilets. One for boys and one for girls. There’d be a big stove in the center of the
classroom. Right in the middle.”
My older sister went to stay with an older lady who wanted company and she went to school from there and stayed
the nights with her. I also did that for some time. I stayed with a family and after school I would take the baby out
in its carriage.“Then I would come back and put supper on the table. There were quite a few children in the family.
Washed dishes. Got those children ready for bed. And then after they got in bed, I’d sit down in a quiet spot and
study. I loved it.”
But in grade twelve, they could tell that I was doing too much because I got a sty on my eye, and I had to go to the
doctor for that. And they talked to my Dad, and between them, they must have felt I was doing too much. So Dad
boarded me in the house right next to the school where Mrs. Dan Charleton boarded other students. And Dad paid
her in potatoes. He took her bags of potatoes to pay my board.
My dad had great gardens. Whenever we had company come, Dad always took the men outside to show them his
gardens. He kept us in food. There would be bins of turnips, carrots, potatoes. When you opened the cellar door after
the harvest, you could smell all the vegetables and apples. And Mom put everything she could in bottles. Pickles
and preserves. She did some canning. She steamed some things. If the boys got a deer in the fall she would cook
it, steam it in those bottles, those Mason jars. She would make mincemeat. We had to be self-sufficient.
I have great memories of my childhood and growing up. We would have parties at home. Mom played the organ and
we’d have singsongs. My brother liked to make fudge. I can still see him beating it over the sink as it cooled and
then putting it in the buttered pan. Brown sugar fudge or you could add cocoa to make chocolate.
The maple trees were tapped in the spring to make maple syrup. They set up a place to boil it outside. Then Mom
would finish boiling it on the kitchen range.
We were the last house before you started down the mountain. Children tended to come to our house. My parents
wanted it that way.
Dad was from West Inglesville and Mom lived in East Inglesville.
We went to church on Sundays.“On Saturdays, on the weekend, my mother might take the horse and carriage – wagon
– and go to visit her mother over in East Inglesville. And she’d stay overnight. And my dad would look after us. And
then on Sunday morning, after Dad got his chores done, maybe we’d need our hair cut so Dad would do that....And
we would get all washed and changed into our Sunday clothes and Dad would walk with us three miles across the
mountain and we’d have dinner that day over at my grandmother’s…with my mother. Then we’d all go to church
and then come home in the wagon after church.”
“In summertime, we went in our bare feet. We walked in our bare feet. And when we got to Grammy’s we would wash
our feet. We had taken our shoes with us and then we’d put on our shoes...We had to save those soles.”
“So we had a lot of blueberries on our farm, back in our pastures...All summer, my mother would give us our kettle in
the morning and we’d go back and we’d pick blueberries. And then we’d have orders from the people in town, and
my mom, when we got home from blueberrying, she would sit down at the table and pick those over, put them in
quart boxes...and then we would carry them to town. And we got 10 cents a box.”
The Morses lived below us on the road. W. I. Morse would come from the states and they just wanted big berries so
my mom would pick out the big ones for them. But we got 25 cents a box for those.
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V ivi a n Li g h tfoot
When I’d come home from school some days my dad would say that the carrots needed weeding.“So I’d go out, and
I loved doing that.”
People went from horse and buggy to Model Ts. My dad never owned a car. He was busy on the farm. He didn’t go
anywhere except to town for groceries.“When he went he’d have the kerosene jug and the molasses jug. And those
were taken and re-filled.”
In Lawrencetown, there was K. G. Isner’s grocery store and then there was Rollie Isner’s at the end of town. He was
a brother to Ken and he had another grocery store. So there were two grocery stores and a post office. There was
a drugstore – Merry’s drugstore.
We had a beautiful school in Lawrencetown when I went. It was built of brick. I had great teachers. Harold Mason was
my principal and a great teacher. Then his sister-in-law came. She was Betty Orchard. She was vice-principal and
then principal. There was an upstairs and there were two rooms, one on each side.“In the mornings when I’d go to
school, you’d hear the kids from Clarence...and they would tromp up the stairs – make a terrible noise.”
“Dad did all his work, cutting hay...he would have used the oxen and there was a mowing machine. He’d mow it and
then it had to be...stooked up...and then Dad would go around with a big wagon with racks and he’d have to have
somebody to help him pitch that hay on. And I know us kids used to...stomp down the hay.”
With haying, it’s done with machines now. The fields have all changed. Dad was proud of his woodlot. He did selective
cutting. Now it’s clear cutting.
My oldest sister went to California. She trained as a nurse. A neighbour encouraged my sister to go to California with
her and she did. I was able to visit her there.
Species are at risk because of the environment around them. In summer we always used to be excited to see the
chimney swifts. They’d arrive around June from Southern America and we’d see them on the phone lines and so on.
In fall as they got ready to go south, they’d collect. You’d see them circling over the house. Chimneys aren’t open
to the birds anymore.
Chemicals weren’t use in farming when my dad was farming. The fertilizers were just manure. “It’s sad to see all the
changes that did away with the natural environment.”
All the machines and things are destroying the natural environment. It’s the big companies. There aren’t individual
farmers anymore.
I read in the paper that farmers are having troubles because deer are coming out and eating their crops. They are
very plentiful. They say the way hunting regulations are now, there are more deer. They have reduced the hunting
season. So there’s more wildlife around.
“I’d love to see things go back to the way they were when I was growing up. But you might as well wish on a star. It’s
terrible. They’re destroying the planet...It isn’t advancement. Everything is being eroded.”
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135
C o l in F l o y d ( ‘ F l o y d ’ ) Lu x ton
I was born at the Cottage Hospital in Caledonia on January 16, 1941. We lived on
the Northfield Road at the homestead at the time. The homestead dated back
to the 1800s. The original owner was John Luxton, one of my ancestors. “But
he’s not recorded anywhere in any of the books. Not too many people knew
he was here.”
I lived on the homestead, a farm, for the first three years of my life.“There was a big main barn which housed the cattle
and then there was a horse barn. They had horses in it and a wagon shed on the side. The house was a two story,
small house.” The house is gone now but one of the barns still exists. At that time the farm products were traded.
“They helped each other out – worked together.”
When I was three, we moved closer to Kempt where Ron Eaton lives now. We lived there one winter. “And then my
father purchased an old store in Kempt and turned it into a house and we lived with my mother’s parents for a few
months. And that was right in back of the existing store there in Kempt...Lou Rawdng’s place afterwards. So that’s
where we lived the first year while he was renovating the old store.”
“My grandfather Luxton, he purchased a mill back when my father was about – somewhere between fourteen and
sixteen years of age. And my grandfather ran this mill in the community. Sawed logs and whatnot, until he had an
accident and had his right arm sawed off. He was a week before they got him to the hospital, so he’s lucky he lived.
And he ended up with a false arm with a hook on the end. When he tried to push himself away from the saw, of
course, he lost his fingers on the other hand. So he had one finger. It was all horse and wagon then. It took quite a
while to transport anyone...Eventually he ended up in Liverpool” in the hospital.
I started school in Kempt.“They sent me there at age five. And the teacher couldn’t control me so they sent me back
home. So they kicked me out of school the first year!” I went back to school the second year.
The school had ten grades in the one room. The school is a house now belonging to Allison MacBride, at the Kempt
corner on the Northfield Road.
At grade three, my mother started teaching in Northfield so I had to go with her.” That was another one room school.
“And then from there we moved to Harmony School and she was teaching there along with Mrs. Ford...That was
a two room school.” It was a two story building with the community hall upstairs. That building was torn down in
the 80s.
“My grandfather
Anderson, he worked
for the Tobeatic
Reserve there after
the [first world] war.
He used to count the
moose herds...”
136
“I guess no kid likes to go to their parents as a teacher.” So my preferred
school was Kempt.
The children used to play outside, having races and a game called Line,
Line Kingdom Come.“You’d form up in two lines, like, and then you’d
try to get past the people...everyone converged on the center, and
if you made it past without being tagged, then you were okay.” On
weekends and holidays, my friends and I visited each other and we’d
play Cowboys and Indians and things like that. We mostly had toys
we made ourselves. I remember making trucks from 2x4’s. We had
apple fights. We went fishing together in local areas. We caught trout
and would cook them over a fire on a spit. We also caught perch, but
they were “garbage fish.” Now there are no fish.
“Kempt had a large Co-op store, which was next to our house now...
I remember there was a white store to the right at the end of the
F l o y d Lu x ton
Northfield Road. And then there was Lannie DeLong’s store.There were three stores...There was a service station...and
an ice house...It was down towards Thelma DeLong’s old place from the garage. On the edge of the swamp, like”
“My father built this garage, that’s out there now. And there was one there before that. It was a garage and a blacksmith
shop...The moose that was noted in Caledonia, or West Caledonia, rather, was shod up at that blacksmith’s shop...
It was used like a horse.”
“Willis Oickle owned the garage part. He was the last one that I can remember...That would be in the late 40s.”
“The three stores that were open then are still there. The buildings are still there. The gallery that’s up there, that was
Lannie Delong’s store...(His real name was Orlando.) That was his idea of getting away from the house for a while.
He’d go open the store and work in there...He was married to Thelma.”
I used to trap squirrels when I was ten or twelve. I’d skin them and when I had a box full of skins, I’d send it to Ontario
and I’d get 2 or 3 cents per squirrel pelt. They were used for coats. “It was like going along the road and picking
up beer bottles.” I snared rabbits and sold them. Elton DeLong took them to Halifax and I got a dollar a pair. “A big
jump from the squirrels.”
I hunted deer when I got older.“I would say the habitat is mostly gone so there’s no place for them to exist really.” The
habitat was changed by “Bowaters and people over-cutting lands. When you take a home away from an animal,
they can’t exist.”
“At that time it wasn’t the ethics of a hunter to sit up in a tree, into a blind and bushwhack a deer. They went out and
pitted their skills against the deer. Which I still believe in but not many people do it anymore.”
“I studied the deer population and they were introduced into Nova Scotia, so prior to that there was moose and elk
here, and maybe caribou.” I never saw moose or elk.“My grandfather Anderson, he worked for the Tobeatic Reserve
there after the [first world] war. He used to count the moose herds...They had cabins all along the Tobeatic they
used to stay in...They were people looking after the moose population....He’d be gone for a week or two at a time
and he’d come home and there were always stories.” There were a lot of moose then.
“Prior to the white tail deer coming, there were elk or caribou. Then they disappeared, too.” The moose contracted
a disease from the white tail deer and the “moose population went ‘way down. Now there’s only a herd of ten or
twelve, something like that, back in the Tobeatic....It’s away from people...I’ve seen moose tracks. I haven’t seen any
moose per se. Other people have.”
“Bats are pretty well extinct now. They caught a disease. Prior to that there were all kinds of bats. There used to be all
kinds of bats in my father’s old place and next door at the Co-op store.
I have a cabin on a lake and there are no Blanding’s turtles in that lake. I do see snapping turtles there though. I know
that there are Blanding’s turtles at Keji.
“I can remember [chimney swifts]. They’re like a swallow, only they live in chimneys. But that’s about all I know about
them. There were chimney swifts in our cabin chimney. Once in a while one would get killed or died or whatnot
and would fall down into the fireplace.”
I had seen monarch butterflies around my place this June. I saw some this past spring on Mill Lake.
When I was young,“they did mixed farming. And then in the wintertime they used any woodland they had for income.
It was like having money in the bank, and all you had to do was go out and do some work and you got by the
winters. The mixed farming normally brought the rest of the things that you needed during the summer and fall
and into the winter.”
137
F l o y d Lu x ton
“Most of the small farms are gone. And the ones that remain are not being farmed. Woodlands are pretty well gone.
North Queens used to furnish South Queens with all their vegetables, their apples, timbers...If it hadn’t been for
the small farmer out here, South Queens wouldn’t have survived.”
“A lot of the fruits and vegetables went to Halifax [by train]. But they’d have to go through New Germany and into
Bridgewater. There was a lot of lumber products shipped out on the trains. Christmas trees and things like this. The
train station in Caledonia brought in feeds and anything that was ordered, say, from Sears, was shipped out that
way. And then we’d have to make a trip to Caledonia to pick it up at the train station...This is where the Mary Lake
Home Hardware is now.”
“Mainly, the land’s been raped...What Bowaters didn’t cut off, people got awful hungry for money. And they over-cut
their woodlands. And it’s still the same practise being done now. We have no forests left. We do, but most people
have cleared their forests off. Turned them into Christmas tree growths. I don’t know – there’s very little...forest
harvesting for big trees. Virgin timber. There are very few places that have that.”
“We need to let the forest grow. And that’s going to take not just one generation...but a couple of generations to bring
the old forest back. And to leave them alone. You can go in and say you are managing the forest but eventually
you’re getting rid of the stuff that keeps the forest growing. We have our forest land up in Northfield. We acquired
it – my ancestors did...1858. That was what was on the deed. And it’s been handed down from there but it’s always
been like money in the bank. You’d go in when you desperately needed money, you cut off what you needed to
and let the rest grow. But it wasn’t this new forest management schemes...It was just common sense...But the new
forest management doesn’t prevail....It’s still being over-cut.”
I attended their [MTRI’s] meetings for a couple of years...I know how they operate and I don’t agree with it. But they’re
still surviving from the government. My main objection is I worked for Environment Canada for 19 years here and I
know how they operate and it’s all government grants that keep them going. And their studies... They get the kids
from universities to do their thesis. And since I moved back here in ‘80 it’s been the same, year in and year out. Even
though I worked for Environment Canada and know how they operate I wouldn’t want them on my land because
for the simple reason that one person will start studying a species that we have on the land and then they’ll want to
close that off...to protect it and then they’ll bring other people in, sometimes great hordes of them, just to observe
what they’re protecting...They’re making money by doing what they’re doing.
“When the loon study first came on tap, I was working for Environment Canada then. And the first year they caught
some of the loons, studied them, bisected them, found that they had...mercury in them...but they hadn’t studied
them in previous years. They didn’t know where the mercury was coming from, they just knew there was mercury
there. You know and I know the loons head for the coast during the winter. Mercury could have been picked up
during the winter on the coastline, which is very probable. But there’s always been loons in the lakes here since I can
remember...Every time that humans go toward their nests, they scare them off...There was approximately four years
on Mill Lake that we never saw a young one. This year there was a young one. But it’s not because of the studies
being done. I think the lack of them in previous years was them being disturbed in their habitat.”
The over-cutting of forests is “lowering the fish count too. Loons live off fish. And without the fish supply, they don’t
exist.”
“I studied acid rain. Naturally, when you change the air, you change everything else. And most of our acid rain is coming
from New York, up the seaboard. There’s two times of the year that it builds up on the land. That’s spring and fall,
you know, the winters. When the rains come in the spring everything flushes into the waterways. Well that’s full of
acid…But what can you do about it? You can advise people. You’ve got jets continuously flying over and they’re
spewing out debris too. You can’t really fight it. All you can do is complain.”
“Now we have all kinds of turtles over here in the lake. Some quite big ones. But they’re surviving because the cabin
owners around the lake has properly done their work on, you know, the beds. None of them flush into the lake.”
“Mankind is destroying the environment. They’re the ones that are living off it. So there’s nothing you can do about
it, really.”
138
F l o y d Lu x ton
“Back when I was a kid, there were rules and regulations made for harvesting wood. They were never put into law. They
were well-planned, well laid out, everything. They even had areas for wildlife. You could only cut a certain distance
from a lake or waterway. Roadways was the same thing. You had to have an environmental zone sort of thing. It
was never put into law. It never has been put into law. You can ask people to protect the environment but there’s
nothing to make them protect it. And as long as pulp and paper companies and people are raping the land for the
money there’s no protection for the wildlife. This was in the ‘40s until now so there’s a lot of people that push to
protect it but got nowhere. They can’t get by the government.”
“The Wildlife Federation here has tried it. The wood fibres group that was started here in Caledonia has tried it. And
they get so far. The governments come and go. But the lands stay. And each government has its own fight, sort of
thing. It’s just not working. It will always be ongoing.”
“The solutions are there. It just hasn’t been made law. People have to have a law that they can’t get around. You’ve
got to have buffer zones for the animals, the fish and everything, ‘cause it takes hundreds of years to grow a tree to
virgin timber, but it only takes one year to destroy it all.”
“I was at the meeting at the Masonic Hall down here that was held and it was to work Bowaters’ land that’s been
raped already, and it would be nice to let it regrow. But that’s going to be generations...I maintained that if we had
to get some money out of it to sell off some of the lake shore properties, this would be money coming back that
we’ve already spent. But only sell to Nova Scotians. Because they’re the ones that are protecting any lands that they
get to build a cabin or something.”
Pages found within Floyd’s grandmother’s (Carrie Luxton) scrapbook
which was done on the inside of an old Simpson’s catalogue
139
Ar l e n e ( n e e R awdin g ) M a c B rid e
I was born in Massachusetts in 1928.
My family moved to Northfield when I was two years old, in what was called “The
Dirty Thirties”. Our home used to be Grandfather Moses’ store. My grandparents
lived up on the hill in a house above the store. My father fixed the store up
and made a house.
“Dad worked at everything – farming, in the woods, Christmas trees, you name it.” My mother kept the house and
looked after 10 children. My father had lost his first wife. “She died and left three children. So Mom brought them
up...My Mom and Dad had seven.”
When I grew up, “I done everything. I was twelve years old and I lived with my uncle and aunt...I milked the cow and
took it to pasture. That’s what I done and I went to school.” I worked looking after my uncle Ted, and also worked
with my sister in a German place over in New Grafton during the summers, running the place. I worked in the post
office, and I looked after kids.
I attended Northfield school. Grades primary to ten were taught there.“I guess there are a lot of changes today.”There
were twenty or more students and one teacher.
For fun, my friends and I played ball and tag. “Had different games. Always got together. Went skating in the winter.”
The children tended to meet at my home.
I learned how to do handwork in school. I made hooked rugs. I made an appliqued quilt then and it is still in use.
The Kempt ladies quilt other people’s quilts and finish them. I’ve probably made 18 quilts for family, children,
grandchildren and great grandchildren. I don’t have one of my quilts on my own bed but I’ve made quilts for lots
of people in Nova Scotia and beyond.
After I was married, three families lived in one house in Northfield – my husband’s grandparents, his parents, and my
husband and myself. We raised our children in that house.
When asked about changes in the community, I think, “So many, they moved away. And people coming in. A lot of
cabins on the lake, which there never was before...Now there’s dozens of them.”
“We used to have a post office in Northfield, too. They used to have them at the home at that time. They’d come with
horse and wagon and delivered it.”
My farm is being used about the same as it used to be.“But there’s not too much of that going on now. They work at
so many other places now.”
My home is the building that used to be the Kempt school. My husband and I bought it in 1967. My father-in-law, my
husband and my children had all attended that school.
Wildlife has changed in the area. “Deer used to walk down in behind here. Now you don’t see no bats at all. There’s a
big disappearance of the deer and stuff. We haven’t even heard the hooting of those...coyotes...haven’t even heard
them lately.”
When asked how we might preserve the environment, I wasn’t sure what could be done. But “I just don’t want to see
it all disappear.”
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141
B ruc e M a dd e n
I was born in Liverpool, N.S. in 1955.
My mother was a housewife and my father was a truck driver. My father drove
for C.W. MacLeod Fisheries in Port Mouton and when we lived in Lunenburg
he drove a Sussex pop truck.
The fish he trucked from Port Mouton were “cod, haddock and halibut. And we used to pick up mackerel.” The
fishery was quite busy then. They used to send fish to the States, like Boston.
When asked how many ships were in the Port Mouton fishing fleet, I said, “They wasn’t ships, they was fishing
boats... They’d go out for about ten days, twelve days, some fourteen days and then come back. If they got full,
they’d come back sooner.” Some went to the Grand Banks. They also would trap lobster.
The fishery would buy the fish off the boats and ship them to sell them.
I lived in Milton, by the river. “Right on the Mersey River...in back of my house.”
We had a small garden, with carrots, potatoes, onions, green and yellow beans and cucumbers. We would plant
just enough for our own use.
My parents divorced when my brother and I “were just kids.” I went to live with my grandmother in Milton. My
grandmother’s husband worked at Bowater. “He worked in the mill itself....He had a steam shovel. He used to
run that down at the mill...If they wanted something dug, like a trench or something like that they’d get him
to do it...Odds and ends more or less.”
I didn’t spend a lot of time in the woods, but I remember, “We used to go back and spend the night in camp on
Lake Rossignol and go fishing. And in the fall we’d go hunting.” We fished for trout. There weren’t a lot of trout
in the lake, though. “Far and few between.” We saw some deer at the lake. “They’d come down for a nice cold
drink of water in the morning.”
I saw gulls, crows and fish hawks and loons around the lake. I liked the echo of the loons’ calls over the lake. There
were quite a few loons on Lake Rossignol then.“Not together. There might be one there, and another up there,
another one over there. Spread out.”
I don’t remember seeing any young ones, but if you ever saw two together, you knew they were a male and a
female.
I took a truck driving course in Truro when I finished school and got jobs driving trucks. I hauled firewood for
people and took pulp wood and logs. The pulp wood and logs went to Bowater in Brooklyn. I worked for a time
driving a truck for the laundry in Liverpool.
“I liked the echo
of the loons’ calls
over the lake.”
142
I went to school in Milton. “It was three stories high.”
Classes there went up to grade eight. We had to go to Liverpool for high
school. The Milton school burned down. Someone set it on fire. They built
the new one out of brick, and it was all on one level. I was about fourteen
when this happened.
bruc e m a dd e n
I recall going upstairs to my bedroom. I looked out the window.“I stood on the steps, looked out toward the building
...the whole sky was right red. It was burning... I stood there and watched it... I went up there the next day. The only
thing left standing was the chimney. The rest of it was all flat.”
Students were sent to Caledonia School and Beach Meadows until the new school was completed.
For fun, my friends and I would go down to a field and play ball. “My father and his friends played ball in the same
field. We had no bases but Dad told me there was rocks in the ground that they used for bases so we used them...
There was no sliding.”
My friends would sometimes get together to go fishing or play frisbee.
When I was a boy, in the winter, I’d knock on doors and ask people if they’d like to have their driveways or walkways
shovelled. In summer I’d mow lawns. That way I earned a little extra pocket money.
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S h ir l e y R a e ( n e e C a rv e r ) F orr e s t M a n s fi e l d
I was born in West Caledonia on December 23, 1928. I was married to a Forrest
first and later married a Mansfield.
“I just feel so thankful that I am able to do want I can do.”
I grew up in the house that my grandfather built. “When my father and mother was married and had us, they went
to stay with them and look after Grandma and Grandpa...We was back off the road about a mile and that’s where
I grew up and went to school. And then we bought a house out in the community and we moved there. In West
Caledonia. But I always loved it back home. It was always ‘back home’ to me...I finished school there. And then, of
course, I went out to work.”
“It was a little country school...We had a wood stove because I can remember when the kids would come in in the
winter the teacher would have their clothes all up around the stove, for drying out because they’d be wet in the
snow...We had a lovely little school... There were a lot of kids and I always loved that little school. It was open until
the high school opened. And then the children, of course, went there. That was from seven, up. Eventually they all
went to the high school in Caledonia. But up until then that was our school. It was...built, like, right in the woods, by
the road but the woods was all behind us...And we used to play ball and we just had a great time.”
It was a one room school.“All the children from all around came. Yes, we had a big class.” The grades went up to grade
twelve until the high school was built in Caledonia. The teacher taught the grades from primary right up to grade
twelve. “When you’d come to grade twelve, you wrote provincials.”
“But I can remember on snowy days, my father used to bring me out to school with the horse and sleigh...when I
couldn’t walk, there would be so much snow...We walked about a mile every day.”
My cousins lived at the top of a hill and my family lived at the bottom of the hill. So our two families of children used
to walk together to school. It took us fifteen minutes or so each way. We took our lunches to school. The teacher
stayed at the school during noon hours.
“It was a local teacher that we had for years. And then her sister was a teacher for quite a while. Ena Lacey her name
was, and she taught for years and then her sister Dora, she taught for...a few years. And Dorothy Scott, she taught.
Esther Penney, she taught. And then we had another teacher that taught and she was only with us a little while
and she took sick and passed away. She was the sweetest thing.”
“My mom looked after Grammy and Grandpa and Dad had his own land and in the summer he worked on the highway.
Then they did whatever work there was to have. Dad cut his own logs and pulp wood and things like that...We
had cattle and we had a horse and we had sheep and we had hens and we had chickens...little lambs. I was really
a tomboy because I loved the farm and I used to help Dad a lot. I guess I should have been a boy.”
“We had everything.
Right on the farm.
And I was always
happy there.”
144
“We had our own meat. We had potatoes, carrots, turnip – all the
vegetables. Mom used to pick berries. We had strawberries and we
had blueberries, raspberries...I can remember Dad made shelves in our
basement – we called it a cellar then - and Mom would have that full
of canned goods. Pickles, all kinds of pickles because we had our own
garden. And we had our own meat. We had our own pig. We had a great
big pig. It would be a year old and it would be big. And that give us all
our meat...I can see the cabbage, hung up by the bottom – by the roots
– along the beams down in the cellar. We could go to our cellar and eat
all winter long. You know, everything was there. Dad used to cut in a
barrel of sauerkraut – cabbage, make it into sauerkraut.”
s h ir l e y m a n s fi e l d
The pork was kept by pickling it. If the pickle could float an egg, it was strong enough. My dad would cut off the back
fat when he butchered the big pig and that would give us what we called clear sheer pork. My mom would fry
that out for making hash or anything you needed an oil to fry. We would have codfish and pork scraps. “And they
were good.”
My mother made all our own bread. She made butter. “In the summer, Dad had a rope and a bucket and we put our
cream, butter and things in that bucket and lower it into the well. Not into the water, but down where it was cool.
That’s how we kept the [butter cool] you know in the heat of the summer.”
“We had everything. Right on the farm. And I was always happy there.”
I recall fun times at school. “We had our days of cleaning up. We had a day, I guess they called it May Day, and we’d
clean up all the grounds and...in the afternoon we’d have a picnic and kind of celebrate...We had Christmas concerts.
We had a sewing club. Even the boys joined it. We learned to embroider and sew and make aprons and tablecloths
and everything. We had a nice sewing club....We made our own fun. That’s what we always did.”
“We was living not too far from a lake. We could walk within ten minutes to the lake. We used to go fishing, and we
caught fish...And we didn’t have rods. You cut a pole then. Dad would get us fish line. He’d fix it up. And when we’d
go fishing, we’d hide them [the rods], so they’d be down there again when we went back. You didn’t bring them
home at night.” Sometimes in the evenings, we’d fish for eels. I was afraid of the eels, so if I got one, somebody else
had to take it off the hook for me.
“I used to even catch rabbits...Mom would make a rabbit stew...I’d snare them all winter.”
“I spent a lot of time with my grandfather. He was so good to me.”
“We got a gramophone and we thought we had the sun, moon and stars! And we used to play that in the evenings,
the 78 records and then the long play ones. We had something else! And then the next thing came. We got a battery
radio. I was quite a little girl when we got a battery radio...Dad made a shelf for it and right underneath of it was the
battery and used to, you know, listen to the radio. That was something else. And then, T.V. came into the picture. My
husband’s brother and his wife had the first T.V….in West Caledonia. We were the second ones. My husband gave
it to me for Christmas. Well, he gave it to the whole works of us, to the whole family...Some of the kids around, they
didn’t have T.V. And I can remember the kids coming from different homes...and my living room would be just like
a school. The kids would be sitting around, some on the floor, some on the chairs, to see the Howdy Doody. It was
on at suppertime. I always loved to have the kids.”
I used to take in foster children. “It is a labour of love. A lot of tears, a lot of happiness. When they come...into your
arms, they’re yours. But then when they have to go, that’s the hard part. I had 28 foster children. I adopted three,
give birth to two...I’m proud of them all.”
“It’s a far cry from what it is today. But I think we were just as happy, if not happier than the kids are today. Kids today
have too much...We made our own entertainment. We played cards. I learned to knit when my feet wouldn’t touch
the floor.”
“And I knit, ‘cause we had sheep, and Dad would shear the sheep, and then he’d send the wool away. It would come
back in rolls. And Mom used to spin those rolls into yarn and we knit that all winter...I knit more sweaters than
you can ever believe in my lifetime. When I was older, my aunt showed me how to knit a sweater...The ones that
were all patterned you know on the yoke. We would knit socks and mittens...and that would give our money for
Christmas.”
We didn’t have our wool dyed here we sent it in PEI, but sometimes my mother would dye a skin in red or green and
that was for the stripes in the socks. My mother bought the dye in little packages at the store.
“We saw deer. We had deer coming out in the field. Squirrels and of course, these rabbits. Oh yes, we’d never see any
moose back home...Porcupines, of course. Raccoons. We saw a lot of wildlife...I think it has changed a lot.”
145
“Everybody lived the same. Everybody worked for themselves and made homes for themselves...They planted gardens.
We all done the same thing because that was our living, that way. But today, I don’t know. You go to a park and you
see some animals...It was so different then than it is now.”
When he worked in the woods, my father used “a cross cut saw and an axe...Of course you had to have two with a
cross cut saw because a handle on each side. Many a time, I pulled that through with my father. I knew how to cut
down a tree. Of course there were just the two girls and I, my mom and Dad and sister...and I...My sister was a home
person but I was an outdoor person. And Dad would have to have help and when I come from school or had days
off I used to drive the horse and he would cut logs and I would haul them out....He would hook me up with it and
I’d come out to where they landed them...and there’d be somebody there to unhook me again and back I’d go. So
I drove that horse time and time again.”
“When the time come to plant, and we plowed, it was the same thing. I drove the horse. And we had a great big horse.
He was big and his name was Bill. Black. And when it come haying, I helped them hay...Dad had a mowing machine.
And he would mow but a lot of it was done by the scythes. Dad would use the scythes. And I remember hauling
the hay in and I used to get up on the wagon. My dad used to say, ‘Shirley, don’t fall off. Don’t get too close to the
end.’ I only did it once. I got too close and off I went. But I didn’t hurt myself.”
“In the spring, we used to have these little baby lambs.”
“So many farms have been closed...The land is not being used like it was back then.”
“In the spring, Dad used to go on the road and work. And that way they earned some money there. You made your
own living, you know. Mom sold eggs. We had hens and eggs of course. And when Dad went down to get our
groceries, Mom would send eggs and butter and they bought it at the store and you could get groceries with that.
And that way, it covered our groceries many, many times...Mom made beautiful butter.” I remember the print my
mother had on the butter molds. It was two flowers.
My father milked several cows. They used a separator to take off the cream. Then my mother would make the
butter.
“At that time there were five stores – grocery stores – in Caledonia. And they all made money. There was always
somebody in there. You never went to Caledonia to a store when there wasn’t people in there...We had five stores
and we had churches and we had the bank. We had a blacksmith shop; of course a lot of them had horses you see
and they had to be shod.” My dad took me with him sometimes when he took our horse to the blacksmith’s.
“We had everything that you could ever really need. If someone ever went to Halifax, that was something out of this
world, to go to Halifax. And even to Liverpool. I was a big, big girl before I ever got to Liverpool...But today, you go
into Halifax to shop. Then, you’d be a day going and a day coming...You only went to Halifax to go to the hospital or
something....[Now] you go to the airport in an hour and a half or two hours. And you’re back home again in three
or four hours. It’s unreal. And if you went to Halifax, it was a big thing...Now there’s no limit of where you go.”
“I’ve always been so happy that I’ve had the life I had. And I worry about the children today...Murder, killing...You never
heard that back - very, very rarely...when I was growing up....Everybody knew everybody.”
“You used to go along the road and you’d see children out playing. You don’t see that anymore. They’re in the house
playing with these little iPads or whatever they call them...I don’t have a computer and I don’t want one....If I want
to play Solitary, I’ll get my pack of cards out.”
“We played every day but Sunday. My father never let us play cards on Sunday. And you know, to this day, I never play
cards on Sunday.”
“We had a lot of company because Sunday we always planned for a crowd for dinner or supper...The families got
together. And if they didn’t come you wondered what happened...And they’d come with horse and wagons.”
146
“People used to travel – some people called them tramps...If there was somebody that came into the community
that needed a place to stay they always sent them back home...They’d come and Mom always got them supper, got
them a place to stay overnight. Get up and get them breakfast in the morning and then they’d start out again.”
A man named David Keith used to travel all over the area with a horse and wagon. “In the morning, I can see him
give Mom material because he’d have everything, you know, clothes and material. Mom used to sew and make our
blouses and stuff like that...We’d be some happy when we’d see him coming over the hill.”
“We always had a fish man come every week...We had a meat man that always came every week...The meat man
came from Maitland Bridge...There was a Holdright man who had his own beef and sold it... His name was Henan.”
His son, Bobby had the store in Caledonia. He had a small store along where the post office is now, at first. Then he
got a nice big store across from where the pizza place was.
“I always had so many birds here, my husband and I, and we fed birds all winter and...we had 98 doves at one time...
the ground was just moving...and you know now, I don’t have a bird.” I was told that whenever there are owls, you’ll
see no birds.
“We had 19 hummingbirds at one time. And we’d have them all summer, and this summer I had three.”
Back home, where my son lives now, they have scads of birds, and yet I don’t have any in my yard anymore. My
husband George and I used to get a couple of bags of birdseed when we went to Bridgewater and I added up the
cost in the spring. We’d spent $400 on birdseed. I feel it was well spent because of the entertainment we got from
watching the birds.
“I love birds and I love animals. And we have deer that come out here and I haven’t seen a deer until a few weeks
ago. I had a doe come out with two babies. They was quite big then. And one that had one [baby]. And they came
out...a few weeks ago. They came out during the day, they came out...in the evening...That went on for about two
weeks. And I haven’t seen a deer since. Back a few years ago, when the little deers come...the fawns, it just looked as
though they said ‘Here’s my baby.’ ...We had one that had three and they used to come out. In the afternoon we’d
sit out on the patio and watch them....Even the deer, there’s not as many.” I think the coyotes are taking a lot of the
deer. And perhaps they are taking many of the rabbits as well.
“It’s sad because we used to have so much, so many animals...and you see so much road kill, it’s a shame...The trees
are growing so much to the road…It don’t give you a chance.”
147
S h ir l e y Mc I nni s
At the time of this interview, September 25, 2014, I am 83 years old. I lived in
Ontario and came to the area to live after my husband had surgery in Camp
Hill, when I was in my early 40s. We built a house on the Westfield Road and
lived there quite some time before moving to Caledonia.
I moved back to Westfield in 2009 where I lived in my son’s A-frame house. Duncan
had built it in 1978.
I don’t feel that the Westfield community has changed a great deal. “It’s a quiet community...and I lived closer to the
bridge.” A gentleman across the road from me was very helpful. He did chores for me like bringing in armloads of
wood. I heated my home with electric heat and wood.
“There’s not too many farms in Westfield...There was a couple but they just had, like, a cow for their own use...for milk
on the table.”
“A lot of people around here, they haven’t got work. They have to leave and go someplace else to get jobs. Some had
to go to Alberta. Some had to go to Saskatchewan.”
Earlier, when I lived close to the Westfield River, my husband and children all fished in the river. “My children, they
fished for trout. And my husband fished for salmon....There’s nothing in the Medway River at all. I don’t think there’s
very many salmon that ever comes up there now...The salmon, they used to come up and they used to spawn. Up
at the head of...Pierce’s Falls...See, the salmon don’t come up there anymore. The falls are just before you get to the
power plant.”
My husband and sons also hunted deer. My husband used to go to Newfoundland to hunt moose. He’d go with
another couple and they would each take a half of the moose.
“I remember one time there was a moose over in Westfield. It used to go up and down by the bridge there...I was living
in Caledonia at the time....I can remember my husband telling me about going up to Lake Rossignol and moose
hunting up there.” Moose meat is better than beef. “With moose, the fat’s on the outside. With beef, it’s among the
meat.”
“My children, they
fished for trout. And
my husband fished
for salmon...The salmon, they used to
come up and they
used to spawn. Up at
the head of...Pierce’s
Falls”
148
“I’ve seen, just a couple of weeks ago, I had a bear out in my back yard.”
“I haven’t seen any turtles lately but oh, quite a while ago there used to
be quite a few turtles around. Not real big ones...in the driveway here...
quite a while ago...It wasn’t a snapping turtle. It was just an ordinary
turtle.”
“I’ve seen quite a few butterflies all summer....landing out on the
porch.”
“The animals that’s in the woods are coming more out to civilized places
like the deer are really plentiful. And I don’t know too much about bears
but they’re around...I’ve seen quite a few ducks....When summer was
just coming on, I saw a little one with her twelve little ducklings going
down to the river...They went right across the lawn.”
S h ir l e y Mc I nni s
One reason for changes in wildlife was “so much cutting in the woods...What protection have they got? They haven’t
got any protection now...If they’re ‘way back in the woods they keep travelling towards civilization because they
know they can get something there.”
“I have land in Westfield. I owned a hundred acres in Westfield and I won’t allow them [clear cut contractors] on my
land because they cut everything. They don’t trim. Say, they come to a tree. Instead of cutting that top off and
letting that tree regrow, they cut it down. They don’t...fix it. They seem to want to cut, cut, cut, cut until the land is
just clear.”
“My son cuts firewood there and he cuts trees that are in the woods – there’s oak there and it’s starting to die off.
He’ll cut it down. He just cuts what should be cut. But as far as letting someone go in and clean cut, I wouldn’t allow
that at all.”
149
R ob e rt W i l l i a m McL e a n
I was born on April 9, 1924 in North Brookfield. I have a sister and a half-brother.
My parents farmed. I lived in the same place since he was 10 years old.
My mother taught school before she had her family. She went out to Saskatchewan
to teach and she taught in Queens County for about 15 years. She taught in
North Brookfield, Liverpool and Westfield.
I attended North Brookfield School. The school was between where Henry Silver’s property and the Silver Road are
today. It was a two room school but when I went to school, we only used one room. The community only had
enough money to hire one teacher. Up to grade eleven was taught there. There would be around thirty students
at the school.
One of his teachers was Margaret Ball. The main schooling was “reading, writing and arithmetic. There was no computer
or anything then. You learned to write - one of the first things you learned was to write. Started printing – built it
up. You had a book...with all the writing in it. Form the letters...practised them.”
Being in a one room school “had it’s good points...you learned a lot of things...say you were in grade two or three and
somebody in eight and nine and you heard them getting lessons, you learned something.” Students then might
not have gotten a lot of education because they didn’t go to school long enough, but they got a good general
education.
The school day went from 9:00 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon. You got to school by “your feet.” I remember
going on a class trip up to Daley’s Mill in Rosette to go fishing on Labour Day. We walked the couple of miles to
the mill.
We carried our lunches to school in a lard pail. The pail was used to carry our bread and butter sandwiches, and maybe
a molasses cookie. Water was in a water pail; we drew water from a nearby well. The school was heated with a wood
stove. Someone in the community supplied the school with wood. While I went to school, the wood was kept in
the second classroom.
I went to school until grade eight and then I went to work at the age of fourteen.
“I can remember
seeing moose about
80 years ago. They
were never plentiful.
I used to see moose
tracks going across
near my house every
spring and fall.”
150
I worked at the Nova Scotia Woodenware in South Brookfield in the
early ‘40s, besides helping at home on the farm. This was after the
war started. Nova Scotia Woodenware was also called the bucket
factory. The main part of the building was three stories high and there
was a sawmill on one side. It had three or four dry houses. Counting
the people who did the woods work, there were about 200 people
employed at the Woodenware Factory. Many of the workers were
French from Quebec. The factory was moved down to Nova Scotia
and many of the workers came too.
“Mostly I drove horses out in the yard. Hauled logs in.” I did work inside
the factory some, not making the buckets, but working other machines,
making covers and bottoms for the buckets. The buckets used to be
shipped out on the train.“There was a train track right in the yard.”The
factory burned in 1944.
R ob e rt McL e a n
Working in the woods, “we cut with a Swede saw and an axe, everything we cut. And now a cord and a half...if you
were lucky, you got two cords a day. Now with the machines cutting that...I don’t know how much they cut.”
“You can’t make employment...and they talk about making employment, but they do everything with machinery
– one man does what it used to take 50 to do...At that time you didn’t cut anything that you didn’t have to cut. And
now they cut anything that’s in the way. Which is a lot more wood wasted than there was then ‘cause...anything
was left that was too small to use - you let stand because it was too much work to cut it.” People didn’t clear cut
years ago, but sometimes they’d burn a cut in the summer if they wanted the land.
Land that is clear cut,“it takes it too long to get started again...If everything’s cut down right small...if it’s not clear cut
and all that little stuff that’s ten, fifteen, twenty years old is left stand, it doesn’t take it long to start again.”
I can remember seeing moose about 80 years ago. They were never plentiful. I used to see moose tracks going across
near my house every spring and fall.
The deer population has changed over the years. They seemed quite scarce compared to what it was years ago.“A lot
of them are hunted...and maybe there’s just…could be stuff with the breeding...there are not as many fields around
with grass and stuff in them to keep them here...There’s a lot of difference in what used to be fields around...grown
up in woods now...If you travel along the road and see where it used to be fields.”
When I was a boy, everyone had a cow and a pig. All those small farms are gone now. And the fields they used for
pasture and hay are grown in.
As for seeing chimney swifts, “not lately but there used to be...one place used to be down there at the church in the
chimney....I used to see a lot there...I suppose it’s fifty years ago.”
I can remember seeing bats flying around in evenings, but I haven’t seen any lately.
“You understand the livings have changed altogether. That I suppose has affected the environment. When we lived
here we didn’t have a car or anything. If you worked two or three miles from home, you generally boarded and
stayed there. And now everybody travels to Halifax every day to work and that pollution has to make a difference
on the environment.”
“We didn’t make much pollution years ago. You heated one room in the winter. You didn’t have a car. You walked
where you went.”
Chairs from the old roadhouse tavern that was
on the original South Brookfield Road over
150 years ago
151
J e a n ( n e e M e a b y ) M e rritt
I was born in Grimsby, Ontario on January 22, 1922. Meaby was my mother’s
maiden name.
I fondly recall the 90th birthday party that my children held for me at the Legion
in Clementsport.
I had two younger sisters, Winifred and Diana.
Winifred was pretty with beautiful hair and a lovely singing voice. Winifred “died too young.” She had spent Christmas
with family in Nova Scotia and then spent New Year’s with Diana in Toronto. Win developed a nosebleed and Diana
called the doctor who lived next door. She sent Win to the hospital but she passed away from a heart attack.
Heart attacks seem to occur in my family. My oldest son, Chris, and my husband Glenn’s father and brother also died
from heart attacks.
When asked when I moved to Nova Scotia from Ontario, I said,“Oh, not very long ago,” but in fact, it was in the 1930’s,
during the Recession, that my father decided to close his fruit and vegetable store in Toronto and drive with the
family to Bear River. “I must have been...maybe ten or eleven”.
My mother wore trousers during the drive to Nova Scotia. “Going through Quebec, oh my, they were not very nice.
‘Cause these pants. I suppose she was the first woman they’d ever seen wearing these pants.”
In Bear River, the first people we met were Mr. and Mrs. MacGregor. My father was hired by a wealthy man who had
a huge garden right on the hill. And he had a lot of strawberries. He also had orchards of apple, cherry and pear
trees. My father was a gardener so he worked for this fellow.
We girls went to school in Bear River. Diana didn’t like her teacher. Bear River’s school was larger than the one room
schools in many communities. The school and church both burned one night.
“My mother was a
good cook and she
did a lot of sewing...
She often used flour
sacks for material
for her sewing. She
would dye the sacking so it would be
whatever colour was
wanted.”
152
Our mother was happy to be able to do fundraising to rebuild the church.
She had “concerts...dances, pie sales. Whatever it was, she loved that....
Winifred had a beautiful singing voice” so she’d perform during the
concerts. Diana would tap dance. I could also sing, but I didn’t like to
perform. “Her concerts raised a lot of money for the church.”
My mother was a good cook and she did a lot of sewing. She made our
dresses for when we were on stage. “Her curtains were nice. And if
somebody needed a blue dress...” my mother would provide it. She
often used flour sacks for material for her sewing. She would dye the
sacking so it would be whatever colour was wanted.
We moved from Bear River to Clementsport and rented a house. This was
during the war years. My father went to work at Cornwallis.
Then he went to work for the Fickes as their gardener.“And we lived there.
Mr. Fickes was a nice man.” I wasn’t as fond of Mrs. Fickes.
Mr. Fickes’s son lived across the road and “he had the first ambulance. He
didn’t have a real ambulance but it was like a car that had four doors
and that was what we used...He was very nice. He kept it heated at night
in case somebody needed it....Charlie Fickes.”
j e a n m e rritt
“They helped to build the hospital in Annapolis. They were nice people...I had five children. They were all born
there.”
My dad “loved to hunt. He loved to hunt rabbits...and partridge.” I didn’t like it when my father had shot some sort of
bird because we found some of the shot in the meat.
I don’t remember him ever going moose hunting. He used to take the captains...from Cornwallis out hunting. Then
he’d take them back to the house and treat them to some of the wine he made. “He made a lot of wine. We used
it at the Seashell”, a restaurant in Upper Clements that we ran for several years. “Rhubarb wine, and that was good,
I guess.”
One summer, the captain was being shipped out to B.C. and they threw a party for him at the Seashell. My father and Win
went to the party.“The cook was out on the back porch...and she heard this funny noise.” It came from the direction
of Dad’s house.“So she called Win. She went down and he was sick. He probably had too much liquor. She called Dr.
Kerr and he came and he gave him a shot right in the heart...said he could have died of alcohol poisoning.”
When I was young, I used to roller skate in Toronto. I couldn’t do that when we moved down to Nova Scotia. There
wasn’t enough pavement. I skipped. “We were good skippers. I was. Double dutch.” I liked horses although I never
owned one.
My father had a cottage at Lake Simco and I learned to swim there. I got used to swimming in salt water after we
moved to Nova Scotia. My husband liked to swim too. “He’d make the funniest noises in the water.”
We had a beach just down through a field from the house my husband and I owned in Clementsport.
I recall travelling and visiting years ago. I went to England with my sister Di, visiting relatives. Chris, my oldest son, was
stationed in Germany and my husband and I went to visit him there. “Germany had to be the cleanest place you’d
ever want to see....I think you could eat off the cement!”
One of the changes that I have seen in Nova Scotia is that small communities like Clementsport, used to have their
own stores and post office. My husband and I ran one grocery store in Clementsport and there were two others
besides.“There was our store, Ruth Sweeney’s store and...Potter owned a grocery store. So that’s three grocery stores
in little Clementsport. And if you were Conservative, you bought out of Potter. This is the truth. If you were Liberal,
you bought from Ruth Sweeney. Simple as that.” When asked who bought from my store, I quipped, “Nobody!”
These stores were found down in the hollow of Clementsport, across the bridge from Rawding’s garage. The old
post office belonged to the Merritts.
Jean (far right) with her sisters and parents
Jean and her daughter, Sharon
153
j e a n m e rritt
My husband, Glenn, was born in a large house in Clemensport, known as The Merritt House. He was one of six
children. Glenn’s father was a taxi driver.
I met Glenn when I joined some friends in a car drive. “We came down through Clementsport and we stopped
there. There was this man standing out...that man happened to be Glenn.” Some people in the car knew him
so they rolled down the windows to speak to him. “He gave all the ladies a peppermint.” Things went on, and
eventually we were married.
When war broke out “Glenn joined the service. We were already married by that time. We were married in St. Luke’s
Church, here in Annapolis. He was a good man. He never drank. He never smoked...He really was nice. And he
knew everybody. I wouldn’t go shopping with him. Grocery shopping. Because....you never got home.”
Glenn worked at Cornwallis as a driver. “He’d drive the ambulance to Halifax or he’d drive just.... a captain to
Halifax.”
We loved to go to dances together. My sister, Win, taught Glenn how to dance.“She taught him the real thing. She
was a good dancer.” We’d have parties with music and dancing. Someone would bring a guitar. We always had
a piano. I remember when we lived in an apartment at the Ficke’s place, we had to hoist the piano up to the
second floor. That was quite an undertaking.
154
155
H a rr y N e l s on
My name is Harry Leonard Nelson and I was born February 8th, 1933 in Voglers
Cove, Nova Scotia. The Great Depression was in full swing and times were
tough.
My parents parted when I was around four or five years old and I was placed with
an elderly couple who treated me as one of their own. They were excellent
foster parents.
We lived on a farm which had eight or nine milking cows, sheep, a pair of oxen and a couple horses. They sold cream,
lamb, beef and farm produce to supplement their income. I helped to make the hay in the summer, we cut pulp
wood in the winter to pay for our fertilizer in the spring. We also cut our own firewood. My foster parents were very
poor, but we were a happy family.
I went to school and completed grade eight in New Canada. Grade eight back then seemed pretty good. With grade
eight one could get in the army, most police forces, I guess most anything you wanted. Today, it wouldn’t be enough
to get you anything to make a decent living. I got along all right because I wasn’t afraid of work; I guess you could
say that I was ambitious. If you were lazy back then even grade eight wasn’t good enough to get you anywhere.
That’s all that I had for education, but I started working on my own. I also helped on the farm and worked in the
woods. I did a little bit of everything, but life was pretty rough back then.
When we were young we played softball in the summer, there were a couple lakes nearby and we swam a lot. In the
winter we skated and coasted a lot which was fun.
I lived about a mile from our nearest neighbour and we had to walk wherever we went most of the time. Occasionally
we travelled by horse and wagon and in winter by horse and sled.
Sunday I had to go to Sunday school.
In those days all we had was a battery radio and listened to it about one hour a day. We did get a newspaper once a
week, “The Family Herald” every Wednesday.
“I remember
thrashing grain.
I would take
one horse and
haul a load to
the thrasher and
when I got older I
would take a pair
of oxen.”
156
For entertainment the school would sometimes have a pie sale. I wasn’t old
enough to bid on the pies, but when a new teacher came in, lots of people
bid on her pies, especially the single ones. They would pay as much as four
times what the pie was worth.
My neighbours would tap maple trees for the sap in the spring and I would
help with that. From the time I was eight or nine years old, I helped to boil
the sap. “That was a good experience.”
I remember thrashing grain. I would take one horse and haul a load to the
thrasher and when I got older I would take a pair of oxen. It would take about
one and one half hours one way.
“When I left school, I went in the woods to work and worked in many different
places.”
H a rr y N e l s on
For a while I worked on a farm in the Annapolis Valley. When I came back I was about seventeen years old and went
to work for the Mersey Pulp and Paper Company, cutting and peeling pulp wood. Then for a while I worked for
Mersey Pulp and Paper Company on a ship called the Markland.
I returned to the woods and the river drive in the spring of the year. “The first river drive I was on was the Medway
River. It goes right through Greenfield. I also worked on river drives in the Rossignol and on the Mersey River.”
In 1973, I moved to Greenfield with my wife, Roxy and our two children, Ricky and Susan. I had only been in Greenfield
a short time when I joined the fire department. I have nearly 40 years of service with the fire department now. I
worked my way up in the department and was Fire Chief for almost 24 years. I am, along with other duties, serving
as their Honorary Fire Chief. Always active in the community, I served as Recreation president for five years, president
of the local softball team and was elected as a trustee of the local school board. I also took part in the Greenfield
bowling league.
In 1988, the International Woodsman’s Competition was started here in Greenfield. These competitions ran for about
ten years. For the first few years the Maritime Woodsman’s competition was held a week before the International
one. I served as a director for the competitions and volunteered to cut and haul all the logs that were donated by
the Mersey Bowater Paper Company. I cut and hauled these logs from many miles away to the local mill at no cost
to the competitions, as my donation. Each competition always had enough logs.
I received a 20 year and a 25 year medal from the Federal Government for my volunteer fire service. I also received
the 50 year Queens Golden Jubilee medal as well as the 60 Year Diamond Jubilee medal. I also received many
certificates of appreciation for the volunteer work I did in the community.
On my 80th birthday the community held an appreciation party for me, not only to celebrate my 80th birthday, but
to show appreciation for my volunteer work over the years. There were well over 200 friends who attended. For me
this was a great honour.
Forty years ago there wasn’t too much in Greenfield - a small mill, a store and service station, a church, a fire hall, a
school, a campground and a very small IOOF hall.
Today there’s a hell of a nice big mill here employing close to 100 people; that is one of the big things they didn’t have
here then. There are better highways now. We have a new school. The church and recreation complex is second to
none anywhere on the South Shore. We have an up-dated fire hall with hall and kitchen facilities, two convenient
stores with gas and diesel pumps. This community has much more than it had 40 years ago.
Harry loading logs
Harry receiving his Diamond Jubilee award from
the premier
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H a rr y N e l s on
When the present recreation building was built I helped cut, haul and mill (free of charge) a lot of the material that
went in the building of this complex. I also cut and hauled the pine that eventually went to finish the up-stairs in
the Greenfield Fire Hall.
Greenfield is a good place to live.
“Today in the woods there’s no comparison to when I was a kid. Today you have to log big because when I was a
kid, I think we cut maybe ten or fifteen cords of pulpwood each year to pay for fertilizer for the spring planting.
Today the same amount of pulpwood wouldn’t pay for anything. I started with a horse to haul my pulpwood out
of the woods and then I used oxen. I then got myself a tractor and power trailer. Then when I could afford it I got
a skidder. I thought I had the world by the tail then!”
The equipment they use today would cost more than $500,000.00.
“Forty or fifty years ago, other than saw logs, we only cut the poor out ... and left anything six inches and up. We let
the rest stand. Today they go through and cut everything.”
Where they clear cut, there won’t be any timber on the land for a lifetime. Where I cut 35 years ago, you could go in
and cut even more timber than I had cut. “They used to... just select cut and they always had timber. Today they
don’t do that... so the future of the forest is not very bright now.”
There were a few moose around when I was young as well as deer, small animals and game birds. Today the moose
have been gone for some time. The deer are still here but the small game birds and animals are very scarce.
“When I first moved to Greenfield, here in the Medway River there were all kinds of trout and salmon. Today you can
hardly get a trout, and salmon are all but gone from the river. Companies that sprayed the woodlands killed just
about everything.
There are not very many birds anymore. I feel that there has been far too much spraying that went on over the last
40-50 years. There are hardly any bees left anymore. It’s a big difference from when I was a kid.
I also wonder if the large wind farms are killing many of the birds.
As far as the environment goes, we have to find a way to cut back on fossil fuels, whether it be by walking, bicycling,
carpooling, wind power, solar energy, tidal power or whatever. It seems we are losing the fight to keep our planet
green.
I think we have gone too far now. I don’t see how we can do too much to help correct this greenhouse effect...it is a
poor outlook for the next generation.
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Helen Opie
I was born in Oxford, England on May 28, 1933 at the Radcliff Nursing Home.
Doesn’t that sound posh?
I came to Canada to stay in June, 1976. I’d lived in the U.S. for a while since
my father had been posted there at the beginning of WWII. It was around
the time, coincidentally, that there were bumper stickers that said “America
– love it or leave it.” I’ve never regretted coming to Canada.
“I came with my late husband and my two children. We had a foster child that we didn’t bring. I don’t think his
parents wanted him to come; they didn’t want to give him up...After two years children either have to go back to
their families or they need to make that shift to be part of another family.” They can’t live as a ‘foreigner’ in a foster
family and grow up properly.
We first came to Canada in 1976 and settled near St. Stephen, on St. David Ridge. I moved over here to Nova Scotia in
1993 after separating from my husband in 1990 and was in Chester for that first winter. Then I bought a garage in
Mader’s Cove and we made it into a home. We did our own wiring and had to have it inspected by the provincial
inspector. The inspector said it was a very neat job.
I moved to Granville Ferry when I turned 70, in 2003. I chose to live here because I’d been coming to Paint the Town for
years. I saw that the town had a lot of community spirit. I knew I wanted to be a member of an arts community, and
I already was a member of ARTsPLACE. I liked living in the country but I wanted to be less isolated.“For choosing a
town when I move is if they have a local newspaper...a sit down library, a good hardware store, and a natural food
store. And a thrift shop is a bonus but not as necessary to me now. And Annapolis had all of those. Still does.”
“I’ve seen changes certainly with ARTsPLACE, which is the place that I know best. And I’ve seen people come and go
in this neighbourhood here. This neighbourhood may have had close to 90% turnover in the blocks around me in
the past 12 years– I guess every neighbourhood is very small.”
“There’s a lot of give and take around here. When a neighbour had breast cancer, everyone made sure she was looked
after. Things like having her driveway shovelled was done for her. “And it was nice to see people just come out of
their own little orbits and sweep her into their orbit.” It is why I don’t want to have to move; I get that caring as I
get frailer, too.
“I love learning more
about the natural
world. I paint to
celebrate the natural world to say to
people ‘This is so
beautiful. Work to
preserve it.’”
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“The art environment around here is wonderful...Everybody who lives
here, who was here when I came, is extremely welcoming and positive.
And a lot of art communities are not that way. Quilters are that way. I
used to be a fibre artist and quilters are very much welcoming to each
other. Quilting is a little bit more sociable than painting...I do have
friends who come over and paint with me...It breaks the house magnet.
The house magnet is ‘I just have to clear that mess on the table and
then I’ll get to painting.’…And that’s the end of painting time. Or the
phone rings, or whatever.”
“There are a few newcomers that move in and they decide they and
Wayne Boucher – he’s a very good modern painter – are the only two
real painters in the area. And then they get miffed because nobody
seems to think they are so wonderful and bow down before them...and
say,‘Oh, we’re so glad you moved here. You finally made our community
into a real arts community,’ or something like that. Usually they move
away or they stop painting...We all work differently. Yes, some people
are better than others. But they aren’t better people.” Geoff Butler and
Wayne Boucher are probably the pace-setters for the art community
now. They are very generous with their time.
H e l e n O Pi e
I’m having a hard time doing all that I used to do; part of growing old. I need to “give myself time to paint and I needed
to keep gardening because it’s through gardening and growing good healthy food that I keep up my energy. I have
some dreams that I know I’ll never be able to manage and one of them is taking my grand cruise. I’m not going
to be sailing around the world, which is mainly a childhood desire. In the 1930s and 40s and even 50s, when I was
growing up, girls didn’t do things like that. You know, they were expected to reproduce and be good mothers and
good wives. And my cousin is the captain of the tall ship Picton Castle, which takes paying crew on sailing trips
around the world. When they were first fitting her out I tried to convince him – it was ‘62 or something...to take
me as second cook because I couldn’t afford the 46,000 dollars to be part of the paying crew. And I suppose it’s
more than that now. I mean, I could sell my house but that pretty much totally revises my life. I’d have to get rid
of absolutely everything I own because I couldn’t probably pay storage fees....and I’d have to do something with
my dog...At that time it was a year and a half they took to sail around the world. Now they do it in a year. And I just
thought I don’t want to be gone from home that long. I’m not that adventuresome.” So now I hope to make my
very scaled down grand cruise up the Annapolis River from the causeway to Paradise and back.
I was a grade one teacher and later a supply teacher until I became pregnant. Then my husband went to teach at a
small Quaker boarding school and I became a house mother and I taught some art. There was no budget but we
had fun with our limited supplies.
“I was always interested in art. I was not a good reader as a child...It is physically difficult to get from line to line. So I
really like audio books for that... I don’t have that physical effort of reading coming between me and the person’s
ideas.”
“I love this world I live in...I like painting landscapes and roofscapes; that’s what I like doing...I used to do house portraits
for money to buy more materials with.”
“I watch the land and I think that’s when I’ve noticed changes...the decline of small farms going into bush from the
lovely open fields...house seeds sprouting on good farmland like weeds...They’re right to protect their land Kentville
way and Wolfville way. It needs to be protected because we need to be able to feed ourselves. It seems so easy
to be able to have people grow things cheaper in Mexico and China...Remember after 9/11. Things weren’t going
through. All you need is an event like that and people will be darned glad to have food.” I have friends who like the
idea of a farmer’s market but they don’t shop there. They don’t come regularly to get their groceries. I’m not sure
that it’s more expensive than the grocery store but the quality is so much better.
“I guess I’m very political on how I spend my money. And I try to spend it as locally as I can, and I don’t really care if
I spend a little more.”
My garden is a work in progress. This ground is very wet.“I couldn’t plant here until nearly July if I didn’t have slightly
raised beds.” In the middle of my raised beds is a compost heap.
The tomatoes got rain blight this summer. I plan to make a rain shelter
for the tomatoes next year.
I have my boat half-finished. It’s a Puddle Duck Racer. I hope to do my
grand cruise next summer. I still need to do the gluing, and priming and
painting in a warm space. And I need to build a roof over the cabin. The
boat is very light. The boat’s name is Molly Kool. She’s named after the
first female sea captain in North America, and perhaps all over the world.
I plan to launch it at the causeway and sail her to Paradise. I’ll make the
sail out of a lovely orange tarp. The boat will be a blue green with an
orange bottom and a white stripe between.
I do sketch journals – little sketchbooks about a trip. They bring back
memories to me better than photographs. I’m going to do one for my
trip up the river and also a book describing building the boat. I’ll call
my book “Sailing to Paradise.” I want to “promote the recreational value
and the beauty of the Annapolis River. And I’ve been talking to CARP
(Clean Annapolis River Project). They are having their first ever river fest
A display of Helen’s paintings
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H e l e n O Pi e
next summer on July 19th (2015) and I was hoping to have my book ready.” But I won’t so maybe a couple of us
will take our boats down to the river for the fest.
“There is a group who is trying to get more of a beach at the causeway and perhaps a little float.” All of this will help
the river more.
I try to do my bit to help save our environment. I plant native plants or ones that feed the bees at blossom time and
the birds when they fruit or make seed. “I’ve tried growing milkweed, but not successfully. I’ve only seen monarch
butterflies down at Gilbert Doelle’s Wild Rose Farm in Gilbert’s Cove...and Lisa Proulx. Lisa does incredible things
with children at the Clark Rutherford School in Cornwallis.”
I’ve noticed there are fewer frogs, too. I heard peepers here for the first time in my pond out here. I have had some
toads in the garden. “I love turtles. My brother used to collect turtles”, mostly box turtles.
Kristl Waleck, “whose business is selling native plant seedlings, has been an inspiration to me. She goes around
collecting seeds and sprouting them. She sells both seeds and plants all over Canada.”
“I learned from her that when witch hazel blooms it doesn’t form seed until the following year. And that seed doesn’t
come ripe until fall. It’s pushed off by the new emerging blossom. Then it pops open and scatters its seeds. Kristl
gathers the seeds just before they pop open.”
“I love learning more about the natural world. I paint to celebrate the natural world to say to people ‘This is so beautiful.
Work to preserve it.’”
I would like to help the Nature Conservatory. They are trying to preserve islands from Clam Harbour to Taylor’s
Head.
“I want to do everything. I’m like Tigger. But I can’t do everything; all of life is a trade-off.”
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163
E l l iott Pay z a nt
My name is Elliott Payzant, and I was born September 7, 1941 in Liverpool NS,
White Point Road, in a home. Dr. Murray was the presiding physician.
I grew up in a five room house. It had three bedrooms and a dining room. A large
room was a kitchen area in one end and a living room in the other. I lived in that
house until I was eleven years old. Then we moved from Liverpool to Albany
New and that was a six room house with 3 bedrooms and a dining room, living
room and kitchen. The house in Liverpool was all one story and the house in Albany New was two stories. I guess
you call it a story and a half because a couple of the bedrooms upstairs had sloped ceilings.
My father worked as a carpenter a good part of his life. He left school in 10th grade just after the Halifax explosion in
1917 to go in and help with the cleanup and he worked as a carpenter there. Growing up he learned carpentry as
a boy because my grandfather was a carpenter. He started out as a ship carpenter and when the days of wooden
ships died out he became a house carpenter. So my father sort of grew up knowing that and decided at the time
of the Halifax explosion he was needed in Halifax so he dropped out of school and went to Halifax and worked at
carpentry work two or three years, I guess. Then he did general work and carpentry work and construction kinds
of work for a good part of his life. In his early fifties he decided that he wanted to become a full time farmer and I
guess he was sort of a part time farmer in Liverpool because I remember the big vegetable garden that he always
planted. As I was growing up I got to help and he had a vegetable stand where my sister, my mother and I would
sell vegetables. He was usually off doing other things and did his gardening early in the morning before going to
work and in the evening when he got home from work.
But then in 1953 he decided to buy the little farm in Albany New and that’s where we moved when I was 11 years
old. And then he farmed and did logging on the woodlot in the winter primarily, but he farmed during the summer
and did some logging on his woodlot during the winter.
My mother was a housewife. That’s about what she did her whole life.
I went to the old Liverpool Academy for the first few years and then I went for one year to the school in Albany New,
the one room school, and after that year the brand new rural high school was built in Caledonia. So I went to the
high school in Caledonia from 8th grade through grade 12.
In the one room school it was a lot of fun. A couple of us had to go early in the morning to make sure the fire was
going in the stove so it would be warm for the teacher when she got there and for the rest of the students when
they got there. We had to make sure that there was water in the water pail and I think
there was some kind of a cooler thing that we had there too, and water in the teakettle
on the stove. We needed warm water to wash our hands or to make cocoa, so you had
to have hot water on the stove. There was always a teakettle sitting on the old stove
there and we always had a wood fire going especially in the winter.
“I remember
the clouds of
nighthawks
that used to
be around
when I was a
kid.”
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Liverpool Academy, that was grades one through six. It was a 2 story building and I’m
not sure, I’d guess there would probably be about twelve classrooms in that building.
It was one of the schools that at one time served as the high school and then there
was a new high school built in the late ‘30s. It was built before my time but it was still
there in the late thirties because I know my father worked at that new school. And
then the old Academy came in grades one through six and the new school was grades
seven through twelve.
In Albany New it was a one room school and I was the only student in grade 6 and
the first year teacher was Ann Dukeshire. I drove her nuts because, well, we had this
reader and I was always a pretty avid reader so I read everything in the damn thing
the first month. Then I had this geography book and I always liked geography so I studied everything there was in
the geography book. I read all the history book and the math book. Math was a particular love for me and always
will be. So by the end of October I think I’d done every problem in the math book. The teacher didn’t know quite
what to do with me. She talked to Mrs. Ritchey, the inspector of schools or something like that, and she talked to
her and said, “Well, I guess you’re just going to tell him to go on to stuff in the next grade”. So I went on and did
the stuff for 7th grade that year. I started after Christmas. Ann Dukeshire told me that I was wasting my time - I’d
better start doing 7th grade work, so I started doing 7th grade work from January through June, which was when
school ended. The next year I went to high school in grade 8.
The little one room schools - the thing that I remember is two or three of us who were a little older, if there were
younger students who were having some kind of difficulty, we were always given the opportunity, or asked by the
teacher, to pitch in and help the younger students along. I remember especially in math if someone was having
difficulty we’d go off outdoors and I’d sit with the student who might be a year or two or three years younger than
I and we’d sit and figure out the math problems.
I’m not sure if that happens any more but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to send a couple of kids by themselves outside
to do math. But it was a one room with all the grades in it and one teacher so you did those kinds of things that
needed to be done. Everyone sort of helped everyone. And I think there are still students who help other students
but they’re all in the same grade level now. I think there’s still some of that that goes on, but now, teachers I think
are more trained than they were back then. Back then many of our teachers had spent one year at normal college.
There were some teachers that when they finished grade 11 or 12 they got a thing called a permissive license. They
got teachers for the little one room schools so people taught on a permissive license with no training in terms of
being teachers, only what came naturally to them. Now the teachers in our schools have to have a bachelor’s degree
plus the education so it’s basically six years of university to become a teacher today. When I was in school I know
there were people who taught with permissive licenses who had grade 11 and that’s all they needed.
So there are differences there. I think there is probably more depth to some of the things that are taught but I
remember when I went to high school in Caledonia I was really pretty happy with all the courses that were offered
there and the things that we could do. I know one year I took three languages. English - everybody does English
– but I had French, Latin and German. The French teacher was Mr. Amirault, the Latin teacher was Mr. Garth and the
German teacher was Av Rauer so it was a little tight juggling all the courses so I could get all those things in. I also
had chemistry and physics and math and I think there was one year when we had both trigonometry and algebra
and another year we had algebra and geometry so there were differences there. Now we have our 11th grade math
and 12th grade math but as far as I can tell they’re not separated into your algebra, geometry, trigonometry the
way they were back then. I think the education we got served us well for the times. I’m not sure that it would serve
students well today. I think that our education system serves students today for the times that we’re in and what I
learned back 55-60 years ago probably wouldn’t be appropriate for this day and age. But it certainly prepared me,
I think, for what I did.
The summer that I was 14 I really wanted to work and my parents knew the superintendent for the Medway District
working for the Mersey Paper Company then. It became Bowater, and I was talking to him one day and I said, “I’d
like to have a job”, and he said “Well, if it’s all right with your parents I can probably get a job for you.” His name was
Frank Freeman. I said, “Oh, yeah? I don’t have a power saw or anything like that”, and he said, “I need a cookee” and
I said, “What’s a cookee?” and he said, “The guy that helps the cook. There will be lunches to carry out to the men
who are in the woods working and that kind of thing. If that’s something you’ll be interested in doing, but I have
to get your parents to sign a permission slip because in order to hire you given your age – you’re supposed to be
16. There’s regulations.”
So anyway I don’t know if my parents wanted to get clear of me for the summer or not but they signed the permission
slip. So the summer I was 14, I went to work for Mersey Paper Company as a cookee. We went up Sunday nights
on the back of a truck and that year I was at camp 11, at the foot of Long Lake. It was a long ride, and we came out
on Saturday afternoons. We were home Saturday from 2:00 until Sunday evening at 6:00 when we went back up
again. That was the time that we had off.
The men worked five and a half days and there were 40 men there who were choppers. There was also a road crew
and they were building logging roads, so there were anywhere from 45 to 48 men in the camp. As a cookee I had
to get up at 5 a.m. because they had horses. Every set of loggers, there was one who drove the horse, and one who
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did the cutting. You had to make sure the teamsters were up at 5 a.m. to feed the horses and get ready to go and
make sure everybody else was up at 6 a.m. so they could have breakfast at 6:30. Everybody was off to the woods at
7 or shortly after. We cleaned up the breakfast which would be beans, eggs, hash, and that kind of thing, and then
I’d have to pack up a pack basket, a big pack basket, with fifteen or twenty loaves of bread and a couple dozen
cans of corned beef or spam, and probably a bunch of sliced corned beef that we’d cooked up in the cookhouse,
and took two or three kinds of cookies and lots of tea. I’d go off with that on my back usually a mile or two back
to where the lunch grounds were and have lunch ready for the loggers back there when lunchtime came. And
I’d pack up the empties and go back and help get supper ready, which took place around 5:30 or 6:00. Then it was
time to wash up the dishes and maybe if the men wanted a snack before bedtime, I’d get that ready. I had to go
around whenever lights out was, 9:30 on days when it wasn’t getting dark by nine. I went in and said “lights out”
and put out the oil lamps.
I had to make sure there was a good fire in the old ramdown because there was a big tub of water on it to have the
water warm for the men to wash in when they got up in the morning. And make sure that I didn’t put too much
wood in it because especially in the summer you didn’t want a whole lot of heat in the bunkhouse at night.
So I did that for two summers and then the next summer I still worked up there but I worked in the sawmill at the
foot of Lake Alma. Logs were driven down the lake and up into the mill and then the lumber was trucked out and
shipped out onto the train in Caledonia. I do remember one time that the logs went down the lake and there was
a boom. Then this chain carried the logs up and into the mill and there was a fellow who sat down there and pulled
the logs onto the chain. He had to watch the boom end because if the wind was against the logs coming down
the lake, it blew the logs into the mill. But if it was going up there was a big winch there so he could wind them in.
You had to keep taking the log off because they were logs that were fastened together by chains. So you had to
take one off to shorten the boom so you could get the logs in closer.
There was a big wind blowing one day and he went to take a log off, and the whole damn boom got away. I was up
in the mill and I heard him yelling, and I took a look down. I guess I must have been a pretty good swimmer, I’m not
sure, but anyway I went down and grabbed this boom chain that he had, a 6 foot long piece of heavy chain with a
tog ring on one end and a toggle on the other. I jumped into the lake and swam out probably 20-25 feet and got
that damn boom chain down through the hole in the boom log. We saved the boom full of logs from going adrift
up the lake.
It was really sort of interesting because my wife happened to meet one of the mill men who was there after she moved
up here and he told her the whole story. I hadn’t told her the story but she told me the story. He remembered it
as quite a feat that I had jumped in and saved that boom full of logs but I thought well, it was just something that
you did.
I actually enjoyed my summers. And got to know a lot of hardworking men but I think they were all good men and
probably helped me appreciate life.
That job doesn’t exist anymore. I mean logging exists but it’s big machinery - feller bunchers and forwarders and
harvesters, and trucks. Back then getting the logs to the mill, the logs were browed up in the woods in the winter.
They were hauled onto the lakes and to the rivers and Bowater had a series of dams to hold water back. There were
dams in Long Lake, there were dams at Lake Alma, there were dams at camp 8, for Henry Lake. There were dams all
over to hold water so they’d have lots of water for the spring drive. The logs were hauled in the winter and piled
onto the ice on the lakes. When the ice melted obviously the logs floated and they were driven down the river, and
came right down by the river where we live now, and down into Deans Lake, and McGowan Lake. They were pulled
right into McGowan Lake, loaded onto trucks, hauled across and dumped into Lake Rossignol and then towed down
across Lake Rossignol and floated down the Mersey River to the paper mill. Now the logs go by truck. The paper
mill is no more, but the logs go to the sawmills. They went by truck when the paper mill was there. Everything was
taken all the way to the paper mill by truck. There were no log drives. They ended in the early 60’s because the log
drives weren’t good for the fish, I think they said.
But I’ve noticed that since the log drives, I can remember coming home from school in the 50s and my mother would
say,“Oh, Elliott, will you run down to the lake and catch some fish for supper?” It was like she was sending me to the
grocery store. You just did it, in the early spring and summer. You just knew they were there. All you had to do was
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go down and throw a line in. If you wanted 5 or 6 trout, you threw a line in 5 or 6 times and you had 5 or 6 trout.
And that doesn’t happen anymore.
We had all those log drives, which were supposedly bad for the trout. But the log drives ended in the early 60s and
that’s about the time that the trout numbers started to die out. So I’m not sure. I’ve wondered about that a lot because when they were driving logs down the river there were lots of trout. But when the log drives stopped we
started losing our trout. I’m not saying that stopping the log drives was reducing the trout population. There were
probably other things. But the fact of the matter is that log drives from my point of view didn’t do a thing to hurt
the trout population because when we were driving logs there were lots of trout. When we stopped driving logs,
there weren’t lots of trout. And I think that those two things probably are not related. But the log drives didn’t have
any effect on trout populations because it was high when there were lots of log drives.
We didn’t get into problems much. We hunted, and we fished, and we camped. I remember Granville Boutilier and
me going back to a camp at Porcupine Lake. We were probably 14 or 15 years old. I’m not sure if it was legal for us
to carry a shotgun but we were each carrying a shotgun. But anyway, darkness overtook us before we got all the
way to the camp. So we just found where there had been an old mill site back there and slept in the sawdust pile
that night. We had a bedroll with us. It was a little chilly, but we had a fire going.
I used to go back for the weekend myself, especially in the spring. I’d like to go fishing. I’d take a few books with me
and some eggs. I’d break a few eggs and put them in a bottle, I’d take some flour and baking powder and a little
salt and I could mix that up and make whatever I wanted. I’d eat fish. There were trout. I’d go back to spend the
weekend.
I remember my father telling a story one time. He said that somebody asked where I was. “Well, I guess he’s gone for
the weekend, back to Porcupine.”“Gone for the weekend? Who’s with him?” “Well, he doesn’t have anybody with
him.” “Does he do that much?” “Well, quite a few times during the year.” “Don’t you worry about him?” “Well, no, I
figure he knows what he’s doing, I tried to tell him everything I knew. I suppose if he told us he’d be home Sunday
night, if he didn’t show up by Monday morning, I might start to think about it.”
So that was sort of the attitude and I was 13, 14 years old. I thought, “I wonder if parents allow 13 or 14 year olds do
those kinds of things today?”
So anyway we did those kinds of things and we’d go off and we hunted and fished and went wherever we wanted
but our parents didn’t seem to worry about us. They taught us to use a compass. If we didn’t use a compass we
looked at the sun. You needed to know the general direction in and out, and if it really got too bad, you looked at
trees. The side of the tree with the most moss on it was the north side, and as soon as you knew where north was,
you knew where all the other directions were.
So there was no problem. You just had to know which direction you had to travel to get out. There was never any big
problem about being lost.
In the summer we’d try to pick up a ball game, stuff like that. Lots of bicycling here, there and everywhere. So that
was our entertainment. If we wanted to make a little money for a weekend we’d go off and if there were two of
us, we could cut a cord of pulpwood on a Saturday and get it out. Then we’d go out. The fellow who bought the
pulpwood from us was Junior Mailman and a little while after that, Dick Anthony. But when Dick started buying
pulpwood I was off at college. Anyway two or three of us would get together and cut a cord of pulpwood and go
out and see Ira DeLong late in the afternoon on Saturday and he’d pay us 12 or 15 dollars for the cord of pulpwood
and we’d have enough for a weekend.
Farms are all grown up; they’re all forest now. And of course there have been a few new houses built in the community
but it’s still a little community. When I was growing up here there were basically three families that lived here and
now there are basically three families living here, maybe five, but not nearly as many children. There are a few more
families. There are cottages where people come for the weekend. There are quite a few cottages in Albany New. As
far as permanent dwellers, there aren’t too many more than there were when I was growing up here.
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Now, there was lots of woodland and it was logged when I was a child, but there were also large fields that grew hay,
vegetables, and now most of them are completely grown up and are forested. That’s the big change. I remember
not too long ago I was talking about the number of old farms that there were in Albany New at one time and now
when you look around, I guess most of what we had that was cleared is completely grown up. But I still have 7
acres of field and that is the biggest of what you’d call farmland in all of Albany New. There were about 10 pretty
big farms in Albany New at one point.
This year the bat population is gone. Last year, one evening my daughter, who lives next door to me, counted well
over 50 bats coming out. This year we didn’t see any. So the white-nose has done in our bat population. I was
hoping that ours would survive but we didn’t see a bat at all this year.
In the last few years I haven’t seen an eastern ribbon snake. I used to see them near the river coming out of rocky
areas. I haven’t seen chimney swifts in quite some time but I think that part of that is because the old brick chimneys
aren’t there anymore. We all use metal chimneys. I remember the clouds of nighthawks that used to be around
when I was a kid. I hadn’t seen very many nighthawks in the last few years. This summer I’ve started seeing a few
more, not the large numbers, but I’ve noticed a few more nighthawks.
We’ve had more barn swallows this year than we’ve had for a long time. We had a real barnful of barn swallows this
year, more than we’ve had in quite a few years.
We used to see Blanding’s turtles. I didn’t think too much of it when I was a kid, but we used to see Blanding’s turtles.
As a matter of fact late this summer, Dawn and I stopped at the end of our driveway and she said, “I think this is
a Blanding’s here.” I went down and it was coming across the road towards our house. So we called MTRI and let
them know we had a Blanding’s. They came and put a radio on it and released it so they could track it. It was one
that they hadn’t seen that was 17 years old.
I spent 28 years in Maine teaching school but then we built our house and spent our summers here. My son Ethan,
when he was 7 or 8 years old, came with a Blanding’s that he’d found out by the side of the house. He wanted to
know what it was because he loved all things herpetological - I mean snakes, lizards, turtles. He used to go snake
hunting down in West Texas, north of Mexico, with his uncle. He had a lot of fun doing it.
But I can tell you a little story about him coming on a plane from Oklahoma with his collection of snakes. They
wouldn’t let you take snakes on a plane. Normally he carried them in a pillowcase but he knew damn well if he
took a pillowcase and they saw something moving they wouldn’t let him on the plane. So he just wore a big baggy
shirt and he had them down his pant leg and up under his shirt. We said, “be careful where you sit.” I don’t know
what he had, five or six when he got home. That was in the late 80s.
So in terms of knowing what was around here by way of snakes and turtles, having a son who was really interested
in that, and an uncle who was a herpetologist, they were always off hunting for any of these kind of things. It was
easy to keep track of where they were.
I remember as a kid, the eastern ribbon snake, was like seeing garter snakes, except that we saw them primarily in
the spring, coming out near the water in rocky areas. That’s where I saw them. I don’t know if that’s where you’re
supposed to look for them. And I just haven’t taken the time to look, but if my wife would give me a few extra
minutes once in a while I might go and take a look and let MTRI know if I found any.
I think we need to be aware of damage that we can do and try to not do things that are going to damage or kill off
plants or other species of animals. I think the whole thing is education. I guess one of the biggest concerns that
I have and I think that I’m really a middle of the road person - if anyone had asked me thirty years ago what are
you, what I knew I’d have said that I was an environmentalist. But I’m an ecologist because I want to know how one
living organism is going to affect another living organism and how they all work together.
I’m not going to get on a bandwagon and say we shouldn’t frack. I’m not going to get on a bandwagon and say we
should frack. I’m going to say “Let’s take a look and make an intelligent decision”. There’s going to be good and
there’s going to be bad, and find out which is which. So I guess for a lot of my life I’ve been a middle of the roader.
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I think I’ve made intelligent decisions because I do really try to take a look and say “If I do this, how is it going to
affect everything else that it touches?” Are the benefits going to be greater than the harm? I think that we need
to do that.
I want to protect species. I want to see the bats back. I want to see the Blanding’s turtle population boom. I really want
to see the bats back because I don’t want the mosquitoes. You want one species to increase so another species
will decrease.
The same with the nighthawks. I want the nighthawks to increase so that they will kill insects. But if I’m a mosquito
lover, I damn well don’t want the bats or the nighthawks back. And look at all the good the mosquitoes might be
doing. I don’t know but there might be something somebody could tell what good a mosquito does. And so you
want to protect the mosquitoes. Do we want to wipe out mosquitoes? Do we want to wipe out black flies? You’d
be killing a species!
So we’re protecting one. We want to protect the Blanding’s, but we want to get clear of black flies and mosquitoes. I
wonder if Blanding’s eat mosquito larvae? There are lots of things that eat mosquito larvae. Of course on the other
hand, we killed a whole bunch of mosquitoes so we could wipe out malaria. We covered the water with oil, so that
wiped out a whole lot of other things. If you’ve got a bit of an oil slick anywhere, you’ve got to get it cleaned up
and out of there, because of all the things that get killed.
But we used to spray areas with oil to kill the mosquitoes! And we used DDT on them. We don’t do those things any
more but we were trying to wipe out a whole species at that point. So I don’t know… And if we go back in history,
we don’t have sabre tooth tigers any more we don’t have mastodons any more.
Something did them in, but we damn near did that to the buffalo. We wiped out the woodland caribou in Nova
Scotia, and the passenger pigeon, so there are a whole bunch of things that we wiped out. I don’t want to wipe
things out. I think that we do need to be aware and try to protect things but I think that we shouldn’t get so hung
up on protecting the Blanding’s turtle that we harm something else. I don’t see that there’s anything going on in
protecting the Blanding’s turtle that’s harming anything else. But I think it’s one of those things where if you get
too hung up and you make it such a cause, that you have blinders on and you can’t see the alternatives.
I think that’s what concerns me with a lot of the things I see going on today with protest movements is that people
are not willing to look at other options. They’re not at all multifaceted. They have one goal, one aim, and they have
blinders on to everything else. That really concerns me. I think we have to look at the big picture, the total picture,
and make our decisions.
Sure, I’ve known MTRI is there. I do the bird count every year. Amanda calls me every year. I count birds all the time.
It’s just another day. The only difference is that I take notes so I can remember how many I saw. I remember the
different ones I saw but I don’t remember how many. On bird count day I keep track of the numbers.
I help MTRI in that respect. There are probably other things that I could and should be doing. And the nice thing
about it, I think that a whole bunch of the work that MTRI does is stuff that I’m interested in. Some of it is stuff
that I research on my own, not that I’ve shared it with anybody. I just tell Dawn, “Isn’t this wonderful? You can’t
believe what I saw today!” Dawn catches the highs. Dawn catches the lows. “Yes honey, no honey, why don’t you
tell someone honey?”
Maybe I should start calling MTRI.
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Eu g e n e V ictor P e nn e y
I was born in Caledonia on January 8, 1942.
I have lived in my present house since 1955. My grandmother built it in 1930.
When I was very young, I lived with my parents in another house, which no
longer exists.
I worked for the Department of Natural Resources for 28 years as a forestry technician. There have been “a lot of
changes. My main work was forest crown land management. They don’t do it now the way we did it when I was
there. We had a crew of men that did work in the woods; road work and fire fighting and so on. That’s changed.
They have a crew of fire fighters but they don’t do any forestry work. I guess the government didn’t want to put
the money in that...It would have done better management than what they’re doing now...They got contractors
to do it and they do it their way.”
There were different types of land management.“Before, people had private woodlots, used them on a sustainable
basis...they’d cut some this year and some next year and that would keep it going for a lifetime...But now they
tend to clear cut it. I call it economic management. I don’t call it forest management anymore. I call it economic
management – they have to cut it, clean it off, get their money and pay for the machinery.” I think clear cutting
should be done only when it’s necessary. If the forest is in a mature state, it has to be cut to save it. “Selective
cutting can even be done by big corporations.”
“I attended Pine Grove School in Caledonia until grade seven and went to the high school.” I went to North Queens
School in 1954. A couple of years after I graduated, I went to Maritime Forest Rangers School in Fredericton,
N.B.
“Pine Grove was a two room school; the elementary side and the grade six to grade eleven on the other side. Pine
Grove was vastly different than when we went to the high school because it was heated with wood furnaces,
one for each section of the school. They didn’t have water; they had outside privies. When you wanted drinking
water we had to go to the neighbour’s with a bucket and get water and pour it in a cooler type thing and each
person was supposed to have their own drinking cup.”
“Before, people had
private woodlots,
used them on a
sustainable basis...
they’d cut some
this year and some
next year and that
would keep it going
for a lifetime...”
“I think we learned a lot anyway. One teacher lasted quite a long time. I
had one teacher in grade primer, first grade and then another teacher
she was there until I went over to the other side and there was one
teacher there until we went over to the high school.”
“We might get some education from the other grade – the lower grade
or the upper grade,” by listening to their lessons.
I don’t think these one and two room school houses would work today,
not with five and six classes in one room. Things are so different today
with computers and so on.
We did mostly outdoor activities.“In the summertime it was swimming,
playing in the lake. We played ball. Games in the wintertime. Played
hockey on the ice on the lake if it was fit to be on the lake. We had
maybe a pond somewhere. We built snow forts.” In the summer we
built forts in the woods. We played checkers and Chinese checkers,
Snakes and Ladders.
The biggest change I’ve seen in the community is the people. “Families
had four, five, six children. Now they have maybe one or two. Neighbours
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Eu g e n e P e nn e y
were neighbours. Now neighbours aren’t neighbours anymore.” Young people often stayed in the area because
there was work here that they could do. “Labour work or sawmill work or woods work or farming. Some, of course,
went away and got educated. Some stayed here. A lot of them stayed here.” Some people only had to work part of
the year, and that would tide them over.
“I can remember when there were a lot of small farms. People made their living, or part of their living, on a farm. Well,
those farms are gone now. Grown up in woods. A few are left.”
With bats, the disease came from afar. It came from Europe, I understand. “When it came out, they had no control
over that.” It was about two or three years ago that I saw a bat. There used to be a couple in the attic. But no more
now.
“The only chimney swifts are out at McGowan Lake. There’s an old blacksmith’s shop there...I’ve been there and seen
them.” I saw them two years ago. “I didn’t go to look this year.”
Monarch butterflies are “pretty near non-existent.” There were lots of them years ago. “Two years ago there were a
few here but this year I haven’t seen one.”
“Deer are here. They’re not as plentiful as they used to be, probably twenty years ago. But there are still deer here in
the backyard, across the road.”
I’ve seen no moose around here. I saw some that were run down on the road. That would have been twenty-five
years ago.
The changes in wildlife may be because “of habitat loss...due to the clear cutting. The changes in the land use. I
think there should be strict enforcement of the environmental laws...disposal of garbage and so on. Clear cutting.
Roadside cutting.”
“MTRI are making people aware of various things. A lot of subjects they work at and present to the public – seminars
are very informative and I think very useful.” The most recent seminar I attended, a lady gave a talk on a rare plant
in Brier Island. Diane LaRue, her name is.
“A lot of changes in my life and a lot of changes in this community...The worst change that has happened is lack of
employment There’s nothing- no employment for young people. So people move here but it’s more or less to retire.
Or to live in a very rural area and they commute to someplace else.”
Masonic Hall, Caledonia (c. 1930s)
Les Henley was a professional photographer
(1889-1951) who lived near Northfield and
took hundreds of photos of North Queens
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Eu g e n e P e nn e y
“There was a train that came in here from Bridgewater, New Germany area, New Germany subdivision up here. Even
in my time I think I can remember when it was still taking passengers. Not that I ever went on it but...I remember my
oldest brother when he went away, he went down to the station and got on the train to go away...Not many people
had cars. And they could get on the train and go to Bridgewater and do their business or shopping or whatever
they wanted to do and come back the same day...They sent out a lot of lumber...millions and millions and millions
of board feet of lumber and wood went out of here and very little of it was ever manufactured here.”
“I remember at one time they used to ship pigs. The Queens Co-op bought pigs and shipped them to Moncton, N.B.
where there were slaughter houses.” The fruit packing company wasn’t in existence in my time. The Co-op bought
products like hay, vegetables and wood and shipped it out.
“Before the railroad came in, people went to Liverpool by whatever means they could get there. After the railroad
came in, in 1903-’04, then the commerce kind of went to Bridgewater because it was easy to get there. The roads
weren’t very good. And you could go there by train, summer and winter, or any day.”
“In Caledonia there was the United Church and the Baptist Church. The Anglican Church was sometimes as active and
sometimes it wasn’t. But each church had a resident minister. And they had a large involvement of people because
one of the things they did was go to church...It’s changed to the fact that in Caledonia, the United Church, now and
for the last few years, has a part-time minister who lives somewhere else. He doesn’t live in the community.” The
Baptist Church, it has gone down a great deal in numbers, but they still have a resident minister. Their population
has decreased drastically.”The Anglican Church is the oldest church building but it has had its ups and downs. They
have a minister that comes from New Germany twice a month.
Caledonia first got a bank in 1918. That was the Bank of Nova Scotia. Then they built a permanent place in 1929, which
has since closed. It closed in March 2014. They also had North Queens Credit Union. That started at the Queens
Co-op more or less to serve their customers. “When I was around 14 years old, I joined the credit union. Take two
dollars and ride down to the Co-op and deposit it. Then it went to the drug store and I went to the drug store...After
that they bought their own building, then bought a modern building. Then they bought the Bank of Nova Scotia
building, until they closed...There is one ATM in the food store. But you have to pay to use it.”
People are upset about losing their bank and credit union. “Because it’s very inconvenient. They have to go to other
places.”
Caledonia has gone from being an independent place to not being able to live on your own. You have to travel for
many things.
A book that belonged to Eugene’s grandmother (cover on
left, title page on right)
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173
J o h n P e tti pa s
I was born in West Chezzetcook on November 18, 1916. My mother had a midwife
come to the house when I was born. I was one of a pair of twins but my twin
only survived a few days. I was the oldest child in the family of five children.
I grew up on a small farm. “That’s all there was around West Chezzetcook.”
Chezzetcook was divided by the harbour, so there was the east and the west. My mother married a man in East
Chezzetcook.
My father was a carpenter, but he would fish in the spring of the year. He would catch herring, mackerel and he handlined for codfish. He’d take “anything that would bite on a hook.” Near Chezzetcook Harbour there was a place called
Grand Desert…“that’s where most of the fishermen were fishing from.”
We had a vegetable garden and a cow for milk, and a horse or a pair of oxen to do the heavy work on the farm. The
farm had woodlots but we had to travel about two miles to get to it.“There was good timber on it...Whatever lumber
we needed anyway...whenever we needed boards or whatever we needed wood for, building anything, we just
hauled it in the mill and they sawed it up for us.” They used cross cut saws to get the wood. “Some of that wood
was hard to get through. I used to go help Dad, especially if he was going to build something. I was the oldest in
the family so John had to go.”
Nowadays, there is a lot of power stuff to cut the wood. “You can get a lot more wood cut today.”
When I went to school in Chezzetcook, “I was a bad guy. I didn’t go quite enough.” Teachers usually didn’t have the
type of training they have now. They would take a summer course at Normal College and then “when fall came and
school just started, they’d take some of them and put them on as teachers.”
Chezzetcook school was a two room building, but when I went to school, there were only enough pupils to use one
of the rooms. The school taught up to grade ten. I left school after getting grade 6. “I should have went more than
that, but you know when you’re young you don’t think of the future.”
“I went with Dad for a while. He was fishing the spring of the year and then when the weather got good...he used to
work carpenter work and I’d be left home in the summer.”
“I used to like to go
hunting....Sometimes you’d see a
moose or you’d see
a deer. Very seldom
that you’d see a
bear...”
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Dad picked blueberries and sold them to a peddler. “He mostly went to
Halifax from Chezzetcook...about twenty miles and he would sell the
berries...of course, he made a profit out of them.”
When I left home to work, I went to a fruit farm in Port Williams.“I worked
there for three years. That was my first job away from home.” George
Chase was my boss. There was a packing house for the apples. The
boats used to come into Port Williams and take the apples,“to England,
I guess.”
I did different jobs there. “Wherever you were needed in the apple
business, wherever you were needed or could do, that’s where you
went.” There were eighty acres of orchards. “There were gravensteins,
Bishop pippins...oh, there were about ten different varieties.”
J O H N PE T T I PAS
I remember getting up at five in the morning to go to the barn to milk the cows. I milked the fourteen cows by
hand.
There were two teamsters who worked with the horses when I first started to work on the Port Williams farm. “I was
only what you’d call the flunky....When one of the guys left…one of the teamsters left, I could go team.”
“When the war started, I worked a little while. Then I said, I told the old feller, I said, ‘I’m going in the army. ‘” I stayed
in the army for four years.
I was in the medical corps at the Twenty-fourth General Hospital in England. I was overseas for two and a half years.
The hospital was a casualty clearing station in Bramshaw, England. It was set up for D Day...“Whenever they brought
the wounded or people who got killed, they’d bring them over...The ones we could look after, we took after. The ones
that were too bad, well, they went somewheres else, wherever they could get the proper care.” Sometimes German
soldiers would be sent on the boats from France to England and we looked after them too.“They were all mixed up
– the Germans and our people. All in the same ambulance....They were looked after, and boy, some of them young
fellas that had been trained by...Hitler, and boy, even though they were wounded, they were quite saucy.”
When I returned from overseas, I went to Cornwallis. My first job there was as a night watchman, but I didn’t like that.
Then I became an orderly at the hospital. I wasn’t fond of that job either. Most of the patients were there to be
treated for TB. “We had a whole ward of them...that was about thirty guys.”
I rented a house in Deep Brook. My son now lives in that house.
The land itself, I don’t think it’s much different. Many of the apple orchards are gone now, though. Spraying the apples
was a big job. “The chemicals sometimes didn’t do you any good...as far as your breathing.” If we used lime and
sulphur, we’d wear a cloth over our faces.“The other stuff that we used in the tank, we didn’t bother as far as you’re
inhaling. The lime and suphur was too strong.”
“If your next door neighbour didn’t have a farm, you’d supply them with milk...Some people would take a horse and
wagon to go around and deliver milk. If someone’s cow was going to have a calf, and wasn’t producing any milk,“...
if you had some, you’d give them some
milk.” Then your neighbour would give
you milk if you ran out.
“I used to like to go hunting....Sometimes
you’d see a moose or you’d see a deer.
Very seldom that you’d see a bear....The
bear had to be doing something to not
notice you coming...You go in the woods
[today] and you don’t see as many as you
used to.”
Although you rarely see moose anymore,
there are deer.“All kinds...In Clementsport,
eight deers crossed the road in front of
us.”
A certificate John received for his 96th birtday from the Knights
of Columbus
One day in Annapolis Royal, I was waiting
outside the Home Hardware, and I
watched deer next to the road that
crossed the causeway. “By Jingo, they
waited until the car come and then they
crossed the road.”
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J O H N PE T T I PAS
I don’t think that Deep Brook, the village, hasn’t changed too much. But there are different people who have moved
in. I’ve noticed a lot of places for sale.“When the navy left [Cornwallis] the base they were hiring civilians to do the
jobs...Then people started moving into the empty houses.”
I used to work in the boiler rooms at Cornwallis.“There were three different boiler rooms...They had one on the south
side of the road, one about halfway down the base and one at the lower end.” They burned coal for years to run the
boilers. The coal came from Cape Breton by train. Tracks ran right up to the building. A large chute carried the coal
from the train to the boiler building. “One day, I was helping a guy and I looked back and he was gone. He went
right through the hole...It’s a good thing I was there so that I noticed so they dug the coal out...If he had been there
a little longer he wouldn’t have lived. He couldn’t breathe.”
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177
A g n e s Pott e r
I am an elder of my community. I was born October 26, 1939 in the Digby Hospital.
I had one brother. He died when he was twelve years old in the sanitarium. He was
recovering from TB but he got thrombosis and that killed him. That was a very sad
time for my family.
I also had a sister. The sister was a deaf-mute. She was very wise. We had our own little sign language to communicate.
“Indian Affairs come and felt that she should be in school. And I guess that was probably the right thing, I don’t know.
But anyway, she did go to school...up there to Halifax to school. And it was so hard for her that she’d cry every day.
She probably was nine. Eight or nine. So anyway, come close to a year and they told Mom, ‘I think we’re going to
have to send her home.’ You know, because she was so lonely and everything like that. And quick as that...she was
sort of coming along...Another week went by, I guess she got a little better...After a while she came home different
times, like Christmastime...and summertime. But after a while it got so that she wanted to go back Christmastime.
She wanted to go back from the summer. I’d have liked to had her home. Anyway she really liked it there...She got
used to the city and...there were people like her own...They were all deaf.”
When my sister would come home, she and I shared a double bed. “We’d have to be quiet. She’d show me the sign
language when you talk with two hands...She’d laugh once in a while. Something would be funny...She’d know
what was going on because I’d be telling her....I’d miss her when she went back because that left me all alone, like,
you know.” My sister died a few years ago.
When I was growing up, I lived next door to where I live now. We didn’t have running water or electricity. But my
home was a happy home.
I went to the Bear River Oakdene School. I went from primary to grade nine. It was a long walk from my home to the
school, especially if it was snowing or raining.
“One time I got a sled. I must have got it for Christmas or something...and I thought if I put my lunch there...well, it’s
all hills...and get on the sled there it’d save me a few minutes and time walking down...And this one day it was just
a glare and the...snowplow didn’t come up here...Going down that hill where the band office is now was nothing
but a glare of ice...So at the top of the hill I got on the sled and I made a run for it and I had my lunch stuffed under
here and away I went...And I got down to where the band office is now...and that sled was going so fast that it was
just jumping up and down...It went off in the bank...I bumped my head and half knocked myself out...my glasses...
broke...And I lost my lunch. I stuck my sled in the snow, I guess. There wasn’t as many people here either, like, you
know...I kept going to school...and I didn’t have any lunch. I think that Diana Wright said, ‘You come to my place.’ I
thought, ‘Oh no, I’m hungry.’ But she was a beautiful person and she’s still really kind to me today. She took me up
to her house and had a nice dinner.”
“My father was always taking me
in the woods and
showing me all the
nature and I learned
so much from my
father...”
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“My father was always taking me in the woods and showing me all the
nature and I learned so much from my father...And my mom too; she
was a good cook…and she was a wonderful mother. I also, down the
road, had a great-grandmother and her name was Madeline Harlow
and she was a very good woman. She never smoked or drank ...and
she had a beautiful heart on her. She’d have done anything for anyone,
you know, like to help them. She always made like baskets and crafts.
She sewed and she was a beautiful cook...I just loved her so much. She
would always teach us about God, the Creator.” She took them to the
Catholic church on the reserve. The priest would come every week or
so then.
“‘When I grow up’, I declared when I was a girl, ‘ I want to be just like my
grandmother.’ As I grew up and have grown I find that her moccasins
are very hard to fill.” She was my role model.
A g n e s Pott e r
My great-grandmother always seemed to have food cooked and if strangers came by, she would feed them. She often
offered people food. “When I grew up, food was precious...and she worked very hard to provide for them.”
Life isn’t so much about sharing what one has anymore, not like it used to be.
Even though we didn’t have things like electric lights, we had entertainments like playing cards. My father was quite
musical so evenings he would play the fiddle. We had a guitar and I could chord along with him on the guitar. I
learned to play the fiddle too and then sometimes I would play the fiddle and my father would play the guitar.
Then I got a small accordion that was ordered from Simpson’s. I played a lot of music on it.
“At school, we’d stand up and sing...‘God Save the King’ so I’d go there [to my home] and practice ‘God Save the King’
every day. And every chance I’d get I’d be squeezing on that thing and going on “God Save the King’...Mom said I
never got tired of ‘God Save the King’. Eventually I did manage to get through all of ‘God Save the King’ and went
on to other musical things.
“My father used to do a lot of guiding. They’d have to carry over the land and go on the water...They used to take a lot
of, you know, wealthy people.. a lot of times it’s what we lived on...And he’d cut pulp wood here on the reserve...He
had to be just like a horse because he didn’t have money [for] a tractor or anything like that. So he made himself
a tepaqan and he’d pull on that thing like a horse would...He didn’t have a power saw. It was just these saws. So
he’d have to go through all this sawing with whatever kind of saw it was and he’d get the logs or the pulp wood
down ..to get them out so the truck could come to, you know, pick them up. Well, he’d drag them out there with
that sled.”
The tepaqan looked like two skis with a box sitting on top. It was braced in the middle with an X of timber.
My mother and I used to go into the woods too and help peel the pulp. My father would build a fire and place the
wood near the fire to heat it up so it wouldn’t be so hard to peel. The peeled pulp was worth more money.
On a Sunday afternoon we might go up to the ridge and go swimming. My father was an excellent swimmer. He was
also a beautiful skater. He could cut a figure eight so well, even in the wobbly old skates he had.
Father had been brought up in Caledonia. He must have gone to Boy Scouts because he knew how to tie all the knots,
do the different techniques, and he taught us these things.
I married young. I took adult education after I was married and got my grade twelve.
Nowadays I think things are so different at school.
I look at my grandchildren’s work and I wonder
about the math especially. For subjects like
geography they have all the computers and they
don’t have to do all kinds of memorizing.
There had been a band school that used to go up to
grade six. The student enrolment went too low.
I learned First Nations’ language when I was young.
My parents both spoke the language, as well as my
great-grandmother. I didn’t use it much in my own
home but my daughter picked it up.
Agnes in ceremonial dress, which was made in Milbrook
I had six children, four boys and two girls. One of
my children lives in Bridgetown and one lives in
Greenland but the rest live on the reserve. “That’s
what I live for - my family. Of course, I put God first
in my life and next to that is my family. We were
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A g n e s Pott e r
very close. And my grandchildren are too, like, you know.”
One of my daughters was the chief of the reserve. There had been other female chiefs, such as Sherry Pictou and
Leona Pictou. Chiefs are nominated and then the band votes on the chief. The term of office is two years. “It’s a
very busy and demanding job.” There were about 200 members of the Bear River First Nation reserve. The chief
has three councillors to help her.
During feasts and so on, the chief would wear her leather ribbon shirt and skirt. She’d sing and drum and she believed
in the spirituality. She could also do Christian things at the church. Like me, she intertwined the faith with the native
spirit.
We had a family tradition of one person cooking a big meal, like a big pot of stew, and invite the rest of the family
over to share it. I have done that only a few times since my husband died. Now my daughter, the band chief, has
taken up the tradition.
“Normally we gather at the cultural center... It has a beautiful stage there and a place where they can cook meals...
We do have our Christmas dinner or Thanksgiving or...community feasts. And any presentations or anything that
comes here.”
“The community feast now, a lot of them bring moose meat or deer meat...Of course we’d have vegetables and we’d
have lusgnign. That is a bread that we’ve always used...It’s almost like a biscuit...My father used to make that all the
time. Of course, mom did too but my father mostly done that.”
Sometimes at home, we’d have salt pork. And we’d dip the lusgnign into the gravy and it would be a feast. “I’d like to
eat it now. I have all I want to eat but I’d love to have that.”
My mother would cook potatoes and turnips with pork fat on the top and mash it up, and have turnip hash. My dad
liked any type of soup, like bean soup or pea soup. It didn’t cost much to buy a package of split peas. Baked beans
and scalloped potatoes was another meal we often had. My mother made lovely bread to go with the meals.
Sometimes neighbours would come join us, and they thought they were having a feast. Unless my grandfather
brought us moose meat, we wouldn’t have that very often. We would more often have deer or rabbit. My greatgrandmother sometimes cooked porcupine. She baked it in the oven. It was like a delicacy to her. I have eaten it
and liked the taste.
I remember my father going trout fishing in the brooks. It was a big treat to have trout.
My father would also snare rabbits. My sister and I went with him one day to check the snares. “Lo and behold, there
was a rabbit there...[Dad] was right happy because that was our supper...He got a stick. [He used to call me Molene.]
He said, ‘Molene, here, hit that thing on the head.’”
“‘Hit it on the head!’ I thought, ‘ That poor little thing!’ I’m not a hunter...You always obeyed your parents. I was taught
that. And I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’...I was only a kid but I was terrified because you had to obey them. I
thought, ‘I can’t hit that thing.’ And I started crying...So he made a sign to my sister, ‘Go hit that thing.’ She went
and grabbed that stick he had and hit the thing on the head and after that she always teased me...She didn’t mind
doing that at all. She had a different kind of heart. I didn’t even like to trout fish or whatever.”
One time I saw a snake while walking through the woods. I started to scream and clung onto my father. He said it was
only a snake. He joked that the snake wouldn’t hurt him because I was on top of him, protecting him.
He would go along in the woods and pick a fern and on the end would be like a little banana. They would taste so
good. He would only do so many though. He would never take more than he needed. “We’ve got to save some for
tomorrow,” he’d say.
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A g n e s Pott e r
I notice a lot of clear cutting in the wilderness. “The forest just seems to be chopped down and there’s no woods.
When my husband and I would drive back in that area,...there wouldn’t be hardly any birds ‘way back in there....
There would be hardly any animals either. So I feel that their territory’s... been taken from them. And I feel that’s why
they come out so close now...There’s nothing to see a bear up and down here somewhere. I feel that’s why they
come out near homes...because their land is sort of taken from them...I know in time the forest will likely grow up
again.” It makes me sad to see all the trees down.
I haven’t seen bats in a long time. We had a camp on a lake and when we first went there, there were all kinds of
bats flying around. I don’t own the camp any longer but I haven’t seen any bats for a long time. I also haven’t seen
monarch butterflies for a while.
I think there is so much mercury and other pollutants in the water it is affecting animals.
We should fight against fracking. “I don’t believe in that.”
A few years ago, Frank Meuse was chief and I lived off the reserve. He felt I’d make a wonderful elder. I was offered a
house. So I decided to move to the reserve and I was appointed as an elder. I had to have respect, be kind to people
and be a mentor.
I have been involved in Native Women. My mother before me also was involved. As time went on, I was appointed
elder of Nova Scotia Women. I went to Ottawa with them and was appointed elder of the eastern provinces. I have
been doing that for a long time. We were involved in the missing and murdered native women. That was very
important to me.
I was asked to be on the Women’s Advisory Council in Debert and Truro. I liked the idea and got involved in that.
Collection of photos of Agnes in ceremonial dress
181
V ir g ini a ( ‘ Gini ’ ) D awn Prou l x
“I was an Adams, daughter of Ruby (Zwicker) and Frank Adams. I was born in Digby
hospital but I lived here in Deep Brook. My family lived just down across the
field from this house. My 5 acre lot is part of that original property. In 1970, my
parents sold the house and property and retired to their winterized camp on
Trout Lake on the South Mountain in New Albany. At that time, I was married and
living in Clementsvale. Mom and Dad, at ages 80 and 84, respectively, returned
to Deep Brook and built this house on a portion of the property they had sold
years before. Sadly, in 2001, my dad and my husband died in the same month. Within weeks, I came down here to
look after Mom. When she had to go into a nursing home, I stayed on here to look after the house. When she died,
I bought the place. “So I’m back where I started.”
“This part of Deep Brook is called Pinkney’s Point. If you look at a map, this whole area, right out to the shore, down
to the Bear River and halfway to Waldeck, is known as Pinkney’s Point. It was my third great-grandfather, Charles
Pinkney, who bought the land in 1787. His descendants, including my Adams family, have lived here continuously
ever since. That’s well over two hundred years...It makes me feel good. I have roots.”
“We worked as a family together. Four girls, no boys, so we were initiated very early on into men’s work. And not only
were we expected to do it but we were expected to do it right. If we weren’t doing a job efficiently, or safely, Dad
would step in. ‘Now, Gini, let me show you how to do that right.’ Suppose I was raking hay with a hand-rake with
the wooden teeth, I’d be throwing it out and dragging it back. Of course, that’s the way you break teeth! So, he
would demonstrate, ‘You take it this way and just keep it skimming above and bring it this way’...Now, I can rake
hay with a wooden toothed rake, without breaking any teeth! We did everything that a boy would be expected
to do in a farm situation. Shovelling gravel was another skill that I was taught. Years later, I was helping Dad and
his Trout Lake neighbours haul gravel to keep the road repaired. (The Dept. of Highways didn’t help them at that
time.) The next day, one neighbour said, ‘Frank, I’ve never seen a woman shovel gravel like that.’ Dad simply said,
‘I taught her well!’”
“We helped out. We were expected to and I didn’t mind. I loved the outside. I could have been a boy easily. When Dad
was working on cars and stuff, I’d have to run for tools...or if he was doing the plumbing, I had to know the tools.
‘Get me a Stillson wrench. Get me a Robertson screwdriver,’ or whatever. Later on, that knowledge came back to
help me when I was alone with our four kids while my husband, Joe, was in the Navy. He was away for three to five
months at a time. We had a seven room home in Clementsvale. I could do the plumbing and electrical work and
grow a garden...I was trained well at home. As I said, my siblings and I all had our chores to do. We didn’t argue, we
just did them.”
“Everyone had a
family farm and
livestock. They had
to have enough
pasture and a hayfield to maintain
their animals yearround”
182
“Growing up in the ‘40s, we had a farm - a garden, cow, pig and hens. One of
the first chores I can remember is collecting eggs in a basket from the hen
house. They’d be all warm and nice when I’d take them in to my mom.”
“We raked hay, pitched hay, tramped hay. On some days in July and August,
about three o’clock in the afternoon, my two older sisters and I would
be sent out to the garden with a clothes basket and we’d fill that clothes
basket with green peas. We’d start shelling them as soon as we had them
picked....I don’t remember who dug the potatoes...but we’d have Dutch
Mess. It’s sort of like a hodge-podge...but it was just peas and new potatoes
and cream and butter...It was so good! For a family of six, we needed that
full basket of peas because it was a favourite meal.”
“We had a milking cow, so the whole property, except for the wet places (the
runs, we called them) was all cleared and it was either hayfield or pasture.
Eventually, because we just had one cow, some of that pasture grew up
with alders. Basically, at one time, it was all open here. I could look down
this way, and see the railway track. There were very few trees except for the
Gini Prou l x
apple orchards on every homestead. I’ve looked at old pictures lately and it was all open fields here. Everyone had a
family farm and livestock. They had to have enough pasture and a hayfield to maintain their animals year-round.”
“One thing that was nice when I was a kid – I was allowed to wander. And I’m still a wanderer. Today, it seems that
kids have to be supervised and entertained... – inside a fence or on a tether or Mom has to be with them. Before I
was going to school, I could wander over this entire property which would go out to where my driveway is here
and a quarter of a mile down the road. I was taught to be careful, you know, but it was a nice sense of freedom that
I had. And I still love to wander!”
“My dad farmed but that wasn’t the way he made his living. It was sort of a self-sufficient farming operation, but then,
he always had an outside job. The earliest one I can remember was at the gypsum plant down here by the shore
– a storage shed. The gypsum was mined in Hants County and shipped out of Hantsport. In the winter, when the
Avon River froze up, they’d bring the gypsum here by rail. The railcars went right into the storage shed and dumped
out at the bottom. My dad operated a crane, loading the gypsum onto the conveyer belt to load the ships. The
gypsum boats would come in on high tide. They’d have to have them loaded and ready to go… I don’t know – on
the next tide or the same tide.”
“Dad had to work some nights and he’d come home after a windy night and go to bed. Sometimes, when he’d wake
up, his eyes would be plastered shut and Mom would have to soak them open with a warm, wet facecloth because
of the gypsum dust getting in his eyes. Back in those days, it’s highly unlikely that he wore a mask or any protective
gear. In later life he developed COPD and had to use puffers. I wonder how much damage was done by that gypsum
dust. Of course, he smoked cigarettes and an old corn-cob pipe for over half of his life. In spite of it all, he lived to
the grand old age of 94. He was tough!”
“Mom was great. I’ve never seen anyone bake bread like she did. Dad wouldn’t have baker’s bread in the house.
‘That’s nothing but fluff.’ So she never had the pleasure of going to buy baker’s bread. Every three days she’d bake
four loaves of bread. She’d pack five lunches out of that...She always had to make sure that she had cookies and
something for dessert, you know. Sometimes I’d get home from school – high school – and she’d say, ‘I haven’t
got anything for dessert,’ so she’d whip up some cupcakes or maybe she’d make what she called cottage pudding
sauce to put on the freshly baked cupcakes. That was a darned good dessert.”
“She stayed at home and she worked in the fields and the gardens just like we did. She loved to hunt. Her dad was a
guide in New Albany and she said that when she was ten years old, he taught her how to shoot, trap and paddle
– all the skills that she’d need to be self-sufficient in the woods.”
“We never had a canoe. Dad was scared of canoes...I didn’t learn to paddle until I was an old lady. I never saw him swim
in my life. I’m sure he could but he just didn’t trust canoes. He had boats – rowboats – and a motorboat eventually,
and loved to fish and hunt. That’s one reason they got along so well because they both loved to fish and hunt. In
their retirement years, Dad had a Rover and they’d go through the back roads. Sometimes they’d get a little bit lost
but they always came back. When he couldn’t walk very well,
they’d drive down woods roads and he’d see a deer up front. He’d
just open the door and lay the rifle on the door and he’d get his
deer that way. This used to be on back roads, not well-travelled
roads. Fishing…on Mother’s Day, that was Mom’s Mother’s Day
treat. He’d take her fishing.”
Mom loved to garden. She had her flower gardens. I have a picture
of her first flower garden. It was probably about 12 or 15 feet
long and a foot wide and it was at the foot of the hill that was
going up this way. Totally barren hill; everything was mowed
or in pasture. It looked so small and insignificant but that was
her first garden and she was so proud of it. She landscaped the
property next door where they lived when I was growing up.
Then they went to Trout Lake and she landscaped that place
beautifully. Then she came back here at age eighty and started
landscaping this. What you see here now is what she started.
She planned everything pretty well so things could grow and
Gini’s parents’ home in Deep Brook (the
wood piled by the house was hand cut
and split by her dad)
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Gini Prou l x
expand and still be safe. But I wish she could see it now because it’s getting a little bit overgrown and I’m having
to start taking a few things out because they’ve gotten too big...That bank was a bulldozed bank and what you
see there now is what she planted – rhododendrons, azaleas, rose bushes and pines. She brought small hemlocks
home, too...She would just go out there early, early in the morning, just daylight, and work until Dad got up. Then
she’d come in and get his breakfast. She just loved it.
“I almost didn’t buy the house because I thought there were too many gardens to tend here. I would much prefer to
be out in the woods exploring...I’d be tied here with these gardens. But then someone came in before it was even
on the market and said, ‘Oh, yes, if I had this place, yeah, I’d clean all those bushes off and I’d just mow that.’ And I
thought, ‘Oh my goodness. If we sell the property, I’d have no control over what happened to Mom’s gardens.’”
By that time the gardens had become overgrown. She couldn’t get outside to work in them and I couldn’t leave her.
The only garden I could work in was near the house so I could look in here and see her sitting in her chair and know
that she was where she was supposed to be...She didn’t always mind. She’d forget that she was supposed to stay
there and there was a danger of her falling. Anyway, after she died, I hired people to come in and help me and we
just redid all the gardens, but planted the same things back. “When I’m in the garden, she’s very close.”
“We always were taught values. You know, Dad would talk about something that had happened in the village, or that
somebody had done. He’d say, ‘You know, that’s not right.’ And that always stuck. At suppertime, we all sat down
together around the kitchen table. No sitting watching television – actually, we didn’t have TV until I was in grade
twelve – but we all gathered for meals. There was a time that I was listening to a radio story on our big Crosley
cabinet radio when we were called to supper. I said to Mom, ‘I want to find out what happens.’‘Well,’ she said, ‘okay
but as soon as it’s over, you come to the table.’ Well, when everybody else sat down to the supper and I wasn’t there,
Dad said, ‘Where’s Gini?’...Mom covered for me.”
“We always ate well. It wasn’t fancy food but there was always plenty to go around. Many times, just a big pan of
potato hash, but lots, so we could go back for seconds. No one ever left that table hungry. And stew. Mom loved to
make good stews. My sisters and I used to go skating on the pond down here. We’d have stew for supper and Mom
would set it out in the unheated porch to cool and leave it there for overnight. We’d come in from skating– three
hungry girls – and we’d smell that stew. We’d just pick it up on the way in, put it on the stove, warm it up and
probably clean it out!”
“We didn’t have a deep freeze so we didn’t kill an animal for beef for the winter but we had Ralph Jefferson and Mr.
Benson who delivered meat door-to-door. That was where we’d get our meat twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays,
I think. Ralph had a half-ton truck with a nice, clean white-painted box on the back. The back door of the box, made
of hardwood, when opened became his cutting board where he’d cut the meat to order. He used a stick with a hook
on it to reach right to the back of the box to grab a piece of meat and haul it out. Mom usually got pork or beef
roasts and steaks. She used to make what we called meat pie. She used quite thick round steak cut into cubes. She
cooked it in water with seasoning, onion and sliced potatoes (no other vegetables). She thickened the gravy then
she put biscuit dough on top and put it in the oven...Chow pickles with that...it was just the best meal ever.”
“She used to have the old Mason jars with the wire bales and each one would have to be checked to see if it was air
tight. You’d fill it with boiling water, put one rubber ring on and clamp it down. Then you’d turn it upside down and
shake it. If the boiling water went spewing out it was not airtight. So, then, you’d have to put another ring on...or
otherwise change a cover. I used these the first ten years of my married life so I know it was a pain. But she canned
corn, peas and beans and they had to be done in a hot water bath for about three or four hours in the middle of
the summer. You can just imagine the heat from the wood stove to keep that fire going and the boiler boiling.”
“In the cellar – her shelves were just like a picture. She’d can peaches, pears, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries...
and beet and other pickles, jams and jellies. We ate well off of those shelves. We grew potatoes, carrots, turnip and
cabbage for winter storage. With the meat man coming twice a week and the fish man on a regular basis there was
always a good variety of wholesome food.”
“In the spring, we’d love to go fishing for trout and in the fall there was always deer meat...She always made mincemeat
and corned venison...I think we used my grandmother’s “quick pickle” recipe...There was salt peter, sugar and coarse
salt. The sweetness gave it a beautiful flavour. You could cook it right in the pickle if you used it within two or three
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Gini Prou l x
days. But if you left it in the pickle a week, then you’d drain it and boil it in fresh water.”
I used to make it when my husband hunted. I’d cook it at home for him to take to camp. Then he’d make a poor man’s
stew (all the stew veggies without the meat) and have the cold, corned venison with it. All the guys that hunted
with him wanted that recipe!
My aunt used to can deer meat. She used a pressure cooker and a canner.
We never went hungry. At Thanksgiving and Christmas we’d kill a rooster. We raised a pig and butchered that in the
fall.
I never learned to milk the cow like my eldest sister, Shirley. “Once, I was asked to put the cow in the barn. It was my
first and last! I was really scared of her. She had very sharp horns and even the neighbours were scared of her. The
local men wouldn’t help Dad if she got loose. So, Dad was busy and I guess he wasn’t thinking. He said, ‘Gini, you
want to put Bambi in for me, please? I’m busy here.’ And all I had to do...the fence came here and the gate went on
an angle to the corner of the barn. The stable door was right next to the gate. All I had to do was swing that gate
wide and stand and hold my hand out toward the barn door. And for anybody else she’d just come out and go
right in. She knew. But she saw this skinny little shape – this kid - out there and she said, ‘Oh, boy. This is my time!’
She just lowered her head and shook her horns like this and I ran and hid under the car. I left the gate wide open!
She went running around the village probably for the next two hours. So, needless to say, I didn’t get asked to put
the cow in again!”
“Planting the garden was a family affair...My dad always had to be in charge of planting the garden (even though
Mom, I’m sure, could have done just as good a job on her own!) So we couldn’t plant until after supper because he
was working days...Mom would have soaked the peas overnight (so they’d get off to a good start once they were
planted). It would be early May and it would be getting dark and cold. I remember…as a teenager planting the
last of the peas and my hands were all muddy and frozen. When I came into the house, I can remember, so clearly,
saying, ‘Boy, when I grow up I’m never having a garden!’ The first year I was away from home, I planted a garden...
about three feet by eight feet...Since then, I’ve only missed one year. I think this year was my 57th or 58th garden
that I’ve planted... I love doing it. And I love the results...When I think of the hours that I’ve spent in the garden…all
worthwhile.”
When I had cataract surgery I couldn’t bend over for a week. I kept looking at the gardens and thinking they needed
to be looked after.
“I went to the Deep Brook two-room school from grade primary until grade eight. That was two miles and we walked
that morning and night. It kept us in good shape. I think if kids had to walk more nowadays there wouldn’t be so
many chubby kids... I’ve been looking at some of our old school photos… There were no obese kids.”
“We just had a reunion for this little elementary school two years ago. I ended up chairman of the organizing committee.
It was not an easy task but it was well worth it. We got in touch with a lot of people – about 150, I think –it wasn’t
for students of any particular year. If you ever went there and you were still living, you were invited.”
“Then in grade nine I started in Annapolis. I went nine, ten, eleven and twelve at Annapolis Royal Academy (at that
time)...I got into sports and I was in track and field, soccer and basketball. Volleyball a little bit...” Some days after
school I’d practice for an hour and then come home on the Clementsvale bus. I’d get off at Clementsport Square
and then head for home. Dad was working at Cornwallis at the time, which was two miles this way. If I boogied up
the Clementsport hill, I might catch a ride with him when he left from work at 5 o’clock. (No way would he go and
look for me!) If I was there, I got a ride. If I wasn’t, I walked. When I missed him I walked another three miles home. So
I’d play basketball for an hour and then walk 5 miles to get home. It kept me pretty slim. I loved the team sports.”
“I was president of the students’ council in grade twelve. (In those days [called] prime minister) That was quite an
experience. We had a symphony orchestra visiting from Halifax. It was my first official duty (or challenge) to thank
them. We had to walk down to the community center for the event. I suddenly got ‘very ill’ and I told my teacher, ‘I
think I’m going to have to go to the clinic. I’m not feeling well.’ ‘You can do it, Gini. You can do it,’ he said. ‘Someday
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Gini, you could be a great leader.’…I have no idea what I said in the way of ‘Thanks’ but I got through it.”
“In the mid-sixties, they changed to the “new math” when my son, Daniel, was in grade two. That was a real challenge!
His teacher didn’t like, or understand it, so she wasn’t good at getting it across to the kids...What I’m finding is…they
say, ‘Well, this system isn’t working so let’s try this.’ They try that for a while and then all of a sudden, ‘Well, maybe
this isn’t working either, so we’ll try this.’ It must be so hard for teachers and students. They end up at the end of
the day, Boom, no-one knows what they’re doing...I guess the government changes and the minister of education
changes.”
“I’ve been thinking that mental arithmetic has totally gone out the door with young kids but my daughter, Lisa, who
graduated in the ‘70s, found differently. She collects monarch butterfly larvae – caterpillars - and raises them to
the adult stage. If you leave the larva in the wild there’s only a 1% to 3% chance that it will make it through to an
adult monarch. She was telling me that she took some monarchs to Clark Rutherford the other day…they had a
lively session discussing the butterflies’ life history and some hazards they face. The kids were asking some really
good questions. She told them how many caterpillars she had collected and how many had died or met with some
misfortune before successfully reaching the adult stage. Then she said, ‘I wonder what percentage of the larvae
reached the adult stage...I haven’t been able to figure out what percentage that is?’ One young grade five lad put
up his hand and came up with the answer. She said, ‘I was so pleased, and surprised, that he could do that.’”
Lisa got some information from Monarch Teachers’ Network to leave with the teachers to help them integrate the study
of monarchs into their lessons. Lisa raised at least 28 monarchs this year – she collected more than 30 caterpillars.
She puts them in little cages and feeds them milkweed. She’s taken them to Milford House, the school and the
Historic Gardens to help spread the word about this species of concern.
“One change in the community, for me, is that I don’t know where anybody lives anymore. It used to be that there
were families that had been here forever and ever and they just subdivided the home lot and children would build
on the adjacent lot...I guess it was when men and women came back from the war that the self-sustaining family
farm went out the door. They came back and got paying jobs...The war created jobs and people got used to having
a wage. That was a lot better than eking out a living off of a farm and maybe subsidizing it with a bit of off-farm
work. So you saw the farms going. Barns are falling down because it costs too much to keep them up. The open
fields have all grown back in again.”
“Look at the big picture. The first settlers came and cleared those fields. They stayed cleared until the 1950s. Then
they started growing up again as families scattered. More people were going to university and trade schools and
finding work elsewhere.”
“Of course, we had Cornwallis here. The naval base was here, so strangers were moving into the community. The local
girls were marrying the sailors. I was one of them.”
“My dad worked at various jobs, usually as a mechanic, driver or heavy equipment operator. He was only unemployed
once that I can ever remember. He had to draw unemployment insurance and he was so ashamed. It was welfare
as far as he was concerned. At that time you had to have a neighbour sign a paper confirming that you were
unemployed. He went to a neighbour and told him the situation and asked, ‘Would you sign this for me please?’
After that, he’d send me with the form to get it signed. He was just so ashamed.”
“Dad was a ‘Jack of all trades’ (including mechanic) so he went out and bought a car that needed work. He worked
every day – and I was there with him, holding the light or stepping on the brake or whatever. He fixed that car up
and sold it so he’d be able to ‘get off this damned unemployment insurance’...He wanted to work. He had a good
work ethic. He instilled that in us too. My sisters and I, we often laugh – we are not comfortable to just sit down and
hold our hands – you don’t do that. You’re knitting or you’re doing patchwork or you’re braiding a rug. You know,
you don’t just sit!”
“When HMCS Cornwallis Naval Training Base was started in Deep Brook in1942, Dad got a job there right away. He
worked at Cornwallis until they closed in ‘46. He worked elsewhere until, in ‘49, the base reopened and he went
back as a driver and heavy equipment operator. He worked there until he retired in 1967...Most families worked at
the base; that was the big employer.”
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“Lots of times military people would retire and stay here. They’d have their pension but often went back to work at
Cornwallis as a civilian. It was good for the local economy until CFB Cornwallis closed in 1994.”
“Plans were made for an industrial park on Waldeck Road – a tire recycling plant was going to be a big employer.
They had a serious fire and went out of business. I don’t think that there was any government (public) money that
went into that. They did that on their own and went under on their own. Then the municipality, I think, paid to
have that building made over into a call center...I don’t know what kind of deals these call centers make but the
government was paying part of the wages for a certain length of time...as soon as the government money dried
up, they moved out. So that building is sitting up there empty now and a lot of the people who worked there have
had to go elsewhere. A lot of the local young people are working out west. My son’s in Calgary now. He went out
in the ‘70s and he’s worked there ever since.”
“I have four children and at one time, in the ‘80s, all four of them were out there. That was the land of milk and honey.
There was always a job. It might not be the best job in the world but you could get a job of you were willing to
work. That’s continued pretty much.”
“There’s no big employer here now, although Cornwallis is doing quite well, considering. I felt badly when Shaw went
out...A lot a people got work there. The seaweed plant seems to be doing okay. I don’t like the smells that come out
of it. I wouldn’t want to live in Cornwallis. There’s quite an odour.”
“I haven’t seen a bat here. There was bat poo at the camp the last time I was there. But there weren’t any bats roosting
above where the poo was...they apparently had died or moved on. We had a steel roof put on the camp and it has
these ridges that run up and down. I’m pretty sure there was a bat in there when we were at camp on the Labour
Day weekend but there are not the numbers that we used to have there. I know about the white-nose fungus.”
“On the way to camp I’ll occasionally see chimney swifts flying around a lot of dead trees in a beaver pond...I don’t
know if they roost in those dead trees...or are hunting for insects around the wet area.”
“I would like to look around my camp more for Blanding’s [turtles]. I’m very interested...I volunteer at MTRI helping to
monitor rare plants. I work with Diane LaRue. She’s an associate researcher there. She’s doing a research project on
Geum peckii – Eastern Mountain Avens. That’s an endangered plant in Nova Scotia – well, in the world. It only grows
in two places in the world. One of them was always Brier Island and one is in New Hampshire, in the mountains
there. Well, Gini with her wandering, found a new patch of it over on Digby Neck...So I was one excited little gal
when I found that!”
“The reason I was in that bog, along with Ruth Newell, an Acadia University botanist, I had received a research grant
from the Nova Scotia Museum to study the threatened Golden Crest on Digby Neck...It’s an Atlantic Coastal Plain
plant. It’s related to iris and has a silvery, 2-foot stem with a yellow flower cluster at the top. Historically, it had grown
in large numbers in the bogs but a 1987 report considered that it was no longer present. A local organization
on the Neck wanted me to go look for it. I had never seen it before so I did a little research and went out with
some members of the organization and we actually found it. I was looking for it in new places when I found that
endangered Eastern Mountain Avens.”
“Later that summer, we had some field assistants with us...they had never seen the Geum, so I showed them the
normal plants they would find in a bog. I said, ‘Now if you find something that looks like this (Geum peckii), you
holler.’ It wasn’t long and I heard a hoot...We counted 300 flowering stems in the patch we found that day. I go back
and monitor that population every year to see how it’s doing. The first little patch that I found was only about 10
inches across – it was just a miracle that I came across it then. If it doesn’t flower it’s hard to find it in that big bog...
This year, in August, I had a compass bearing to where this little patch should be, so I got to the end of my paces
and it wasn’t there. But I looked around a bit and there it was - flowering. Well, I was one happy camper that day.
We were able to get a GPS reading on it...We’ll go back and count them each year.”
“Diane (LaRue) got the same grant from the Nova Scotia Museum...she’s doing propagation trials. She just got her
report done a few days ago and sent it to me...This new knowledge will be useful in the ongoing work of the Eastern
Mountain Avens Recovery Team. The Nature Conservancy of Canada owns a good portion of Eastern Mountain
Avens habitat on Brier Island so they’re doing their own research on the plant. Diane’s work will tie in nicely with
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theirs because she’s looking into the biology of the plant.”
“At MTRI, I’m registered as a volunteer. Talking about the monarch butterfly…Lisa came to me shortly after Brennan
Caverhill from Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute (MTRI) visited Clark Rutherford school and spoke to the students
about endangered species. He urged each school to come up with a related project. Lisa came to me to ask what
they should do. I suggested a butterfly garden. So that’s what they did. The kids got involved. The Grade 5 students
dug the garden themselves and loved it. One kid who usually had difficulties in school said, ‘Ms. Proulx, I could
just do this all day long!’ The next year Lisa was so happy that she did a little ‘happy dance’ because there were
monarch larvae in the butterfly garden. The kids helped with the release of the butterflies after they emerged from
the chrysalises in the fall. They planted swamp milkweed although the butterflies prefer the common milkweed.
When she’s out collecting, she’ll get the common milkweed if she can find fresh stuff for the caterpillars to eat. It’s
very rewarding for her. Last year the monarchs were at a very low ebb but the numbers are much better this year.
It was feared that they were on a downhill run.”
“We need to get people involved” to help the environment.“I know for myself, I’ve been into rare plants since the ‘70s
or ‘80s...I’d just give anything to be out in the woods. That’s almost why I didn’t buy this place because I’m always
out exploring new territories, new habitats, to see what might be there. From the ‘80s through the ‘90s, I discovered
over 30 rare plants in Digby and Annapolis County that had not been reported.”
Roland and Smith’s ‘Flora of Nova Scotia’ (1969) has distribution maps with dots indicating where each species has
been collected. There were maps for many species with blank spots in Digby and Annapolis Counties. I said, “Well,
that grows here.” So I’d collect a specimen and take it to the museum. Over time, I submitted well over a hundred
specimens. When ‘Roland’s Flora of Nova’ (1998), edited by Marian Zinck, was published, Digby and Annapolis
counties were much better represented. I said, ‘Those are ‘Gini dots’.’ I was included in the credits along with all the
professionals.
Pixie Williams was another amateur botanist that was recognized by the N.S. Museum. She lives in Cape Breton. She
and I are mentioned on their website.
My daughter and a girl in Bear River and one in Clementsport are learning from me. I try to help and encourage them.
Sometimes people will send me digital photos and in the middle of winter, I can check my field guides and identify
plants. It’s nice to be able to enlarge the photos on the monitor and see the plant details.“It’s good for science and
it’s good for me.”
“I took the Flora of Nova Scotia course at Acadia. I have grade twelve. I loved the sciences in high school but I was just
tired of studying and I didn’t want to go on to university. Ruth Newell had been telling me about the Flora of Nova
Scotia course. It’s a third year biology course so there were prerequisite courses that I would have needed to get in
there. After working with Ruth on the Golden Crest project for the summer, she knew the extent of my botanical
knowledge. She convinced the professor that I didn’t need those other courses so I got in.”
“I just loved that course. I hated to see it end...The first five or six weeks of the course...we went by bus to different
habitats. I was 61 and I had difficulty keeping up to Sam Van der Cluett…he had legs about six feet long! We went
to a bog, a salt marsh, Cape Split and the Kingston sand barrens.”
The sand barrens remains one of my favorite habitats and one that’s rapidly disappearing. I’ve spent time monitoring
two special plants there: the endangered Rockrose and threatened Hudsonia. I’ve talked to the ATV groups in the
Kingston area to use a lower trail, rather than travelling where most of plants grow. Many of the ATVers co-operated
but, then, a bush hog was taken through there and I’m not happy about that. I’ve asked the Dept. of Transport not
to take heavy equipment in there. When that sand is disturbed it blows and/or washes out.
A year or so ago, a passing lane was added to that section of Highway 101 that passes through the Kingston sand
barrens. I was driving through and saw a transit set up where the rare plants grew so I pulled over. Nobody was
around but there was a lot of expensive equipment left unattended. I thought that if I stood near that equipment
it wouldn’t be long before someone would show up. Sure enough, they came along and I told them there were
rare plants there. They said they had taped off some places where these plants were growing and that they’d work
around them.“It was just disgusting the way they did it. They bulldozed the whole sandy bank and left a little 3 by
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5 foot block untouched. I doubt that the rare plants will survive in that little bit of habitat. Fortunately, they didn’t
alter the bank on the opposite side of the road where the larger population of rare plants occur. However, that side
is threatened by the ATV trail and the bush hog damage. ”
“I go to bat for rare plants. That’s one of the things that I do. If I find them on private property, I’ll find the owner
and I’ll say, ‘You know what you’ve got here? This is special.’ So they’ll know it’s there and, hopefully, they’ll not do
anything to harm it. They’ve always been very good and they’ve never kicked me off their property...I think I have
pretty good PR with them. That approach seems to work.”
“We even brought people all the way from the States. Americans owned the property on Digby Neck where the
Golden Crest and Eastern Mountain Avens were growing. He had arranged for a local contractor to build a road
for him and in return the contractor was going to cut timber off of this property. We told the owner about the rare
plants and how special they were and that they could be impacted by the timber harvest. He called the whole
project off. That gives you a good feeling.”
“My mom grew up in New Albany and walked two miles to school with her teacher (and neighbour) Jenny Whitman.
Jenny had attended Normal School in Truro to earn her teaching licence and had studied botany. She taught my
mom the names of the flowers that they encountered. Education then was under the Dept. of Agriculture and
someone (Minister of Agriculture?) came up with a plan to collect information on seasonal fluctuations in flowering
time, hay harvesting and freeze-up. Phenology charts were sent out to every teacher along with their register and
were asked to record dates for the first ripe strawberry, the lakes freezing over or the ice going out, first hay cut,
that sort of thing and especially when different flowers bloomed. As kids were walking to school morning and
night, they would see these happenings and they’d report to the teacher. They covered the whole territory because
there was a school about every four miles. Jenny, the teacher, decided she’d make a contest out of it...’Every time
you bring in a new flower, I’ll give you a star.’ I told you that Mom’s dad was a guide. He would get all these plants
from the woods and she’d take them in and get stars. Of course, she won the prize that year! Mom learned to name
all those plants and then she taught me. So this is where I got my background in botany...I’m still a real nut about
plants. And the rarer they are, the better.”
The seasonal records accumulated in the 1920’s through the efforts of school children like my mother were saved
by the government and proved to be valuable 70-80 years later when the Nova Scotia Plant Watch project was
underway. Flowering times in the twenty-first century could be compared to those of the early 1920s and offer
insight into climate change.
A member of the Annapolis Field Naturalists Society (which I helped
organize in 1988) brought me a blank phenology chart that would
have been issued to teachers back in the 1920s. I sent a copy to
Melanie Priesnitz, coordinator of the NS Plant Watch. She was
delighted.
There were other “Citizen Science” projects in the province: Frog Watch
and Worm Watch. This system works. It gets the required scientific
information and also wins over those people that are doing the
work. It makes you more aware of what’s going on and what’s going
wrong. It’s the way ordinary people can help. I go a little bit further
by going off into bogs and remote areas.
“When it comes to convincing people to respect and appreciate rare
plants, just talk to them about it. It makes a big difference, I think, in
your attitude…how you approach people. You get more bees with
honey than vinegar!”
Loran Adams, Gini’s grandfather,
drove the mail from November1913
until January1945
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J e a n e tt e ( n e e R owt e r ) R awdin g
I was born in New Grafton, just outside of Maitland Bridge on August 12, 1933.
My parents built a home in Maitland Bridge and that’s where I grew up.
My parents were William and Freda (Lewis) Rowter. “Life for them was difficult
I think because Dad worked in the woods and he did a lot of guiding for the
people that went to the Keji Lodge at that time. And my mother, there were
five in my family, so my mother worked hard. She always made practically everything we wore. I think Mom made
everything we wore except our shoes...And of course in Maitland Bridge at that time there was no electricity so
washing was done with a scrub board, ironing and everything was done the hard way. With five children, there
was a lot of work to do. And you didn’t run out to the grocery store when you needed a loaf of bread. You made it.
There was very little, that I can remember at that time, that was bought at a grocery store. Oh, things like sugar, tea
and coffee. Those things that you couldn’t make yourself or get yourself. But I can’t think that we ever wanted for
anything. We always had lots to eat and we were happy.”
My mother could look in the Eaton’s or Simpson’s book and see something she thought I might like and she’d take
a large sheet of brown paper, cut out the pattern and sew the clothing. And it was as well made as you could get
anywhere. I remember when I was going to Teacher’s College, there was a white coat on the cover of the Simpson’s
catalogue. It was a three-quarter length coat that I really liked so my mom bought the material and made me the
coat. People thought it was the coat on the cover of the catalogue. “I always treasured it.”
My dad didn’t have a vehicle when I was a young girl. “A bicycle was a handy thing to have.”
I had a sister and three brothers, two who were twins. My brother Clark and I, being the two oldest, had to have the
wood box filled every night. Water had to be brought in from the well, but my parents did that job. Clark helped
with the barn chores. We had a horse and three or four head of cattle.
“Dad always planted a big garden in the summertime. A big garden. Lots of potatoes and things to keep us over
winter.”When my father would go off to work through the days, he’d tell me to pick potato bugs off the plants. Clark
was supposed to do the same thing. I did mine early. Clark tended to do his later but he did eventually get it done.
We also had weeding to do. We were always busy. “We weren’t looking for mischief or things to do.”
“There was a grove of trees, not too far from the house and down in that grove we had playhouses and we played there
by the hour amongst the trees and the rocks. We had kitchens and houses and roads. So that’s how we entertained
ourselves a lot. We had the same amount of toys that other children did.”
I remember when I was twelve, my father brought home two fairly new bicycles, one for me and one for my brother.
“I’ll never forget those bikes. They had those balloon tires and we’d ride them and ride them. I don’t know how they
managed it. Money was hard to get. You worked hard for it.”
“When I was a girl,
we never saw bear
out in the community. But now, they’re
out where we are.”
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There were children over at Hazen Holdright’s, but I was the oldest girl in
that part of Maitland. My friends lived two or three miles away so we
saw each other mostly at school. I played with the younger children. I
didn’t feel I was very athletic. I played with dolls and such.
I attended the school in Maitland Bridge up to grade eleven. I had good
teachers. My last teacher there was my aunt, Idella Parker. I went to
Caledonia to get my grade eleven and stayed with my grandmother.
Grace Scott was the teacher. At that time, we didn’t have anyone who
taught grade twelve. I wasn’t quite sixteen years old when I finished
my grade eleven. “I went to Truro that summer to the Normal College
for six weeks. I got my temporary C license for teaching. The day before
we were ready to come home, it was about the tenth of August, I got
a call to the principal’s office. And that was Dr. McCarthy and nobody
J EA N E T T E R AW D I N G
wanted to get called to the principal’s office. And I thought, ‘What have I done?’ And he said, ‘I’m just looking over
your papers.’ He said, ‘You’re not sixteen years old yet.’ I said, ‘I know. I’m going to be sixteen years old the 12th of
August,’ which was only a couple of days. He said, ‘You really shouldn’t have been here this summer. Because you
were supposed to be sixteen but you’re done. You’ve done a good job. We’ll grant you your temporary C license.’”
“So I came to Northfield to teach. I was sixteen in August and I started teaching the first of September in Northfield
with different grades. And I will say, I copied a lot of my aunt Idella’s teaching methods, and I taught in Northfield
two years. That’s where I met the love of my life, Robert Rawding.”
“Teaching then, I kind of thought I knew everything there was to know about it. But the last year of teaching I figured
I didn’t know anything about teaching.” In the small schools, you might have one student in a grade, two in another,
none in another. You just did the best you could. And there were no teacher aides in those days. You had a piece
of chalk and a blackboard to work with. You had books, but you didn’t have photocopiers and manuals and things.
You had a curriculum so you’d know what you had to cover.
I enjoyed teaching. In those days, you couldn’t attend Normal College until you were 18. So I taught for two years
in Northfield and then went to Truro when I turned 18. My first year of teaching, one girl I taught was only a year
younger than I was.
In those days, I didn’t have troubles with the children. They played outside at recess and noon, while I prepared their
lessons. They didn’t play around in class. I guess they knew I meant business.
The Northfield school burned. It used to stand where the school bus makes its turn now. It was a well-built school. It
wasn’t drafty. It had the old wood stove. There was a water pail with a ladle to dip out the water. The boys had the
job of getting the water from Beryl’s every day. We didn’t worry too much about passing germs along.
In all, I taught 31 years. I taught in Northfield two years after I married and then I went to Kempt. I taught there a couple
of years and then stayed home to raise my son, Shawn. We lived with Robert’s parents because Robert’s father had
arthritis. “In those days they called it rheumatism...today it would be rheumatoid arthritis. We knew it would be a
year or two and he wouldn’t be able to do much.”
When Shawn started primary, I went back to teaching. I was his teacher in primary and also grade six.
Robert’s father kept cattle so Robert continued to raise about 30 head each year. He drove a dump truck and did
woods work in the winters. “He worked hard and so did I.”
Jeanette’s home, built in 1933
Jeanette’s last class in the Kempt School
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When they closed the small community schools in 1957, they wanted me to go to Caledonia to teach in the elementary
school. I said no. I thought I was done teaching. A year later, they “were back coaxing me again to go.” They really
needed a grade six teacher. I agreed to go for one year.“Well, I think I stayed there twenty-one years.” I taught grade
six for a few years and then “jumped from the frying pan into the fire and taught primary.” I had big classes – 25 to
30 five year old children. One year, I taught my grandson, Robbie.
I don’t recall a child causing me much trouble in school.“You can be strict with children but you can be nice to them.
And they realize that. If you’re nice to them, don’t put yourself up on a pedestal and look down at them, get on their
level, whether it’s grade six or eight or nine. You may need to be a bit strict to start with but then you ease up. They
learn to respect you. And in those days children had respect.”
When I taught in Maitland, I’d gone to school with the children I was teaching. Someone asked one of the boys how
he liked his teacher. He said that I was strict but he liked me.
“I always enjoyed the children. I relate to children and...I taught school because I wanted to, not because I had to.”
When Robert asked me to marry him, I said, ‘I’ll marry you on one condition.’ He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘That I not
stop teaching school.’ Because I didn’t go to Teacher’s College for a year...that’s what I really wanted to do.”
“There’s a lot of difference in teaching today and then...I don’t know if I could contend with it or not. Children don’t
have the respect....They know you hardly dare to touch them...The last year I taught, or second to the last year, I had
one boy, primary, that was very hard to handle. He’d get down on the floor and kick and squirm and yell, ‘You don’t
dare touch me. I’ll tell my mother.’ And sometimes it was the parents’ fault but I don’t always think it was.” Often a
troubled child came from a troubled home.
Different era. Different society.“I hope it doesn’t go too much for the worse because education is a necessary commodity
in this world. It always was but more so.”
In the one room schools, I feel the students got a good education. They did more for themselves. They maybe didn’t
get as broad a base of subjects. When I went to Normal College in 1952-53, I was taught not to spoon-feed children.
Don’t do everything for them. Make them think.
“Of course children don’t have to think and remember things like they did. Computers and all that take care of that
today.” When I went to school and when I taught, there was a lot of memorization. “No wonder people didn’t like
history. You had to remember all those kings and all those dates.”The multiplication table was drilled into our heads.
“Right off quick you could say what nine 8s were. But today I don’t think they hardly memorize that anymore.” They
rely on computers for their information.
In the small country school, we always had a Christmas concert. Often practice for the concert started in November,
a little time here and there. My neighbour, who came from the city, thought I was spending too much time on the
concert and not enough on other things. After the concert, though, that neighbour was the first one to congratulate
me on the job the students had done. And they hadn’t missed any of their other work. That got covered as well. It
was the only public speaking the children did then. It was enjoyable but “a bit hair-raising at times. But they always
came through.”
My house was moved from another community, where Robert’s father lived as a child. After my in-laws were married,
my father-in-law brought part of the house down where I live now. There are some boards in the roof that are two
to three feet wide. Another piece was added and it’s had many renovations over the years. It’s a very comfortable
rural home.
On the Mill Road there used to be a lot of houses there. It seemed that they got back as far as they could in some cases.
My father and grandfather said people went for a hardwood hill. There are several old homesteads that were on a
hill. But it’s all grown up now. ‘There were farms and some of them had quite a few apple trees – a few orchards...
It’s changed a lot.”
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“Even here there are two fields that are growing up in probably mostly pine, that my father-in-law and... Robert helped
clear. At that time they wanted the grassland for cattle. Well, Robert sold his cattle about 1986 and the fields weren’t
any good so he decided...might as well let them grow up in wood. Something that you could use...People put a lot
of hard work into clearing those fields. I feel sad to see them grow back. But I can understand the reason why. And
it wasn’t only the trees they had to clear off it. We had a rocky area.”
In behind where Shawn lives, the Luxton place, there used to be a beautiful old house. I believe someone moved the
house. There are maple trees that are gorgeous in the fall. It is growing up and my son is getting topsoil there.
“People just don’t farm anymore. And there’s hardly anybody that’s got a garden except these few little ones. I miss
that.” But gardens now need to have something to keep the deer out.
My husband kept mostly beef cattle. But he had to work with his dump truck and in the woods or they couldn’t have
survived. Even when Robert’s father had the farm he was a mason and a carpenter as well. He was exceptionally
good at rocking wells or putting rock foundations around houses. During the war he worked in Liverpool as a
stevedore. The farms weren’t big enough to be completely self-sufficient.
Fewer people live in Northfield than in the past. At one time Kempt had three stores and two service stations. They
don’t have any now. There’s one small garage. People have to drive about 8 miles to Caledonia to get groceries.
Nowadays when young people start out they want to have everything, not work along and get things bit by bit. People
travel more. When I taught grades 1-6, I had to teach Nova Scotia history to the grade sixes.“That history was Greek
to most of the children except Paul and Merna’s children. Because they had been to a lot of these places. We were
talking about Truro and New Glasgow and maybe Cape Breton. They had been there with their father when he
worked.” Many people didn’t even travel within the province. I had never left the province until my husband and I
honeymooned on PEI. People didn’t have the means or the transportation to travel.
Roads were plowed some, but they were at their worst in the spring with all the mud. “The road wasn’t paved from
Caledonia to Maitland Bridge. They were working on that the year we were married, 1953. So you know it was a lot
of mud to contend with in the spring.”
I can remember going to Bridgewater on what was called the Barren Road, “Now that was an obstacle course in the
spring.”
Robert’s mother wasn’t a war bride but she came to
Massachusetts to live with an aunt. She was a cook in
Boston for well-to-do people there. In 1995, Robert and I
went to England to meet some of his relatives. My motherin-law went back to England twice after her husband
passed away.
Shawn now works the woodlot a little. Neither he nor Robert
ever clear cut the land.“My husband always said a tree has
a life-span the same as a person does. So when he went in
he picked up a lot of trees that had fallen or you know the
wind had taken them down. And a lot of trees that were
older. So he was selective cutting I suppose you could call
it...There’s no barren land on ours that I know of.” The land
extends out to the Mersey River in places. With the price
of pulpwood and logs it really isn’t profitable to do much
cutting. Shawn does sell some firewood.
Robert’s father bought up a lot of land. He was looking
ahead and could see that land would be valuable. He also
Northfield School class picture
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said that if a country doesn’t have enough people, it’s good to bring in immigrants. “That’s an issue today to bring
immigrants in to do some of the work, as far as I’m concerned, our own people don’t want to do. Such as picking
strawberries, Christmas treeing, working in fish factories.”
“And I’d like to know where our health system would be without the immigrant doctors we have.”
I feel more young people have recently come to the Caledonia area than there was for a while. “You have to have
people to have a country.”
People are having smaller families. Years ago, families of nine to twelve children weren’t unusual.
When I was a girl, we never saw bear out in the community. “But now, they’re out where we are.”
There are lots of insects, perhaps because we have fewer swallows. I’ve noticed a lot of dragonflies this summer. The
bats are pretty well gone.“Snakes I don’t care to see.” But I remember my father-in-law never wanted a snake killed.
He thought they were the best thing to have in the garden. There aren’t as many hop-toads around as there used
to be.
Not as many people hunt in the area. Years ago, people used to live off the meat they hunted.
The park “has helped the economy...I don’t think it helps as much as it did at one time because it isn’t employing as
many local people as it did. It’s certainly preserving the land situation...It brings in a lot of visitors. It’s very popular
as a camping spot...I think it’s good that they’ve put in some serviced sites. It’s...made people more aware of our
land, or our heritage...It was a shame when they tore the old Keji Lodge down. That was quite a something. But the
same as all older places...things have to come and go.”
My mother worked at Keji Lodge. And a lot of American people had cabins in that area. They had to give those up.
“It’s put us on the map, I’ll say.”
Some of my father’s land was taken for the park, but I feel that people were well compensated for the land. “It might
have been harder for some people than others to lose their land. A lot of them, that was their livelihood.”
The environment needs to be taken care of. ”Mother Nature isn’t going to do well unless she is. People need to be
more careful of a lot of things. Of course, garbage is taken care of today...It’s no problem sorting it. Our rivers and
lakes...acid rain we can’t do much about I guess.” I think that keeping things rural helps. I remember when Robert’s
cousin visited from England, she couldn’t get over the trees. Even people who live along the South Shore are amazed
at the trees in the area.
I feel that beaver are hard on trees along the water courses. Beavers had dammed one of our streams and it flooded
quite a bit of land. “They are a nice animal but they are a destructive one.” A lady who had lake property bought
some expensive trees to plant on her property. She was away a few days and when she returned the trees were
floating out in the lake.
“I hope our land continues to remain stable and I hope the world remains stable. I’m thinking of my grandchildren
and great-grandchildren coming along and other people’s...Sometimes you wonder about the future generations...
But they seem to be doing fine...I think we live in one of the best countries in the world and the best province in
the world.”
“I try to be a positive person...The positive is much more reassuring and easier to live with than the negative.”
In all, I’ve had a good life. My husband passed away in 2001. Since, my family has helped me out – my son and
daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. I still live in my own home and hope to do so for a few more years. Two
great-granddaughters help to brighten up my life. So you see, I am trying to be positive.
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195
L l e w e l ly n R obin s on
I was born on July 19, 1950 in the little hospital in Annapolis Royal.
“Home was pretty special to me. I had a wonderful mother and father. I only had
one sister so we had a relatively small family for those times.”
“I had an enjoyable six years at elementary school, which was still at Parker’s Cove at the time.”
“The local school was Parker’s Cove Elementary. This would be back in the late ‘50s or early ‘60s...I had started out in
grade primary up the road in 1955-56. There was an older school, a one room school up the road from our home
about a mile and subsequently the new school got finished in ‘57 so my grade one to six was down here in Parker’s
Cove Elementary...I was there until I went to grade seven at A.R.R.A. in Annapolis Royal.”
“Well, of course, the on-line social media scene with the internet, all these high technology ideas, have come into the
school system. It’s changed everything in so many ways. Myself, when I think back to my children and when I went
to school, there was so much writing – hand writing – ... and a lot of reading as well. So academically, your writing
skills, your reading skills, they just seemed to be so promoted at those times.”
“Nowadays whether it’s in school or out in the workplace it seems that everything is just being pushed by buttons and
numbers and I actually heard an interview on CBC the other day...of someone that mentioned how the...handwriting
skills and so on have kind of been compromised. Now I know we have to move on with the time and the tides, if
you will, but I guess being asked this question kind of makes you reminisce on the times gone by.”
“I was always interested in animals. I had a small calf and some chickens as a young boy, which was challenging but
very fulfilling for me as an individual.”
“My parents were very supportive in everything I endeavoured to do. I had a lot of friends in the local community.
And we played outdoors all the time.”
“I never had any special jobs, per se, like referring to chores...When I did get older, in early teenage years, I would help
my father put the furnace wood in the basement in the fall of the year...But actually having any jobs, I didn’t have
any.”
“I was always interested in animals. I had
a small calf and some
chickens as a young
boy, which was challenging but very fulfilling for me as an individual.”
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“My mother was always a stay-at-home mom, ever since she got
married to my dad. She just did all the cooking and the household
chores and was just a general support that way.”
“My dad was a labourer and a hard-working fisherman all his life. He
had become a skilled carpenter just by observing other men of the
time if you will. He built three new vessels from 1963 until 1981...
He had built myself a new vessel in 1981 that I might participate in
the fishing industry. And when I think back upon it, the skill that a
lot of men had in that era all the way back to the First and Second
World War, the trades people were just phenomenal. But he was a
really hard working man and a dedicated man.”
“I had a lot of friends in the community when I was a child. We were
all of an age, within a year or so of one another and we were very
close. I remember just up the road a mile we had a lot of homemade
dump trucks and bulldozers and other things that actually were
made probably by ourselves, or our fathers, one or the other. And
LLE W ELLY N R O B I N S O N
we used to build little construction roads around the edge of the woods and just enjoyed doing this type of thing.
But I also remember as a young boy we played an awful lot of Cowboys and Indians in the shore pasture. We had
little trails through the bushes and we would hide from one another. So I guess we could call it Cowboys and
Indians/Hide and go Seek. But there was so much outdoor activity when I was young. Wherever we went we either
walked or ran. It really was a special time.”
“I was involved in the scallop industry for 28 years. And then I had the privilege of going lobster fishing for five years...
that’s past 30 years involved in the industry. The industry has totally changed, except for the lobster industry. Every
other sector of the fishery is controlled by an enterprise allocation. So any given fisherman has so many pounds
to catch in one season...When I was involved in the industry we went to work and we were gone three, four or five
days. But now it’s all done in zones. You have to fish in certain zones. Now I realize some of these things have been
done in the interest of conservation. But in terms of the way the fishery is managed when I was involved in it, it
has totally, totally changed altogether.”
“This is one of the biggest changes ... there are almost no manual labourers left. When I was a little boy or a young
man in and around these local communities, even in the town of Annapolis, there was dozens and dozens of men
that were classified as labourers. They worked for a daily wage or an hourly wage. I remember when I was just a
teenager...the pulp boats were still coming in to Annapolis Royal to load pulp. And it was probably one of the most
extensive, manual jobs that I ever seen in my whole life. But the change for me in today’s society, there’s almost
no manual labourers left. I mean, everything’s done by machinery and the whole community has changed in that
light.”
“I don’t have any forestry land myself...I notice one thing that has happened over the last ten or twenty years...even
here on the North Mountain, there’s been so much clear cutting...They tell me that you really can’t get a feel for
it unless you fly over it with an airplane, and get a look at how much land has been clear cut. And that will never
grow back in our lifetimes. But when I was young...there was a man across the way who always hauled his firewood
with a single horse and then there were some oxen that were used to haul wood with. And of course nowadays,
everything’s done by machinery, tractors, etc. I’m not saying there’s not forestry management because I know there
must be, but it just seems like we’re taking more from the land than we’re going to be able to get back in the next
number of years.”
I may have seen one bat the whole summer of ‘14. There used to be several bats flying around at night. We’ve all heard
of the white-nose syndrome that has stricken the bats on the eastern seaboard. Monarch butterflies, on the other
hand, I saw quite a few of them this summer. That was a bit encouraging, knowing that they migrate all the way to
Mexico. Thank goodness for the Tobeatic Reserve where some species can be taken care of.
You hear so much about what’s in the air and global warming. “But we know that change has happened. Even just
a one degree change in the temperature of the ocean – I’m thinking about...the lobsters in the Gulf of Maine...
Rumour is a lot of the lobsters are migrating up into the Bay of Fundy to find colder water. Now for me to say that’s
true, I don’t. But that’s just one example of a change that quite possibly could be happening.”
Protecting the environment is a vital thing for all of us.“We just have to make our carbon footprint a little bit smaller.
But I don’t know just what all we can do.”
The allocation of fish quotas had been talked about for a long while in different fisheries, such as scallops, ground fish,
and herring.“One thing the allocation - the transferable quotas - has done, it’s put a lot of the quota (the ITQ)…into
a few separate people’s hands. For young men who may be coming up in society in these local communities and
wanted to get involved in the fishing industry, it’s a very, very difficult thing to do. The individual quota is a good
thing and yet it’s a bad thing. I guess we’ll have to wait a number of years to see if it really works out.”
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D r . J a m e s ( ‘J i m ’ ) F r e d e ric k R o s s
D R . E l i z a b e t h ( ‘ B e tt y ’ ) L e e
( n e e D ou g l a s ) R o s s
Betty: My name is Elizabeth Lee Douglas Ross. I was born in Caledonia in the house that would be where Blair lived,
next to Muriel’s. Our house was built when my father married my mother, I think before the first child was born,
which was Nelson. I was born in 1927. I was born in that house in the front bedroom by the old Dr. MacLeod. It
was August 26th.
There were three houses - there was the school, then Muriel’s house, then ours (the second oldest), and then a very
old house, which has long since been taken down.
That would have been Nelson Douglas’ house, and that would have been John Nelson. It was a Victorian home, I
think, and it would have been the second generation.
The original home of John Douglas, the settler, was where the well was over on the hill, and the house and barn burned.
Remember ‘Granny Picked Blueberries While the House Burned?’ That was her house. That was the grandmother
Douglas’ house. John Douglas was one of the first settlers and his name is over in the old Lakeview cemetery.
It was the first Douglas home and I suppose they didn’t have a very good chimney, probably a bunch of rocks, and it
burned. They lost all the books. Because the schoolmaster lived there and that meant that his books were there
as well as their own. That was the way life was then.
I don’t know exactly what year it burned, but there’s a letter. I don’t think that tells what year it was. It was a letter
from John…“it may interest you to know” and he told about his own coming to Caledonia. It was written by hand,
but it disappeared …but there is a copy.
Jim: My full name is James Frederick Ross. I was born in Moncton, New Brunswick on Bonacourt Street on January
29th, 1925. I first became familiar with the North Queens area a little bit in the summer of 1948. Betty and I were in
medical school together. We did whatever you could do and still be a medical student because we met on a blind
date in the fall of 1947 at Dalhousie University.
In ‘48 I was spending the summer making Sussex ginger ale. I was the head mixer for the summer, in Sussex, NB which
is where I lived from the time I was 6 months old. That was my major home.
Jim: “I was a hunter. I
loved to hunt. I loved
to roam the woods and
get lost, which I did
many times.”
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Our relationship changed and grew we decided that in 1950 when
I was 25 and Betty was 23, that we would get married if… if I
made marks enough to keep my DVA going and it so happened
that that particular year was one of the best years academically
I ever had.
Betty: I lived on the West Caledonia Road, but I grew up in the
fields… in the fields and the woods. I was lonesome. There were
no more girls up there at the time and I had no transportation so
I roamed the woods and I roamed the trees. I had climbed every
tree I could reach the bottom of and if I could reach a limb I was
up the tree.
D R . J i m R o s s a nd D r . B e tt y R o s s
I would roam everywhere, the house next to us, the old Victorian home was in existence, but not Nelson’s house, and
of course the school wasn’t there; and it was a field. When the wind went over that in the winter, oh, you wouldn’t
believe…I was just a little thing and I’d have to go up that hill and I remember counting the steps…I had to count
the steps or I wouldn’t have made it.
I had an older brother, 3 years older, Nelson. And another younger brother, Charles, wasn’t born for another two years
and he was a delicate little thing and he wasn’t involved in going to school with me very much. Nelson always had
friends older than he was so it was just like a new generation.
I didn’t have many friends, and not many of the other little girls could roam the woods like I did. I played with the
boys until mother caught me and…we won’t mention that, but I wasn’t allowed to play with the boys. On the other
hand I had to play with the boys; I had nobody else.
We played ball, and I didn’t have a mitt. They did. It’s a wonder my fingers are intact. And I couldn’t skate, my ankles
were weak. I used Nelson’s skating boots and they were three sizes too big, and three sizes too wide, always. My
ankles were so weak until suddenly somebody got a pair of boots that were too tight for them and they sold them to
Mother and they fit me and I could skate, you know? I skated on the front lake. That would be the one in Caledonia
now – Lake Mary. Lake Mary was the front lake, and Lake Nancy was the back lake.
We were able to swim in Lake Nancy then, and it isn’t polluted as badly as it was. We could catch fish in the front lake,
but we couldn’t eat them. They were fed to the hens because all the private homes’ sewage drained into it.
I went to the only school there was then. My father went to the one that was destroyed, called the band hall, and
there was one I think before that, but that was really the early one. I think it was where the tourist bureau building
is now. Sort of one room with a little back to it. And of course it had an outside toilet. I didn’t go to that school but
Father did. I think he went all his years there.
I never went to that school. I went down to the Pine Grove School. And the pines were behind it, and we played in
the pines. We made houses and things in the pines. And I had a few girl friends there, but not close ones, because
we couldn’t get together after school, it was too far, and I had no transportation. I didn’t have a bike until I was 12
years old. So I went “shank’s mare”. I walked.
In the winter we often skied down, but not when I was really little. I had woolen clothes and it got full of water. I
remember we had this big woolen scarf, it must have been over 2 feet wide and long and we’d hold it like this, and
rotate, and put it around and around your face so you wouldn’t freeze to death, and we walked. And I wasn’t very
big and it bothered me a lot. I nearly froze to death. And I would go into where the Heritage House is now and
that would be a relative of mine, my aunt Ethel Douglas, and she would give me milk and cookies, and my mother
would say ‘You don’t need to go in there, you can walk home,’ and I’d say ‘Mother, it’s so far and so cold’. She would
thaw me and send me on.
But we would have something you don’t see now. It was a hedge. The hedge is gone now, but there was a hedge
right along the two houses and then some, and the snow would drift there. It was colder then and it would make
good drifts and we would tunnel in and make houses in it. It’s a wonder we didn’t freeze to death. After we were
there long enough my mother would call, we could hear her too, and then she’d send the dog after us. And the dog
knew of course where we were. His little legs would come through that snow, and the first thing you’d see the roof
with the legs in it and then we’d have to come home. And then she’d take us down to the basement and sweep
the snow off us and we would sweep as much off as we could and stomp and so on. She would take the clothes
up and dry them on the furnace, the radiator. And we would try and thaw out.
I remember some of my teachers. Addie Anderson (Adelaide) was my primary teacher.
I didn’t have a male teacher until I got into high school. And we had double benches and sometimes even three of
us would sit in there and we would have an inkwell. We were supposed to be able to write with a straight pen. I
couldn’t write anyway.
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They divided those kids in that grade into the smart ones and the dummy ones. I believed I was a dummy up until
the time I was quite a girl, in grade 3 or 4 when the Hebb girls came as teachers. And they were fair. One of them
took me aside, and said, ‘Listen, you’re going to university and all of these other kids are not, now pick yourself up
and go,’ and that was the first time I realized that somebody believed in me.
I did the first 6 grades in the primary department, still believing I was stupid. I did, and then I went into the advanced
department and stayed there until I finished school in grade 11. I did double up in one grade because the older
kids were girls and the younger kids were boys and it was Uhlman and Grace Scott that moved me ahead because I
obviously needed to be challenged. The boys were not doing anything so they moved me ahead to the next grade.
I was not quite 16 when I was finished. There was nothing else here for advanced education.
We were not taught; we couldn’t be. After all, she had six grades, and varying degrees of intelligence and abilities and
home life. Home life was a big thing, and she used to say, you will do pages so and so, and then she’d check that
we’d do it. And Grace Scott didn’t miss much but she didn’t sit down and give you a formal talk and she did not
waste your time talking; she did not teach you math, it was in the book, and if you couldn’t do it, she would give
you a little hand I guess, but we figured it out ourselves and we did it. We were all girls and all did well at math.
I think there were advantages in being with all grades and all ages. It’s hard to expand on that because you don’t
realize how much you missed, in lots of ways. When I think of Sheila Sheppard teaching English years later; how I
wish I’d had her for a teacher. I did not understand a great deal of the literature I was reading because I was reading
everything in sight. I learned to read before I went to school and had a disadvantage in that I didn’t get the words
right. I said them the way they looked or didn’t see them properly, and I didn’t have glasses and I couldn’t add a
long column and so there were disadvantages. But there were some where you heard what was going on and you
could do as much as you wanted. I was self-motivated because I had to get out of there. I couldn’t stay there.
I finished high school and went to Acadia. I graduated in 1947 and I had my Bachelor of Science degree then. And
I wasn’t quite sixteen when I registered at Acadia. I snuck in under the line. I was just 21 when I got out. I did the
four years, but we didn’t have grade twelve.
I had no French, no Latin; we had written French, and I did a little bit of Latin by myself. There were no experiments
and nothing like that but we learned what we read ourselves. So I went to Acadia and they looked at my first year
and the teacher was a young American because of course the Canadian people were all in the army and he said,
‘Who taught you French? Who taught you math?’ and he was looking around for a great teacher. Poor Grace…she
made sure we did it.
In Caledonia, some of the people were very religious and some of them were not. And I belonged to the not. Father
and Mother were not religious. Mother was well trained in the Baptist church but she wasn’t interested in us being
baptized, or she didn’t think that we needed to be religious. And Father he could take it or leave it. And he was a
friend of everybody; he didn’t care whether you were Catholic, black or white, or mostly Indians. He was fond of the
Indians. They tried to teach him how to speak Mi’kmaq but he wasn’t quite sure what they were teaching him.
My father’s name was Lee. He co-owned the store on the corner - N.F. Douglas and Company Limited. That became
the pharmacy in 2010. He inherited the whole family but the aunts were his servants; they must have had equal
ownership, and the other brother was not an entrepreneur. He was a very nice man, but he was not a leader. His
name was Perry. He lived in the big house next door to us with the aunts. And he had a wife called Marguerite and
she was a Telfer. Very nice lady.
There were umpteen general stores. Across the way was Herman Douglas, at the corner (there’s nothing there now),
and he had two sons, and they were younger than us. And then there was Miller’s store, he became Dusty Miller. I
think at first it belonged to a Jewish family. It was a general store, but then again, they all had the same things. Some
would be two cents cheaper than the other. But there wasn’t a lot of variety, and now they moan about their being
only one store. But it’s got the same stuff in it. Down the road, there was Bell’s store. It was a general store, too.
And sawmills. I think when grandfather Douglas died, which was when father was in grade 10, there were sawmills
that he couldn’t maintain, so he gave them up. But there were sawmills in the family and I think Perry did a lot. And
they had a mine, did you know that? The gold mine. And it was during the war years that they had the gold mine,
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and Perry ran it. He knew the men and he knew how to manage it. It was up in Whiteburne. The remains of it are
still there.
As for hotels, I didn’t know Caledonia in its prime. There was the Alton House. It was a little bit upgrade. It’s still there
but it’s a private home; it’s been rebuilt. I don’t think it was operating when I was a girl. And then the Freeman House,
the Parker House, it was operating in a way. They had boarders there. I had friends…Shirley Freeman would have
been my age and she worked there; it was her family home. She went to school with me, graduated with me.
Next to the Alton House was a private residence, the McGuire residence. Clark Murray had a house where the post
office was. They had girls older than I was.
As for changes, well, the houses are better, or else they’ve disappeared, and the school is big, and I’m not sure it was
altogether for the good. And the stores have dwindled, turned into one or two, and they still have the same things
in them. At that time you could buy anything in Caledonia because you couldn’t get out.
Oh, my God, the roads! It’s impossible to believe what they were like. When I went to university first, now I’m talking
about med school. We had to write an essay on what we could do to improve the health of a community. Well, I
looked at the barns and so on, and everything seemed pretty clean, and so I finally decided that the thing to do best
for the health of a community was to improve the roads. Because you couldn’t get out, and I know of a little girl
who died because she couldn’t get out. She died of appendicitis and they didn’t want to bring a train in because
they didn’t have money. At that time if you didn’t pay for it you didn’t get it. And old Dr. MacLeod waited to see
and waited too long. And I thought, my soul, because there were times we drove (although we didn’t drive until
we were through med school) we drove all the way to Liverpool and came out that way, and had to have a truck to
pull us out of the mud. Oh, they were not dirt roads, they were mud roads. Not what we call dirt roads.
I can’t remember when the pavement happened. They went through Bridgewater and came down this way and again
we had to have trucks to pull us out and we did. We didn’t have a road then to Annapolis Royal (still a mud road).
I remember when they put that road through because we got stuck in the mud. In the Liverpool road they had an
area that was known to be mud and they had oxen on one side and they would pull you through.
You ask about the use of the land. They farmed. They all had farms. Not always big farms but little places. For me,
it wasn’t a farm that was profitable but it was a farm which was subsistence. Chester Douglas was the man who
looked after the animals and he would make hay for the horses. And Perry was in charge and he was very particular.
He didn’t want one wisp of hay left on the field. Not because he wanted the wisp of hay but because he didn’t want
to see anything on the field. And bobolinks grew in that grass. And he was what you would call a rough man in a
way but he would see a little patch, he would come to a nest and he wouldn’t let his horses come near it and he
would leave a little tuft of hay. He would save the birds. It was part of my life that he would preserve those birds,
the bobolinks. I don’t see them here now.
Jim: Well, I suppose all I knew was what was around the Douglas place, I knew about Kejimkujik because the Douglases
had a little cottage at Peter’s Point (before the National Park), but I didn’t even know there was a place existed
that we’re on now until somebody told me about it. We live at 91 Minard Road, which is a small road that comes
off the Harmony road which goes to West Caledonia and we bought this particular area from Theodore Weare. I
remember Roger, his son, as a boy coming and helping us with things we did. The old house that’s there, was built
in 1836. The Weares lived in it when we bought it, but I have a whole history of the place. Theodore Weare owned
it before me.
That is the house, up where you make the turn. If you go behind the house there are two big maple trees and a pile
of rocks and that’s where the original 1834 [was]. I have the deed for this original property from 1834. Fred Hawkes
lives in the house now. It’s a very old property.
Betty: People farmed the drumlin hills. Everybody says, oh why did they do that, that’s because that’s where the
ground was, underneath was just rock.
Jim: Well, I would say that a good part of this area is still as it was a way back. You look at the area between here
and South Brookfield. There’s old farms there like Dottie Veinot’s place, that are still functioning. They make hay.
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There are sure a lot of changes in the forestry in this area too. The farms here, most of them, were subsistence
farms, because this particular place changed ownership probably ten times from 1834 until we bought it in 1966
so a lot of changes and people losing the farm and bankruptcy and you know this was the standard picture. But
young ladies like this were born in that house. Our housekeeper, Anna Weare Mansfield, was born in that house. I
remember her as a little girl.
Betty: As for changes, well, people wouldn’t live that way anymore. I’d say that people are more demanding of
prosperity. They cut a little hay and raise a horse or two but they aren’t raising large numbers of cattle…the van
Dyks raised pigs. Very hardworking, they were fed and they were clothed again with hard work. Everything was
hard work. Nowadays they don’t do that type of work that’s hard. I think the van Dyks might still do it but nobody
else does.
Do I remember the North Queens Fruit Packing Company? I know that the bucket factory was still in process in South
Brookfield and apples were shipped from here. During the war they were shipped again but I don’t remember
when it was a prosperous thing to do. But there was the old Smith farm had all sort of fruits, and Clarence McGinty
as a boy worked on that farm. That was the Smith’s farm, up on the hill at South Brookfield.
Jim: What little I know about forestry is related to this particular place here which we bought in 1966. I remember
the Douglas mills and so on through my association with Betty but I never saw clear cutting ever, you know, that
was a no-no. Anna’s father was a super forester. He could cut down a tree without damaging any other trees. And
he used horses.
Betty: I have never seen a man as skilled as that Theodore Weare.
Jim: The only thing I’m against is clear cutting. I just don’t see it as a way unless one would do what they’re doing in
New Zealand. We went to New Zealand for eighteen years after we retired every winter and the rule there was that
if you clear cut 100 acres you planted 100 acres and it was one species, red pine. And it was a fantastic operation
to see. You’d see a bald hill and they didn’t stop. They went up the side of one hill and down the other. They had
ways of getting the logs out by actually bringing them out, sometimes in later years by helicopter. But they would
clear cut it, they would mulch the ground with these huge roller mulchers and plant within the year. They grew
ten months a year in most places.
We’re just, I don’t like to use the word rape, but we’re raping the forest. This is a terrible thing to see and a lot of what
I say is affected by what I’ve seen done in other parts of the world.
You’ve got to look at the man that owns the property or around the city, the developers, you’ve got to look at it from
another standpoint, which is the acreage is not the same as it used to be. An acre of land in the old days, this deed
that I hold now, which was 1834, it was said that this place had 200 acres more or less, and that meant they didn’t
count swamp and they didn’t count rocky areas and so on. And I have some reason to know that this is actually
what has happened. But they took a whole area of this part of Nova Scotia and they made it a national park, which
has been good and bad. Good because a lot of people are able to go there, but bad because people who owned
a 1,000 or 2,000 acres are looking at it and nothing is being done with it.
Betty: I saw land use... from poverty in a way but I didn’t know it was poverty. We had food and we had more or less
clothing, not pretty clothing, but more or less clothing, and we were self-sufficient in lots of way. And my father ran
a store and therefore we had a little bit ... but he ran a lot of bills, oh I can tell you. They’re still there on the books; I
think they might have thrown them out by now. And people used to say, ‘Oh yes, the store, you have all that.’ It has
to be paid for but I didn’t know it until I went to university and realized that the other kids were better off than I
was, but that was all right. I didn’t mind that too much except that I grew before I went to university and my clothes
were too small so I would have clothes that were too small. That was it!
We were never, ever allowed to clear cut. We took out what we needed and left the rest. And my father would have
been very upset about clear cutting. He found the park really, really upsetting because here was all the timber that
he should have been using was taken away by somebody else and they owned it. Oh my goodness, yes, he lost a
lot of land. You know we can go on it now. You can see what we were doing.
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I fear you can’t use it all up at once. If you’re going to live on that land, you’re going to live less prosperously but more
sustainably and people are realizing that now, I suppose.
Jim: About wildlife, in those days I think in this area I only saw one moose and that was up in Keji, at Peter’s Point.
But I’ve watched the deer population grow and grow and grow to the point where we’ve got to do something
about it. I was a hunter. I loved to hunt. I loved to roam the woods and get lost which I did many times. But you
know there’s got to be a medium place someplace between economic progress and so on and still not cut every
tree that comes in the way of a big machine because in our area here the growing time is too large to grow a full
mature red pine. In New Zealand it took 18 years and we’d be lucky here to have a full grown one in 45 or 50 years.
You can’t say we would do what they would do. I know that is economically a good thing to do, and it’s been what
disturbs me right now is to take this large land mass that is owned by the government and they’re buying up more
land and not having people who understand the problems with the forestry. There’s got to be some other way or
we’re going to run out of wood fibre no matter what it’s for.
The deer population is increasing at a rate that is unbelievable. We’ve taken away a lot of their places to eat and
bring up their families and so on and down in the Mahone Bay area I’ve never seen so many deer. They’re being
driven to where people live.
I’ve seen monarch butterflies but I don’t know anything about them. We did see them actually grown by people of
interest in New Zealand and it was quite interesting. I can’t tell you the last time I saw one.
We’ve had experiences with bats because the old house up here had more bats per square foot probably than any
place I ever saw. There’s hardly a bat in the old house now. I don’t think there are any. At least if you asked the
people that lived there, they haven’t heard the bats, within the last 4 or 5 years.
I saw one of the first Blanding’s turtles in Kejimkujik National Park. That would have been on our honeymoon in 1950.
We’ve seen others and it’s rather interesting because we carved our initials BD and JR on a Blanding’s turtle shell
in 1950.
Betty: It wasn’t unusual to see Blanding’s turtles laying eggs at our place in Keji in the beach, before the park. We
knew them as children. We didn’t know they were unusual, we didn’t know the name, but we knew they weren’t
the ordinary turtles. They weren’t snappers. And we collected them as pets but I used to go and let them free. The
boys had them in a big tank and I would go set them free.
The turtle we carved was found, it was after Keji park, and we told the man what we knew, that they were laying eggs
up on that bank and the ‘coons were taking every one of them. We still had lots of turtles.
Betty: “It wasn’t unusual to see Blanding’s
turtles laying eggs at
our place in Keji in the
beach, before the park.
We knew them as children. We didn’t know
they were unusual...”
Jim: Professor Blakeney from Acadia has done many years of work
on that turtle and because he had been at Acadia when Betty was
there. He understood.
Betty: We found the turtle laying its eggs along with the other turtles
along that beach. It was beautiful sand, and we enjoyed it. It was
Peter’s Point.We kept it pristine.The turtles loved it.We would watch
them lay their eggs, and we’d see their shells in the morning where
the ‘coons stole them. We didn’t really want any more snappers up
there because we went swimming there and we didn’t want our
feet eaten and we never did get bitten by a turtle.
Yes, but we didn’t have a name for the turtle we carved. We let
people know we had found it. The rocks, the Fairy Rocks with the
carvings on them, that was part of our property at that time. And
we used to take chalk and mark out the outline of the carvings so
that nobody would step on them. But the erosion with the rocks
moving over them was still taking place and we used to take people
out to see them but were careful not to let them step on them. We
were good guardians.
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In the future we should stop cutting everything we see and we didn’t do that at Keji. We didn’t catch every fish to eat,
because we didn’t have refrigeration and we didn’t want to waste anything, so we caught a fish and we ate it.
Jim: As far as protecting our environment for the future, I don’t have an answer to that because it’s so bound up with
the economy of our land and Canada is a wonderful place but the treatment of the forests for some reason is not
going to work. At least when you speak to people who are intelligent foresters and older people too, they say how
can we maintain the wood fibre. This week’s Rural Delivery, they said there that you’re not going to be able to buy
firewood this time next year. And they make the story for people that even own their own lands no longer are able
to sell firewood off their lands. This is disgraceful, and they were probably doing it well, too, because it was their
land. I don’t know if there is a solution because the problems are getting worse. At least I think they are.
Betty: We ran it because our land was sacred and we did not wish to destroy it. My father was a great ecologist in
that sense. Mind you, he didn’t mind cutting trees to use, but he would cut what he needed. He didn’t cut anything
that he left lying around. And we didn’t have it all guzzled up in fibre. We just didn’t. It wasn’t part of our life. He
wouldn’t permit it. But nowadays it seems the more you cut up the better.
Jim: Anna’s father, Theodore Weare, was a marvelous forester and used his land. He owned this place for about 7 years,
and when I bought it from him he said, ‘Jim, I’ve cut the timber off it, I might as well sell it.’ What he had done was
he had selectively cut timber; if there were 2 big trees together, one stayed and one went. The other thing is that if
you look out here, there were no trees there when we came here, and that’s Betty’s forest. And one person makes
the decision about it, and it was her. And there was an example of what can be done. We used to ski directly into
the lake there. We’ve got trees now.
Betty: I’m born to love a tree. I’m a tree lover. Not every tree; I know that some of them have to go and I don’t mind
cutting them. We have a beaver that’s working on it.
I have a story about a platter that’s been in my family for many years. My story is it was handed down from my
mother’s family. This platter was brought across from Europe and it was brought across in a fishing schooner.
The two captains, one was American and one was British, and they planned to sink the British boat. And the two
captains met and they realized they were both Masons, so they shook hands and separated. And that platter was
on the British boat and it was brought across to Lunenburg and it stayed with my grandmother, who died when she
was 90-odd. And it came down to Caledonia when she broke up her household in Lunenburg town. And Captain
Scott, who died very young, he brought it down on his lap because it was obvious it wasn’t going to carry on that
corduroy road very well.
There were quite a few things that they brought down from that same period. There was a cranberry dish, that
mother remembered them serving strawberries in. The platter was passed down over the years and I’ve never let
the kids use it.
Betty holding an old platter that has
been in her family for years
204
The crest on back of platter
205
B e tt y Ann R u g g l e s
I was born in the Annapolis hospital in 1946 and I was brought up in Lequille.
“My home life was great. I had all kinds of brothers and sisters, you know. We didn’t
have a big house but we weren’t all there at once. There’d be about nine of us
there at once, like...I’m the fourteenth child.” There were fifteen children in all.
“I was spoiled by my father but I wasn’t spoiled by my mother because I got the same as everyone else got...If I needed
a trimming, a trimming I got.”
“My father was a labourer and my mother was a housekeeper.” My mother did housekeeping out in the community
as well as at home.“My kids were flabbergasted when my mother told them that she got paid a dollar a week...And
then it went up to two dollars, you know. She said when she first started, it was 50 cents. Can you imagine?.. My mom
was born in...1906. She went out to work when she was twelve or thirteen. You’re talking about 1918, something
like that, you know...She lived to be 95. Her mind was good but her body wasn’t. She outlived my dad by 30 years.
He died in 1971 and she died in 2001.”
My dad had a garden “and he grew just about everything. He grew potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce, onions,
cucumbers, peas, beans, all that stuff. Corn. We used to have one [garden] out to the side of the house, one down
back of the house and the one at the front of the house he grew all tomatoes...We used to sit on the bank and eat
tomatoes. Now you couldn’t pay me to eat one!”
“My mother made pickles. She did pears and plums and blueberries and all that stuff.” I don’t think anyone in my family
preserves anymore. I’ve only got one sister left and she’s 88...I think when my sister used to live here years and years
ago she did all that stuff. “And I did when Robert and I first got married...Every once in a while I’ll still do chow.”
When I was a girl we had a pig, a cow and a horse.“And I used to love going riding in that buggy with my father. Ronnie
and I had to look after the pig. It’s fine to have one on the table but not so good to have to look after. And we had
hens. “Just didn’t trust that rooster.”
People don’t seem to have gardens like they used to.
“I went to school in Lequille ‘til I got to grade three and then I come here to the Academy and I went until I finished.
And I couldn’t get out of school fast enough. When I was in grade eight I told my mother I’d had enough. She said,
‘You’re going to school.’ I thought,‘No I’m not.’ So when my sister come back from Germany and needed a babysitter,
I was it. I went to New Brunswick and that’s where I stayed for a while. I think I was about eighteen.”
“You respected
the teachers.
You might
not have liked
them but you
respected
them.”
206
Education has changed.“For one thing when I went to school you weren’t allowed
to be as mouthy as kids are today. You respected the teachers. You might not
have liked them but you respected them. Otherwise your parents seen to it. Kids
have got a lot more freedom. They do. They get to go a lot more. They have a
lot more things to do, maybe not in some schools compared to others, like, you
know, than we did in school.”
There weren’t organized activities in Lequille for young people. “There wasn’t
anything like that going on in our community... Nothing. We would just go
outside, ride our bikes, skip, kick the can, whatever...play ball, play horseshoes,
stuff like that. It was something everybody did. They’d come to my dad’s house
and play horseshoes or a bunch of us would get together and play baseball.” As
a kid I liked to play cards.“I used to cheat like crazy; my father taught me.” Once
I had my family, I lost interest in cards.
B E T T Y R U GGLES
The focal point of the community was the church. “I was brought up Anglican and there wasn’t too much that went
on there because back in the day you weren’t even allowed to belong to whatever they had, you know. But the
Baptist church we went to that too. My dad was Baptist so we had to go to both. And they used to have suppers
every year and everybody got together and cooked something, you know, and we used to have a church full and
things like that.
When they did build that hall out there in Lequille – of course it’s gone now – but when they did build it we used to
have Bingos and we had dances and we used to have suppers and things like that...That brought a lot of people in.
But before they built that we didn’t have too much... When I was a kid and they had the little hall in Lequille there
used to be a lot of dances. Every Saturday night there was a dance...That’s how I first knew Robert. But I was only
about twelve, thirteen but my parents and his parents knew one another...Actually, my dad used to go with his mother
and my mom used to go with his dad...And then Robert’s grandmother ended up marrying my great-uncle.”
“Because when Robert and I got married, everyone was saying, ‘You are cousins.’ And I said, ‘No we’re not.’ I asked my
mother all the right questions.“‘Cause Robert actually is a Fowler and his father was a Fowler. And then she married
my great-uncle Jim and he was overseas and he wanted to send his mother money and they told him in the service
the only way he could do it was to change his name to Ruggles. So he changed his name to Ruggles...And Robert
used to hang around with my brothers and he was always around...But they used to have dances every Saturday
night. That place was jumping, girl.” They would have bands come from Weymouth, they’d come from Bridgetown,
Digby, all over just to come to the dances.”
“And then they had what they called the revivals. We used to have to go to those as kids and we’d be sitting and the
minister would be pounding his fist and going on...But that’s what you had to do.”
“The community’s just gone to hell...One thing, most of the older people that run these things now they’re past...
Same way with that Baptist church out there. It used to be a full, swinging thing. We had suppers in the hall…and
everything. And once most of the people died off...like Wilber Barton from over the mountain...and he used to be
the head of it. And once he died and some of the other ones died, it was just...that was it. Same way with the hall.
The hall just run into the ground...Too many hands in the kitty...There’s nothing going on out there now. Not a
darned thing.”
I lived in Lequille for 61 years. We moved to town seven years ago...It’s handy the grocery store...everything’s handy.
I just whip around the corner to the eye doctor…or to the doctor. And I can go walking whenever I want...I usually
go across the dyke...It’s more accessible.” I used to walk the three miles into town from Lequille.“It’s all uphill going
back.”
“We saw bats all the time. We were ducking our heads and going on there. And millers!...All my mother had to do was
snap the outdoors light on. And I hate them things. The whole side of the house would be just covered with them.
And you don’t see them no more now. And you hardly see a butterfly.”
“I can’t remember seeing one [monarch] in a long while. When we first moved to town we used to see bats all the
time when I walked, like, from the wharf down...But I hardly see a bat now at all.
Wildlife is changing because “they’re digging up too many places where the animals should be and stuff like that.
And that’s why they’re coming out, like...I mean, listen, the only time you saw a rabbit or a deer, or a porcupine or
a skunk, I used to go hunting with my brothers back in the woods and you’d see the skunk in the distance taking
off and the racoons and see the deer because we were hunting them. You’d never, ever see a bear....They’re hungry
and they’re coming out.”
“I can look out my window from upstairs sometimes and they [deer] are down there by the apple tree, eating...Or in
the back field where we lived, travelling through the cemetery lot, I’d look out my bedroom window and see three
of them staring up at me...They’re here all the time...If I walked from my house to Foodland, right there the other
side of that little house there, I saw I think it was five...They’re a dangerous commodity.” “I’ve never seen as many
skunks as I’ve seen around town.” The roadkill is terrible.
To help the wildlife, “maybe we shouldn’t cut down so many trees and things...and dig the land all up...Because they
deserve to have their spot...the same as we do.”
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B E T T Y R U GGLES
“We had people who lived next door to us and they had a farm. He had a horse and he had pigs and he had cows. So
we used to go up in the summertime, haying with him. That was fine until I saw a snake and I got off the wagon.
Definitely when they were throwing it in the barn...we ‘d stomp it down and throw it in the barn. And we used to
go up there and we’d split wood for them and...you got a quarter, five cents, whatever.”
“What I liked about it, they always had a garden like potatoes and things and she had the most beautiful sunflowers.
We used to haul them out of the ground...and she’d chase us home. But she had really nice flowers and, like, apple
trees and they had, like, crab apples. So when the crab apples fell on the ground we were allowed to pick them
up and bring them home. And my mom would make crab apple jam. And then they had blackberry bushes and
currants so we were allowed to go down, pick those and take them home.”
“But they used to have big gardens...They had a nice big cold cellar so they would store, like, turnip, carrots, potatoes,
apples and things and we’d go up and buy them for 5 cents a pound. And get a bag full, you know.” We could count
on being able to get that produce from the Gallaghers.
It seemed that my Grammy Franklin and Mrs. Gallagher were half-sisters. Back in the old days, people didn’t talk about
who they were related to. “There are so many questions now that I wished I asked my mother. I try to pass on the
things I remember my mother told me to my son, Robbie.”
I got a call from a woman not long ago who wanted to know about Peter Franklin, my great-uncle. She said he’d
married a white woman and had a daughter. That was more than I knew. Anyway, this woman was the daughter’s
daughter. I could tell where he worked, how old he was when he died and what year he died, but after that, I didn’t
know. He died in 1963 and he was 78 years old.
He served in the First World War. And almost got shot. He came home with a hat with a big hole in it. He wore a hat
like a Mountie hat and the jodhpur pants and the boots and a tweed jacket with patched sleeves and a plaid shirt
and tie. That’s what he wore all the time. He was maintenance man at the Annapolis General Hospital. He tended
the garden and supplied the vegetables for the hospital back in the ‘50s. He used to do watercolour paintings and
birds, like ducks.
I met someone at the fort grounds last summer. He said he was Dr. Sutherland’s son, Max. He said he had a painting
done by Peter Franklin and that he used to do maintenance at the hospital. I said that my uncle did maintenance
at the hospital. And he said he knew someone named Billy. And I said I knew Bill Burrell, and that’s who he was
thinking about. Then he asked about a Lewis girl he went to school with. I wondered if it was Dorene. But it was
her sister, Adith. I only knew that she was a nurse.
Doreen Lewis had been a nurse in Annapolis for years. She used to do weaving too. I bought a beautiful cape from
her and someone told me to wash it in cold water. Worst thing I could’ve done.
“The last time I saw Doreen she was picking marsh greens across from my house. She was walking down the road
with a bag and I thought, ‘What have you got?’ She said, ‘I got my marsh greens. I go picking them on the marsh
every year.’ When I was a kid we used to have to go get marsh greens. I didn’t like them. “We’re talking vegetables
here, come on.” We’d pick a whole basketful and Mom would wash them off and cook them in a little salt water.
“Especially when she was having mackerel for supper...The boys would dig right in, and my dad.”
I used to talk to my sister Maude for a couple of hours at a time on the phone. She’d say,‘Remember when?’ and we’d
talk.
When I’d visit my brother Bob, before he passed, he’d say,‘ Mary...’ He’d never call me Betty. None of my brothers called
me Betty. Mary was just a name they give me. His wife would ask him when he’d call me by my real name. He never
did. He remembered a lot of things. He was a good source to go to. My two good sources are gone now.
Most of my brothers and sisters left here and came back. Only one brother, How, never left. They all went to Winnipeg.
Three of them later went to Toronto.
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209
B e atric e S a nford
I was born in Digby County in 1927. “Annapolis didn’t have no hospital in those
days.” I lived on the number 8 highway in South Milford on a small farm.
We had hens and pigs and cows.“A little bit of everything. I even had a pet lamb.”
That lamb was the only sheep on the farm. She produced about ten pounds
of wool every year. My mother sent the wool away to have it carded and put
into rolls “and then she would spin it and knit socks, mittens, sweaters...She
sold a lot to people in the States. We didn’t live that far from the Milford House and they was always wanting socks
or something.”
Some of my siblings were grown up and had left the farm when the youngest boy and I came along. There were
seven children in the family.
My dad was a guide. He guided people from the Milford House, taking them moose hunting in the fall or fishing in
the spring and summer.“I can remember when there were moose around. But now, the deer outnumber the moose.
And there’s no moose around anymore. Just deer.”
“They had what they called a call and he would call them up. It was a thing made of birch bark, about that long. And
he’d get that and roar like a moose.”
The fish he guided for were trout. He’d take people “down across the lake in the canoe, and maybe be gone for a week
or two.” They camped out and he did the cooking for them. There were lots of trout then. “A different quality and
a different bunch of trouts than there is today. They aren’t around long enough to grow to be any size... Speckled
trout, that’s what we had around here.”
My mother was a “homebody. She spun and knit and done whatever she had to do...made butter.”
I went to school in a one room school in Lake Munro. “That was on the number 8 highway also.” There were from
half a dozen to a dozen students at the school. “People moved in and people moved out” so the enrolment varied.
“They always had a teacher that could teach up to grade twelve.... They even taught French the last I was going to
school.”
“My dad was a
guide. He guided
people from the Milford House, taking
them moose hunting
in the fall or fishing
in the spring and
summer. “
210
The school was heated by a wood stove that sat in the center of the room.
The teacher looked after the fire after it was built in the morning. I was
the one who was responsible for starting the fire in the mornings for
quite a few years. “I had two miles to walk...and I done the fires.” I had
to get there early to warm things up before the other students and
the teacher arrived.
To have drinking water at school, “we went to a neighbour’s and got
water from the well.”
We did quite a bit of memorizing in school in those days.
For fun we “played games like kick the can...We’d have a can and you’d
kick it to see how far you could kick it. And then we’d throw the ball
over the school. It wasn’t a whole lot of good things- it was just plain
everyday ideas.” There was no equipment to play on. “We put a board
on a rock and we made it a teeter. One would sit on one end of the
board and one on the other and up and down you’d go....It was fun
while it lasted.”
B EAT R I C E SA N F O R D
“All the kids took their own lunch. They were...far enough away that it was too far to go home.”
I would take a peanut butter sandwich. My mom would fix up various things for me, like pie or cake. “We had one
family, the poor souls, they only had bread and molasses. And I’ll never forget one day how the hornets come in”
for the molasses. “It was a wild spot there for a few minutes.”
Most of the teachers were single young women.“They boarded at the nearest house to the school...They went home
for their lunch because they didn’t have that far to go to the place where they boarded.” The children looked after
themselves during the noon hour. “Once in a while, there was a shuffle...It just resolved itself. It was always the
brother and sister that got in a fight...He’d pull her hair and she’d get mad and she’d clobber him...They broke up
and walked away themselves. Nobody had to intervene. They settled it themselves...They was able to walk away
with a laugh.”
“One time we went for a walk in the woods. We got lost. And the boy, he was about my age and he panicked. They
got pretty upset. It didn’t bother me because I walked the woods with my dad. And I stopped and listened for a
while and I heard a vehicle coming. That way, I knew where the road was. And we went out to that road. And right
here, before the young feller died, he said to me, he said, ‘I don’t know how you figured out where to go!’ And he
was a boy and he should have been the one that should have known.”
I got married and had three children but only one is still alive.“I lost my youngest daughter in April and my husband
died in August.” It was a rough year for me. But I survived it. “I managed. I sometimes wonder how. But I did.”
“I worked outside. I had worked in the post office for a while and the store for a while. And of course that took me away
from home. But that’s what I did before I got married. And then when I got married, why, I followed my husband
in the woods where he was...he had a pair of horses and he worked in the woods. That’s what he liked...I just had
one child and I took her with me. And I done the cooking. And everybody lived! Nobody died from my cooking,”
she laughed. “I guess it was okay.”
My husband cut wood for the International Cooperage. That was for a stave mill in Princedale. He had men in the
woods and he hauled the timber out with the horses. A lot of it was softwood. The barrels were made for many
things.“...they’d use a certain kind of wood for a certain kind of stuff that they was going to put in it....I would think
if you was going to do sauerkraut or pickles you would want hardwood.”
My husband worked the whole year ‘round cutting wood. We didn’t have a garden while they were in the woods.
“All I had was a big flock of hens.” I gathered eggs to help with the baking.“The company that we worked for, they
didn’t supply any amount of anything. I had to make things stretch. The only thing they ever sent us was fish and
more fish. I guess that was to give us brains!” The fish came up from Digby.“That’s when we worked for T.H. Warren
and Co.”
When I was a girl we had a garden, with enough vegetables “to run us the winter. And apples and pears and grapes....
The vine grew up over this great big rock and in the fall when it was time to pick them we climbed up on that rock
and picked them.” They were purple grapes and they were good for eating or preserving.
Food was kept in the cellar where it was cool. The cellar had rock walls. “It was only wood heat upstairs. It wouldn’t
be downstairs so that place kept cool.” We kept food in barrels or boxes. “We had a golden russet apple that... we
was still eating apples in August. They kept.”
We didn’t have electricity when I was growing up.“You scrubbed out everything by hand. And you carried your water.
That was the good old days... Well, you had no power bill to pay.”
Electricity wasn’t installed in our house until I was married and my oldest child was about ten years old.
We moved quite a bit because of my husband’s work.
When I walked to school, I’d see lots of wildlife.“I used to see the wildcats, the bears, whatever would be on the road
in front of you. You kept on a-going.”
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“One time we looked out our living room window and there was 21 deer in our field. You don’t see that today.”
To help preserve wildlife, I think “they shouldn’t be jacking them. They shouldn’t be shooting them off. That’s the
biggest thing. And the stupid coyotes.” I think they should be culled because of all the animals they destroy.
When asked about woodlots today, “Well, they’re not used like my dad used to use it. He just went in and cut the
poorest up. And let the good stuff grow. And he done that each year...He was very cautious how he used it. Because
he wanted it to last. And it did last. It outlasted him.”
Nowadays, “they take the big machines in and they just slam bang and tear everything to pieces. That’s
destructive.”
I remember that I sometimes would have to walk a couple of miles the other way from home after the school day
was finished to go to the store to pick up groceries. So those days I’d be walking six or eight miles.“It was good for
me. That’s what spoils kids today. They have the bus to ride in. But of course, there are places they need that bus.”
The buses didn’t run to the consolidated schools until after I finished my education.
I had some chores to do when I was a girl. I had to fill the wood box and feed the hens each day. There wasn’t any
choice; it was expected.“You either did it or you paid the consequences.”When it was time to harvest the vegetable
garden, everyone helped out.“Dad would do the digging and we’d go behind him and he always picked out what
he wanted to save. And the other ones were just to be used up.” Some of the not-so-good vegetables were fed to
the cattle.
“Mom done a lot of preserves...She would put them in glass jars and she’d boil them in a big pan or a big pot on the
stove. And then she would put them in the jars to seal them tight. After the sugar was in, naturally. You had to have
that to keep them.” Or a little bit of both sugar and salt was added to help preserve the food. “A little taste of salt
to bring out the flavour and the sugar to keep them.”
We cured the meat by pickling it. We knew the pickling had enough salt in it if it would float a small potato or an
egg.
Certain times of the year, the hens would shed their feathers and they stopped laying.“Mom always had a big box in
the cellar....She had coarse salt in it and she’d put the eggs in that...layer upon layer and that...kept the eggs from
spoiling.”
Planting and haying times were always busy times of year.“I have raked hay until I had blisters on my hands...it wasn’t
even funny.” Although we raked by hand, my father had a mowing machine that cut the grass. The horse pulled
the mower. The hay ”had to be shook out to dry it and it had to be loaded on the wagon.... We raked everything
up. We didn’t leave anything laying in the field. Had to have all you could get for winter.” Hay was forked into the
mow by hand.
Almost everything was done by hand then. “Back then there were no goodies. You had to be rich in order to get the
goodies... Back then they was lucky to get fifty cents for work.” People just wouldn’t work for that kind of money
today. But there wasn’t any option back then.
“Them was the good old days. And I think it was good for the people.” People weren’t idle and they had to grow their
own food and cure their own meat.“A lot of people pickled and a lot of people smoked. Of course they would cure
the hams and the bacons...they smoked them...They’d make a pickle of some sort. Some had sugar in it...to make
it tasty...They’d smoke it. It would take quite a while to get it smoked.”
The smoke house was a little shack, boarded up tightly so the smoke would stay in. We made a low fire, burning mostly
dry wood, usually maple. That added flavour. “Sometimes it took a week or more to get it where they wanted it.”
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I think food prepared then was “so much better than what we get today. I don’t care for how they cure the meat
today.”
“My husband and I had a big farm. And he knew what he was doing.” He wouldn’t have any animal butchered that
was less than a year and a half or two years old.“They were always fed before they were butchered to put...to put a
little bit of fat on them. Anyway, we always sent them off to the butcher shop. We never done no butchering at all
because he hated it and so did I. We hated to see our pets go. That’s what they were.” The cattle were treated well.
They were never abused and their stalls were kept clean. In the summer, they would be out in the pasture.
I liked to keep scrapbooks, I saved family photos and newspaper clippings from the time I was a girl until I came to
live in the nursing home. My mother started me with the interest in scrap-booking. My mother was a royalist and
kept items about the queen and princesses. I continued to create scrap books so I could look back on events.
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B ord e n S a nford
I was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia on December 6, 1920.
Both of my parents were natives of Clementsvale. I was born in Halifax because
after my dad had been in the army and got out of the hospital, he took a
course in carpentry in Halifax. So we lived there for a while. We moved back to
Clementsvale when I was very young, just a year old or so.
My father was in the Halifax hospital for a time. He was wounded in the war.“He was hit with a piece of shrapnel about
a week before the war ended right over his right eye and I first remembered dad, he was lying down on the couch
or something like that…you could have dropped an egg in that hole in his head, over his right eye...When he died,
it was practically filled in but he died with the shrapnel still in his head.”
My father was a carpenter most of his life. He worked for a time in Boston for his uncle, who was a contractor, before
the war. My dad and his brother Bill went to the Boston area and worked for their uncle for a time until the war
started. When the war started, my father enlisted and never returned to the United States.
My dad had a small farm, with a couple of cows and a garden and a pig, and chickens. That was very common in the
area at that time. There wasn’t a great deal of carpentry work in the days after the war but we were better off than
some people because my dad had a pension because of his war wound. It was something like $15 a month. “But
that was $15 that other people didn’t have.”
A dollar a day was the normal wages then. “You wonder how they ever got by on a dollar a day. But that’s the way it
was around here.”
“Mom was just a housekeeper and a wonderful cook…She was a community girl.”
“I thought I couldn’t have a better life, growing up in Clementsvale. We had...we just had all kinds of things to do. We
didn’t have much to do with...but I certainly had a great growing up. I wouldn’t want to change it any other way.”
My sister, June, lived in the house where we grew up.
I was in the airforce. I joined in 1941. My cousin and I joined together. I was an air frame mechanic. I was never sent
overseas, but I had overseas service “because of Newfoundland. At that time was a country on its own. So it passed
as overseas service in Newfoundland. I was at Gander for about a couple of years. That was quite an experience
just being in Gander.”
When I got out of the airforce, I started doing carpenter work. My dad and uncles were all carpenters and I worked
with them.“They had some pretty big jobs around here. They built the doctor’s stone house in Clementsport...You
know that one? And the Fiske house...and several other places. They were quite the carpenters.”
A job came up as a firefighter in Cornwallis and I spent 35 years doing that.
“The community
doesn’t seem to be a
priority anymore.”
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We had a two room school. The grades went up to grade eleven. The
school was right next door to my family home. “School in those years
was an experience, you know. There was a wood stove in each room.
There was a janitor to build the fires in the morning. And then after
school was opened they would send ...delegate a couple of pupils to
go to the neighbours and get a pail of water. That was the water for
the school. Toilets were out back...a couple of divided toilets, out back.
And in the wintertime when the fire was on, people who sat close to
the stove were pretty uncomfortable. People who were away from the
B O R D E N SA N F O R D
stove were freezing. It was ...compared to today, pretty weird.”
The first school I attended is now a barn across from where I grew up.
The new school was built in the early fifties. And now that school is closed.
For fun, “we played all kinds of games... We used to in the wintertime go snare rabbits. I had a quite close friend and
we used to go trapping. Muskrats and mink and things like that...We went as far back as Beaver Lake, you know,
walking. It was quite a ways but it was quite an experience and we enjoyed it.”
For doing chores at home,“I got off pretty easy. I just had to feed the chickens and get the wood in and we always had
a woodhouse full of wood every spring and we’d pile that up. I had to keep the woodbox full in the house. Clean
out the cows. And when I was big enough, I’d milk the cows.”
I remember that about 75% of the fields were cleared when I was a boy. Looking from where my home was, looking
toward the east, you could see right up through the fields.“You could see the fences and stone walls and everything.”
Now it is forested.
“The community doesn’t seem to...people do their own thing.”The community doesn’t seem to be a priority anymore.
Although, there is work going on at the community hall and a small park is being built.
When I was about four years old our neighbour across the road... I ran across there one time ... I ran across there and I
tripped going across the lawn because back in those years nobody paid any attention to the lawns, you know. Hay
just grew up around the house....Maybe cut it off a couple of times a year. But I tripped and I fell on a glass bottle.
I cut my arm.” I have a nasty scar near my elbow, still very visible today. They called the doctor in Bear River and he
came to the house. My dad held me while the doctor sewed the cut together. “I can remember that!” I believe the
doctor just poured iodine in the cut and stitched it.
Thinking about wildlife in the area,“When I was young, deer were very scarce. Deer were just sort of coming into their
own, back in those years. When I was a young boy. Moose were everywhere. You didn’t have to go out past a mile
before you could find a moose.”
Don Baird and I would go moose hunting. I was too young to take a gun so I was just tagging along.“Every time you
went, you’d see a moose, probably.”
Then deer started to populate the woods. I believe that deer were introduced to the province around 1905.
Borden and his sister, June
Paddling in front of the house
215
“People didn’t have any money but they had lots of fun.”
Everyone had a woodpile every year, to fuel the stoves. I recall my dad had a large woodpile one year.“It hadn’t been
touched. A feller came in to see dad and he said,’How are you going to get your wood cut up? Who are you going
to get to cut your wood?’ Well, Dad said that.. there used to be a feller from Bear River East that had kind of a power
outfit. He’d go around with a horse and wagon and cut people’s wood.”
My father thought he’d get him to cut his wood. The feller said, ‘Would you give me ...would you pay me as much as
you pay him if I could cut it up for you?’ Dad said, ‘You mean you want to cut it by hand?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘I
would.’
Dad said, ‘Well, yes, I’ll do that.’
The feller came down the next day and all he had was an old bucksaw that wasn’t cutting very well. My dad filed the
bucksaw for him. Then he cut the wood. “He was just so desperate for a few cents…for a dollar or two, you know.
He had no trade and he had no... When you think of it, it was sad that people had to live like that.” This was around
1929.
At Christmas one time, the first year we had electricity in Clementsvale, the electricity had been just been turned on.
The year was around 1928 or ‘29. “That Christmas Eve, we went to bed. We always hung our stocking on the end
of the bed. We’d wake up in the night and reach over to see if Santa Claus had been there yet....Anyway, we finally
woke up and felt it and the stocking was full. And there was a glow downstairs. A light that I’d never seen before.
I’d never noticed it before. And we went downstairs and the Christmas tree had electric lights on it! My mother had
sent to Boston to her sister who lived in Boston and she sent down a string of lights. And I suppose we were the
only place in Clementsvale that had lights.”
“That same year, two days after that, I was in bed. I heard a noise...you know, talking downstairs. Quite a lot of talking
which was unusual. And my dad came upstairs and he sat on the bed and he said that ‘I’ve got some bad news.’ He
said Uncle Harry was killed in a car accident. That was his youngest brother. He was killed on the river road from
Bear River...December 28th I think.”
In those years, there was no funeral parlor in the area. The undertaker came to the house and looked after the body.
Uncle Harry’s body was taken to our home. We had to take the Christmas tree down to have a place to put the body.
Uncle Harry had three boys. His widow, Aunt Bessie, had no income and there was no welfare back in those times.
Aunt Bessie and the youngest, Bruce, moved in with my parents. Gene went with one Sanford family and Weston
went with another Sanford family for a few years. Then Aunt Bessie started to teach school and “she got her flock
together again.”
Those boys had no father. It was very sad. The war came along after that. They had done well in school. “Gene was
a paratrooper. Weston was in the army. And Bruce joined the army at 16, just before the war ended you know. He
was...just got in under the wire. They all did well. Gene dropped...parachuted over Holland the night before the
invasion and was captured and spent the rest of a couple of years as a prisoner of war...When they came back,
Gene and Bruce went to Acadia....They both graduated from geology. Gene went up north and Bruce worked for
the federal government.”
“About five years ago, Bruce was granted the Order of Canada. ... And at eighty he said to himself, ‘All my friends have
Ph.Ds.’ He said, ‘Why can’t I be a Ph.D?’ He went back to the University of Ottawa and he graduated with his Ph.D.
The oldest person to graduate with it.”
I felt we were always pretty fortunate when it came to medical care in Clementsvale. There was a hospital in Annapolis
all my life. And there were two local doctors in Bear River.
I liked to experiment with things. When I was about ten years old, I placed a couple of metal plates on a board and
wired it. I’d catch a bullfrog and set him on the plates and turn on the switch. I electrocuted frogs that way. My
mother loved frogs’ legs. She hired boys around to catch bullfrogs for her. She’s pay them a cent or two for each
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frog so she could fry up the frogs’ legs.
“Growing up in Clementsvale, I couldn’t have asked for a better place. The friends I’ve had and the things we
did.”
I recall when Cornwallis base was built. I believe it was started in 1941. It closed for a short time after the
war, then was opened again as a training base. I was off doing service and I remember when I came home
on leave, I couldn’t believe how the place had changed. Buildings had cropped up very quickly. If anyone
wanted work, there was lots there. “The base employed everybody who wanted a job.”
When I was a lad, there were only two places in Clementsvale that had indoor plumbing. My father had been
caretaker of one of these.
When I was a boy of about twelve, we got a pump in the house from the well for running water. “Before that
we just went out to the well and we lowered the bucket down the well, and when [we] cranked on her
and wound her up and carried a pail in the house and that was it.” We didn’t have an indoor bathroom
until I was in the air force. Harold Rawding was the only plumber in Annapolis at that time and he put the
bathroom in the house for my father.
“When you think of the times and think of things...changes that have taken place since I’ve been around,
you know...and the changes that are taking place now that’s...I can’t even conceive...of how it works, you
know...Just mind-boggling.”
Apple blossoms in Clementsvale
Clementsvale church
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Murr ay S m it h
I was born in Harmony, Queens County, in 1925.
My dad worked in sawmills and did farming. My mother kept house.
My father sawed out logs, cut timber and drove horses. “He did everything that
people did in those days. They weren’t highly educated people nor were they
when I was a kid. Dad went to the same school that I went to...and my wife’s father went to the same school.”
My father worked with Jim Smith at his sawmill in Harmony. “They weren’t brothers but they were related...He was
an uncle of Dad’s.”
The school I attended was a one room school. “The teacher taught from grade one to grade eleven....For grade
twelve, you had to go somewhere else to get your grade twelve.” Students could get grade twelve in Caledonia or
in Liverpool.
When asked about my time in school, I said, “I remember all of the people there in it. Different grades.” I sometimes
see people, like Roxy McBride, who was a school mate. She’ll say, ‘Well, you and I go ‘way back to school days.’ Both
my brother and sister attended the same school, of course.
“It was a good time...good school. We used to come down to exhibition, when the exhibition was on...there were
concerts. People from all the schools [were] around. There were all these one room schools in every village. And
they all used to compete here...It was a big thing to win” the singing competition.
I feel there is a lot of truth in the saying: There’s no place like home. “I always had the feeling as long as I was away, I
wanted to come back to Caledonia...Well, I did.” I bought a home in the area in the 1970s that had belonged to my
wife’s aunt. “When I retired from service, we came back here. And we just loved it here....It was our home.”
“Now you take my children...they weren’t born here. So they don’t like it here. They have to be in the big city.”
For fun, we skated in the winter. We played ball...“all the things that kids do - still do.”
I spent some time in the woods hunting. “Everybody did, pretty well. My brother and I used to go together. And Dad
used to go.” They hunted for deer. “The cheapest meat you could find.”
“We had oil lamps
before electricity
came to the homes
in the area. Now
they’re something to
look at, souvenirs of
time past.”
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I never saw a moose while hunting.“Moose didn’t thrive down in this end
of the country. They still don’t. There are a few but you have to go up
Cape Breton way to get the moose.”
Other animals I would have seen in the woods when I was young were
bear, coyotes, and fox.
I think restricting people from hunting might help woodland species
today. “But that’s a pretty hard thing to do, too.” I had read that there
was a disease in loons at Keji.“Maybe diseases, I don’t know, in deer and
moose...wildlife” need to be addressed to help them.
Some people in the area today find it very hard to get along, and often
need to hunt to supplement their food, just as they did when I was a
young man.
m urr ay s m it h
I have seen a lot of changes in Caledonia over the years. There was a bank in Caledonia for about 70 years. That closed
and was replaced by a credit union. “That was only here for a few years and that moved out because there wasn’t
enough business...The people need those things here. They’re mostly old age people. They have to go to Liverpool
or Bridgewater to cash their old age cheque.”
When I was young, “...you could go to Caledonia on a Saturday night and there’d be cars on both sides of the road.”
Now people shop in Liverpool or Bridgewater.
For entertainment, a movie would be brought in and shown at the Masonic Hall.
“There were five or six grocery stores in Caledonia. There was Co-op, “which they used to call the warehouse, down
this end....There was a clothing store; N.F. Douglas’s had clothing...groceries...There were three barber shops at one
time...Now there isn’t a man barber to be found..” Everyone goes to hair salons now.
“The first person that I was ever told of to have electricity in this area was Jim Smith in Harmony. And it was run by
water. And his son, Sam, was a very smart guy. And he wired the house to the water in the mill...Anyway, however
he did it, they were the first ones to have electricity, I was always told and as far as I can remember.”
We had oil lamps before electricity came to the homes in the area. “Now they’re something to look at,” souvenirs of
time past.
To keep food, “they used the basement, or the cellar, before electricity to keep things cool And you put the butter
down the well, and the milk, down in the well to keep it fresh.”
Another change in the area was people getting drilled wells. “I had a well drilled at the house that I bought.”
Travel is different today. People often travelled with the mail car to Liverpool. Some people had their own car when I
was a lad.“The train went to Bridgewater.” Caledonia had a train station; it was located where the Home Hardware
is today.
The rail line was taken out when they put big trucks on the road to carry freight.“I think it was a shame that they did
that because people used to go on the train. And keep the big trucks off the highways. I think highways could be
preserved much better, at a cheaper rate.”
Murray’s Certificate of Service (front)
Murray’s Certificate of Service (back)
219
m urr ay s m it h
I was overseas for three years during WWII. I served in the army. “I spent my seventeenth birthday in Britain. I went
from there to Italy - up through Sicily to Italy- to a place called Ortona, where I joined up with the Canadians that
were there. The fifth Canadian division was there at the time. They were war tired. And the first division replaced
them. And I stayed there with them. War, war, war. And then, we came when the war was lost in Italy, we came down
and went up through Europe to Holland.” I liked Holland. It was pretty and I liked the people. “The Germans had
them scared to death in Holland.”
Then one day, “the sergeant major came in and he said,’Smith,..pack up your kit because you’re going to England in
the morning en route to Canada.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to go.’ I was single, I was happy, I had a girlfriend in Holland. I
wanted to stay. ‘You’re going!’ he said....And so I did.”
I returned to Canada in 1945.
I re-enlisted in the service after the war.“Jobs were tough to find here. They used me good so I re-enlisted and I made
a career.” I was an administrative clerk in the forces. They sent me back to England for three years. I took along my
wife and family. It was the best posting I ever had. When I came back, I was in Ottawa, and then on to Kingston. I
wasn’t really happy in Kingston. I wanted to come back to Halifax and eventually I did get back to Halifax.
I received several medals from my years in service. My grandson now has the medals.
I did not suffer any physical injury during the war. I drove an ambulance at one time. “They sent me up to the front
to get any casualties. And my first night out I had a major in the ambulance. And of course, it was dark. There was
no lights...and I got lost. Came across the British – a British unit. And I went in there and I asked where I was, if they
could set me straight and if they could look at the casualty they had in the ambulance. And they sent a medical
officer and he said ‘There’s no need to worry because he’s dead.’ I didn’t want that to happen the first night. Maybe
if I had of gone straight it might have saved his life, you know...They told me where to go and I finally got back to
my station.”
“And then, I was there one day and a German shell came over and hit the back of an ambulance. I wasn’t driving. Hit
the back of an ambulance...five people in it. Four stretchers and one medical person in the back of it...They were
just mangled. And I was the first one to open that door. I never saw in my life such a sight. And that driver got a little
piece of shrapnel in his back; that’s all that happened [to him].”
The memory still upsets me. “I can’t stand that stuff. It gets to me.”
“I’ve had a good life and a bad life. But all in all, I’ve had a good life.”
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221
C l inton T in k e r
a nd
Gr a c e T in k e r
Clint: I was born in Freeport. Life was rugged.
Everybody had about the same. My father was a fisherman. He fished groundfish like haddock and cod. He had his
own boat and worked for himself.
I had an identical twin. My brother was named Clifford. I had two other brothers.
“My mother raised us the best she could. She did all the cooking and cleaning.”
To get ready for winter, my family put up preserves. They would butcher a pig. It was put in salt to keep. They dried
and salted the fish to keep it. They dried the fish on boards when the weather was decent.
Everybody burned wood to heat their homes. Sometimes they’d burn coal.
As a young man “I tried to stay out of trouble...There was always work to do.”
At the community hall, we had Christmas concerts and general meetings.
I went to a rural schoolhouse. It was two stories high. It had primary through to high school. Grade twelve was included.
There were four teachers.
A lot of people left the island to look for work. They went to the mainland. Many people worked in the fish plant.
I helped my father on the wood lots. We used to cut wood, split it and dry it, for firewood in the winter.
Thinking about the community of Freeport,“it’s changed a whole lot. Well, a lot of them went to university, including
me...There were four boys in the family and all of us got a university education.” I took business.
I worked with the government, building roads and building the Bear River Bridge.“It was an interesting piece of work
because it was one of a kind. There was only one in North America that was built like it...Especially the curve in it.
It was quite a feat, that was.” It took about two years to build. There is one like it in Europe.
Other people who got an education worked away from Freeport, maybe in Halifax.
“I helped my father
on the wood lots. We
used to cut wood,
split it and dry it, for
firewood in the winter.”
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So many people who used to be the lifeline of the community have died.
“There was nobody to take up the slack.”
“There was an old fish plant that was there for years and my father was
the foreman of the fish plant...But the old fish plant burnt. It burnt to
the ground...several months ago.” So there’s no fish plant in Freeport
anymore.
The island’s woodlots have “just grown up in forests.” People don’t cut
wood any longer. Heating houses has “all gone to oil.”
C l inton T in k e r a nd Gr a c e T in k e r
The groundfish aren’t as plentiful but they are still being fished. “There’s still a livelihood to be made that way.”
People still keep gardens “but just the odd one. Everything comes out of a grocery store now.”
There were very few bats in Freeport. There weren’t any turtles there. I used to see a number of butterflies. “Well, I
would say there’s more there than there were before.” People used to hunt deer or rabbit for food but they don’t
do that so much now.
“Our environment is changing. There’s the good and the bad.”
Grace: “I grew up in a small town but it was different. I felt sort of isolated” in Freeport. I lived in B.C.
My uncle piloted ships all over the world.
My home had lots of roses in the summer. “It wasn’t cheerful in the winter.”
Our home was near a lake. We couldn’t see the sea from our home.
The home of Grace and Clinton Tinker, in Freeport
223
V ictor ( ‘ V ic ’ ) a nd W i l l i e T roo p
Willie – I was born in 1940 in The Hague Holland.
Vic – I was born in Digby in 1939. My parents lived next door from this farm where
I live now.
Vic - My great-grandfather and grandfather (Joseph Henry Troop and Arthur Sinclair Troop) lived on the farm where
I live now. My grandfather died just the day, or maybe two days, before I was born. “I didn’t get to meet him.”
“I have three brothers; they’re all younger than me. In fact the youngest one wasn’t born until I left home to join
the army. We lived next door for the first 4 1/2 years of my life and my grandparents lived here in this house and
then we moved up to Upper Granville and we lived in a house up there. I guess we had no electricity, but they put
electricity in while we were living in the house. We were renting it. And then a farm came available just down the
road from us and father bought the farm and of course that had electricity.”
My father was a farmer. “Mixed farming – a little bit of everything. He had some cattle. He had a horse or two to haul
wood out. He liked oxen and he had oxen sometimes. And he grew extra vegetables to sell.”
Willie - “And you guys did Graves pickles.”
Vic - “We used to have a contract to produce string beans for the Graves canning company. And then later on,
cucumbers...For a couple of years, I don’t know what they called it. It would have been during the latter part of the
war, the Second World War.”
“And he worked in an apple juice plant. They dehydrated the apple juice. It was big boilers the syrup went through...
if he wasn’t careful the pipes would get stuck up with the syrup running through them.”
“I guess we had things to do. It wasn’t always the same thing every day, that’s for sure. But whatever was going on. If
it was vegetable time we had to pick the beans and the cucumbers and so on.”
My mother was a housewife.
Willie - “She baked all the bread. She did help milk, she helped with everything. Without your mother, your father
couldn’t have done poop. The woman worked so hard.”
“King birds – I
haven’t seen a king
bird for I don’t know
how long...They are
hilarious to have.”
Vic - “She was a hard worker. She made three loaves of bread a day, six
days a week. And then on the seventh day she’d buy a loaf of baker’s
bread. That didn’t go very far. We ate a lot of bread, I guess.”
Everyone worked hard then.
Willie - “Especially the women. If she had to go pick cucumbers, for
instance, she’d go out and work with everybody and then everybody
laid down and she had to make the dinner. And then she had to do the
dishes while they were still resting and then out they went again...She
was a going concern, that one.”
Vic – “I don’t remember Mom helping a lot with the hay but pretty well
everything else she did.”
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V ic a nd W i l l i e T roo p
“I went to school in a little country school about about three hundred meters from home, I guess.”
Willie - “Scanlan’s vet shop.”
Vic - “Yes, that little schoolhouse that became a vet shop later. In Upper Granville. Then I guess when I got in grade
eight they had just built the new high school in Bridgetown and I went there on a bus. And I didn’t have to walk.”
“We never had any computers.”
Willie - “You were in a one room school...so they did a lot of classes together.”
Vic - “As a matter of fact, I got advanced a year because there was two of us in grade two and two in grade three and
for some reason when the end of the year came they put us all in grade four...I think the teacher wanted it a little
easier the next year so she’d have no grade three to do.”
Willie - “And the highway was just dirt when you were little.”
Vic - “Gravel road. Like this little piece that’s left over here in front of our place.”
For fun, “I used to go to Bridgetown to a movie Saturday nights. Not every Saturday night...Usually some neighbour
had a vehicle and we’d go up in their vehicle. But if I didn’t have the money to go to the movie, I’d make an axe
handle and sell the axe handle to the little store. I got 35 cents for the axe handle and it cost 25 cents to go to the
movie and I had 10 cents left over for a box of french fries at the local taxi stand, actually, and a hamburger joint.”
Thinking about changes in the community,“I think we had more community social events. I can remember each family
took a turn having a card party during the winter and all the neighbours would come to the card party and bring
some food. Have an evening of fun and playing cards. Option 45s and so on...We don’t do that anymore. I mean,
there are still other events in our community currently, but they’re a little different.”
Willie - “There are no young people left either.”
Vic - “Well, nowadays people have got cars and they go somewhere else for their entertainment or whatever but back
in those days you didn’t have a vehicle to travel a lot so you just did everything within your own community.”
Willie - “You walked a lot more too.”
Vic – The land is probably used for the same things.“There’s
a few crops that we didn’t grow back then... It takes more
land to make a living nowadays because everything is
automated and we’ve got tractors...I can go out and mow
10 acres of hay in about two hours and fifteen minutes and
back then I remember my dad had a team of horses on a
little horse-drawn mower with a short cutter bar and I’d
say if he tackled that same piece it would probably take
him all day.”
Victor’s collection of apple stencils (some are
from his grandfather Arthur Sinclair Troop and
his great-grandfather Joseph Henry Troop
who lived in that farmhouse)
Willie - “They could live from what they did. And now they
can’t...You couldn’t really make the same living off it. He
did make a living off that field. And they grew cucumbers
for Graves. Okay...I remember his father saying, ‘Okay, we
need a new tractor tire so there, plant an extra row of
cucumbers.’ Right? You just couldn’t do it nowadays. You
don’t get paid enough for your farm stuff.”
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Vic - “It would take more than one row of cucumbers to buy a tractor tire. I just put two new ones on that tractor out
there and it cost me over two thousand dollars.”
Willie - “You can do it in a shorter time but you’re not making any more money. Well, which is why they all want those
great big farms so they can sit on their great big tractors and run over all this flat land, right? And it’s easier in some
ways.”
Vic - “I can remember having up to about 50 head [of cattle] in a barn designed for twenty. So they were stamping
all over the place.”
Willie - “But now, you could not make a living off 50...head of cattle, I don’t think. Maybe if they were 50 dairy cows.”
Vic - “We were up to 60 head here at one time. We’re down to 20 now. And this fall there will be more gone.”
Willie - “The exhibitions in days gone by were more farm...there’d be cattle and sheep I guess. And maybe some goats...
pigs...They’d have Ayrshires, shorthorns – they probably had milking shorthorns too. And they had all the different
kinds of cattle you hardly see. Now they’re a lot more exotic cattle. They wouldn’t have Simmental and they wouldn’t
have had Charolais and Limousines, either. But they have all these exotic cattle now from Europe. I’m not saying
that’s good or bad. That’s the way it is...They were just different. They were bigger...They had made the Herefords
very small. They were little square boxes...The Charolais were way bigger, the Simmental were way bigger.”
Vic - “I guess some people just wanted bigger cattle.”
Willie - “And then they grew the Herefords way bigger...Because in the 1800s the Herefords were way bigger, then
they got smaller, and now they’re bigger again. Now they’re putting them back down to a better size. They worry
about the conformation more and their birth weights.”
Vic - “Even in our time, we’ve been farming, and we’ve had Herefords for about thirty years, I guess...And when we
started off, they were long-legged things and when you went in the show ring with them well, you could have
judged them with a ruler. All you had to do was pick the tallest one and that was in first place. And then they finally
realized there was nothing between the belly and the ground to eat. So they worried about the long legs and they
tried to make them a little bit fatter. Compact.”
Willie - “And you want it to be healthy. You want it to have good feet. Want them to calve easy, want to have milk,
and useful teats and udders. You’ve got to look at the whole picture, not...this tall animal is all I want? I mean, come
on.”
Alexa is a polled Hereford heifer.“She’s not bad, but she was picked for 4-H because we’ve only got twenty animals...
there’s no competition at the county level in 4-H right now for us...If I figure it out right all my kids can go to the
provincial show.”
Vic - “If you give them a different kind of animal, like give one a calf and the next one a... yearling heifer, then they’re
in two different classes. They both win their class or come at least second and then they’re eligible to go to the
provincial show.”
Willie - “I have five boys this year... the top two heifer calves would go, the top two yearling heifers would go, and
then I’m running out so then we had to pick a feeder calf or something...Our cattle are pretty good. They’ve always
done well with them.”
Vic - “And if you get a good name for yourself when you go to the purebred auctions people say, ‘Oh, that’s a Crow
Harbour farm. That should be good. ‘”
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Willie - “You shouldn’t be selling it if you don’t think it’s worth selling. Or that it’s going to do well. We do freezer beef,
Vic does, so you sell your culls as freezer beef. They’re perfectly good, healthy animals but they might not be thick
enough or you might not like their legs or whatever.”
Vic - “Or they might have a tick on their backs.”
Willie - “I never really worried about tick backs...It doesn’t really matter that much. Her [Alexa’s] mother had a tick, her
grandmother also had a tick. [A tick is a mark]. I didn’t think it would be so hereditary but obviously that one is.”
Vic - “I was in the military for 32 years. Well, we started farming a little bit before I got out. I got out in 1987 and I guess
we’d been farming for five years before that.
Willie – The cattle went to Vic’s parents’ farm. “His father is supposed to be looking after these. They’re not even his
cattle. Poor man. And then they’re calving…This was not good. Because I didn’t want to get into this until we were
ready. But since they were screwing up so badly we had to take charge of how it went.”
Vic - “Thank you for your direction, dear.”
Willie - “Nothing’s going to die on my watch if I can help it.”
“There’s been a lot of change in wildlife. We didn’t have coyotes, right?...No earwigs.”
Vic - “That’s why we got the guinea hens, isn’t it?”
Willie - “Well, sort of...Earwigs and ticks.”
Vic - “All the chickens will pick the earwigs. We don’t really have them around here. But the guinea hens are noted
for picking up the earwigs.”
Willie – The guinea hens lay eggs with very hard shells. “If you drop them they likely won’t break.”
Vic - “Bears, they used to say when I was little...there were no bears on the North Mountain. But now there are...Not a
lot of them but there’s a few there.”
Willie - “And certainly the birds have changed an awful lot...Nowhere near the swallows we used to have...in the early
fall they’d all be on the lines. Now you’re lucky if you’ve got any barn swallows...The bobolinks. There’s nowhere near
as many. When we first moved here...the noise from the birds – now you just don’t have that. King birds – I haven’t
seen a king bird for I don’t know how long...They are hilarious to have. We had a pear tree in front and there was a
king bird nest in it. And they’re sort of robin sized...The funny thing about them is, I will tell you, you won’t have any
birds that shouldn’t be here when they have a nest there. Crows will fly wide circles around your place because the
king bird will sit right on their back and peck them. I mean, they’re wild.”
We see turkey vultures now but there didn’t used to be any. And mourning doves too. Cardinals you see now. We see
pheasants. “Of course, they were imported...They were always here when we were here.”
“Forget about the bats...I haven’t seen a bat all summer. Poor things. Last year there was still the odd one...But not
this year.”
We don’t see any turtles here.
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Vic - “I hit one with the mower up on Belleisle Marsh one time. It wasn’t a Blanding’s. It was a bigger – I don’t know...
it was quite a big one.”
Willie – There aren’t chimney swifts here. At the Middleton school there were some. At the Windsor Wear in Windsor,
there was a big chimney there. But that was torn down.
We see the odd monarch butterfly
Vic - “I don’t see the number I used to see as a kid.”
Willie - “In fact, you don’t see near the butterflies you used to see either.”
“It’s all the pollution... and everything’s destroyed. Wherever they’re nesting or wherever they’re hanging out. Well, even
here people...well, okay, you’re mowing. In the olden days they mowed in, what, August? Early August. One cut.”
Vic - “‘Way later in the summer than we do now.”
Willie - “They’re mowing two, three, four times. Like, good gravy, how’s a bird supposed to live through all that? You
can’t. You have a nest and it’s destroyed.”
Vic - “At one time I used to get extra hay up on the Belleisle Marsh and they encouraged us to use what they called
a flushing bar...It stuck out of the side of the tractor and it had chains or whatever. I had one that was homemade
and I tied some oil bottles to it. And it would hang out the side of the tractor and when you went along it would
scare the birds out of the grass...before the mower came along and cut their heads off.”
Willie - “What do you do to protect the environment for future generations?...You can’t clear cut and just be greedy.
Most all of it is due to greed, as far as I can see...And pesticides and insecticide. Same with the bees’ collapse...
basically to me it’s all greed that it’s due to. And wanting more. What do you do to protect it though? I don’t really
know that anybody wants to when I think of it...You can only worry about what you can do, really. Because I can’t
make other people do anything.”
“Because even the 4-H kids I have, they may or may not feel the same...Our son-in-law is organic. I think that’s a good
place to start. Do everything the organic way and don’t use pesticides. Don’t spray things...Select cut your woods
other than just clear cut.”
“I’d like to get away from packaging altogether. I cannot see why everything – even now when anyone gets a loaf of
bread or what-is-it, it’s always in one bag and then it has to be put in another bag? Why? You know, bring your own
bag. Don’t mess about like that. There are so many things you can do. Yes, I would definitely stop all this packaging
that everything comes in.”
Vic - “I mentioned when I was mowing up on the Belleisle Marsh we used the flushing bars. But also because I was
leasing the lands through the Department of Natural Resources I wasn’t allowed to cut before the 15th of June
and by that time they assumed that most of the birds would be off their nests. They’d have their little ones hatched
out and be moving them around. And there was one kind of grass that grew on the marsh they let us cut on the
first of June I think it was. But most of it we couldn’t. So that was a step that should have helped some. That and the
flushing bar. Although every once in a while those flushing bars were, as far as I’m concerned, a menace. Because if
you’re a pheasant hunkered down, pheasants don’t like to fly. They like to lay low and let you pass by. And if those oil
bottles and what-not fop over top of you, you just hunker down. Now if you didn’t have them you might have flown
before the mower got to them. Now I can’t remember hitting more than one or two pheasants in my lifetime.”
Willie - “I’m also against roads...Wherever you put a road a problem will crop up. If you have a cabin, you just walk
into your cabin and carry your stuff in you probably won’t have that much trouble. But as soon as you put a road
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in, you’re going to have snowmobiles and four-wheelers and stuff. And whenever people start to holler about
there’s an accident or something and we should have another lane on this highway, we do not need all those cars.
Honestly. Let’s do public transportation as much as we can.”
“When I was in Holland the last time it was absolutely amazing how everything dovetailed together and how easy
it was to get around. Now it’s ‘way, ‘way harder here, no two ways about it because we are so large. We could bike
a lot more...I’d sooner see bicycle paths everywhere than another lane added to the highway. We could double up.
Going to town, oh yeah, that’s how I’d basically like to see it. Make gas really, really expensive or otherwise ration
it. Everybody’s only allowed so many litres of gas a week or whatever and then I will ask my neighbours, ‘You want
to go to town? And the next time, you take me. ‘”
Vic - “We were involved in gas rationing in Germany. We used to have to buy based on the size of the engine in our
car. We bought little tickets and we were entitled to so many tickets. Each ticket would let you get…10 litres of gas
or something. So depending on the horsepower of your car or the size of the engine you were allowed to purchase
so many tickets. And that was all the gas you could consume in any one [week]. Now fortunately...mostly we had
enough...we never worried about it.” We gave some tickets to Willie’s Dutch uncle because he couldn’t get as many
as we could.
Willie - “We’re so dependent on fossil fuels that it isn’t funny, really.”
“Isn’t it peculiar that all those deer showed up in towns all over Canada at more or less the same time? Like, how did
that happen? We never had deer in towns. Victoria is loaded with deer in town...What I find odd is why did that
happen all over Canada at the same time?...What made them think they could go into towns and it was okay?”
“What does anybody do about climate change? Come on, we keep right on trucking...And Harper especially. I don’t
think he cares one way or the other. And the tar sands. They shouldn’t be. That really is dirty oil...so much pollution
there.”
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G e or g e ( ‘ G e or g I e ’ ) U h l m a n
I was born in 1956 in Caledonia.
The first school I attended was in Pleasant River. It was a one room schoolhouse,
heated with a wood stove. I feel the teacher, even though she taught five
grades, had equal time for all her students. “We all got to take part, even if we
were small.” We all had a turn bringing wood into the school, fetching water
and putting on the fire.
“We pretty well picked our own activities. We’d watch the older group and if they played ball...we’d play tag.”
I attended the Pleasant River school until grade five. Then I went to the two room South Brookfield school. There
used to be a service station on the road just below the school.“We had to ride on the bus then. Up to grade five, we
walked to school. Walked two miles, we did, my family. Morning and night.” I attended the South Brookfield school
until grade seven, and then I went to the high school.
“We had horses at home so we used to horseback ride. At that time you could go right on the main road because
there was no traffic. And then we had bikes.”
“It used to be fun back then. Things were so different.”
“We didn’t even have a phone. We didn’t get a phone until I was about 14 or 15.”
“We used to play the button game with the string on them. We’d take things out of the old clocks and turn them by
hand on the table.”
If we couldn’t get something in Pleasant River, we’d come to the store in North Brookfield to shop. There were lots of
little stores then. Going into Caledonia then was like going to Bridgewater now.
I consider Caledonia my community now. “It’s changed so much. Even since the 70s. Since the seventies, there were
three service stations right here. You could get gas anywhere. Now you only have one...We had three mills back
then. We had N.F. Douglas’ down below Richard Lane’s home, on Lake Mary. We had the Bowater’s mill here. And
we had the Caledonia Hardwood Co. up here near Lakeview.”
“And I always say for
people to survive
today, they’d have
a real good life
if they’d learn to
live off the land
again.”
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At the Caledonia Corner, there were no gaps here between all these
buildings. There are a lot of heritage buildings gone. “If my grandkids
could only see what it used to be.” There used to be a grocery store and
a feed store across from the liquor store. Also, the Parker House was torn
down to make room for the new grocery store.
I remember the old co-op and the train coming in there. I could see the
train going past my home in Pleasant River.“We could see the lights and
the caboose and the train cars coming through. The trains hauled lots of
things - lumber and chloride for the highway shed in Caledonia.
I started working when I was just a young fellow.“That’s what’s wrong with
me now. When I was ten years old, I could use a power saw.” Most of the
young boys grew up on farms in the area and they learned how to work.
“The farms are still there but they don’t look like farms anymore. And I
always say for people to survive today, they’d have a real good life if they’d
learn to live off the land again.”
G e or g i e U h l m a n
“When I was fourteen or fifteen years old, I worked on a lot of these farms that’s here...And I’m back again...I know it’s
a good feeling to be back. It just makes me really happy to say I did come back the second time...I had to move out
from home just to see what it was really like. It wasn’t free time, right?” I had to learn how to balance work, going
to school and doing homework.
“I notice a difference in the forestry, big time. Because back then if you got a cord of wood by the road...if you only
had one cord, they’d buy it from you. Fifty dollars a cord, for a cord of pulp wood. That was real good money.” Now
they won’t buy five cords. “They’d just laugh at you. They don’t even come and pick it up.” Right now, you would
have to have at least 12 cords of wood.
All my wood is brought out by horses. So when I go onto a woodlot, I make sure I get enough to make up a load. “I
can visualize that in the woods. I know if I’ve got a load.”
“The way I do it, I’m just making the forest better, making it grow by itself. When I leave an acre of land, that land is
ready to go on its own...I’m not really in business today. I can’t go into business the way people are doing what
they’re doing. So I like doing it as a hobby. And that’s why I’m still with horses.”
Most people are using big machines. They need to build a road into woodlots just to get them into the woods. “I’d
probably take a month to cut that much with the horses and do it the right way.” I’m concerned about the land
and the water courses.“We don’t have near enough people watching this stuff. It’s going in the fast lane right now...
There’s clear cutting everywhere.”
When I cut a woodlot, I look carefully so I don’t have to cross waterways, “if there’s any way possible.”
I don’t like to think about what the clear cuts are doing to the forests. “I just stay away from the clear cuts.”
I didn’t like hunting or fishing. I liked to enjoy watching the wildlife. “Wildlife’s getting scarce. How many brooks are
you going to go find trout in now? We have one of the few trout brooks left...There’s so many roads through now,
the wildlife is getting chased out of their own homes...
Clear cuts is another thing...The bears are coming
back but they’re coming out closer to homes...Where
are they going to go?” I feel they don’t have enough
habitat left.
“Our bats are gone.We had bats in the old house. I noticed
two years ago...” I still saw butterflies, but we planted
flowers for them. We like to see the butterflies, moths
and hummingbirds.“They’re not like they used to be.”
I think the plastic siding on houses has something to
do with the decrease in moths. They used to cling to
the sides of houses but I haven’t noticed them much
lately. “That stuff gives off a lot of heat.”
“Some farms, they get all the chemicals they want. Up
where I am now...there is no spray...We kind of live in
our own little world there. And it will always be that
way as long as I’m around because I don’t believe in
it.” I feel there is too much spraying being done.“But
it’s out of our hands because the regulations come
from higher up.”
“Anything helps. Whether it’s small or big.” The
Department of Transport does things very differently
than they used to. Things like putting in culverts are
done with the environment and safety in mind.
Atlantic Forestry magazine with Georgie on the
front cover
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G e or g i e U h l m a n
I was nominated Woodlot Owner of the Year. I feel that not travelling through water is very important.“Don’t disturb
the waterways.” When brooks go dry from machinery running through them or the trees being cut away from the
banks, “they’ll never come back.”
Care for the environment “should start right in the school.“...we knew every tree that was in the woods. We collected
the leaves. And we were taught which one was which. Is that ever done today?...Get someone who works in the
forest to come to the school.” The workshops put on for kids by MTRI are wonderful. “It’s awesome what they do.”
“Years ago I wanted to start a community garden at the exhibition grounds.” That didn’t work out. But I feel that a
community garden at the school would be a good idea.
One spring, each nursery school student got to plant a pumpkin at my place.“They put a stick in with their name on
it...And they came back and got them Halloween time.”
“Environment...– we’re late. For us to save what we’ve already lost, you can’t do....The government has to soon realize
this...It has to last us out, and my grandkids.”
Georgie’s Woodlot Owner of the Year plaques
232
233
C orn e l iu s ( ‘ C a s e ’ ) Va n D y k
I was born May 1, 1931 in the Netherlands.
After the war, the farms were too small for making a living, but I also wanted to
find a new future. “I came here to become a fruit grower. So I was destined to
go to the valley.”
I wasn’t content with the farming methods I found there. I took some courses. “One of them was a socioeconomic
course.”This course gave me some ideas.“This community holds a lot of potential. Not just for farming but for things
to grow. And opportunities. And you know one of them was blueberries...I took a serious look at that.” I found that
one of my fields was about 50% covered with wild blueberries. I realized there was an opportunity to make this a
commercial venture. I talked to the agricultural people in Truro. Blueberries became my main interest.
I bought the old farm on the Devonshire Road. It was a mixed farm. We had three pigs, 50 hens, 17 sheep and about
20 mixed breed milk cows. I remember the old cream separator we had in the kitchen. The skimmed milk went to
the calves and the cream went to MacKenzie’s creamery in Middleton once a week. “We had to keep the cream in
the old well to keep it cool.”
“I said there is no future for a dairy here because the farms are too small. But this is where my living is at this point.”
I tried to find a buyer for my raw milk. My milk was heavy in cream. I started selling to people in the area. “All of
a sudden, I got more and more customers. I was serving Westfield. I was serving South Brookfield. I was serving
Caledonia.” I built a cooler to hold the milk and I delivered it.
I got many of the customers from Superior Dairy. I was called into Liverpool to the Dept. of Utilities. I was forced to
sell my milk for a cent more, the same price as the dairies. Although I was selling milk to most of North Queens, I
decided that wasn’t my future.
The dairy approached me to see if I would sell my milk to them. I asked for a quota that amounted to the milk I was
selling. I sold three cans of milk a day to Superior Dairy, at their Liverpool depot. I discussed getting out of milk
cows with the NS Farm Loan Board. I was told I’d have to go to the valley. “Here I was, a stubborn Dutchman and
they wouldn’t give in...So I had to struggle.” I eventually got approval to go into hogs. I figured out a budget by
determining how much I would get for the cattle and the hay. The NS Farm Loan board turned down my loan.“That
was a broken promise.”
I joined the Liberal party in Liverpool. I became chairman of the committee and an election was coming up. I was
asked to re-draft my proposal. I did that, and sent it to Truro. “I have never, ever seen the mail go so fast. Because a
day later, I had approval.”
“In nature, things
don’t come easy.
All of it is complicated...There is a
thing of balance.”
“From there on in, things were easier.” Three of my boys went to Agricultural
College. My oldest, Jerry, came home and we started to build hog barns. We
had 200 sows and about 6000 pigs a year. The hog business went well for a
few years, but then the price dropped. “That was a bad thing for us. I said to
the boys – by that time, the boys had more control than I had by that time - I
said,‘Boys, listen, you see that price. Don’t look for any changes....Your future is
basically gone.’” When we sold the last pigs, we were losing about $6 a pig.
I believe that when so many hog farms were ruined, the NS Farm Loan Board
absorbed a lot of the loss and it would have run into a billion or so dollars.
Three of my sons decided to work on the farm. Jerry took Agri-business, Pete
and Anthony took animal science at NSAC. Our daughter Jeannie took animal
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C a s e Va n D y k
science as well, but went on to McGill, MacDonald’s College, and got her degree.
Then we went into the blueberries. And Jerry went into excavation and stuff like that. Right now we are three businesses.
And we employ about 45 people. “Blueberries have given us the biggest boost.”
At the beginning we hired people to pick the berries. Just within the last ten years we have had machines to rake the
berries. I was involved in the development of these machines. They are built in Collingwood, Cumberland County.
“Doug Bragg was the machinist...Once they got that machine going...they sold a lot of machinery, all through into
the States and everywhere.”
We used to get young people to rake the berries from North Queens. We would pick up about thirty of them in a
school bus, but “now, that’s all over.” Some of the best rakers made $200 a day.
I feel kids are too busy texting these days. I have seen them text to one another across the table. “That’s poor
communication.”
The passenger train stopped running into Caledonia in the early 1950s. I could only get the train to Bridgewater.
Freight trains continued until 1983, but I didn’t use them for my products.
The bear population has increased a lot. I remember going to a meeting in Kentville and a biologist there suggested
to the blueberry growers to let the bears have some of the berries. I didn’t agree. “I said, ‘Listen sir...are you saying
we should let them have some free?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I don’t see anything wrong with that.’ I said,’You are a biologist,
aren’t you? The more you make food available, the more wildlife grows.’” Bee keepers and apple growers were also
concerned because bears were getting into their products. That was kind of an interesting meeting.
I like to make room for wildlife, but I also have to farm. I don’t feel that DNR was very helpful. I remember that there
had been a problem with bears in Bear River. They were trapped and taken out to Victory. I had blueberry fields
there. “I have never, ever seen so many bears in Victory.”
Bears do a lot of destruction to a berry crop. “They do two things. They have these big feet and they tramp it down
on the ground. And now they press the juice out of them...They are all broken berries and you’re raking them up.
So you’re getting a lower quality berry...Number two, you have their manure there and they tramp that.” We have
to lift the rake machine over that. So some of the crop is lost.
Case and his wife, Henrica (‘Riek’), at the blueberry
plant
A pair of skates Case brought to Canada from the
Netherlands
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C a s e Va n D y k
Pete has put up fences on some of the fields, including one in Northfield, to keep out the bears and the deer from
the blueberry fields. The fence cost $30 000 per six or seven acre field. The fence was about twelve feet high and
electric, using solar power. It will take years to regain that expense. Deer go into the fields early in the spring and
chew off the top two inches of the plants. “That’s where the blueberries are.”
“I respect wildlife...Wildlife is part of nature...Wildlife has to be kept in control like everything else.”
I feel the bat situation has become very serious. “Bats eat their own weight daily in insects.” We used to have bats in
the attic, but they suddenly disappeared. The last bat I saw was hanging on an outside wall, and I noticed the white
on his nose that showed he was infected with the white nose disease.
Bees too are a concern.“That’s what you get for so much agriculture controls. All kinds of things happen...We import
a whole trailer load from Ontario. These hives are about $160-180 a hive.” The bees pollinate the blueberries. “The
more seeds the berry has, the more it develops. You get a bigger berry. It ripens more...it’s very important that it’s
pollinated.”
“The bees have given us an opportunity to get more berries. So we are willing to spend that much money on
them.”
“Spray. That has not solved the problem. And it never will...what I’d like to see more research done on is that when
we have a plant and the plant has a weakness, go and study where it comes from. There’s not enough effort to turn
science into a worthwhile thing. I know it’s very, very difficult but it’s the future. And we can’t keep knocking wildlife
and knocking insects. Every time when we try to solve a problem, we make another one...There isn’t enough push
to go that way.”
I remember years ago, people would pick enough berries for their winter supply and the plants had very few natural
enemies. They survived year to year. That has changed. “In nature, things don’t come easy. All of it is complicated...
There is a thing of balance.”
When I first started growing the blueberries commercially, they were exported to Boston. In the Yarmouth area, a
little maggot was found in the berries and that ended that. “In the meantime, they found a machine to clean the
blueberries and put them in the freezer. That’s what the big business is now.” Most of my berries go to Oxford,
Cumberland County. Now I buy back the frozen berries and make blueberry juice. I have a blueberry juice plant on
the West Caledonia Road. The plant has been in operation for almost 15 years. The juice is sold all over the world
such as in China, USA and Europe. “The Chinese are really buying heavy.” Twenty pallets of ninety boxes of juice
will go straight to China this fall.
“I went to Kentville and I met some people there and they were willing to do some research...The juice was really well
accepted...There were a lot of antioxidants and a lot of anti-inflammatories.”
I have won awards with my juice. I won an award in Spain for my blueberry juice.
Seven employees and a local bookkeeper work for the blueberry plant. The frozen berries are kept frozen until they
are ready to juice them. The morning they will be juiced, they have been allowed overnight to reach -4 degrees.
Then the berries are heated to about 40 degrees and the juice is pressed out of them. It goes through a pasturizer.
“That goes into a bulk tank and from the bulk tank to the bottler and from the bottler to the labeler. They make
about 140 boxes a day.” A box holds twelve bottles.
My son Leo may take over the juice business. I feel the business should make a profit. “We are not out to become a
millionaire. We try to be successful at running a business. And make a good living at it.”
Farmers are not on salary. If we lose a crop, we go hungry.”
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237
B e tt y W a g n e r
I was born July 4, 1928. I was born in Digby but then I moved to Mount
Pleasant.
I lived in a “plain old house, but it burnt. It was two story; a big house.” It burned
when I was only fourteen. The fire started in the roof. The shingles were old and
dry. My father had just sold a pair of oxen and he was saving money to get new
shingles, but it burnt before he got it shingled. I was home when it happened. We
lost almost everything but we all got out. We rebuilt on the same property.
We lived on a farm. “We had a couple of cows and some smaller animals.” Papa had one horse. We had hens and a
rooster. I used to collect the eggs. I learned how to milk the cows. I fed the cats and the dog.
Papa had a woodlot and he cut logs. Papa used the horse to plow and do that kind of heavy work. Nowadays people
use tractors.
Mama had thirteen children.“I was the last one.” The older ones didn’t have much time to spoil me. Everyone helped
out on the farm.
I went to the Mount Pleasant school. It was a one room school. There would have been about 30 or 40 students. It
went from primary to high school. There were no school buses. I walked to school. I had quite a long walk. I went
along with other children who were going to school. I went to school until I was, maybe, fourteen. I didn’t mind
going to school. My favourite thing was recess.
The school was heated by a wood burning stove. The teacher usually kept the fire going.
Several different teachers taught at the school while I went there.“They were all pretty good, I thought.” They usually
came from somewhere else. They boarded in the community.
Sometimes we had homework to do.
For fun, my friends and I “played with dolls some.” Sometimes some of the neighbours would give them to us. In the
summer, we’d play in the brook. We’d go sledding in the winter. I had a sled that my papa made.
“Papa had a woodlot and he cut logs.
Papa used the horse
to plow and do that
kind of heavy work.
Nowadays people
use tractors.”
238
When I got out of school, I worked in Digby in a fish plant. It was kind of
messy work. I had to wear rubber boots.
“There was a grocery store just across the street from the fish plant and
after a while that man got me to work in his grocery store as a clerk.”
I worked there quite a while before I was married. I imagine I worked
harder as a clerk than people do today. The store stayed open most
nights until six and on Saturdays it stayed open until eleven. I used to
take a little lunch along with me and I would eat it in the back of the
store. The store is gone now.
When I got married, I still lived in Mount Pleasant. There are more houses
there now. People usually have to go out of the community to work.
B E T T Y wag n e r
After I married Willard, I stayed home to look after the family.
Willard worked on the roads and in town sometimes.
Willard was a WWII veteran.
The church was in town so we only went some because it
was so far to walk.
My children went to school in town. They travelled by bus.
There are more roads now than there used to be.
There wasn’t much wildlife around the farm. I used to see
deer once in a while. I don’t remember seeing bats around
when I was young. Once in a while we’d see turtles in the
brook. There were lots of butterflies around.
Betty and her husband, Willard
239
W i l l i a m ( ‘ B i l l’ ) L a ur e nc e W a m bo l dt
I was born in Caledonia, Queens County on May 31, 1943.
I grew up in a single-family home with a kitchen, living room and two bedrooms
downstairs and an attic space that was used as a bedroom for his brother and
himself upstairs. The washroom facilities were outside. There was no running
water.
“We slept under a mound of quilts...If you stuck your head out and breathed, you could see frost. You could see frost on
the bottom of the roof because nothing was insulated in those days. And when you went to get up in the morning,
when you reached out over the bed, wherever you had carefully laid your clothes the night before, you could pull
those into the bed with you and warm them up, then get dressed before you got out from under the covers.”
I had one brother and one sister who lived.
My father was a mechanic. In later years, he owned his own garage. My mother did a lot of housekeeping, helping
out elderly people. In later years, she worked at Bobby Holdright’s market in Caledonia.
I attended Pine Grove School in Caledonia, which was a two room school. Primary to grade three were in one room
and four to six were in the other. The North Queens high school had been built by that time, so grades seven to
twelve were taught there. “We certainly didn’t have the technology they have today. We didn’t have computers
and all that sort of stuff. You had to write everything...There was no calculators, no prompters or anything like that.
You had to do your work on your own, using your mind and a pencil and paper, basically...The whole world has
changed since that time.”
Children’s activities were “sort of graduated by age because you did certain things at one period and certain things at
another period and certain things at another period. Certainly, we didn’t have television. Some places had television
but we didn’t have TV at our house when I was growing up. So we made our own fun. We coasted and we skated
and we swam and we played games like Hide and Go Seek, Kick the Can, all those kinds of things when we were
younger. We rode bicycles, we played ball, we played hockey. We did whatever we could organize and do.
“Then when we got a little bit bigger, older and stuff, we hunted and fished and we camped and we did some
interesting things...We used to run logs in the pond up at the Caledonia Hardwood Company...a few summers,
we used to run the log booms...that used to be great fun. You’d run the logs until you slipped on one and went
smashing down through.”
“At that point in time they had the big draft horses. The paper company stabled in Caledonia during the summer,
when they weren’t working in the woods...They used to pasture them in a farm behind the stables. It was called
the Cawle Farm, we used to call it, and some of us adventurous teenagers used to go over and herd those horses
and play and whatnot and chase them through - between rocks and tried to jump on them as they ran past. Then
Charlie Cushing found out we were doing that and he put a stop to
it. We weren’t allowed to go back that way. So we...had a couple of old
canoes and an old raft and we used to paddle across the lake and go
over that way...That only lasted for a couple of years...It seemed like
a good idea at the spur of the moment...It was always outside...There
was no sitting around the house.”
“The community has
always depended on
the forest resource
to a large extent.”
240
I have done several jobs. When I left high school, I went into the Air Force
to train as a pilot. Out of a group of 64, I was one of eight who actually
made it through the training. I found out after nine months of training
and three months on the flight line that I was prone to airsickness. I
was given an honourable discharge from the Air Force. I didn’t want
to re-muster as ground crew.
bi l l w a m bo lt
I went to Halifax to work for a time. Then I went to Ontario to “make my fortune picking tobacco, which didn’t happen.
When I came back from there, I worked for Irving Oil, building the large storage tanks that used to be in Caledonia.
Then I taught school in South Brookfield ...from December through June. I taught grades four, five and six. I went
to work for the Bank of Nova Scotia and I was with them for about six years. And I worked in six different branches,
including Caledonia. And then I joined the federal government - Parks Canada - at that time it was part of Northern
Affairs and Natural Resources, I believe. I worked for them for the next twenty-nine, almost thirty years. Then I retired
in 1997.”
“The community has changed substantially. In those days...I remember when the roads weren’t paved. They were dirt
roads. Vehicles weren’t what they were today. People didn’t venture very far from home. They lived and worked
pretty much in or near the communities that they lived in. They bought most of their groceries and clothing and
whatnot from local stores. At that point in time there were – I don’t know how many stores there were in Caledonia.
There were N.F. Douglas, Morris Scott’s. There was Dusty Miller’s, Mrs. Bell’s. There was... Herman Douglas’ store. Coop had a market. Co-op actually had two stores in Caledonia. There was the one down below where the exhibition
grounds are now and then there was a market that later became Bobby Holdright’s market...Plus there were stores
in Pleasant River, South Brookfield, Maitland Bridge, Kempt...That’s one of the big things. People stayed pretty much
in their communities...People did things in the community. They helped out in the community. They did a lot of
volunteering and took part in community activities which to some extent is still true today, but it’s waning....It’s
North Queens instead of Caledonia, Kempt, Maitland and Harmony...as it used to be then.”
“The community has always depended on the forest resource to a large extent. Which is still true today, although the
downturn with Bowater or Resolute going...it has changed somewhat. There used to be a lot of small, independent
sawmills...which don’t exist anymore. This area went through the gold mining era. The shipbuilding era before that.
It went through an agricultural era. There were a lot of farms around here. It was a great fruit growing, vegetable
growing area. They had their own packing plant here at one point in time. I guess this community has always been
in change. Now the biggest change you would see would be the tourist influx...with Kejimkujik National Park being
part of the community now. But tourism always was part of the history of this area because they used to have a lot
of guides.” People from the States would hire guides to go out and sport hunt and fish.
I believe that the same animals are in the area that were here when I was a boy. Perhaps there are fewer foxes because
of the migration of coyotes. Skunks are beginning to come back.“When I was a kid, we had no such thing as skunks...
They had gotten a disease.” Wood ticks have come along since I was a boy. I was in my twenties before I ever heard
of wood ticks. Earwigs are also new. We used to call a long bug with lots of legs an earwig when I was young, but
they didn’t resemble the earwigs of today.
“We need to balance our activities with the natural world...We’ve got to have economic activity, we’ve got to have
resource extraction...but we have to find a better way to do it so that people are comfortable with it...and the
environment can be sustained. Whatever we do as humans is not at the expense of the environment.”
Bill, back left, with his parents and siblings
Bucket Factory in South Brookfield
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GE O R GE S C O T T ( ‘ Scott ’ ) W a m bo l dt
I was born in Caledonia on November 25, 1946 in the old Cottage Hospital.
I live in the home that I was raised in. The house is about 80 years old.
I went to Pine Grove School. It has become an apartment building up by the pool
now. I went there for primary through to grade six. It was a two room school,
with the older grades in one part and the younger ones in the other.
“The discipline at the schools then was a lot different than it is today. And some of our teachers were pretty handy
with the...pointer – the wooden pointer. Never got strapped but I got nailed on the side of the ear a few times with
that pointer.”
Gussy Morgan, Grace Scott, and Anna Frank are the teachers I had that I remember.
At recess time, we played ball. In the winter we had snowball fights.
I remember the float in the exhibition parade from the school. The younger children went on one float, and the grades
four, five and six had their own float.
When we got home from school each day we had chores to do.“You mowed the lawn, you raked up leaves or you put
in wood…We had no running water then so we went and carried our water from over at Agnes Atkin’s well.”
We could go bowling at Duke’s Bowling alley when we got a bit older. “We could play pool; there were pool tables
there, where Jim’s pizza shop is now. Except it was a bigger building. Longer.”
“So many kids now, you have to make their fun for them. Back then, we used our imagination. We’d build old wagons
and carts and anything you could think of and we’d come down this hill up here...you used your imagination.”
At one time there were movies at the Masonic Hall. “That’s got to be sixty years ago...I think it cost ten cents to get
in to the movies.”
A lot of men worked in the woods. Some people worked for the Department of Highways on the roads.
“... there’s
trout
around,
yes. But not
like there
used to be.”
“There were five garages in Caledonia at that time. Dad had the one up on the flat, just the
other side of Caledonia. Mervin Selig was the one across from the Hollow Log now. Jack
McQuire had the one right in Caledonia – the Irving station, which is now just an empty
lot. And Fred Waterman had one up here on the top of the hill....They have it cut down
now to just a woodshed. There were two in South Brookfield, like Harrison Wellwood’s
and Joe Wamboldt’s down below. [Now] we don’t have any.”
People didn’t travel for employment years ago. Now there are people who travel back and
forth to Halifax to work. “Then they didn’t. They just didn’t go anywhere.”
“We’re now a retirement community. That’s what we are. I mean, there’s nothing to hold a
young person here anymore...To me, it’s gone downhill.”
“The stores have changed. Residential areas have changed. They’ve gone and torn them
down. Half the buildings in Caledonia are gone now...Well, that’s progress, supposedly.
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Scott w a m bo l dt
I’m not so sure it’s all for the better...You know, we used to have a blacksmith’s shop...Randolph Wagner had one just
off the Hibernia Road...just the other side of where Mary Jo Conway lives now. Ez Hunt had one here in Caledonia.
That would have been right alongside of where the barber shop is.” The little park is named Hunt Park after Marian
Hunt, wife of Ez Hunt.
“We never ever got to the corner much... You had too many things to do. You were outdoors. I mean, the only time
you come in was when it was dark.”
“Saturday morning, Laurie Frozzle used to allow us to go in and watch cartoons for two hours I think it was, up till
noon. Nine until noon. He was the janitor at the school at the time. But he’d allow the kids to come in and watch
television...at his house.” His would have been the first house past Ellis Douglas’, on the left, across from the present
high school.
“There were a lot more gardens than there are today but that’s normal everywhere.”
A lot of the small farms aren’t operating any more. “Orn Veinot’s down here, I spent a lot of time there when I was a
kid, helping him. Or I thought I was helping him. I probably was aggravating him more than anything...He was selfsufficient, but not a big operation by today’s standards.”
“When I first went up with Bowater, we still had horses. That was one of my first jobs, was to help Percy Veinot take
horses around to the camps.” I worked for Bowater thirty-eight and a half years.
“The horses would come in right off the train. They’d come in from Alberta right off the range – Alberta and
Saskatchewan...right over here to the Mersey barns, right near the present day Home Hardware store. And then the
Cowy Farm, which was Larry Uhlman’s mill, that was where they pastured them. And they weren’t broke or anything
and Charlie Cushing would ...get them ready to go up in the woods. And that was one of my first jobs, was helping
to haul horses.” They probably used horses in the woods until 1968 or ‘69.
“It was all new to me. I’d never been around horses. Scared to death of them. They were big horses and the first thing
they did when they got them up there was they sharp shod them. So they had sharp caulks on their feet, on the
shoes. I mean, they were big horses and they’d kick and go on...”
“The horse was all important...If a horse got sick at night they’d call Charlie Cushing. He had a radio system. We’d call
Hattie Douglas, from the office in Medway. She in turn would get a-hold of Charlie Cushing. And if it was midnight,
it didn’t make any difference. He was up there.”
If we needed anything, we could call Hattie on the radio. It was a VHF radio. There was a tower on her property, the
old Middlemas property, toward West Caledonia. She would take the message and get it to whomever was needed.
She would relay orders to the paper mill. Hattie was the last operator.
“There are big differences [in woodlots] from the machinery side of it. ...The biggest difference, back then they didn’t
plant. They didn’t need to then and they don’t need to now. There’s too many trees growing on the land as it is. And
places that you plant nowadays – there’s odd places, but 90% of the places that you plant, you’re going to come
back in seven, eight, ten years and you’re going to thin them out so they can grow. Less competition. You’re going
to cut down half the ones you planted, so your original stock that comes out of the ground...they’re more suited,
They’re climatized and everything else and more suited to that piece of property and they’ll grow better than the
ones you plant...The ones you plant are normally the ones you cut down.”
“Even in the ‘60s and ‘70s we didn’t cut near water or anything. We left buffer zones on it. You didn’t have to. It was
just the way you did it. Today, with the machines, you don’t destroy as much of the land as you think. If you seen
one of the old cable yarders tearing stumps out of the ground and everything, it’s something to see. But really all
it did was tear the ground up so they had a place to grow. So it did the land good.”
I’m for clear cutting. “It’s the only way you can in this country...Everybody equates these forests with Sweden and
Norway or somewhere like this where it’s all plantations. You haven’t got that here. You can’t do it. And I mean
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Scott w a m bo l dt
economically it’s impossible.”
“We cleared a stand...I’d say it was a foot on the stump. First wind storm come, half of it blowed down. So we went in
and salvaged that. We went in again the next wind storm and picked up the rest of it. So it just won’t stand in this
country unless you leave buffers around it. You got to do it in a hollow. There are so many different things.”
“When you get to northern Nova Scotia you get a whole different ball game than in the southern, western end of it.
You got fir, mostly fir. Once you do that [clear cutting] you get erosion. And here you don’t get that because you
get enough hardwood mix that you don’t run into that...Newfoundland ran into this a lot too. When they’re on the
slopes, you’ve got to put your roads in the right places. You can’t have them coming down the slopes. You’ve got
to have them go across the slopes. Just crazy things like that.”
“A lot of the book learning won’t tell you that. It’s got to be common sense. So much common sense is lost today...”
“Our forests are so dynamic that...when I go back up to Medway where I was in the early ‘60s – I went up around
what we call The Big Loop – I hadn’t been up there for about twenty years. And I’m telling you, it’s unbelievable. I
went back into 18 where I started and you could go back there and log just like nothing...Nature looks after itself
pretty well.”
“I think you’ve got less wildlife now than you had back then because...well...I’m not against the park. But what you’ve
got now is an inbred population. And they’re inbred to the point where you’re starting to get what we used to call
morphidites. They’re smaller... They may be half one sex, half the other.”
There used to be a few moose up in Medway.“But with the advent of the four-wheelers, nothing is sacred. And I know
I’ve seen tracks of a cow and her calf and then four-wheeler tracks and then only the cow’s tracks.The calf got missing...
There was one standing in the road in Milton here a couple of years ago, standing right in the pavement...He looked
good…a young bull. He was headed for the river, which is not all that far down through the woods there.”
“I don’t think there are as many deer out around - they’re all out in the settlements now. Because the coyotes have
got them chased out.”There weren’t any coyotes years ago. They came to this area around the ‘80s.“They’re a pretty
animal....When I was travelling to Liverpool a lot, I saw a black coyote three or four times through the Sixteen Mile
Meadows, coal black and...he was as big as a shepherd dog. He looked nice and healthy.”
I used to see bats around the old abandoned camps but now I don’t. Even in the spring and summer evenings I don’t
see them flying like I used to. Chimney swifts used to be over at the old power plant.
Years ago there were lots of monarch butterflies around, but not now. “I blame it a lot on the pollution in the air and
not here either. I think it’s coming from across from the USA and I don’t think there’s a darn thing we can do about
it...I think that’s what’s wrong with our fish.”
I used to fish for trout. “There’s none left. I mean, there’s trout around, yes. But not like there used to be...We used to
do a lot of white perch fishing. Don’t see many of them anymore. There are still a lot of yellow perch – garbage
fish.” Bass fish were introduced about 20 years ago and they could be the cause of fewer trout. I think acid rain is
to blame, too.
“I had asthma when I was a kid and I outgrew it...Today, two out of every three have asthma. And something is causing
that...and I still think that’s the same thing. It’s acid rain. It’s the pollution coming in the air.”
“See, I’m of the old school. Discipline. You learned at a very early age. And I think, and I know a lot of people won’t
agree with this, 99% of them won’t. I think every kid should be in the armed forces for two years...But I think that
would teach them some discipline, a little self-respect...You sat in your class and you didn’t talk, you didn’t jump
around. That’s the way it was. And if you put a snake in the teacher’s desk drawer, you got a swat the side of the ear
with the wooden pointer.”
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245
R ob y n W a rr e n
I was born in Britain, in Dorset England, on September 11, 1953.
“We had a lot of work to do. It was after the war so there was...still rationing in
effect. So food was a major thing for most people...No one realized when we
came here to Canada what it was like to have people live through that kind
of a situation. I think the ration for butter was a quarter of a pound per month
per person...There were many things taken for granted when we came to Canada. They were a luxury in England.
It was like coming to the land of plenty.” We moved to Canada in 1968. I was 14 years old.
My parents were farmers. “They had a dairy farm and grew vegetables.”
“My brother and I – we were smaller than the bales and we had to move them. It had to be done.”
My mother looked after the family as well as milking and helping to tend the fields.
“We had to learn a new language, really,” when we moved to Canada. Many of the words were different.
“School was a very warm place, because in England they didn’t have much heat in the schools. The budgets didn’t
call for heat so when we came to Bridgetown High School, it was like you roasted.”
When we came from England, we moved to the farm in Belleisle, Annapolis County. “The farm was a dairy farm and
the fellow who sold the farm was named John Carslow and he was a very knowledgeable man...He said,“Whatever
you do, never talk to anyone about anyone because they’re all related...We had a party line with ten people on it
so we found out that whatever you said on the phone, everybody was going to find out. We never had that where
we came from. So that was a big thing.”
“When Dad was farming [in England] he had a 50 acre farm and he rented about 30.” It was all used, even the edges
of the fields. So when we came here we couldn’t understand why people didn’t use the whole field. It seemed
wasteful at the time. “There isn’t a need here to do what we had to do there.”
Many of the teachers in England were war veterans. They didn’t get special honours for what they did; they did it
because they had to. You never heard stories about the teachers; they were in a special place. My name was Warren
because I was in a school of 900 students. Girls were known by their first names and boys were known by their last
names. We wore uniforms, with a cap and a blazer. There was lots of discipline. It seemed that some of the teachers
who were here in Canada were teaching because of someone they knew, not because they were the best person
for the job. There wasn’t a lot of respect for some of the teachers here.
“So we have to do
it in the best way
possible, that’s sustainable. But that’s
also economical.”
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“When I was a little kid, we played cricket on the lawn... we’d go shooting
pigeons sometimes...They would eat all the crops if you didn’t...I was in air
cadets for a while. It was an after-school thing, in the evening.”
When I came here, it was mandatory to take army cadets in school.
“When we came here, everybody knew everybody. And everybody was
very helpful to each other. And it was a wonderful community. More
community spirit than anywhere...If anybody needed a hand there was
someone willing to help...We still have that right here. The neighbours,
we get along pretty good with. But they seem to be all leaving us, either
going to homes or dying. People are coming in that don’t farm. There’s no
farming left, really, in the sense that it was.”
R ob y n W a rr e n
“All the kids used to come and work, haying. And there’s no haying done because there’s round bales. And no kids
want to work anyway, anymore, really. Not physical work...They never come looking for a job, anyway.”
“I followed the [school] bus this morning and I was quite shocked because...the bus never stopped for about three
miles to pick up any little kids...When I went to school that way, the bus was full. Just from here to Bridgetown...
There are a lot of senior citizens and that’s about it.”
“When we first came here, the Britex was going...400 people working there. And the distillery was going. Like, 70 or
80 people worked there. And all the farms. There were two Co-op stores. Everything was humming. And apparently,
it wasn’t as humming as it was 30 years before [that]. It’s been on the slide for a long time.”
When we arrived here from England, all the fields were used for hay or pasture. The Mad Cow Disease diminished
the value of beef for a long time. There were droughts in the ‘90s. We were selling hay to people from all over. Many
people who had been raising cattle gave up. Many of the fields are growing up. Some people just go over the fields
now with a bush whacker to keep the bushes down.
I got into the maple syrup business when Peter Frances suggested that I tap the trees rather than cut them down.
That was the start of it. But it’s discouraging to want to start something because some people are very negative.
“I was fortunate that we went to California for a vacation. It sort of rubbed off, the positive side, because you’d see
people growing strawberries in the middle of nowhere and irrigating them and it wasn’t ideal conditions...If they
can do anything, so can we. After we started, we still had the negative stuff going on, but you had to ignore it. If
you didn’t ignore it then it would get you down.”
“Sometimes you do something and you don’t succeed. But if you never try it, you’ll never know.”
John Stacey from Natural Resources and a fellow from Annapolis County development came down as well as various
other people, and the Dept. of Agriculture representative, Dale McIssac came and had a look and thought maple
syrup would work. They funded a lot of the money to get the maple production started.
It was all a new experience to me. I hadn’t used an evaporator before.
We had been through a fight with the power corporation over the raising of the river. We had difficulties with 400
acres of marshland because of the raising of the salt water. We came to a status quo with the power corporation. A
wheat field on the marsh was all covered in white from the salt. I thought we just couldn’t do this anymore. “It got
so we couldn’t be against that wall anymore.”
I got hold of Keith MacAlony at Ducks Unlimited.“One thing
lead to another and the province ended up purchasing
the 400 acres.” There was opposition because the
farmland was going to be reverted to wildlife, but Greg
Kerr helped to make it work.“Everybody was reasonably
happy in the end.”
The dispute with the power corporation resulted in large
lawyer fees.“It was a real nightmare of a situation...After
it was all over, it felt pretty good.”
I go to the markets with the maple and it’s wonderful. We
have visitors to the sugar house in the spring.
Robyn Warren with maple syrup products
“I think there’s more wildlife than there ever has been...
There was no Canada geese back then [when I was a
boy].You never saw one. There’s more deer now for sure.
There were no bears but we’ve seen bears. Of course,
there’s always porcupines.” I let my dog out the other
247
R ob y n W a rr e n
day at 5:00 in the morning and there was a skunk right on the step.“So I shut the door quickly and it was all good.”
We have more frogs too. And this year in the squash field, I saw a hunk of mud moving. It was a turtle that had been
in the bottom of the ditch. It went across the road and my mother guided it so it wouldn’t get run over. Years ago
there were turtles on the marsh.
“There were a lot of bats but I think they’ve diminished a lot. They’d accumulate in the chimney in the camp up at the
top...Now they’ve got a virus apparently.” I never see monarch butterflies. We see some swallows.
Canada geese are everywhere now. I don’t think the Ducks Unlimited made that much difference. They are becoming
a problem. When my neighbour, Larry Cranton, planted his grass seed, 80 geese came and ate it all and he had to
plant it again.
Eight years ago, neighbours had their woodlots sprayed with Vision. We ended up with the drift from the spray. “We
grew vegetables. We weren’t able to sell any that year because of the fact we knew they were sprayed...Since then
people say, “Whatever happened with that?” All I can say is you never see a helicopter spraying Vision anymore.
When there’s a problem, when someone actually stands up to say that there is a problem, things can change.“That’s
the answer. If there’s a problem, don’t just go tell your neighbour. Go do something about it. And then it will get
fixed.”
Clear cutting is necessary if there’s a disease or something like that to get rid of the pest. There’s no point in leaving
some infected wood to just fall down and be no good. “If a forest is managed...and [one] goes and cuts a certain
area every year and looks after it, that’s fine, too.”We’ve planted about 200 000 trees on this property over the years.
We’ve planted red spruce and white spruce. “The favourite one for the province was Norway spruce. There was a
big push on it. So we planted quite a few of those and it turned out that they’re no good whatsoever. There are...
millions grown in the province now and the pine bark beetle gets in and stings the top, the leader gets broken off...
They did a test on the strength of the lumber and it has no strength so they can’t use it for building. It’s another
typical example of someone in government who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Being in charge and telling
people what to do, when the old guys if you’d asked them, who’ve lived here forever, would say...[plant] what would
come naturally.”
When Ducks Unlimited came to the marsh they asked my father and I what kind of trees they should plant. We both
said, “If you look down there now ... – all the ones that were down there naturally...” So that’s what they did. Just
propagated the ones that were there. So that’s really the best thing to do, isn’t it?
“And trees don’t live forever. That’s a big thing, when there were negative comments about clear cutting. Natural
Resources pointed out quite logically that the lifespan of a white spruce is about 70 years. So if you don’t cut it
down, or have a forest fire burn it, then it’s going to die anyway. So you may as well get some economic use from
it. And that’s...really a big part of the issue. The economics of it all. Because if nobody cuts trees in an economically
viable way then nobody’s going to have a job. And there are more people who are going to go out west. We can
all say we shouldn’t do this and we shouldn’t do that but... we have to compete with the whole world. So we have
to do it in the best way possible, that’s sustainable. But that’s also economical.”
Some people think we should go back to the day of the horse in the woods. It may be workable but there wouldn’t
be many people working in the industry.
“If you look back at history...when all the turtles were dying along the creek because the power company blocked it
off, if you call[ed] the number, no one [would] come...When there were twenty turtles dead on the side of the bank
and nobody would do anything...You’ve got to look at the huge picture and see who is who and what’s doing what.
The Annapolis River is not a pretty place as far as that goes. Because there were a lot of people who did things that
they shouldn’t have done...There should be a day of reckoning for someone that does something wrong. If there
isn’t one because of politics involved then someone can get away with something because they know somebody.
I think that’s half the problem with this whole province. It is very noticeable if we go back a little bit...The highway
workers getting kicked out every time the government changed. And to me, that was ridiculous.”
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R ob y n W a rr e n
In the school system, it was quite evident that politics was involved in the hirings. There are too many people who
are in a position because of who they knew rather than their experience. Maybe that’s true everywhere but it is
very evident here.
Tom Bell used to have maple trees. He was in charge of Cornwallis when it was being disbanded. They had a committee
to hire people to do the work. He said that they couldn’t hire local people because someone on the committee
would know something about the applicant that was negative.
There are many intelligent and talented people in the area.
325 people were paid damages along the river after the dispute with the power corporation. The solicitor said they
should thank us for all our efforts because they sat back and waited. People were intimidated into not doing
anything.
The year that we had trouble with the spray, many people would buy three times what they needed from us at the
farmer’s market, just to help. They are wonderful people. They make up for the ones who aren’t.
“It has hit me that we have become an aged place. There’s not many young people left. And there’s getting less. And
there’s no reason for them to want to stay. The service industries do not cut it. There needs to be manufacturing or
something that’s really happening. You...can’t teach kids if they’re not here.”
“Look at the houses that are for sale...Who’s going to come in here unless it’s going to be for a summer home? That’s
going to be it....They’re not going to come here unless we have a health care system that will look after them.”
Forty years ago everybody was buying a mobile home...Now they are living in seniors places.
I saw in Saskatchewan many houses that were empty. The farms have become so huge and they use big equipment
to do the work. Not as many workers are needed.
When we first came here, this was a dairy farm. We used to ship milk to Port Royal Dairy. There were 110 farms who
shipped to Annapolis Royal. There was MacKenzie Creamery in Middleton and Superior Creamery in Digby and
there was Farmers that came down through Clarence. LaHave would also come and pick up cream. Farms were just
everywhere. The distillery provided slop for feed and the dairy provided jobs in Annapolis.
My brother got a job. He was a strong guy to pick up the cans, they were smaller here than the ones we had in England.
They were 88 gallon cans here, so they weighed about 100 pounds. The fertilizer bags here were 50 pounds. In
England they were 112 pounds. They used to be 224 pounds. My grandfather used to fill feed bags at the thrasher
and they would be 224 pound bags. Now people don’t want to lift 30 pounds for fear that they will get hurt.
We used to put up 25 000 square bales of hay here each year and they all weighed 50 pounds. One day we put 4000
in the barn. There were six of us working. The hay mow would be 110 degrees. People don’t want to do that kind
of work now.
We grow squash. I went into a grocery store and they had Chinese squash there. It’s up to people to say no to food
that comes from far away and to buy local. We used to sell squash to Lewis Foods in Cornwallis. When Sobey’s
became more prevalent in the business, the squash had to be shipped to Stellarton and then they’d ship them
back through the system. It wasn’t worth it.
“Corporations have so much power.”
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W in s ton W e l l s
I was born on February 8, 1941 in Kentville, Kings County.
My father was a male nurse and my mother looked after the house. My father nursed
in Digby and the family lived in Deep Brook for much of my childhood.
When I was old enough to pick a profession, I was encouraged to train to be a nurse as well.“I went to the Nova Scotia
Hospital and trained...I went to work with my father but he was hard to compete with because he was a real good
nurse...Lots of experience.”
My father’s parents lived in Coldbrook and my mother’s parents lived in Scotch Village.
When asked about changes I have seen, I remember,“Today they have more modern things than when I was younger,
like the snow plow and the cars. The cars were made different. And the trucks were made different.”
My home was heated by a wood furnace. “Took a lot of wood to make the whole house so [that] you could feel the
heat.”
I had a passion for anything western. I liked country music. “One year we went to my grandmother’s for Christmas.
I used to think, my, wouldn’t I love to have a set of guns and holsters. In the morning I ran down and in the sock
was a piece of wood. So I was quite upset about that but they just did that to tease me. But I did get my guns and
holsters.” I am disappointed that you can’t buy a toy gun in stores anymore. “I think today a play gun looks pretty
well the same as a real gun.”
I went to school in Deep Brook. The school had two classrooms. The grades went up to grade nine. For high school,
students went to Annapolis. I found the teachers to be quite strict. One was Mr. Gaucher and the other was Mrs.
Nichols. “But I used to do stupid things like if we were having a test I would try to copy off the person next to me.
And I got away with it for a while. But they went and caught me.”
On the school bus one day, a girl came to sit with me and said they were going to have a variety show that evening.
She asked me to take the part of Elvis Presley in the show. “Well, Holy Cow, that went right to my head!” I sang
“Hound Dog” and did the shaking that Elvis was famous for.“The crowd was going crazy...So I went home and I got
another phone call and I played Elvis Presley... and that really got to me. I told my mother and father, ‘I’m leaving....
I’m popular now.’ After my third show, “all I got was a few claps. And that was the end of my Elvis Presley days.”
“I liked to fish in
a brook in Deep
Brook. The brook
ran through the
woods. I enjoyed
the solitude.”
250
I had a mischievous streak. “Hallowe’en night, my parents were away so my
friend come over and said ‘Let’s go Hallowe’ening.’ I said,‘Okay,’ so anyway we
went to the Deep Brook School and back in those days the outhouses were
outside and we went and tipped those over... So the next morning, my friend
come and knocked on the door...He said, ‘The police are here.’ I said, ‘Go out,
will you?’ He said, ‘Well, do I have to bring them in?’ I thought my friend was
kidding him. “It was two policemen.” We got off with a warning.
I liked to play hockey at Cornwallis. I belonged to a league, and we played
against Digby and Annapolis teams. In the summer I liked to swim or go
fishing for trout. At that time, there were lots of trout.“But now, there’s scarcely
any I guess....It’s all been fished out.” I liked to fish in a brook in Deep Brook.
The brook ran through the woods. I enjoyed the solitude.
W in s ton W e l l s
While in the woods, I’d see rabbits and an occasional deer. When I was seventeen, I was encouraged to snare rabbits
to earn some money. I gave it up fairly quickly since someone else was snaring and selling rabbits and it didn’t
work out to be very profitable.
Western stuff was my hobby. I wasn’t sure why I was so interested in cowboy things.“When I was up to my grandmother
Wear, they owned a farm. And they had a fence up around the barn. So my grandmother would give me a blanket
and I would put the blanket over top of the post and then she would tie some rope to the head of the fence and I
used to get on that and make believe it was a horse.”
My grandparents had horses on the Scotch Village farm but they didn’t think it was safe for me to ride them. They
also had cows and lambs and chickens. They raised them for their own food. They used the horses to do the heavy
work on the farm. I remember seeing them plowing the gardens and clearing the driveway out to the road. The
mower for hay and the hay wagon were pulled by the pair of horses. “They’d open these two wide doors and the
horses would go right in. And they’d start with the fork throwing it up in the barn.”
“I can remember the snow being so deep you could hardly get out. I got a good surprise when I was younger, going
to school, and they’d cancel school because of there was so much snow.”
I was married twice and had two daughters. I lived in Halifax and worked at the Nova Scotia Hospital at that time.
I travelled in a little Chev car, driving over the bridge from Halifax to Dartmouth. “I used to like going across the
ferry the best because I’m a little afraid of heights...I’ll never forget the time there was a storm, a blowing storm,
and I went across the MacDonald Bridge and you could feel it swaying in the middle. I could hardly wait to get to
the other side.”
I recall seeing a lot of foreign ships coming into Halifax harbour with cargo. And at Cornwallis I recall seeing many naval
vessels when it was a Canadian armed forces base. “At that time, if you were civilian, unless you worked there, you
weren’t allowed in.” Sometimes, a friend who lived on the base would sneak me in so we could go to a movie.
“In Deep Brook, there’s a place...it’s a long house where they used to make things...gypsum....nearly behind my house
in Deep Brook.” It was close to the shore, near where the Bear River Bridge is today. They brought gypsum in on
ships and put it in a shed and made gyproc from it.
251
HELE N W ESLEY
I was born in Granville Center in 1932.
The home where I grew up is torn down now. It was built by my dad when I got
married.
Dad was married twice. He had a large family before I was born. He did farm work
on his own home place. It was up close to the North Mountain. He had a cow
and hens and chickens and pigs. “I used to help.” I never learned how to milk the cow though. Mom looked after
the house. “I used to help Mom to make the butter...It was a wooden churn that we had. We had to push it back
and forth so that the butter would make.”
“When I left [home] I went out and did housework. That’s what I did.” I helped look after kids as well.
I went to Granville school. It was a one room schoolhouse. I liked my teachers and I had a good schooling. I stayed
until I got grade nine and then I went and got a job.
For fun, I played with all my school friends. “They’d come up to my place and I’d go down to their place and play
games and things like that.”
I had a son, David. He’s the oldest. Then I have my daughter, Patricia; she came next. She’s still getting her education,
getting upgraded. She’s in New Jersey now.
My husband has been dead now for quite a few years. He was a labourer.
There has been a change in wildlife.“Bears come out right around here. It seems like the animals all come out... If I tap
on the window they don’t run, like. They just look up and keep on going. As long as they don’t make an attempt to
break in!..Deers go by here in the winter.”
My family always shared things.
“I used to help Mom
to make the butter...
It was a wooden
churn that we had.”
Helen and her family
252
253
H a r l e y V e rnon W h it e
I was born on May 10, 1941 in what was called at that time the North Queens
Nursing Home. It also became known as the Cottage Hospital. It was located
across from where the present post office is in Caledonia.
My family’s home was in Kempt, across the road from where I presently live. The
house where I live was acquired by my father in the ‘60s, after I had left home.
My wife Claire and I returned from the U.S. in the early 70’s and moved into
that house.
I went to school on the Northfield Road, at the Kempt corner. It was a one room school. One of my teachers was Ella
DeLong. Another teacher was a Ramey woman from Greenfield. Mrs. Douglas, Ellis Douglas’ mother, from Caledonia
also taught there. The teachers were quite strict, but I don’t remember getting into too much trouble as a youngster.
Sometimes students got the leather strap for punishment.
I think that there were about 30 students in the school, going up to grade ten. ”Anybody that wanted to go beyond
grade ten had to go to Caledonia at that time.” They went to Pine Grove School, and would board in Caledonia. I
was in the first grade seven class to go to the new school. It was quite something to go from the one room school
to the high school. It opened up opportunities, like playing sports against other schools. “It seemed like finally we
were getting into the big time.” But “it seems the people who are going to be successful, it doesn’t matter where
they are, they will be. Better accommodations doesn’t make for more successful people.”
For fun we played softball. Occasionally a ball would go through a school window. There wasn’t punishment for
that. We would just have to replace the window glass, which cost about 15 cents. We played basketball, shooting
baskets at home. We had homemade baskets. We were into hunting and fishing. Monopoly and marbles were big
things too. We played some cards.
Dennis Willis and his sister came to live with us when Dennis’ parents died in the mid-’50s. “Dennis always won all
the marbles and Boardwalk in Monopoly.”
In the winter we coasted on the hills. We coasted right on the highway before the roads were paved. We were safe
because there was very little traffic then.
My father had trucks. He hauled logs for the mills. Through the ‘50s, the roads would be bad in the spring. The paved
road only came as far as Middlefield. Then my father took over delivering the mail in the early ‘60s. He drove the
mail until 1986-87. He hauled mail from Liverpool to Caledonia. He
also took over some of the house delivery in the Middlefield area.
My mother, Winnifred, did much of the sorting of the mail.
“In the winter we
coasted on the hills.
We coasted right on
the highway before
the roads were paved.
We were safe because
there was very little
traffic then.”
254
We didn’t have power in the house until 1948-49.“Most people around
didn’t adopt modern living practises until a few years after because
they stuck with the old habits. The thing of it is that if Nova Scotia
power had a tree over the line in 1953, if your house was intact, you
didn’t blink an eye because life just went on as normal.Whereas today,
two days without baker’s bread, you’re in trouble. That’s all I can say
about how far we’ve come. We’ve come from a self-sufficient society
to one that totally depends on other people.”
In Kempt, there were three grocery stores when I was a youngster.
One of them now belongs to Floyd Luxton. It is no longer operating.
Gordon Hanley ran that store. The one across the road from that was
a Co-op store. There was one where the art gallery is now, owned by
Leonard DeLong.
H a r l e y W h it e
There was a garage where Ringer’s garage is now. Roscoe Luxton tore down the old garage and built the one that
is there now and ran it from the ‘50s into the ‘70s’.
There was a dance hall located northwest of the Kempt corner. It was on Minard’s Lake. The dances were over before
I was old enough to go. It started out in the ‘40s and was run by Clarence DeLong. Mr. DeLong’s home was what is
now the Whitman Inn. The dance hall stopped operating in the late ‘50s.
I don’t remember seeing moose or coyotes when I was a young man, but there were deer and bear around. The
number of deer ran in cycles; sometimes there were more, sometimes there were less.
I wonder if acid rain and over-fishing have affected the fish populations. The park attracted a lot of people during
summers who liked to fish and perhaps it has been too many for the area to sustain. “It is so simple... for people
from Liverpool or Bridgewater or Halifax to come out with a boat for the weekend fisheries...Mostly it was local
fishing back when [I was young].”
There were lots of bats around up until about five years ago. “They’re very scarce now.”
I remember there were many chimney swifts at the Harmony power plant years ago. I used to work for the company.
“There was one building that was off limits to us for anything because... they made it known to us that chimney swifts
were there and we avoided it.” That was at least ten years ago. Those were the only chimney swifts I ever saw.
A fellow I knew had a cabin in the area and he was doing a project where he monitored all kinds of butterflies. He’d
take pictures for an organization that was keeping track of them. He saw quite a few monarch butterflies. He told
me that there were about 70 species of butterflies and he was able to document 60 of them in the past couple of
years.
My father’s farm was a small farm that helped us maintain
our food supply. A person couldn’t go to a store to buy
bread so my mother made bread two or three times a
week. I had the job of milking the cows.That’s why I don’t
keep animals nowadays; I know how much work it is.
There were a couple of hog farms in the area but most
people kept a pig or two.
I worked in the summers on a large farm on the Northfield
Road. Jay Forkenham owned it at that time. It now
belongs to Ron Eaton.
Most pastures that existed have grown up. Back when I was
young, people kept their pastures cleared. If they started
to grow up in trees, they were cut for firewood.
“At that period in time, you did what you had to do
to survive. There was no welfare or unemployment
insurance back in those days. So you’d better be
prepared because survival was up to yourself, unless
it was something serious and then people would help
you out.”
“Most people, as I recall it, with small lots would typically
cut off logs once a year to pay the taxes...Most of the
little farms were self-sustaining in that manner.”
Harley’s grandmother’s scrapbook
255
H a r l e y W h it e
I did very little work in the woods. I did not do any cutting for the lumber companies. It wasn’t long before I realized
I wanted to do something different. “I took a course in Halifax and I worked with metal for forty years.” However, I
cut my own firewood.“Hopefully we’re managing it so it will last a long time...I can use, for an example, the property
here which is 180 acres. And back a few years ago I had a contract with Bowaters. There was someone that came
in to look your property over and advise you. And the person that advised me showed me the type of trees that
should be cut because they’d reached their...end of their growth period. So that’s what we’re following – been all
over it and cut those and left the rest. And the same with the firewood. We’ve tried to stay with the bigger, older
trees that their life period is getting short...and leave room for the others. Hopefully if my kids manage it properly
they’ll have firewood in the future, which firewood at this point in time seems to be becoming...critical.”
“I clear cut an area a few years ago. We went in, in the beginning to do select cutting and when we got started we
found that the trees even down to two inches in the fir was rotten. So we were advised to clear cut it and so we
did. Fir in this area here has a very short life.” We set out several thousand spruce trees where we had clear cut.“The
mortality rate on them was very low.” We had a 95% survival rate on the trees we set out.
“I think clear cutting is all right but they should be replanted again.”
The area we clear cut was done in 2002. I would like people to see the area before they decide to condemn clear
cutting. The trees we planted are taller than I am. I feel in ten years, the trees will be a good size. Thirty-five years
should be the harvesting age for a spruce. “If they are replanted, in ten years, your forest is back. It may not be full
growth but it’s on its way.”
A page from Harley’s grandmother’s scrapbook, depicting
the flood of 1956
256
257
M a r g a r e tt e ( ‘ M a r g ’ ) W h it m a n
I was born in Middleton, Annapolis County. I’m very proud to be able to say that
I was born on December 12, 1920.
I remember when I was growing up that “everything was done the hard way in
those days … Now you can push a button and things work out for you.”Washing
was done on a wash board.
When I was very young, there weren’t many cars.“Everything was done with horse and oxen.” In the winter there were
bad snowstorms and no snowplows. My dad and several other men in the community took horses and sleds and
made a road, in case someone needed a doctor. The road wasn’t plowed. The horses packed the snow down. It did
make for good sleighing, though.
At haying time, we used horses to pull the mowing machine and hay rack. The hay was loaded onto wagons by hand
with a fork. It had to be tramped down in the barn’s mow by walking on it.
Thinking about the hard work, “I think (it) made healthier people.”
My dad was a farmer. He didn’t have a large farm of his own, but he worked for people, doing jobs such as haying and
logging. He loved his horses. My mom was a housekeeper and she “kept the house sparkling.”
I lived in the rural community of South Williamston. The children went to a one room country school. Grades primer to
grade ten went to the school. Students went to a town school if they wanted to get their grade eleven and twelve.
Sometimes there were only fifteen students in the school at a time, one or two in a class.
There were no school buses so the children had to walk to school. I lived about half a mile from the school and my
sister and I used to walk home for lunch and then back again for the afternoon. On very stormy days, we carried a
lunch to school in a brown paper bag. “It was very exciting when we could take our lunch to school.”
The school was heated with a wood stove. The stove pipe stretched from one end of the room to the other and helped
to keep the room warm. Usually the oldest boy who went to school kept the fire going.
“I loved my school days…It was so comfortable and we all got along so well…We all liked our teachers. Sort of like
a little family.”
Sometimes a teacher would stay at the school for two or three years.“In those days, a married woman couldn’t teach.”
So my teachers were young women. “I remember there was one that did get married. No one knew it until after
the school year was over.”
“We see more
animals now
because they
are coming out
of the woods.”
258
I think that schools today have more advantages. The little school I attended had
a teeter-totter that we would play on at recess.“So many would get on one end
of it, and so many on the other...Take up the whole school mostly. But we didn’t
have the things they have nowadays. In towns they had a little more. They had
a gymnasium and that sort of thing. But we never had anything like that. We
were just country kids.”
For fun, I read a lot. At age twelve I started knitting.There weren’t too many children
my own age to play with. We all enjoyed coasting in the winter, though. We used
to go to Ledge Hill. A bunch of us would get onto a sled and slide about half a mile
on the road. Then we’d have to walk all the way back up the hill. We used to do
this during the evenings. There weren’t many cars on the roads then. If a car did
m a r g w h it m a n
happen to come along, we could see the lights coming and we’d get on to the side. “Imagine doing that now!”
In the summer, there wasn’t any place to swim where I lived so I never learned how to swim. I liked to go for walks.“It
was safe to go for a walk in the woods. You didn’t have to worry about anyone molesting you. Or even wild animals.”
There was a road called Jerusalem Road that had beautiful trees. About a mile along there was an apple orchard
and a brook to wade in. There were big rocks to sit on. I liked the rocks.
When I was very young, I played with dolls.
There weren’t a lot of activities in the very small community. “When you became 60 you were considered old and
you were expected to stay home.” Nowadays there are Senior Games and things.
There was a hall where ladies had meetings and they had church there. The minister from Lawrencetown would come
over to preach in South Williamston.
Children helped out with the chores on the farm. “My duty was to fill the woodbox. Rain or shine after school I had
to, which didn’t hurt me a bit.”
My grandmother had a beautiful iron pot. She would take the cover off the stove and set the pot down and “make
a most delicious stew.”
One change I remember in my community was that we got electricity. “And then of course the cars came.” Once
electricity was installed, companies started making things like washing machines and irons.“We used to iron with
the irons you used to put on the stove. You had to have at least two, because while you were using one the other
was heating up.”
I believe it was in the early 30s when we got phones. “Our neighbour had a telephone before anyone else. If anyone
else in the community needed to make a call, they used their telephone. They were so kind to let everyone do
this….If you needed a doctor, that’s where you went.” We didn’t use phones like they do today. People didn’t spend
time chatting.
“This phone was like a wooden box on the wall and you had a receiver and you talked through a little horn on the
front. To ring your number there was a little crank on the side.” Each phone had a different ring, like two long rings,
or a long ring and a short one.“You had a community line when they started getting the phones. Everyone…there’d
be four or five on one line. Mostly if they heard someone’s number ring, everyone went to their phone and listened
in.”
Usually people owned their own woodlots in those days.
When I was first married my husband and I went to the
woods to cut firewood. We used an axe and a cross-cut
saw that took two people to use.“I remember when we
got our first power saw. That was quite a thing.”
I feel the woods aren’t being respected like they used
to. There were some trees that the men wouldn’t cut
down, they were so beautiful. “The big pine trees that
had been there for years. They just didn’t have the
heart to cut them down. To me, it’s more about getting
money nowadays than valuing them.The beauty…and
we need the trees. Everyone knows, for the water table
and other things…And the animals. We’re driving the
animals out to the cities.”
The house where Marg’s parents lived
“We see more animals now because they are coming out
of the woods. I never saw a deer when I was growing
259
up…I’m not fussy about seeing a bear but I guess they’re quite common now around.”
My grandfather was a blacksmith. “I loved the blacksmith shop when I was growing up. I used to go out and he used
to let me pound nails and things.” I liked to watch him shoe horses. Sometimes I watched him put new shoes on
the horses and sometimes he just replaced the cleats. He would come in the house and tell my grandmother to
write in the ledger book. “Two shoes and two removes, a dollar and a half.”
“To see him put that red-hot shoe on the horse’s hoof and the smoke would come from it and the horse didn’t mind
at all.”
He had a stand that he put the hoof on so he could work more easily. He rasped the end of the nails to smooth
them.
“What I could never do was watch him shoe oxen. They were in a sling and it took them off their feet. They had to…they
put a rope around their feet. And they were in a sort of stall...I could hear them out there, thrashing around. I never
enjoyed that.” But the horses didn’t mind at all.
They were bringing wild horses from out west at that time. Some of them had never been shod.“I remember one that
sent my grandfather flying out the door. Broke his leg.”
“To me that was so cruel. Those beautiful horses just roamed around and they would catch them and bring them
here…That always upset me.”
My grandfather also made chain links and hooks and that sort of thing. He also tyred wheels.“Apparently the wooden
wheel would shrink and they would have to re-tyre them. Because they were tyred in steel rims, he would have to
heat that in his forge.” After heating the metal, he took it out to a cement mold that had a center for the hub. He
pounded the tyre on it there. Then it was brought back into the shop to put the bolts in to hold it on. I used to help
my grandfather with that job.
I remember the bellows that had to be worked up and down to make the fire. He used coal for fuel in the smithy. I
think that the coal came from Cape Breton. My grandfather would go to Middleton to buy bags of coal that had
come in by train.
I loved the blacksmith shop. “I kept a few horse shoe nails for years.”
“I wasn’t a very exciting person…The thing I liked to do best was read.” I read every Zane Grey book and Grace Livingston
Hill. “Most of the good authors are gone. They used to write just novels. I don’t read too many novels now.”
There was a library at their community school. “That’s where they had a lot of the Zane Grey books.” I wish I could
read a certain book again. I can’t remember the author, but it was ‘Rose of the Mountain’.“I can still remember many
parts of that. I’d love to read it again.”
My advice for young people today is “to work hard with their education. To get a good education, which of course
you can’t go anywhere now without one. To help others. Go to church. Listen to your parents. They know more than
you do, even though you don’t realize that at first. They have the experience and they realize that…the dangers
that are temptations and so on that are ahead of them.”
“I don’t know if I’m a good example to tell others or not. Young people have so many advantages now. If they will
only realize what is right and wrong.”
“Young people don’t realize how good they have it today. When it comes to working.”
260
“It’s nice to remember some of the things we did. I’m not so fond of remembering when we used to separate the milk
and had to wash the separator!...Every day of course it had to be done. You know what milk is like when it’s sour.”
“We were happy and carefree in those days. You didn’t have to worry about so many of the dangers that there are
today.”
“There are too many temptations for young people. And it’s so hard for young people to get started nowadays.
There’s so much against them it seems. In those days, we had our own gardens and things like this. You didn’t go
hungry.”
“It was fertilized with the manure from your barn. That was the only fertilizer that was used in those days as far as I
know. That’s what we used. And all we did was hoe and weed. And you had vegetables – good vegetables.”
“I guess more fertilizers and what not have caused more troubles.”
“I don’t know - what they call acid rain and all that has done to the soil. There’s…everything is so different.”
261
Mi l dr e d W ood l a nd
I was born in Princedale, Annapolis County, in 1917.
I’ve thought about the changes I have seen in my lifetime.“At the time you don’t
notice the changes but if you go back, that’s when you notice.”
‘It seems everybody was poor in those days. We had a farm. My father was a good
farmer. He put all of us to work. He knew how to manage things, to teach us
as we went along.”
My mother died when I was only twelve, so I “was in charge of the household. But I had my grandmother to help,
who used to come in every day and help me for a while when the kids were at school - the younger ones. It wasn’t
easy.”
I had to do the cooking and cleaning. We didn’t have running water in the house. “We had a well outside.” My oldest
brother, the sibling next to me in age, had to do chores each morning before going to school.“One of them was to
fill up water pails to sit in the outside porch - enough water for me to use throughout the day for cooking - clean
drinking water from the well.”
We used a wood stove to cook. It had an oven and room for four pots on top.“If you were baking you didn’t leave the
kitchen ‘cause you had to watch the heat. Every farm had a kitchen like that. The kitchen was the most important
room in the house, really. The biggest room.” There was a big table in the kitchen where everyone ate our meals
together.
“There were seven of us.” After my mother passed away, we “were left on our own for a little while. Then an aunt
came from the States and she said, ‘this would never do.’ She said, ‘You can’t take Mildred out of school. She’s only
twelve years old.’ There used to be no rule where you had to stay in school so many years. So my father thought he
could take me out of school so I could do the cooking. That didn’t work. My aunt, she talked him out of that. She
made him realize that I needed to have a lot of help and still be able to go to school. So she settled that question.
A good thing she came.”
I attended a one room school.“You wouldn’t believe how much we learned in that one room school. We had the class
we were in; we listened to the class ahead of us. I used to do that....” I was good at math [arithmetic] and when I
finished my day’s assignment, I’d listen in on the older students’ lessons. I’d “...take in all that they were learning. So
that when I came along to that bunch...it wasn’t new to me, so I could take extra...”
“We’d have enough
apples to last ‘til
Christmas. Potatoes
enough for all winter. Carrots. A few
onions. Turnips.”
There were seven grades in the school. To get a higher grade, students
had to go to the school in Annapolis. “We had a great teacher, the first
teacher we had when we went to the town school. She looked to be a
hundred years old but she was smart as a whip. And we learned from
her.” Her name was Miss Harris.“Some of the kids didn’t like her. She was
very strict. You didn’t waste any time talking.” The boy who sat behind
me would try to distract my attention, just for fun. “I’d catch him every
time. So that didn’t work.”
“We learned from Miss Harris. If we didn’t, she didn’t pass...she didn’t let
you grade to the next grade. You stayed. And that was punishment. You
had to work after school every day for an extra hour. Oh, school was
school in those days.”
My father’s farm was on the edge of town so I could walk home for lunch
most days, unless it was stormy.
262
We had a fifteen minute recess in the morning and fifteen minutes in the afternoon. We went outside and played
outdoor games, like races. “Lots of exercise.” We didn’t have any play equipment on our part of the school
grounds.
At home, “I didn’t really have time [for fun]. When my mother died I didn’t have any extra time at all. It was hard...but
it had to be done.”
“The big thing that happened was we got electric lights in Princedale. They came up through from Clementsport,
which was like the main highway along the river. So we got electricity. That was wonderful. Go to bed at night and
put the light out and it’d be dark. Unless the moonlight.”
We had kerosene lamps before the electric lights came to Princedale. There was one for the kitchen, and two for
upstairs, one for the boys and another for the girls. “...It was my job to trim the lamps, wash the shades ‘cause if
someone turned it up too high it would turn it black and shut out the light...” I cleaned all the lamps each week
and refilled them with kerosene.
We kept a big drum of kerosene in the porch. My father watched the level and when it got low, he’d pick up more
kerosene when he went into town each week. He also picked up molasses.“It was ‘way cheaper than sugar. We liked
it. It was good. It was good for us too.”
“My grandmother, my mother’s mother, lived about a half mile from us. And she used to bake the best cookies...great
big cookies...Every week she brought us a whole boxful of those cookies. We had to make them last through the
week. One a day for our school lunch on top of our bread and butter.”
We had cows and when my mother was alive, she made butter. “It was a special kind of job. You had to be careful
when the cream was ready...the right temperature before you used the churn to make butter. Because if it wasn’t
just the right temperature, it wouldn’t form into little bits of butter.”
The butter was stored in the cellar.“We had a really cold cellar underneath our house. It was good because you could
go down there and about half way down the steps, you’d feel the cold air. And when you got down, my father had
fixed the cellar so that we had a better cellar than lots of other people, because part of the floor he made covered
with concrete. So it was clean. You could go down there and walk on the concrete and you didn’t have to put your
boots on first.”
We stored some of the groceries from town in the cellar. In the fall, everything
from the garden we wanted to keep through the winter went into the cellar.
“They used to keep really well. Potatoes. Even apples...We’d have enough
apples to last ‘til Christmas. Potatoes enough for all winter. Carrots. A few
onions. Turnips.”
My mother “...picked peas and canned them. She put them up in jars.”
We had a meat man who came once a week. We could buy roasts. “He had
meat all cut up ready in the back of his truck. You could pick out the size of
roast you wanted. Or if you wanted some ground beef, he had that. So this
was once a week.”The meat was stored in the cellar.“If possible, we cooked
some ahead, like a stew. And used the meat that was less likely to be fried
in the stew and keep that down there in the cellar. Maybe enough for two
or three meals. So I think we had good food...the food we had must have
been what we needed because we weren’t a sickly bunch.”
“There was also a fish man from over the mountain. He used to come. But
the fish we usually ate first because it wouldn’t keep as well as the meat.
We all liked fish.”
Mildred’s mother, Amy
263
I remember some poor kids who lived in the community, whose families had no gardens, might not have enough to
eat. Sometimes fathers had to go away to work and would only get home on weekends, so they couldn’t have a
big garden. “We were more lucky than many of the others. We appreciated that.”
Everybody in the family had chores to do. Things they were able to do well, that was their job.“We had hens. And the
hens needed... the hen pen itself needed to be kept up. It was wire. You couldn’t let them run free because they’d
go right for the garden. The boys had to be sure the wire was cared for to keep the hens in.”
My father worked on the farm and worked cutting wood in the winter. There was a big hotel in town. We planted
enough extra vegetables in the garden “to supply that hotel through the winter.” That brought extra money in.
“He always brought back some little treats for us. Like hard candy. That was a big treat.”
“Christmas, we had special...my grandmother used to bake special cake for Christmas. And that was a great big thing
– Christmas. Really special.”
“My father’s sisters lived in the States. And they used to – they all worked in Boston. And when Christmas came they
would have stored up among them enough gifts that they did a great big parcel and mail it to us. And when we
saw that parcel, oh, we just couldn’t wait ‘til Christmas, but we had to. Mom used to hide it away and sometimes
the boys if she wasn’t home...they’d worked really hard to...” find that parcel. “They didn’t find it.”
The aunts knew what to send.“We used to send a letter to Santa Claus...give him a list. And we always wanted candy
and always wanted nuts. Then besides those two things we...could [have] one special gift each. So I always wanted
a book.”
The boys would look at my gift and say, ‘You only got an old book.” But I was happy with my book. I loved to read.
The younger boys wanted little steel trucks. Each would get one of those.
We got our bag of candy, and I remember how much I enjoyed the ribbon candy. We also received some fruit.
“Oranges..a few oranges. We always had apples in the basement but that wasn’t any treat. But we loved an orange
for Christmas.”
“We didn’t ask for a lot.”
“We always had a Christmas tree. Other kids would come in to look because we always had more ornaments and
stuff because our aunt in the States would send an ornament and she’d bring some with her when she came. Ours
would be different. So they would come in Christmas morning. The house was full of neighbours...neighbourhood
kids would come to every house and see what so-and-so got.”
We didn’t hang stockings at home. We had the tree and the gifts would be under the tree.
Christmas was special because we were able to enjoy things we didn’t have the rest of the year.
We had Christmas concerts at school.
I think we had good teachers. They would do whatever they could for their students. “They were ready to help.” And
I feel that the students appreciated it, at least the girls did. Some of the boys, not so much.
264
“But I know when I finished school there and went to town school, I had to write some exams. And the town teacher
that had to correct my work said,’Well, you could easily skip a grade with what you have.’ She offered Mildred the
chance to stay with her age group “until Christmas, maybe, and see how it works out. So I did that. First year I did
two grades. From Princedale school, mind you.”
“I wanted to learn. It was interesting.”
“I did teach for a while. But for three hundred dollars a year....That’s what teachers earned in those days.”
A friend came home at Christmastime from Halifax. She said, ‘You could find work anywhere. There’s all kinds of work
for teachers. And I found that true. So I went back to Halifax with her. And I lived with her for a week...two weeks, I
think, until I found a place of my own. Little apartment. And I went from there on through school. Finished grade
twelve.”
“I worked after school, I worked part time at Eaton’s. And saved money. Kept saving money. I went to normal college
for one year. That’s what you needed. And that put my teacher’s licence up to where it was worthwhile.” She proudly
said that “it is still in effect – permanent.”
I left teaching though, since I found I could make much more money doing other work in Halifax.“I used my knowledge
of math to do such as Customs forms. One company paid me the same salary as was paid to government workers
with promise of a raise yearly. Held that job for 8 years at retirement.”
265
J o s i e Loui s e W ri g h t
I was born in Greenland in 1916.
My mom spent most of her time in the home.“She was kind of weak...She never
went outdoors much.” My father was “jack of all trades.... He could shoe a horse
or do carpenter work or rock a well up when they used to rock them up ‘way
down 15 feet down in the ground.”
I had two brothers and two sisters. For fun we played ball and hide and seek.
I had some chores that I had to do, like wash the dishes. We had a nice well. We lowered the bucket on a chain and
brought it up when it was full of water. Water was heated on the stove in the wash boiler. “There wasn’t a lot of
dishes, but still...We didn’t use a lot of dishes like they do today. Dishes for everything.”
As I got older, I helped my mother keep house. “My older sister done it, and then she got married. So then I done it. I
had a younger sister but she didn’t do much. She was too small then.”
I got married and had a family. I was married in March and stayed in Greenland for a while, then we moved out to
Clementsvale to my husband’s parents’ place. His mother had gone to live in Bridgetown.
We had a farm “A great big one...20 acre field and woodland, too.” We had a small garden for ourselves. My husband
kept a pair a steers “He made them up, two alike,...break them, they called it. And then they could haul a wagon
or a sled in the winter. They was boy calves with white faces. They grew up and then [they] put a yoke across their
heads. Made a yoke out of wood and painted it and put that on with straps around [their horns that] held the yoke
on there. They hauled wood out with the oxen, or hauled the plow. “Somebody had to go ahead of the oxen and
somebody had to hold onto the plow handles. And after that we got a tractor with a plow on it.”
My husband also did some work with a horse.
My husband made hay in our field. He had a mowing machine to cut the hay. “A big cutter bar, ‘way up like that.” It
was about five feet long. It could be held up by moving a lever to move the mower around, and it was put down to
cut the grass. When the wheels went around, it drove the cutter bar. At first, the oxen pulled the mower, and “after
that, the horse.”
We had a “great big raker...and shafts on it to fasten the horse to it. By hand it would take too long” to cut and rake
the hay.
“My father could
make snowshoes...
Rawhide leather he
put on it, weave it in
and out, in and out.”
We had a hay wagon with racks that set out at an angle.“And it would hold
a big load.” I tramped the hay to settle it on the wagon. “They hauled it
in the barn with a horse. They backed it in....” A man teamed the horse to
back the wagon into the barn. The hay was forked over onto the scaffold.
The haymow was located on the sides of the barn. “It was hot up there.”
When electricity first came, “we liked it. I was out in Greenland then when
we first got electricity.” The line came through from Clementsvale. “We
had...electric mixer, a lovely Sunbeam mixer...to mix the cakes.” And
electric lights. “That was good, electric lights. Didn’t have to carry that
lamp around....You had to be careful carrying it around.” It was a kerosene
lamp. “Chimney on it too, that would break easy... It would get smoked
up quick. Had to clean it every day.”
I recalled some animals we had. “The cow would have a bossy. That’s what
we called it. A calf...Sometimes twins. Not much...once in a dog’s age.”
266
j O S I E W R I GH T
My husband wasn’t a hunter, but my father was a moose hunter.“They’d go up the Victory Road up to Lake Mississippi
he called it, and he’d always get one. His crew who went. If he didn’t get it, someone else did and they’d share with
5 or 6 of them. Because a moose is big. Bigger than a deer a lot.”
We sugar cured the meat.“Wouldn’t salt it because it’d be too salty. So they’d make a pickle and boil it and cool it and
put it on the meat and it’d keep. Good sugar cured. Good. It had some salt in it but sugar in it too, in the pickle.” It
was stored in a pickle barrel.
Meat could be kept in the winter, hanging in the shop because it was cold.
I think there might have been more snow in the winters when I was young. I remember it was hard to get used to
snowshoes. “My father could make snowshoes... Rawhide leather he put on it, weave it in and out, in and out.”
I don’t remember the First World War. “I was just born then.” I do remember some about the Second World War. My
husband went to fight but my father didn’t go.
The school I attended was right across the field from where I grew up. My siblings and I walked to school.“I went until
I got grade seven. That’s all. Then I had to stay home and do some housework.”
The school had a wood stove for heat. “We’d hover around that stove for a while in the morning.”
“I had to take some water down from our place. We lived right close to the school...They didn’t have no well on the
school grounds. Then they didn’t.”
The school had seven grades. I think perhaps there would have been about 25 children in the school.
There was just one teacher at a time. I remember Mrs. Winchester from Digby. “She was nice and kind. And another
one, Hatty Peck. Harriet M. Peck. From Bear River...She was nice and kind.”
I went home for lunch from school since it was handy. Some students lived a mile from the school.“They couldn’t go
home. So they carried their lunch in a little lunch basket or kit.”
At noon, the children played outdoors. The teacher boarded nearby, and walked to the home where she boarded for
her lunch.
The teacher often went home on weekends. Most of the
teachers were young women.“They went to summer school...
normal college...and got the licence to teach.”
The church was right across the road from our farm.There wasn’t
a community hall in those years.
“We was poor. Didn’t have much. Had as much as the rest,
though. There were a few that had a little more. Not many.”
My father worked at Jesse Jefferson’s to earn money and we had
the garden to provide vegetables. “There wasn’t no store in
Greenland.” We shopped in Bear River or Bear River East. Dick
McRae had the store in Bear River East.
Josie’s farm in Clementsvale
267
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