The following, arranged chronologically by birth date,
are among the more prominent people in the history of Nova Scotia:
Mostly from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
and Members of the Order of Canada
Pierre du Gua de Monts (1558?-1628)
[Not to be confused with Sieur de Monts (floruit 1662)]
Despite the tremendous contribution made by this far-seeing and broadminded individual to the development of Canada, he has seldom been accorded his rightful place in accounts of its history. Here is the man who made possible so much of what Champlain accomplished. He it was who founded the first permanent colony here. With his interest in trade simply as a necessary source of funds for colonization and discovery, he sacrificed personal gain for the greater goal, one in which Champlain was his staunch ally. From the day he and his associates established their settlement on Île Sainte-Croix, the continent was never to be without a European settlement. It was de Monts who proved that people from Europe could live here permanently and that agriculture could be carried on successfully.
Saint Croix Island International Historic Site
Parks Canada
Saint Croix Island International Historic Site
U.S. National Park Service
Timeline: Saint Croix Island through Four Centuries
U.S. National Park Service
| Saint Croix Island History Saint Croix Island Historical Timeline Ste-Croix 2004 Coordinating Committee 1604 The French expedition, led by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons, established a settlement on St. Croix Island. 1697 The St. Croix River set as the boundary between the British Provinces of Massachussetts Bay and Nova Scotia. 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the American War of Independence and the St. Croix River was established as the international boundary… |
Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling (c.1577-1640)
[Not to be confused with Sir William Alexander (c.1602-1638)]
William Alexander persuaded King James VII/II that the only way to get Scots to emigrate was to give them a new Scotland comparable to New France and New England; and the King conveyed the royal wish to the Council of New England and obtained from the latter the surrender of all their territory north of the Sainte-Croix River. Thereupon the king immediately instructed the Scottish Privy Council to prepare a grant of this territory for Sir William Alexander. The grant was signed on 10 September 1621 (o.s.), making Sir William, on paper at least, lord proprietor of the region now known as the three Atlantic Provinces and the Gaspé peninsula – to be called for all time New Scotland or Nova Scotia.
Also see: Sir William Alexander monument, Halifax
| Saint Croix River Historical Timeline How a 1621 decision by King James VII of Scotland established what ultimately became today’s boundary between New Brunswick and Maine; part of the international boundary between Canada and the United States 1621 …the King conveyed the royal wish to the Council of New England and obtained from the latter the surrender of all their territory north of the Sainte-Croix River. Thereupon the king immediately instructed the Scottish Privy Council to prepare a grant of this territory for Sir William Alexander. The grant was signed on 10 September 1621 (o.s.), making Sir William, on paper at least, lord proprietor of the region now known as the three Atlantic Provinces and the Gaspé peninsula – to be called for all time New Scotland or Nova Scotia. 1697 The St. Croix River is set as the boundary between the British Provinces of Massachussetts Bay and Nova Scotia. 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the American War of Independence and the St. Croix River is established as the international boundary. |
James Stewart, fourth Lord Ochiltree (1582?-1659)
Founder of a short-lived colony at Port de la Baleine, on Cape Breton Island
Isaac de Razilly (1587-1635)
Captain in the French Navy, colonizer
French governor of Acadia
Isaac de Razilly, Fort Point 1632
Photographs of Monument
André Malapart (fl.1629-1649)
In 1629, André Malapart lost an eye and part of his hand in the attack by Charles Daniel on the Scottish fort built by Lord Ochiltree on the coast of Cape Breton Island.
David Lomeron (1591-1636+)
Huguenot merchant of La Rochelle
In 1627 there was in existence near Cap Fourchu (now Yarmouth, Nova Scotia) a tiny community called Port-Lomeron
Charles de Saint-Étienne de La Tour (c.1593-1666)
[Not to be confused with Charles de Saint-Étienne de La Tour (c.1665-1731)]
On 14 July 1654, an English expedition sent by Oliver Cromwell under the command of Major Robert Sedgwick entered the harbour at Saint John and called for La Tour’s surrender. Having few cannon, almost no ammunition, and a garrison of but 70 men to oppose a force of 500, La Tour was obliged to comply. He was made a prisoner and taken to England. Only in 1656 was he allowed to see Cromwell. He asked for the return of his property on the grounds that England and France had been at peace when the capture took place. Cromwell refused the request, agreeing only to recognize La Tour’s right as a baronet of Nova Scotia as his father’s heir, provided he accepted English allegiance and paid both the amount he owed Boston merchants and the cost of the English garrison that Leverett had maintained at Saint John. Discouraged with the turn of events and undoubtedly dispirited at the thought of the French creditors awaiting him and his wife, Charles accepted these conditions. To raise the £15,000 involved, La Tour entered into partnership with William Crowne and Thomas Temple.
Barthélemy Vimont (1594-1667)
After a shipwreck on the coast of Cape Breton Island, in August 1629 Capt. Charles Daniel built a fort at the entrance to the Grand-Cibou (now Englishtown, Nova Scotia), where he left a garrison with Father Vimont as the chaplain.
Sir David Kirke (c.1597-1654)
When war broke out in 1627 between France and England, an expedition under David Kirke, was commissioned by Charles I to displace the French from “Canida.” Accompanied by his brothers Lewis, Thomas, John and James, David Kirke set off with three ships probably in company with a fleet bringing settlers to Sir William Alexander’s projected colony at Port-Royal, Nova Scotia.
Nicolas Denys (1598-1688)
Nicolas Denys was one of the leading figures in Acadia for over half of the 17th century.
Sir Lewis Kirke (c.1599-1683)
In 1654 Lewis Kirke with his brothers John and James petitioned Oliver Cromwell’s Council of State for the claim of £48,000 unpaid from the 1632 settlement with the French regarding Quebec. Provision for a final settlement was contained in the French treaty of 1655, but as late as 1667 the terms had not been fulfilled and Sir Lewis was asking Charles II not to return Nova Scotia to the French until they complied.
Simon Denys de La Ronde Trinité (1599-c.1679)
In 1632 Simon accompanied his brother, Nicolas, to Acadia.
Charles Daniel ( ? -1661)
Sea captain, member of the Compagnie des Cent-Associés
Founder of Fort Sainte-Anne on Cape Breton Island
Philippe Mius d’Entremont (c.1601-c.1700)
Lieutenant-major, king’s attorney, settler
The first of the d’Entremonts of Nova Scotia
Sir William Alexander (c.1602-1638)
[Not to be confused with Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling (c.1577-1640)]
On 4 February 1628/29 Alexander, the Kirkes, and others obtained a monopoly of the trade to Canada. While the Kirkes went off to capture Quebec, Alexander joined forces with Sir James Stewart, Lord Ochiltree, helped him build a fort at Port de la Baleine (now Baleine) in Cape Breton, and then, under the guidance of Claude de Saint-Étienne de La Tour, proceeded to Port-Royal. Here, in the summer of 1629, Alexander built a new fort in which he decided to pass the winter, sending back his ship for additional supplies and colonists. He also dispatched Claude de La Tour with an agreement for his father, Sir William, to sign, the terms of which conferred the title of knight-baronet and a large grant of land on Claude and his son Charles de Saint-Étienne de La Tour, in return for their assistance and allegiance. This agreement, slightly modified, was duly signed by Alexander’s father 30 April 1630.
Charles de Menou d’Aulnay (c.1604-1650)
D’Aulnay deserves consideration as a great colonizer and as one of the first architects of the plan to give to the Atlantic provinces a European population.
Emmanuel Le Borgne (1610-1675)
Under the patronage of the Duc de Vendôme, Le Borgne returned to Port-Royal in 1654 in the ship Châteaufort, laden with 75,000 livres of merchandise, provisions, and munitions, to enforce the duke’s claim to Saint John and Saint-Pierre under the 1652 transaction. But Le Borgne failed to capture the Saint John fort and La Tour before his operations were interrupted by Sedgwick‘s 1654 expedition to capture Acadia. In the capitulation of Port-Royal (16 August 1654), which he signed along with Father Léonard de Chartres, he requested that his ship and his merchandise be returned to him. He returned to France late in 1654, leaving his eldest son, Emmanuel Le Borgne Du Coudray, as a hostage at Port-Royal, and Alexandre Le Borgne de Belle-Isle in charge of La Hève (now LaHave, Lunenburg County).
Sieur de Monts (fl. 1662)
[Not to be confused with Pierre du Gua de Monts (1558?-1628)]
The crossing of the North Atlantic ocean in 1662 was rough. It lasted four months, during which the Sieur de Monts, according to Marie de l’Incarnation, was “most sorely treated by the captain of the King’s vessels, not to mention that he had provisions for only two months, and was four on the way.”
Nicolas Le Creux du Breuil ( ? – ? )
He probably arrived in Acadia with Commander Isaac de Razilly as early as 1632. Le Creux was in command of de Razilly’s Fort Saint-François at Canseau (Canso) and was working at fortifying it when, on 31 July 1635, he had to repulse Indians who had been stirred up by Jean Thomas, the captain of a fishing boat.
Father Léonard de Chartres ( ? -1654)
In July 1653 Father Léonard officiated at the marriage of d’Aulnay’s widow, Jeanne Motin, to Charles de Saint-Étienne de La Tour and signed the marriage contract. The following year he was present at the capture of Port-Royal by Sedgwick and with Le Borgne he countersigned the articles of capitulation, 16 August 1654.
Richard Walker (1611-1680)
[Not to be confused with his father Richard Walker (1592-1687)]
Richard Walker was deputy governor of Nova Scotia (Acadia) in 1670. He represented Lynn in the General Court (Massachusetts Legislature) in 1679-80.
Robert Sedgwick (1611-1656)
In 1653-54 Sedgwick visited England, then at war with the Dutch. Because New Haven had petitioned Cromwell to reduce her rival, New Netherland, Sedgwick was sent to New England to organize an expedition against the Dutch colony, but news of peace overtook him in Boston. Since his commission from Cromwell of 8 February 1653/54, as general of the fleet and commander-in-chief of all the New England coast, authorized him to make reprisals against French commerce for attacks on English vessels by French privateers commissioned by princes Rupert and Charles, he resolved to use this power to secure the rich fur-trading and fishing resources of Acadia for New England and the Protectorate. Charles de Saint-Étienne de La Tour controlled Acadia at this time, but his defences were weak. He had outlasted his rival, Charles de Menou d’Aulnay, only to suffer attack by d’Aulnay’s creditor, Emmanuel Le Borgne. Sedgwick left Boston on 4 July 1654 with 170 men in three ships and a ketch. In ten days he reached the Saint John River where he found La Tour in his fort. Three days later La Tour and 70 fighting men surrendered. On 31 July Sedgwick’s expedition sailed to Port-Royal (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia). Sedgwick was ambushed but won and took the fort. His son-in-law, Major John Leverett, was appointed military governor of Acadia and Sedwick left for England, taking La Tour with him. Cromwell welcomed Sedgwick because possession of Acadia provided additional bargaining power in negotiating with France. The Protectorate agreed to recognize La Tour’s title to Nova Scotia under his grant from Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, if he would undertake to reimburse Sedgwick for the cost of the conquest, nearly £1,800. This led La Tour to sell his rights to Sir Thomas Temple and Col. William Crowne, who became proprietors of Nova Scotia for the next 14 years.
Thomas Temple (1614-1674)
On 12 September 1657 an agreement was made between Temple and Crowne for a division of their property. Temple’s share extended from what is now Lunenburg in Nova Scotia to the River St. George in Maine, including the whole coast of the Bay of Fundy (Baie Française) on both sides and a hundred leagues* inland. Crowne and Temple had many disputes over their property in Nova Scotia. In 1659, Col. Crowne leased his share of the grant to Thomas Temple for four years. Another challenge to Temple’s assertion of authority over Acadia was Alexander Le Borgne de Belle-Isle’s seizure of La Hève (now La Have in Lunenburg County) in May 1658. Belle-Isle acted under his father’s concession in Acadia from the Compagnie de la Nouvelle-France. He was captured by Temple, taken to Boston, and there held prisoner for several years. After the restoration of Charles II in 1660 petitions for a grant of Acadia were placed before the king by Thomas Elliott, a groom of the bed-chamber, Sir Lewis Kirke, the heirs of Sir William Alexander, the French ambassador on behalf of Le Borgne, and others. In 1662 Temple was created a baronet of Nova Scotia and given the governorship for which he paid Elliott £600 per year.
* “A hundred leagues” is equivalent to about 500 kilometres.
Sir Thomas Temple, Baronet (1613/14-1670)
website of the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia
Jeanne Motin (c.1615-1666)
She came to Acadia in 1636 with her two sisters and her brother-in-law, Nicolas Le Creux Du Breuil. In the same year, probably at Port-Royal, she married Charles de Menou d’Aulnay, by whom she had four sons, who entered the army and died in battle, and four daughters, all of whom took religious vows. In a marriage of convenience she was wed in July 1653 to Charles de Saint-Étienne de La Tour, who had been d’Aulnay’s chief rival for power in Acadia. They lived at the mouth of the Saint John until about 1656 when they moved to Cap de Sable. By La Tour she had five children.
Martin d’ Aprendestiguy, Sieur de Martignon (c.1616-c.1686)
In 1672 Aprendestiguy was granted a seigneury at the mouth of the Saint John River.
John Leverett (1616-1679)
Official commander of the forts in Acadia, 1654-57
Governor of Massachusetts 1673-79
Leverett Circle Boston, Massachusetts
William Crowne (1617-1682)
In the year 1656, Crowne tied up his fortune in a venture in the New World. He became joint proprietor, with Col. Thomas Temple, of Nova Scotia, by buying Charles de Saint-Étienne de La Tour’s patent as baronet of Nova Scotia. By this purchase, Crowne and Temple agreed to pay La Tour’s debt of £3,379 to the widow of Major-Gen. Edward Gibbons of Boston and Temple assumed the cost of the English troops which had earlier captured the fort on the Saint John River. Col. Temple, Col. Crowne, his son John Crowne, and a group of settlers came to America in 1657. Crowne’s name first appears in the records of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, in September 1657 on an agreement between Temple and Crowne to divide Acadia, Temple taking the eastern part and Crowne the western, including the fort of Pentagouet (now Castine, Maine). The claim of Temple and Crowne to the grant of Nova Scotia by Cromwell was threatened at the Restoration by both French and English claims. Thomas Elliott petitioned King Charles II for a grant of the province. Sir Lewis Kirke and associates and the heirs of Sir William Alexander also petitioned for it. In 1661 the French ambassador claimed it for France. That same year Crowne, accompanied by his son, went to England with a petition, signed by the three original grantees (himself, Temple, and La Tour). On 22 June 1661 he submitted a statement on the manner in which he and Temple became proprietors. While in England, Col. William Crowne also pleaded the cause of the colonists before the council and lord chamberlain on 4 December 1661. Temple arrived in England in February 1662 and prepared a statement in answer to the French ambassador’s claim, which gained him and his heirs a grant of Acadia and Nova Scotia and the governorship for life.
Jacques de Chambly ( ? -1687)
On 5 May 1673 he was appointed governor of Acadia.
John Alden (c.1625-1702)
In 1688 and 1689 Alden made trading voyages to Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) and Les Mines (Grand Pré, Nova Scotia). He made a truce with the Indians at Sagadahoc in November 1690. Earlier that year he had taken part in the capture of Port-Royal under Phips, and had gone with Captain Cyprian Southack to reduce La Hève (LaHave) and Chedabouctou (Guysborough, Nova Scotia).
Cornelius Van Steenwyk (Steenwijck) (1626-1684)
Mayor of New York, 1668-1670 and 1682-1684
In 1676 Van Steenwyk briefly served as governor of Acadia, more or less. His authority over Acadia was never effectively asserted.
Hector D’Andigné de Grandfontaine (1627-1696)
Governor of Acadia, August 1670 to May 1673
Grandfontaine was the first French governor of Acadia after the English occupation of 1654-70. An official census done in 1671, as ordered by Colbert de Terron, the intendant of Rochefort, showed the total European population of Acadia, including the garrisons, amounted to barely 500 persons; it was a very small colony.
Pierre Tibaudeau (1631-1704)
Tibaudeau is the founder of Chipoudy (now Shepody, New Brunswick).
Pasquine (fl.1681-88)
Engineer of the Department of Marine (French Navy)
Pasquine arrived in Acadia in 1688. He drew a detailed plan of the river and country surrounding Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) and visited the other posts on the Bay of Fundy. He also prepared several plans for the rebuilding of the fort at Port-Royal. Pasquine left maps of the mouths of the Saint John, Penobscot, and Kennebec rivers, where he recommended that forts be erected. These maps are of great historical interest.
Jurriaen Aernoutsz (fl.1674)
Aernoutsz was a Dutch sea-captain who conquered Acadia in 1674. He spent a month in Acadia which he called “Nova Hollandia” or “New Holland.” He then sailed to Boston where he disposed of his plunder, even selling the cannon from Fort Pentagouet to the Massachusetts government.
John Rhoades (fl.1674-76)
In September 1676 the Dutch West India Company made a belated effort to capitalize on Aernoutsz’s conquest by granting Rhoades a commission to reside and trade in Acadia and by appointing Cornelius Van Steenwyk, a Dutch merchant in New York, governor of Acadia.
Alexandre Le Borgne de Belle-Isle (c.1640-c.1693)
In the autumn of 1656, two years after the capitulation of Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) to Sedgwick, Acadia was ceded by Charles de Saint-Étienne de La Tour to two English colonels, Thomas Temple and William Crowne. The following year Emmanuel Le Borgne was appointed governor of Acadia by the king of France, but being unable to leave Europe he sent his son Alexandre to the colony with some 50 men, to take possession of his holdings. The little force seized the fort of La Hève in May 1658 and appropriated for itself the food and pelts that Temple had stored there. Carrying on its campaign, it then unsuccessfully attacked Temple’s fort, constructed at Port-La Tour. Thomas Temple, anxious to avenge the insult, hastened up from Boston and attacked Alexandre Le Borgne’s improvised fort. Le Borgne was wounded during this engagement then taken to London, where he was held captive for some years. When the Treaty of Breda restored Acadia to France in 1667, Emmanuel Le Borgne recovered his former possessions. The following year he entrusted the government of the colony to his son Alexandre, who from then on took the name of Le Borgne de Belle-Isle.
Michel Leneuf de La Vallière de Beaubassin (1640-1705)
[Not to be confused with
Michel Leneuf de La Vallière de Beaubassin (1677-1740)]
After studying in France, La Vallière returned to Canada in 1657. According to Charlevoix he was in command on Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) in 1666, under Nicolas Denys. In 1672 he is supposed to have set up a fur-trading post on the Isthmus of Chignecto, while devoting part of his time to the fishing industry, farming, settlement, and soldiering. In October 1676 Buade de Frontenac granted him a piece of land 10 square leagues* in area, constituting the Beaubassin seigneury. Later this region was to become one of the most strategic points in the struggles between French and English in Acadia – indeed in North America. On 7 May 1676, on Frontenac’s orders, he set off to cruise along the Acadian coasts to spy on the enemy. While thus occupied, with his brother-in-law Sieur Richard Denys de Fronsac as his second in command, he seized three English ketches from Boston that were taking on coal at Cape Breton: two of them were declared lawful prizes. La Vallière was promoted commandant of Acadia in 1678, replacing Pierre de Joybert. He enjoyed the favour of Frontenac, who in 1681 recommended him to the minister as a future governor. Appointed governor in 1683, La Vallière exercised his functions for one year only at Port-Royal (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia).
* “Ten square leagues” is equivalent to about 900 square miles
or about 2300 square kilometres.
Pierre de Joybert de Sulanges et de Marson (c.1641-1678)
In October 1672, in recognition of his “good and praise-worthy service to the King, both in Old and New France” he received a seigneurial grant on the east bank of the Saint John River, measuring one league* in depth and extending four leagues* up the river from its mouth. This large area included what is now downtown Saint John, New Brunswick. At the same time, he was promoted to “Major des troupes” in Acadia and assigned command of Fort Jemseg (called Gemisick by the French) and the river Saint John by Buade de Frontenac. It is doubtful if there was a single white resident at the time on the Saint John and his appointment appears to have been part of a plan to settle soldiers and families on that river as an aid in establishing an inland route of communication between Quebec and Acadia.
* “One league” is equivalent to about five kilometres.
“Four leagues” is equivalent to about twenty kilometres.
Louis-Pierre Thury (c.1644-1699)
About 1698 Abbé Thury founded a new mission at Pigiguit (on Minas Basin) and planned to group the Micmacs in one huge settlement between Shubenacadie and Chibouctou (Chebucto, Halifax).
Charles Duret de Chevry de La Boulaye (c. 1645-1691?)
By 1685 La Boulaye was lieutenant for the king in Acadia, replacing Bergier. He was at Chedabouctou (Guysborough, Nova Scotia), which was the base of operations of the fishing company, about 7 or 8 leagues* from Canseau (Canso), when Jacques de Meulles, the intendant of New France, arrived there on 5 June 1686. At Canso, while on the way to Chedabouctou, de Meulles found the fishing company’s ship Saint-Louis which had arrived 8 or 10 days earlier to fish for cod. The establishment of the company at Chedabouctou then consisted of Fort Saint-Louis and several roughly built huts.
* “7 or 8 leagues” is equivalent to roughly 40 kilometres.
Edward Tyng (1649-1691)
[Not to be confused with Edward Tyng (1683-1755)]
After the fall of Port-Royal in 1690, when Massachusetts included (more or less) Acadia or Nova Scotia, Tyng was selected as its governor.
Claude-Sébastien de Villieu (fl.1690-1705)
Villieu was in command of Acadia from July 1700 to December 1701. In 1705 Villieu sold his house at Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) to the Recollets, who turned it into a parish church.
Vincent Saccardy ( ? -1691)
Engineer-general for the French king in Canada
Saccardy arrived at Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) in October 1689. He spent about a month there, during which he began to tear down the old fort and build a larger one of four bastions.
Guillaume Blanchard (1650-1716)
Early settler at Chipoudy (now Shepody, New Brunswick)
Jacques-François de Monbeton de Brouillan (1651-1705)
Governor of Placentia (Plaisance) and of Acadia
Knight of the order of Saint-Louis
Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie de Saint-Castin (1652-1707)
In July 1670, the treaty of Breda having restored Acadia to France, Saint-Castin, still an ensign, went with Captain Andigné de Grandfontaine, the new governor of Acadia, to Penobscot Bay, to retake possession of the fort at Pentagouet (on the Penobscot River) captured by the English 16 years before. The place was a “hot spot,” right in the middle of contested territory. The French maintained that the boundary of Acadia was at the Kennebec River, the English put it as far back as the Penobscot River, and the most enthusiastic of the Bostonians even wanted to make it the Sainte-Croix River. While these disputes were going on between white men, in the coastal region the country remained also and above all the domain of the Penobscots, and in the forests of the interior that of the other Abenaki tribes. Saint-Castin was entrusted with several missions which enabled him to study the men and the country. The town of Castine, Maine, is named after Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie de Saint-Castin.
John Nelson (1654-1734)
In 1691, after the capture of Port-Royal (Annapolis, Nova Scotia), Nelson and six other merchants concluded an agreement with the Massachusetts government to provide a garrison there in exchange for a monopoly of the area’s trade for the next five years. Nelson had been on such good terms with the French authorities that he had been able thus far to maintain a warehouse in Port-Royal. While trading in Acadia in 1691, however, Nelson and a number of other New Englanders were captured by a French cruiser, and Nelson was sent to Quebec. Among the others taken were Colonel Edward Tyng, newly appointed governor of Acadia, and John Alden.
Francis Nicholson (1655-1728)
Soldier, governor of Nova Scotia, colonial administrator
Joseph Robinau de Villebon (1655-1700)
Governor of Acadia 1690-1700
In 1686 Acadia had 885 inhabitants;
in 1693 the total was apparently 1009.
Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680)
The first Indian to be named venerable
A Mohawk woman buried in Quebec will become the first Native American saint at a ceremony in Rome in October 2012. Kateri Tekakwitha, who spent most of her life in what is now upstate New York, will become the first aboriginal saint when she and six others are canonized at the Vatican. Pope Benedict made the announcement Saturday (18 February 2012), after he appointed 22 new cardinals. Benedict had already approved miracles attributed to Tekakwitha, the final step toward sainthood. Known as the Lily of the Mohawks, she was born in New York in 1656. Tekakwitha is entombed in a marble shrine at the St. Francis Xavier Church in Kahnawake, Quebec. About sixty First Nations Nova Scotians will make the pilgramage to Rome to mark Saint Kateri’s canonization on 21 October 2012, among them thirty members of the Shubenacadie Band, and others from the Eskasoni and Millbrook First Nations communities. Kateri is said to hold a special importance for First Nations peoples. The process for her sainthood has been ongoing since 1884.
—Source: Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 19 February and 21 June, 2012
Antoine Laumet, dit de Lamothe Cadillac (1658-1730)
Seigneur in Acadia
captain in the colonial regular troops, sub-lieutenant in the French navy,
commandant of Michilimackinac, founder of Detroit, governor of Louisiana,
knight of the order of Saint-Louis, governor of Castelsarrasin in France
Boastful, ingenious, quarrelsome, not too scrupulous about adhering to the truth. About 1683 Cadillac landed in Acadia as an obscure immigrant and settled in Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia).
John March (1658-1712)
Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley appointed Colonel John March to lead the proposed expedition against Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal), Nova Scotia, in 1707
Mathieu de Goutin (c.1660-1714)
Upon his arrival at Port-Royal in 1688, de Goutin found himself the busiest official of the colony. As lieutenant general he heard all civil and criminal suits, and those pertaining as well to public order, navigation and trade. As king’s writer he was the subdelegate of the intendant of New France. He administered the king’s accounts, munitions, and supplies, and was inspector of crown works.
Richard Philipps (c.1661-1750)
As a younger son of a Welsh family, Richard Philipps had no prospects of inheriting the family baronetcy. He entered the army as a lieutenant about 1678. His chance for preferment and a basis for his later career came in 1688 when William of Orange set sail for England and he was employed to circulate printed announcements of the prince’s intentions among the Jacobite troops in advance of William’s landing at Torbay. Philipps was arrested and, though accounts differ on the details, it is known that he was about to be hanged when the news of William’s arrival came and his captors hurriedly released him…
Cyprian Southack (1662-1745)
Southack entered the service of the colony of Massachusetts in 1690, when the man-of-war Mary, of which he was commander and part-owner, was rented for use in the expedition against Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) under Sir William Phips. After the capture of Port-Royal, Southack went to Cape Sable Island, where he battled Indians allied to the French; to Chedabouctou (Guysborough, Nova Scotia), where he reduced Fort Saint-Louis; and to Newfoundland, where he raided French outposts. This was the beginning of a long period of employment for Southack by the Massachusetts government.
Pierre Maisonnat, dit Baptiste (1663-1714+)
Ship’s captain and privateer
Lawrence Armstrong (1664-1739)
Lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia
Charles de Saint-Étienne de La Tour (c.1665-1731)
[Not to be confused with Charles de Saint-Étienne de La Tour (c.1593-1666)]
In 1703 Charles was appointed an ensign with the French forces in Acadia. He was a member of the local garrison during the bombardment and capture of Port-Royal by Nicholson in 1710 and was severely wounded. He was promoted lieutenant and in 1714 was stationed at Île Royale.
François Guion (1666-1701)
Privateer operating on the coasts of Acadia and New England
Justinien Durand (c.1667-c.1746)
After the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 Durand and other missionaries in Acadia tried, at the request of the French government, to encourage the Acadian population to emigrate to the territories that had remained French. At first Durand was optimistic about his parishioners’ desire to leave. But the British authorities increased the obstacles, and the French authorities showed little inclination to respect the wonderful promises made by their agents. In reality the Acadians did not want to leave their land if freedom of religion and property rights were guaranteed them. Neither did they want to take the oath of allegiance to the British King. None of the early administrators of Nova Scotia, Francis Nicholson, Samuel Vetch, John Doucett, Thomas Caulfeild, had succeeded in obtaining it. When a new governor, Richard Philipps, arrived in April 1720, he was firmly resolved to settle the question.
Patrice René (1667-1742)
In 1703 Patrice René arrived in Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia), joining his confrère, Father Félix Pain, who had been chaplain at the fort since 1701. René became the first superior of the convent which his order founded at Port-Royal, and in 1708 he was appointed the bishop of Quebec’s vicar general in Acadia.
Félix Pain (1668-1741)
Félix Pain was garrison chaplain 1701-1710,
at Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia).
Samuel Vetch (1668-1732)
Commander of the garrison at Annapolis Royal
Governor of Nova Scotia
Louise Guyon (Damours de Freneuse) (1668-1711+)
In 1711 Mme de Freneuse returned to Port-Royal (renamed Annapolis Royal) with a pass from Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, the governor of New France. She crossed the Bay of Fundy in a canoe in the heart of winter, alone with her youngest son and an Indian. The acting English governor of Annapolis Royal, Sir Charles Hobby, allowed her to stay there, but Paul Mascarene claimed that she was acting as a spy for the French government. Certainly Mme de Freneuse would have had several valid reasons for returning to Acadia, if only because of the many relatives she had there and to see to the possessions she had had to leave in haste behind her at the Saint John River and at Annapolis Royal. On the other hand, we know that the court of France was seriously thinking of retaking Annapolis Royal. According to Mascarene, two of her sons may have taken part in June 1711 in the attack at Bloody Creek (near Bridgetown, Nova Scotia), where 30 English soldiers perished.
Sir Charles Hobby (c.1670-1715)
In October 1710 Port-Royal fell to the British and Vetch was made governor of the fort (soon to be renamed Annapolis Royal) and of a three-mile [five-kilometre] surrounding area. Hobby was second in command. The following June, Samuel Vetch left for Boston to plan a full-scale attack on Quebec and Hobby was left in charge of Annapolis. The garrison he commanded was by now reduced by disease and desertion, while the fort was beginning to fall into disrepair. Furthermore, they were surrounded by hostile French and Indians. Hobby soon received news that Sir Hovenden Walker, commander of the Quebec expedition, was sending 200 New Englanders to reinforce the Annapolis garrison and in return demanded that Hobby return 100 British Marines and all the mortars and ordnance stores he could spare. Meanwhile, the French and Indians had become more aggressive. Early in June 1711, a detachment of about 70 men, sent from Annapolis to harass a nearby Indian settlement and restore the transportation of wood to the fort, was ambushed by Indians; some 30 soldiers were killed at the First Battle of Bloody Creek. Shortly afterwards a force of about 200 French and Indians laid siege unsuccessfully to the fort.
François Le Coutre de Bourville (c.1670-c.1758)
In 1718 Bourville was appointed garrison adjutant of Île Royale (Cape Breton Island). In 1730, with little recommendation other than the usual automatic increase in seniority, he succeeded to the king’s lieutenancy of Île Royale. On four occasions he commanded at Île Royale in the absence of the governor.
John Doucett ( ? -1726)
Lieutenant-governor of the fort of Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, 1717-26
Administrator of the government of Nova Scotia, 1717-20 and 1722-26
Thomas Smart ( ? -1722)
British naval officer who directed the
attack on French fishing installations at
Canso, Nova Scotia, in September 1718
Dièreville (fl.1699-1711)
He reached Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) in Acadia on 13 October 1699, after a voyage of 54 days. He spent a year in the country in search of information about the region and the French and Amerindian populations; he also gathered plants. In October 1700 he sailed for Europe.
Louis-Simon Le Poupet de La Boularderie (c.1674-1738)
Commandant 1719-1738 at Port d’Orléans, Île Royale
(North Bay Ingonish, Cape Breton Island)
Father Antoine Gaulin (1674-1740)
Missionary to the Abenakis and Micmacs of Acadia and Nova Scotia
Between 1717 and 1720, after France had founded a new colony on Île Royale (Cape Breton Island), Gaulin succeeded in bringing together a great number of Micmacs from the peninsula in a large mission at Antigonish – within English territory but close to Île Royale. Later he established missions at Cape Sable, La Hève (La Have), Shubenacadie and Mirligueche (near Lunenburg).
Louis Denys de La Ronde (1675-1741)
In the spring of 1713 the peace of Utrecht had ceded Acadia and Newfoundland to England, and in an effort to counter the loss France decided upon a new venture on Île Royale (Cape Breton Island). Serving under Saint-Ovide [Monbeton], Louis Denys de La Ronde reconnoitred the island, making recommendations for settlement and preparing charts and reports of his observations. It is perhaps significant that he noted with some emotion the vestiges of the pioneering efforts of his grandfather, Simon Denys de La Trinité, who more than 60 years previously had built a trading post at Sainte-Anne (Englishtown). In the summer of the following year La Ronde joined Jacques d’Espiet de Pensens on an unsuccessful journey to Nova Scotia to encourage the Acadians to leave the province and immigrate to Île Royale.
Michel Leneuf de La Vallière de Beaubassin (1677-1740)
[Not to be confused with Michel Leneuf de La Vallière de Beaubassin (1640-1705)]
In 1713, La Vallière was sent to Île Royale; his name appears among those who signed the official taking-over of the site of the future Louisbourg, on 2 September 1713. He was active at Port-Toulouse (St. Peters, NovaScotia); as early as 1715 he concerned himself with the handful of Acadian families who were trying to found a new settlement there. In April 1737 La Vallière obtained a commission as major. From Louisbourg, where he was located, he wrote on 30 June 1738, to the minister in the absence of Major Le Coutre de Bourville, the acting governor, to inform him of the deplorable state of the colony.
Charles de La Goudalie (c.1678-c.1753)
Except for a few disputes with the lieutenant-governor, Lawrence Armstrong, La Goudalie maintained excellent relations with the authorities in Annapolis Royal.
Louis Du Pont Duchambon (1679-1775)
[Not to be confused with Louis Du Pont Duchambon de Vergor (1713-1775)]
Duchambon secured favourable terms for the capitulation of the Louisbourg Fortress.
Patrick Heron (fl.1709-1752)
British Army officer
Heron was the commanding officer at Canso, Nova Scotia, in 1744 when war broke out between France and Britain.
Alexandre de La Maisonfort (fl.1699-1752)
French Navy officer
In 1745 La Maisonfort, commanding Vigilant, was given the task of transporting munitions and supplies to Louisbourg. In May 1745, when he arrived in sight of Louisbourg, already besieged by troops from the English colonies under the command of William Pepperrell, he fell into a trap set for him by an English privateer. Challenged by the privateer, Vigilant pursued it and found itself confronted by Peter Warren’s English squadron. After a long fight, La Maisonfort had to surrender. The loss of Vigilant had a double result: a material one in that it deprived the defenders of Louisbourg of the help intended for them, and a psychological one in that it showed England’s supremacy on the seas, which would destroy for the besieged fortress any possibility of relief.
Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix (1682-1761)
In 1719 Charlevoix was given the delicate task of recommending boundaries for Acadia, a constant subject of dispute between England and France after the treaty of Utrecht (1713). He worked ten months on this investigation and reported that the Acadia ceded to the English in 1713 included only the Nova Scotian peninsula, and that the French should continue to support and trade with the Abenakis, a position which would be contested by the English until the end of the French regime.
Emmanuel-Auguste de Cahideuc, Comte Dubois de La Motte (1683-1764)
Dubois de La Motte’s naval squadron at Louisbourg delayed the fall of Île Royale by a year.
Edward Tyng (1683-1755)
[Not to be confused with Edward Tyng (1649-1691)]
In January 1745, Captain Tyng was elevated to the command of Massachusetts, a new vessel. He sailed from Boston on 16 March 1745 as commodore of the colonial flotilla of 13 armed and about 90 transport vessels engaged in the expedition against Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island). During this campaign he performed blockade duty. He participated in the destruction of Port-Dauphin (Englishtown, Nova Scotia) and in June went to relieve Annapolis Royal which had been briefly besieged by the French and Indians in May.
Paul Mascarene (1684-1760)
Mascarene was in some ways an odd fish in the imperial backwater of Annapolis Royal. Like those who preceded him, he was caught up in the tedious and unrewarding business of guarding an imperial possession before the crown had decided to take its imperial role seriously.
William Winniett (1685-1741)
Military officer, merchant, member of the Nova Scotia Council
Isaac-Louis de Forant ( ? -1740)
Naval officer, knight of the order of Saint-Louis
third governor of Île Royale
Jean-Baptiste-Louis le Prévost DuQuesnel ( ? -1744)
In 1740 DuQuesnel was appointed commandant of Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) but his initial enthusiasm soon waned; within a year he had applied for a transfer to the first vacant governorship. An inspection of the town after he landed on 3 November 1740 revealed an understaffed and under-equipped garrison, further weakened by indiscipline and drunkenness. He faced serious problems in supplying the garrison; there were constant shortages of food, especially during the winter of 1742.
Jacques-Pierre de Taffanel de La Jonquière (1685-1752)
On 1 March 1746 La Jonquière was promoted rear-admiral, and three weeks later he was appointed governor general of New France. While on his way from France to Canada he participated, as commander of the flagship Northumberland, in the disastrous expedition led by the Duc d’Anville – a fleet consisting of more than 70 vessels – which was outfitted at Brest that year to undertake offensive operations against the British possessions along the Atlantic coast of North America. The expedition was the largest military force – of any nation – ever to set sail for the New World prior to the American Revolution (1776-1789). After reaching the coast of Acadia in September 1746, the squadron was scattered by a strong gale, an event complicated by the death of d’Anville. D’Estourmel, the second in command, gathered together five warships and most of the transports and entered the harbour of Chebucto (Halifax, Nova Scotia) on 27 September 1746. On 29 September a council of war made him commander-in-chief; it also decided to attack Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. A few hours later, D’Estourmel tried to commit suicide. Jonquière, as the most senior officer, took command. Though Jonquière tried to reorganize the forces to attack Annapolis Royal, in October of 1746, another Atlantic torm hit the reduced fleet of 42 ships and Jonquière was obliged to make the decision to return to France with his battered ships and sick men.
Pierre Morpain (c.1686-1749)
French naval and militia officer, privateer, port captain
Cruising out of Port-Royal (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) as captain in 1707, in a single ten-day outing Pierre Morpain sank four British vessels and brought in nine prizes. Morpain’s activities were vital to Port-Royal; preoccupied with the war in Europe, France had not sent any supplies there since 1706. In June 1715 he was named port captain at Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) and he reported to Louisbourg a year later. He supervised all the details relating to the maritime interests of the crown in Île Royale: the construction of facilities; the building, maintenance, and outfitting of ships; and the conduct of navigation. It was the events of 1745, however, which were to mark the zenith of Morpain’s career. Although Louisbourg had been founded as France’s key stronghold in the new world, New England troops commanded by William Pepperrell were able to land on Île Royale and lay siege to the fortress in May 1745. The Louisbourg garrison was completely demoralized; the entire officer corps lacked the energy and boldness required to meet the occasion. In these circumstances, Louis Du Pont Duchambon, the acting governor, was forced to rely on Morpain rather than the regular officers to direct the French defence. Morpain’s performance between 11 May and mid June 1745 shows that the 60-year-old privateer, however rash and unorthodox some of his manœuvres, possessed a better military mind than any in Louisbourg’s officer corps.
Charles-Joseph d’Ailleboust (1688-1761)
One day in June 1745 (accounts vary about the specific date), in Louisbourg Harbour, Charles-Joseph d’Ailleboust went on board Admiral Peter Warren’s ship to hand over to him the act of surrender of the Fortress of Louisbourg, at the time the strongest military site anywhere in North America.
Bernard-Anselme d’Abbadie de Saint-Castin, Baron de Saint-Castin (1689-1720)
French officer, commander in Acadia
John Washington (fl.1719-24)
Lieutenant and engineer, assigned to the British garrison at Annapolis Royal
Arthur Savage (fl.1720-31)
First secretary of the Province of Nova Scotia
Jean-Pierre de Miniac (c.1691-1771)
Miniac left Quebec on 12 September 1742 and reached Rivière-aux-Canards
(near Canard, Nova Scotia) after a long and arduous trip.
Constantin-Louis d’Estourmel (1691-1765)
Promoted rear-admiral on 1 January 1746, d’Estourmel was given command of Trident in the squadron led by the Duc d’Anville – a fleet consisting of more than 70 vessels – which was outfitted at Brest that year to undertake offensive operations against the British possessions in North America. After reaching the coast of Acadia (Nova Scotia) in September 1746, the squadron was scattered by a strong gale. D’Estourmel gathered together five warships and most of the transports and entered the harbour of Chebucto (Halifax, Nova Scotia) on 27 September 1746, where he learned of the Duc d’Anville’s death. On 29 September a council of war made him commander-in-chief; it also decided to attack Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.
Jean Mascle de Saint-Julhien (1693-1759)
Saint-Julhien was appointed on 1 September 1755 to act as commander at Louisbourg in the governor’s absence.
Edward Whitmore (c.1694-1761)
Governor of Cape Breton Island and the
Island of St. John (Prince Edward Island)
As governor he was responsible for the demolition
of the Louisbourg fortifications in 1760.
Sir William Pepperrell (1696-1759)
In June 1745, Pepperrell and Warren jointly negotiated the terms of capitulation of the Louisbourg Fortress with the French commander.
Robert Denison (1697-1765)
Soldier, settler, MLA
Louis Franquet (1697-1768)
The most important of Franquet’s
responsibilities was the
defence of Louisbourg.
Charles Des Herbiers de La Ralière (c.1700-1752)
Governor of Île Royale from July 1749 to 1751
When the colony of Île Royale – consisting of that island and Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island) – was returned to France by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), Des Herbiers was chosen as King’s commissioner to negotiate the details of the transfer from the British occupying force. This negotiation was completed at Louisbourg on 23 July 1749, and Des Herbiers became the governor.
John Henry Bastide (c.1700-1770)
For almost three decades, Bastide, a capable French military engineer, worked at the French fortress at Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island). He drew a plan of Louisbourg as it was in 1734 which was accurate enough to be employed by 20th-century historians in their reconstruction of the history of the fortress.
Louis-Joseph Beaussier de Lisle (1701-1765)
Despite the efforts of the English squadron, de Lisle succeeded in entering Louisbourg harbour on 26 July 1756. The next day he left again with Héros to engage two English ships of the line; they had to retire after being badly damaged.
Jean-Louis de Raymond, Comte de Raymond (c.1702-1771)
Governor of Île Royale from 1751 to 1753
Some of Raymond’s ideas were sound; all were expensive to implement.
Jean-Baptiste de Gay Desenclaves (1702-1764+)
Desenclaves is distinguished by the fact that his relations with the British authorities in Nova Scotia were always cordial; his conduct consequently laid him open to criticism by the French authorities, religious as well as political. Desenclaves first went to Minas Basin, which was without its parish priest, Abbé Claude-Jean-Baptiste Chauvreulx. After Chauvreulx’s return in December 1739, Desenclaves took charge of the parish of Rivière-aux-Canards, at Minas. From there he carried on an exchange of letters with the English administrator, Paul Mascarene, concerning the difficulties which the ecclesiastical jurisdiction might create for civil justice, and vice versa.
Edward How ( ? -1750)
How was appointed commissary of musters for the British forces in Nova Scotia in March 1736 and in August was sworn in as a member of the provincial council at Annapolis Royal.
Sir Peter Warren (1703-1752)
In June 1745, Warren and Pepperrell jointly negotiated the terms of capitulation of the Louisbourg Fortress with the French commander.
Augustin de Boschenry de Drucour (1703-1762)
French naval officer, governor of Île Royale (Cape Breton Island)
François Bigot (1703-1778)
Financial commissary of Île Royale and intendant of New France
Jean-Louis de La Corne (1703-1761)
La Corne’s first combat experience was in Acadia (Nova Scotia) in February 1747 when he served as second in command of a party of some 300 Canadians and Indians led in a winter attack by Nicolas-Antoine Coulon de Villiers against Colonel Arthur Noble and 500 men in Grand Pre.
Andrew Rollo, 5th Baron Rollo (1703-1765)
Army officer
George Williamson (c.1704-1781)
During the summer of 1758 Williamson commanded the artillery during Amherst’s siege of Louisbourg. His force consisted of about 300 men and 145 pieces of ordnance including 85 heavy guns and mortars. Williamson appears to have been responsible for preparing the main bombardment against the fortress, which opened on 22 July. When Louisbourg surrendered five days later he commanded the detail that hoisted the British flag over its walls. A capable artillery commander whose work played an important part in the crucial engagements at Louisbourg and Quebec, George Williamson contributed significantly to the British victory in the Seven Years War.
Benjamin Goldthwait (1704-1761)
In the fall of 1746 Goldthwait was sent to Annapolis Royal as part of a New England reinforcement for Nova Scotia. That winter the New Englanders were dispatched to the Minas area under the command of Arthur Noble, in an attempt to rout the French forces in that region. Goldthwait was present at Grand Pre on 31 January 1746/47 when the French launched a surprise attack against the New England forces. On the death of Noble, Goldthwait assumed command of the troops, but seeing the hopelessness of their situation, he agreed to surrender to the French commander, Nicolas-Antoine Coulon de Villiers.
Lord Charles Hay (c.1705-1760)
Charles Hay was sent to Nova Scotia as second in command of the troops under Major-General Peregrine Thomas Hopson who were dispatched to join the Earl of Loudoun [John Campbell] at Halifax for the projected attack on Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island).
John Rous (c.1705-1760)
Between 1749 and 1755 Rous was the senior naval officer on the Nova Scotia station of the Royal Navy and made a notable contribution to the preservation of the new colony. As the Admiralty did not provide effective naval forces for the defence of Nova Scotia, Rous had to improvise the protection essential to the survival of the settlements at Halifax, Canso, Lunenburg, Annapolis Royal, and Chignecto. He had at his disposal three 14-gun sloops of the Royal Navy, the occasional man-of-war from England, and several New England coasting vessels. Rous convoyed the mast fleet to England in the autumn of 1759.
Antoine Le Poupet de La Boularderie (1705-1771)
French military officer, colonizer, and colonial official
Claude-Pierre Pécaudy de Contrecœur (1705-1775)
On 16 April 1754 Contrecœur and a large French force seized a fort the British were building at the Forks of the Ohio, where Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, now stands. He continued with the construction of the fort, which he named Fort Duquesne. Contrecœur never served in Nova Scotia, but no adequate history of Nova Scotia can be written without including an account of what happened at Fort Duquesne.
Charles Germain (1707-1779)
In 1760 Charles Germain was the only missionary in Acadia who still had faith in a French victory, but the following year, resigned to defeat, he offered the Nova Scotian government his help in pacifying the Indians. On 21 September 1761 the British authorities granted him a pension of £50 for his services.
Philip Durell (1707-1766)
In the spring of 1745 Durell joined Commodore Peter Warren and William Pepperrell in attacking Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island). Through his local knowledge and surveying skills Durell played an important part in the expedition. While his ship was wintering in Nantasket Roads, Massachusetts, he assisted in formulating Pepperrell’s instructions, and Eltham was the first ship to join Pepperrell at Canso (Canseau). During the siege Durell assisted in the capture of Vigilant, which was laden with supplies for the fortress, and, as captain of Chester, he helped take two French East Indiamen.
Joseph Du Pont Duvivier (1707-1760)
On 6 August 1744, along with two cousins, another ensign, and 18 soldiers, Joseph Du Pont Duvivier took part in his brother François’s expedition against Annapolis Royal. During the siege Joseph acted as emissary to the garrison commander, Paul Mascarene.
Henri-Marie Dubreil de Pontbriand (1708-1760)
At the beginning of Bishop Pontbriand’s episcopate in 1741, the Catholic ministry in English Acadia was under the direction of Abbé Jean-Pierre de Miniac, while that of French Acadia was assigned to Jean-Louis Le Loutre. The Jesuits ministered to the Abenaki missions on the Saint John River, and the Recollets were responsible for Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island). Pontbriand was much concerned about Acadia. He described the English as enemies “on whose word it would be imprudent to rely.”
Nicolas-Antoine Coulon de Villiers (1708-1750)
Nicolas-Antoine Coulon de Villiers led a force of about 250 Canadians in an assault on over 500 New England troops commanded by Arthur Noble at Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia. Nicolas-Antoine Coulon de Villiers was a brother of Louis Coulon de Villiers and Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville.
Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas-Roch de Ramezay (1708-1777)
Officer in the colonial regular troops and King’s lieutenant
Charles Lawrence (c.1709-1760)
Governor of Nova Scotia
Sebastian Zouberbuhler (c.1709-1773)
Businessman and office-holder
Familiar with the English, French, and German languages
Duc d’Anville (1709-1746)
French Navy officer
Jean-Louis Le Loutre (1709-1772)
On 22 September 1738 Le Loutre left Île Royale for the Shubenacadie mission, an immense territory stretching from Cape Sable to Chedabucto Bay in the north and present-day Cumberland Strait in the west. Le Loutre was to minister to the Indians as well as to the French posts at Cobequid and Tatamagouche.
John Gorham (1709-1751)
In 1745, Massachusetts Governor William Shirley and William Pepperrell persuaded Gorham to raise troops for the planned expedition against Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island). He was appointed lieutenant-colonel in the7th Massachusetts Regiment and led the successful landing at Gabarus Bay on 30 April 1745.
Arthur Noble ( ? -1747)
About three o’clock on the morning of 11 February 1747, in a raging snow-storm, the French launched their attack on the ill-prepared and unsuspecting New Englanders at Grand Pre. In spite of later attempts to gloss over their inefficiency, it is obvious that Noble and his officers were tragically neglectful of ordinary precautions and that the New Englanders were taken completely by surprise. According to English sources, about 70 of the 500 New England troops were killed, some of them still in their beds.
Montagu Wilmot ( ? -1766)
Governor of Nova Scotia, May 1764 – May 1766
Pierre Maillard (c.1710-1762)
Maillard arrived at Louisbourg, Île Royale, on 13 August 1735 and began to study the Micmac language. Having a remarkable talent for languages, Maillard succeeded within a few months not only in mastering Micmac, despite the difficulties in pronunciation, but also in perfecting a system of special symbols to transcribe Micmac words. He was thus able to write down in note-books the formulas for the principal prayers and the responses of the catechism so that the Indians might learn them more easily. This system was worked out during the winter of 1737-38. Le Loutre described Maillard as “a naturalized Indian as regards language.” He even succeeded in acquiring the gift of rhyming at each member of a sentence, which was the genius of that tribe, so that he reached the point of “speaking Micmac with as much ease and purity as do their women who are the most skilled in this style.” He was used by the officials at Louisbourg to train officers as interpreters. Except for native speakers, Maillard is unsurpassed in his grasp of the Micmac language.
Thomas Saul (fl.1750-60)
With established channels for the supply of provisions and a ready fund of money, Saul soon became the most reliable source of food and cash in Halifax. In September 1751 Governor Cornwallis turned to him to provide coin to pay the labourers employed on public works. When, at the same time, another contractor who was to supply the settlers failed, it was Saul who provided 224,000 pounds [101,000 kg] of bread. Unfortunately, he used the urgent necessity of the colony as an occasion to strike a hard bargain and charge twice the market price for the bread. However, the Board of Trade (in London) forced Baker to adjust the price downward before payment was made. Such occasional sharp dealing did not seem to hurt Saul’s position in Halifax. By July 1752 he was employing ten servants. The summer of 1757 brought large British forces to Halifax. Saul, who was now deputy paymaster, received £22,000 in coins for paying subsistence money to the troops.
John Huston (1710-1795)
John Huston served at the siege of Louisbourg in 1745. He represented Cumberland Township from 1759 to 1760 and Cumberland County from 1770 to 1774 in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly.
Jonathan Belcher (1710-1776)
Chief Justice and Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia
Louis Coulon de Villiers (1710-1757)
Louis Coulon de Villiers was a brother of Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville. Another brother, Nicolas-Antoine Coulon de Villiers, led a force of about 250 French Canadians in an assault on 11 February 1747 on over 500 New England troops commanded by Arthur Noble at Grand-Pre, Nova Scotia.
Jean-Baptiste Cope ( ? -c.1759)
Micmac chief
On 14 September 1752 Cope appeared at Halifax to open peace negotiations with Governor Peregrine Thomas Hopson. On 22 November a treaty was actually signed between the English and Cope, along with delegates from his tribe.
Silvanus Cobb (1710-1762)
Mariner, military officer
Richard Gridley (1711-1796)
Richard Gridley was lieutenant-colonel in command of the artillery in William Pepperrell’s expedition against Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) in 1745. During the siege Gridley had “direction of the Batteries,” in particular the one at Pointe à la Croix (Lighthouse Point).
Charles Morris [1st] (1711-1781)
[Not to be confused with Charles Morris [2nd] (1731-1802)]
[Not to be confused with Charles Morris [3rd] (1759-1831)]
Charles Morris [1st] was Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, March 1776 to May 1778. As Chief Justice, he heard a number of major cases, including charges of treason against rebel soldiers who besieged Fort Cumberland, near Amherst, in 1776, in a failed effort to import the American Revolution (1776-1789) to Nova Scotia. On 25 September 1749, Governor Edward Cornwallis appointed Charles Morris [1st] (1711-1781) “Chief Surveyor of Lands within this Province.” Charles Morris [1st] was surveyor general of lands for the province for 32 years 1749-1781, a period which saw the founding of Halifax and Lunenburg and the coming of the pre-loyalists, when the colony’s foundations were laid. The Council had every confidence in his decisions and actions, and the chronicler of 18th-century Nova Scotia, John Bartlet Brebner, praised him for his honest impartiality. Charles Morris [2nd] (1731-1802) apparently came to Nova Scotia in 1760. From then until 1781 he assisted his father, Charles Morris [1st], Nova Scotia’s first surveyor general; between 1776 and 1781 he performed the tasks of the office alone. After his father’s death in 1781, Morris [2nd] was appointed surveyor general for Nova Scotia.
Daniel-Hyacinthe-Marie Liénard de Beaujeu (1711-1755)
In 1746 Lieutenant Beaujeu was among the leaders of a 700-man Canadian (French) army dispatched to Nova Scotia to link up with forces expected from France for the capture of Louisbourg and Annapolis Royal. His 28,000-word journal of the 10-month campaign includes a detailed account of their greatest exploit. After a 150-mile [240km] march in bitter mid-winter, 300 Canadians and Indians attacked 500 New Englanders billeted in Grand Pre and forced their surrender after bloody fighting (11 February 1747).
Edward Boscawen (1711-1761)
Boscawen and Amherst insisted that the garrison of Fortress Louisbourg must become prisoners of war, and demanded an answer within an hour, failing which the town would be attacked by land and sea.
Charles Holmes (1711-1761)
In 1756 Holmes returned to North America as commodore of the squadron charged with preventing French reinforcements from reaching Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island).
Otis Little (1712-c.1764)
Otis Little arrived in Nova Scotia in April 1749 with the fleet of Governor Edward Cornwallis. He was listed as captain in an independent company and was accompanied by ten male and six female servants as befitted the “Surveyor-General of Nova Scotia.” To that appointment Little soon added others. On 15 July 1749 he was appointed commissary of the stores and provisions of the new Halifax settlement. After admission to the bar of Nova Scotia on 3 February 1749/50, he became advocate general in the Vice-Admiralty Court and by 11 October 1750 was acting as Kings Attorney. Unfortunately, his style of living apparently exceeded his income, and he began to take chances.
François Coulon de Villiers (1712-1794)
François Coulon de Villiers was a brother of Nicolas-Antoine Coulon de Villiers, who at Grand Pre in Nova Scotia, in February 1747, led some 250 Canadians in an attack on some 500 New England troops commanded by Arthur Noble.
Edward Cornwallis (1713-1776)
Army officer and colonial administrator
Founder of Halifax, Nova Scotia
Meet the real Edward Cornwallis by Jon Tattrie
Halifax Chronicle Herald, 11 March 2012
Louis Du Pont Duchambon de Vergor (1713-c.1775)
[Not to be confused with Louis Du Pont Duchambon (1679-1775)]
In August 1754, Louis Du Pont Duchambon de Vergor was appointed to command at Fort Beausejour. Forts Beausejour and Gaspereau, which the authorities in Massachusetts and Nova Scotia viewed as a threat, became the objects of a British expedition in the spring of 1755. On 13 June 1755, after seizing a ridge within range of Fort Beausejour, General Monckton began mortar fire with telling effect upon the French position. Vergor capitulated the next day. The following day Benjamin Rouer de Villeray surrendered Fort Gaspereau without being attacked. The fall of these forts settled the Acadian boundary dispute finally in favour of the British.
Pierre Gaultier de La Vérendrye (1714-1755)
[Not to be confused with
Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye (1685-1749)]
In 1752 Pierre was sent to Fort Beausejour, where he served
until its surrender to the British in 1755.
William Tutty (c.1715-1754)
On 2 September 1750, William Tutty preached
the first sermon in St. Paul’s Church, Halifax.
Henry Denny Denson (c.1715-1780)
Denson realized a substantial income through the breeding and raising of livestock. At his death, the inventory of his estate at Mount Denson included five black slaves, lavish household furnishings, and one of the larger private libraries in the province, including an extensive shelf of legal reference books. The successful squire not only held land but was also the political leader of his community. Denson dutifully accumulated a variety of elective and appointive responsibilities. From 1761 he was a justice of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas and, except for the years 1765 to 1769, a member of the House of Assembly for various constituencies until his death. He was a militia officer from the founding of Falmouth and road commissioner and collector of impost and customs for Kings County. In 1773 he served as acting speaker of the Assembly at Halifax.
Elizabeth Osborn (1715-1798)
In 1749 she married Edmund Doane, residing on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Some years later, at the height of the Seven Years War, Doane decided to emigrate from Cape Cod to the Cape Sable area of Nova Scotia. In 1761 Doane had his house dismantled and the frame and boards loaded on a hired vessel together with furniture, grain and vegetables, and some animals. Elizabeth with her seven children by Doane set out for Nova Scotia. A gale blew the ship ashore; the Doanes had to salvage what they could and embark in another vessel. An autumn storm drove their ship past Barrington to Liverpool, where they had to spend the winter in a rough storehouse. In the spring of 1762 they sailed to The Passage (Barrington Passage, Nova Scotia), and in the frame house they built near the harbour they opened a shop, selling such goods as flour, corn, salt, molasses, rum, sugar, cloth, nails, and shoes to about 50 customers. But the inhabitants of Barrington suffered many hardships in the early years and had little cash. Doane decided to return to Cape Cod. Elizabeth, however, had filled an important niche in the scattered fishing settlement. There was no physician, and being skilled in the use of roots and herbs and in nursing she was soon acting as nurse, doctor, and midwife. At the request of those relying on her services, in 1770 she took the unusual step of applying to the proprietors of Barrington for “Land to Set a house upon.” Her petition was endorsed by 38 male proprietors. She was granted 1½ acres, and the Doanes remained in Nova Scotia.
John Bushell (1715-1761)
On 23 March 1752 Bushell started publication of the Halifax Gazette. The Gazette was first issued on a half-sheet of foolscap, printed in two columns on both sides. About a quarter of the newspaper contained material relating to Nova Scotia, such as information on ship arrivals, proclamations, and occasional notices on runaway slaves, stolen goods, and straying wives. The rest of the paper consisted mainly of excerpts from British newspapers on European politics and government, and news from the American and West Indian colonies. In addition to publishing the Gazette, Bushell printed proclamations and laws for the government and likely did job-work for local merchants. He seems, however, gradually to have lost control of the Gazette. In 1754 Richard Bulkeley, provincial secretary, assumed the editorship of the paper. In 1758 Anthony Henry became Bushell’s assistant and was soon doing much of the printing. The earliest known piece of official printing by Bushell for the government of Nova Scotia was a six-page pamphlet containing “An act for the relief of debtors,” dated 6 December 1752.
John Hicks (1715-1790)
Hicks and his family were among the Rhode Island planters who arrived at Falmouth (across the Avon River from Windsor) in four ships in May 1760.
Jacques Prevost de La Croix (1715-1791)
French colonial administrator
Danvers Osborn (1715-1753)
Governor of New York, Member of the Nova Scotia Council
In 1750 Danvers Osborn went to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he became a member of the Nova Scotia Council on 29 August. During his attendance at council meetings in the next month, Osborn and his associates were faced with such problems as the victualling of new settlers, and the suppression of “the scandalous practice of selling meat and other things publicly on the Lord’s Day.”
Patrick Mackellar (1717-1778)
Patrick Mackellar, one of the most esteemed military engineers of his generation, deserves a significant share of the credit for the capitulation of Louisbourg in July 1757.
Jeffery Amherst (1717-1797)
Amherst and Boscawen insisted that the garrison of Fortress Louisbourg must become prisoners of war, and demanded an answer within an hour, failing which the town would be attacked by land and sea.
Alexander Colvill, 7th Baron Colvill (1717-1770)
In March 1755 Colvill sailed in Northumberland with Admiral Boscawen, taking part in the attempt to intercept French reinforcements to North America, and returning with Boscawen’s squadron in November. In the following year Northumberland cruised in home waters; in 1757 she sailed in Vice-Admiral Francis Holburne’s squadron to Nova Scotia. After the attempt to capture Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island), that year had been given up, Northumberland was among the ships lying in wait off Louisbourg for the French fleet in the harbour, and she was caught in the disastrous hurricane of September 1757. She sailed then to Halifax, and when Holburne returned to England in November he left Colvill in charge as commander-in-chief. Holburne instructed Colvill to prepare a careening wharf in Halifax and to have the squadron ready for sea as early as possible for the Louisbourg expedition of 1758.
Richard Bulkeley (1717-1800)
Provincial secretary, councillor, brigadier-general of the provincial militia
Francis McLean (c.1717-1781)
All ships lost – the worst defeat suffered by the United States navy
before 7 December 1941.
On 16 June 1779, under the orders of Sir Henry Clinton, the commander-in-chief in North America, McLean took an expedition of about 650 men to Fort Majebigwaduce (Castine, Maine) to find a refuge for Loyalists and to forestall an anticipated attack on Nova Scotia by troops from New England. From 25 July an American force of between 2,000 and 3,000 soldiers and sailors in some forty vessels under the command of Dudley Saltonstall besieged him there. McLean faced desperate odds. Although he had not had nearly enough time to complete his fortifications, he resolved to stand his ground while sending for help. A gale drove back one relief force from Halifax, but Sir George Collier sailed from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, on 3 August and engaged the Americans on the 14th, routing them completely. McLean’s casualties amounted to only 23 killed, 35 wounded, and 11 missing.
Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville (1718-1754)
In February 1747 Nicolas-Antoine Coulon de Villiers, a brother of Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville, led a force of about 250 Canadians in an assault on over 500 New England troops commanded by Arthur Noble at Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia.
John Breynton (1719-1799)
Breynton entered the service of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel on 17 April 1752 and was sent to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Étienne Bâtard (fl. 1750s)
Étienne Bâtard is believed to have murdered Edward How in September 1750, at the Missaguash River.
William Nesbitt ( ? -1784)
In 1758 Nesbitt was elected to Nova Scotia’s first House of Assembly and the next year he was appointed its second speaker.
Jean-Baptiste Dupleix Silvain (1721-c.1796)
Throughout the 1745 siege of Louisbourg, Dupleix Silvain served bravely in the town militia (as he was to do again in 1758) and after the fall of the fortress was deported to La Rochelle. He was taken prisoner by the British for the fourth time in 1793 and held captive for 28 months.
Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry (1721-1797)
[Not to be confused with Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry (1682-1756)]
In 1750 and 1751 Léry worked in the Chignecto Isthmus, mapping, writing papers on the geography of the region, and building stockade forts. In the latter year he was sent by La Jonquière to France and delivered the reports and plans made in Acadia to the minister of Marine, Rouillé.
J.F.W. DesBarres (1721-1824)
Army officer, military engineer, surveyor, and colonial administrator
Lieutenant Governor of Cape Breton Island, 26 August 1784 – 1787
Isaac Deschamps (1722?-1801)
Isaac Deschamps is believed to have been born in Switzerland in 1722 and came to Halifax in 1749, the year the city was founded. Fluent in French and English, he was a natural choice as an agent for merchants trading with the Acadians and Mi’kmaq and was often called upon to translate official documents. Between 1759 and 1783 he served as MLA for a succession of ridings – Annapolis County, Falmouth Township and Newport Township. On the death of Chief Justice Bryan Finucane in August 1785, Deschamps, as senior judge, became acting Chief Justice. Although he had not received any legal training, he had had years of experience in various courts and had entered in his diary extensive notes on previous decisions. Nevertheless, Deschamps and his colleague James Brenton had an all but impossible task in trying to provide biannual circuit courts in six townships throughout the province. Deschamps’ time as acting Chief Justice ended when Jeremy Pemberton was named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia in August 1788. As late as 1799 he accepted an appointment as road commissioner for Kings County. Isaac Deschamps had a long and busy life in Nova Scotia, and few spoke ill of him. Deschamps’s honesty can hardly be questioned: in a day when many profited from patronage open to them, he left only a tiny estate. Kindly and compassionate to all persons, he was an untiring public servant, and it is noteworthy that there were so few complaints about his work in so many commissions and duties.
Nicolas Larcher (1722-1788)
Merchant, and French colonial official
Antoine Rodrigue (1722-1789)
Ship’s captain, merchant, and French colonial official
Bruin R. Comingo (1723-1820)
Wool-comber, fisherman, German Reformed minister
Jean Pettrequin (c.1724-1764)
Pettrequin arrived in Nova Scotia from Montbéliard in July 1752 aboard the Betty, a ship carrying European Protestant settlers. These “foreign Protestants,” as they were called, had been arriving in Halifax since 1750, and were part of a British plan to populate Nova Scotia without drawing off badly needed agricultural workers from Britain. For the most part the new settlers were Germans and Swiss. They were offered an initial grant of 50 acres* of land free of quit rents and taxes for ten years, with additional grants as their families increased. Free subsistence was granted them for a year upon arrival, as well as any necessary arms, and materials and utensils for clearing and cultivating land and erecting dwellings.
* 50 acres = 20 hectares
Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester (1724-1808)
Carleton was at New York from May 1782 till November 1783, where one of his responsibilities was to evacuate some 30,000 troops and up to 27,000 refugees. The latter included several thousand former slaves who, over George Washington’s protests, were helped to emigrate to the Caribbean and to Nova Scotia, where about 1,200 settled near Halifax. Carleton also urged the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, Sir Andrew Snape Hamond, and then the new governor, John Parr, to grant Loyalists free land and a year’s provisions and prompted Frederick Haldimand to do the same for those who entered Canada.
Deborah How (c.1725-1806)
Deborah How was raised in Canso, where her father was the leading merchant and civilian official. The family’s strong New England ties and her father’s fluency in languages assured her a sound education, likely at home. She was married at an early age, and her first child, Martha Grace, was 11 days old when Canso fell to the French in May 1744. The community’s buildings were burnt and the garrison families were removed as prisoners to Louisbourg, Île Royale.
Alexander McNutt (1725-c.1811)
Alexander McNutt was a persuasive speaker and memorialist, with elaborate plans for bringing settlers to Nova Scotia in the 1760s.
Joshua Mauger (1725-1788)
Between 1740 and 1760 Mauger took part in some 52 property transactions in Halifax. He received some land in the form of direct grants from the government and acquired other properties from bankrupt merchants or from tradesmen who were indebted to him. Outside of Halifax he owned land in Lunenburg, Annapolis Royal, and Windsor, a 20,000-acre* tract in Cumberland County and an estate on St. John’s (Prince Edward) Island.
* 20,000 acres = 31 square miles = 8,100 hectares = 81 square kilometres
Joshua Mauger (1725-1788)
The History of Parliament (London)
the House of Commons 1754-1790
Joseph Goreham (1725-1790)
In the early 1750s, Gorham’s Rangers were used in Nova Scotia to protect the new British settlements such as Lunenburg against Indian raids until the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, when they became increasingly involved in major military operations because of their skill in irregular warfare. In July 1757, for example, Goreham and some of his men were dispatched to reconnoitre Louisbourg for Lord Loudoun’s expedition. In 1758 they served under Amherst at the successful siege of the fortress.
John Parr (1725-1791)
In July 1782 Parr was appointed governor of Nova Scotia. He was at once confronted with the urgent and immense task of succouring and settling some 35,000 Loyalists who flooded into Nova Scotia at the end of the American Revolution in 1783. With the colony’s population more than doubled overnight, impossible strains were placed on Nova Scotia’s rudimentary administrative machinery as well as on stores and provisions. In the winter of 1782-83 ten thousand refugees arrived helpless and destitute at Halifax, and as makeshift accommodation warehouses, sheds, and churches had to be commandeered, ships detained in port, and improvised shelters erected in open places.
Robert Stobo (1726-1770)
While being held at Quebec as a hostage, Robert Stobo escaped twice, in May and July 1757, and was captured twice. On his third attempt (1 May 1759), he fled down the St. Lawrence River in a canoe with eight other American prisoners. Thirty-six days later, after a series of hair-raising escapes and hardships, they sailed triumphantly into Louisbourg, Cape Breton Island (then held by the British) in command of a French schooner, which they had taken in the Baie des Chaleurs, and with two captive French sea captains.
Jonathan Eddy (1727-1804)
The Eddy Rebellion
During late 1775 and early 1776, when the American Revolution was getting under way in the Thirteen Colonies*, Jonathan Eddy, then living in the Chignecto region of Nova Scotia and a Member of Nova Scotia’s Legislature, developed a plan to precipitate a major insurrection in the colony. Eddy hoped to achieve this by persuading George Washington and the Continental Congress to send an “army of liberation” to Nova Scotia. In February 1776 Eddy and fourteen associates left the Chignecto region to discuss the situation with Washington. On 27 March 1776 General Washington listened to Eddy’s arguments for invading Nova Scotia but declined to offer any military assistance. In Halifax, Eddy was charged with treason.
* The Thirteen Colonies were Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia — but not Maine or Vermont.
Jean Manach (c.1727-1766)
Manach was closely involved in the border incidents which began in September 1750 while forts Beauséjour and Lawrence were being constructed on the Chignecto Isthmus.
James Wolfe (1727-1759)
Army officer
Joshua Winslow (1727-1801)
Army and militia officer, diarist, judge, and politician
In 1765 Winslow was among the leading men of Cumberland County who petitioned for the county’s representation in the House of Assembly.
Charles Deschamps de Boishébert et de Raffetot (1727-1797)
In October 1746, Boishébert took part in the unsuccessful siege of Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, the British administrative and military headquarters in Acadia. During the winter Ramezay prepared an expedition against the force under Arthur Noble which was stationed at Grand Pré. Boishébert was wounded in the battle fought there on 11 February 1747.
Samuel Johannes Holland (1728-1801)
In 1765 Holland had surveyed the Îles de la Madeleine, and then moved on to Cape Breton Island, where work had been begun by Charles Morris in 1764. Cape Breton Island was divided – in the same manner as St. John’s Island (Prince Edward Island) – into *counties of approximately 500,000 acres, *parishes of around 100,000 acres, and *townships of about 20,000 acres, surveyed with precision by fixing latitudes and longitudes from astronomical observation; he also took careful soundings in coastal waters. The completed maps and reports, which Holland had sent to London by July 1767, indicated that in addition to its fisheries Cape Breton was valuable chiefly for its coal, building stone, and gypsum, although it was also suited in a few areas to agriculture. In 1768 Holland expressed the view that Cape Breton Island could not develop its resources energetically as long as it remained administratively dependent on Nova Scotia; it was separated from that colony in 1784. While the survey on Cape Breton Island was being finished, in 1767 Holland’s survey parties were working in the Gaspé around Baie des Chaleurs and on Anticosti Island. Holland made his home at Louisbourg for much of the period 1765-67.
(county) * 500,000 acres = 775 square miles = 202,000 hectares = 2020 square kilometres
(parish) * 100,000 acres = 155 square miles = 40,500 hectares = 405 square kilometres
(township) * 20,000 acres = 31 square miles = 8,100 hectares = 81 square kilometres
Winckworth Tonge (1728-1792)
[Not to be confused with William Cottnam Tonge (1764-1832)]
Army officer, officeholder, politician, and landowner
James Cook (1728-1779)
Naval officer, surveyor, and explorer
Captain James Cook, of England’s Royal Navy, is best known for his exploits in the Pacific between the years 1776, and the year of his death in the Hawaiian Islands, in 1779. But what must be remembered, in considering the history of Nova Scotia, is that James Cook played a significant role in it as he cruised the coasts of Nova Scotia as a junior naval officer during the final years of that period when the French were to lose possession of Acadia, and, for that matter, all Canada: 1756-1763. One need only look at the record and see what Sir Charles Hardy had to say when he and his fleet of ten warships came back into Halifax harbour on March 19th, 1758. He finds the squadron that had “wintered at Halifax in a great state of forwardness.” The point here is, that it is no easy trick to see a large wooden sailing vessel, much less a group of them, through to the end of a cold Acadian winter – one usually sailed them into tropic waters for semi-refit, or back to England (or France) for a full-refit. Further, it is no small task, even in the best of circumstances (experienced men, facilities, tools, and, of course the weather in which to work), to get a British war ship ready for the next season; especially when she had a hard run through the previous season. But the feat that earned the most respect for James Cook by those in charge, was the work that Cook and Holland completed, which enabled Admiral Saunders to bring all of his invasion fleet through to Quebec in the spring of 1759, without major mishap: this feat being the compilation of all known charts of the area (mostly they were French).
Joseph Peters (1729-1800)
Soldier, schoolmaster, and postmaster
In 1782 he became unofficial postmaster of Nova Scotia and succeeded to the office of deputy postmaster general in 1785. As postmaster Peters’ main innovation was to initiate a regular courier service between Halifax and Annapolis Royal, where the mail was carried by boat to Digby and across the Bay of Fundy to New Brunswick (which in 1784 was separated from Nova Scotia to become a new colony). By 1788 a regular service to Quebec was established to coincide with the visits of the New York-Falmouth packet* at Halifax for eight months of the year. The irregularities, expenses, and frustrations of the postal service made Peters’ life as a public servant far from enviable. The General Post Office in London remained singularly unsympathetic to the pleas of the hard-pressed postmaster for a higher salary and reimbursement of the considerable expenses of his office. Although between 1785 and 1792 his stipend climbed from £50 to £250, financial anxiety constantly plagued him.
*Packet – a boat that carries mail with a published schedule of sailing dates; a ship employed by government to convey official messages or mail; a vessel employed in conveying dispatches, mails, passengers, and goods, on a fixed schedule.
George Scott ( ? -1767)
George Scott had an important role in the capture of Fortress Louisbourg in 1758.
Joseph Scott ( ? -1800)
In 1759, Joseph Scott was elected to the second House of Assembly as one of the first two members from Kings County.
John Butler (fl.1749-1791)
[Not to be confused with John Butler (1728-1796)]
[Not to be confused with John Butler Dight (c.1760-1834)]
John Butler came to Halifax via Long Island, New York. He received property in the first allotment of land in Halifax in 1749, acquired further large holdings in what later became Hants County, and some time before 1754 erected the Great Pontack Inn, the centre of social activities in Halifax. By 1758 he was referred to as a distiller, probably because of his connection with Joshua Mauger. Butler acted as business agent for the English firm of Watson and Rashleigh, and when Mauger left Nova Scotia in 1760, Butler became his attorney-agent there. With Michael Francklin and Isaac Deschamps he protected Mauger’s economic and political interests in the province. In 1762 Butler was elected to the House of Assembly as one of the members for Halifax County. Ten years later he was appointed to the Council on the recommendation of Francklin, then lieutenant governor, and became agent victualler and paymaster of the troops in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland on the death of Benjamin Gerrish. He was made lieutenant-colonel in the Halifax militia in January 1774, appointed a justice of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas three months later, and commissioned a full colonel in the militia in November 1776.
Jacob Bailey (1731-1808)
Bailey’s literary accomplishments mark him as one of the first important figures in Canadian literature. Born in Rowley, Massachusetts in 1731, Bailey graduated from Harvard last in his class (in the days when the list was arranged by family wealth). In 1782, to escape the persecution and injustice he suffered as a Loyalist in New England during the American Revolution, he fled with his family to Nova Scotia, and lived the rest of his life in the town of Annapolis Royal. Here Jacob Bailey discovered a talent for verse satire in the style of the English poet Samuel Butler. Between 1779 and 1784 he wrote some outstanding anti-rebel satires, including a long work entitled America, in which he pointed out the causes of the revolution from a Loyalist perspective.
Charles Morris [2nd] (1731-1802)
[Not to be confused with Charles Morris [1st] (1711-1781)]
[Not to be confused with Charles Morris [3rd] (1759-1831)]
Surveyor, politician, office holder, and judge
On 25 September 1749, Governor Edward Cornwallis appointed Charles Morris [1st] (1711-1781) “Chief Surveyor of Lands within this Province.” Charles Morris [1st] was surveyor general of lands for the province for 32 years 1749-1781, a period which saw the founding of Halifax and Lunenburg and the coming of the pre-loyalists, when the colony’s foundations were laid. The Council had every confidence in his decisions and actions, and the chronicler of 18th-century Nova Scotia, John Bartlet Brebner, praised him for his honest impartiality. Charles Morris [2nd] (1731-1802) apparently came to Nova Scotia in 1760. From then until 1781 he assisted his father, Charles Morris [1st], Nova Scotia’s first surveyor general; between 1776 and 1781 he performed the tasks of the office alone. In 1772 the possibility that his father might lose his position spurred Morris [2nd], with his father’s approval, to seek it for himself. He enlisted J.F.W. DesBarres to promote his cause in England and in return looked after DesBarres’s land interests in Nova Scotia. Morris [2nd] however, had to wait until after his fathers death in 1781 to obtain the position. In 1802, Charles Morris [3rd] (1759-1831) succeeded his father, Charles Morris [2nd], as surveyor general. In April 1831 he was replaced by his son John Spry Morris, who served until the office was merged with that of commissioner of crown lands in 1851. Four members of the Morris family — 1749-1781, 1781-1802, 1802-1831, and 1831-1852 — thus held the position of surveyor general of Nova Scotia for its entire existence 1749-1851, a continuity of service rivalled only by that of the Wrights of Prince Edward Island. The Morris family had the reputation in Nova Scotia of being good administrators and surveyors.
David Mathews (c.1732-1800)
Mayor of New York City 1776-1783
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 27 May 1795 – 29 June 1798
Michael Francklin (1733-1782)
When Michael Francklin arrived in Halifax on a ship from Jamaica in the summer of 1752, the leading merchant in Halifax was probably Joshua Mauger, who sponsored Francklin’s first Halifax enterprise, a dram-shop on George Street. Although many merchants failed during the highly unstable times of the mid 1750s, Francklin’s business concerns boomed. The Seven Years War (1754-1763) proved to be a financial windfall for Francklin. He secured several lucrative contracts to provision the British forces at Halifax and later at Quebec. Problems of wartime supply led to scarcities which increased both prices and profits, particularly in rum and fish. Investments in privateering brought him additional income. During the war he became an exceedingly wealthy man. His marriage to the granddaughter of Peter Faneuil, one of the most important Boston merchants, cemented his business relations with New England. Francklin’s involvement in politics began in 1759, when he was elected to the House of Assembly to fill one of the first two seats for Lunenburg Township; in 1761-62 he served as a member for Halifax County. During the American revolution (1775-1783) Francklin remained loyal to the crown. Unlike most merchants, however, he was not passive in his loyalty. In 1777 he was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs for the province, a position for which he was uniquely qualified. In 1754 he had been captured by a band of Micmacs and taken to the Gaspé. During his three months of captivity he learned their language and developed a respect for the Indian culture. Francklin, who spoke French, was also influential among the Acadians. Francklin must be considered one of the truly important founders of the province.
Anthony Henry (1734-1800)
[Not to be confused with Anthony Henry Holland (1785-1830)]
The first Canadian newspaper to operate
independently of government patronage
and
The first King’s Printer of Nova Scotia
In 1758 Henry served with the British forces as a regimental fifer at the capture of Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island). It is believed that after his discharge Henry worked in a New Jersey printing office for two years. He then joined John Bushell’s shop in Halifax. He was made a partner in the business on 23 September 1760 and took control of it after Bushell’s death in 1761. Henry continued the publication of the Halifax Gazette, but his business was mainly government printing and stationery. The Halifax Gazette ceased to appear in mid-1766. In 1769, Henry founded the Nova Scotia Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser, the first newspaper in what is now Canada to run independent of government patronage. This newspaper, renamed the Royal Gazette and the Nova-Scotia Advertiser in 1789, lasted for thirty years and increasingly became an outlet for official information. In 1788 Henry was officially commissioned King’s Printer, an appointment which removed much of the uncertainty in his contract with the government. His commission is one of the earliest and most important documents in the history of Canadian publishing.
Charles Inglis (1734-1816)
Church of England clergyman, bishop, and author
The British evacuation of New York in November 1783 forced Charles Inglis to resign his rectorship of Trinity Church in New York and return to England, where he spent the next three years jockeying with fellow refugees for pensions and preferments. Although he was unable to find the comfortable living in the United Kingdom for which he yearned, he did secure, with the patronage of Lord Dorchester [Guy Carleton], appointment in 1787 as first bishop of Nova Scotia, a position he held until his death. His diocese included not only the colony of Nova Scotia but also Newfoundland, St. John’s (Prince Edward) Island, Quebec province, and Bermuda.
William Spry (1734-1802)
In about 1770, Captain William Spry purchased some land in Nova Scotia and established the settlement known as Spryfield.
Captain William Spry Community Centre
Brook Watson (1736-1807)
In 1749 Brook Watson was a teenaged orphan serving as a crew member on a trading ship owned by his uncle and foster father, John Huston, then of Boston and later Cumberland County, Nova Scotia. Watson lost his right leg below the knee when he was attacked by a shark while swimming in Havana harbour, the earliest attack by a shark on a human to be fully documented. In 1752 young Brook Watson became secretary to Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Monckton at Fort Lawrence (near Amherst, Nova Scotia). By the early 1770s Watson had acquired considerable land holdings in Nova Scotia, and was the dominant figure in the commerce of the province. In 1773, he was a partner in London exporting firm of Watson and Rashleigh that shipped the tea that became the target of the Boston Tea Party – Watson’s tea was dumped into the Boston Harbor. In the mid-1780s he moved to London, and eventually served as chairman of Lloyd’s of London and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. He became, in 1796, the first one-legged Lord Mayor of London.
Brook Watson (1735(sic)-1807)
The History of Parliament (London)
the House of Commons 1754-1790
James Brenton (1736-1806)
Lawyer, militia officer, politician, office holder, judge
Ranald McKinnon (1737-1805)
Army officer, office holder, and militia officer
Sir John Wentworth (1737-1820)
Royal governor of New Hampshire 1766-1776.
Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia 1792-1808.
Theophilus Chamberlain (1737-1824)
As the British occupation of New York City drew to a close in mid-1783, Chamberlain accepted a captain’s commission in the city militia from Sir Guy Carleton with responsibility for arranging the transfer to Halifax of a group of refugees. With his family and friends he reached there in the early fall of 1783. Almost at once he was commissioned a justice of the peace, named a deputy surveyor, appointed to lay out a new township east of Dartmouth, and made agent to distribute land within the area. The actual grant in December 1784 gave Chamberlain and 143 others, including Loyalists, blacks, disbanded soldiers, and Germans, a “plantation” of *32,000 acres in Preston, his name for the new township.
* 32,000 acres = 50 square miles = 13,000 hectares = 130 square kilometres
Thomas Peters (c.1738-1792)
As a result of Peters’ charges Governor Parr was ordered to institute an inquiry into the Annapolis area land problem. If Peters’ description proved accurate the blacks were to be located immediately on good land. Those who chose not to accept grants could either enlist in a black army unit for service in the West Indies or remove to Sierra Leone. In the fall of 1791 Peters visited Annapolis and Saint John to promote the colonization scheme. Lieutenant John Clarkson of the Royal Navy, brother of the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, was appointed to recruit the emigrants and organize their safe passage, arrived in October. He toured the black settlements in Halifax and Shelburne counties with the same intent. In New Brunswick Peters met with determined opposition from the whites, who did not wish to lose cheap labour or have his charges corroborated by mass emigration. False debts and indentures were fabricated, officials harassed Peters and his recruits by demanding proof of free status, and the story was spread that Peters would receive a fee for every black he inveigled to Africa for sale into slavery. The situation in New Brunswick was not exceptional. Agents appointed by both colonial governments to publicize the alternatives available to blacks deliberately misconstrued the Sierra Leone Company‘s intentions. The blacks nevertheless responded with enthusiasm to the offer of free land, racial equality, and full British rights in Sierra Leone. Some 1,200 emigrants gathered in Halifax, almost 500 of them from Peters’ recruitment areas.
Israel Perley (1738-1813)
In 1763, a number of families, led by Israel Perley, arrived in four vessels from New England, and settled at Maugerville, on the St. John – the first permanent British settlement above the mouth of the river. In 1765, this district (including the St. John and Passamaquoddy river valleys) was erected into a county called the county of Sunbury in the province of Nova Scotia. Until 1784 this region was administered by the Nova Scotia government in Halifax.
James Fulton (1739-1826)
JP, judge, militia officer, surveyor, and politician
John Murray (c.1739-1824)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 21 June 1799 – 16 September 1800
Before leaving Halifax in mid-June 1799, Murray was given all the lurid details of the political quarrelling in Cape Breton. The contending parties, both trying to gain the ear of the colony’s ruler, were headed by the Reverend Ranna Cossit and Attorney General David Mathews. When Murray arrived in Cape Breton on June 21st he was particularly suspicious of Mathews, about whom he had been warned in Halifax. But in an effort to follow the non-partisan path of the absentee lieutenant governor, William Macarmick, he appointed his Executive Council from both parties. Mathews made it practically impossible to maintain this balance.
Bryan Finucane (1740?-1785)
Bryan Finucane was born in County Clare, Ireland, sometime before 1744. He studied law at London’s Middle Temple, was admitted the Irish bar in 1764 and practiced in Dublin for several years. Finucane was appointed Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in December 1776 but did not arrive in Halifax until April 1778. He was sworn into office on 1 May 1778. Finucane balked at traveling on circuit and tried, unsuccessfully, to reduce the length of sittings in Halifax. He was granted a leave of absence to travel to England, where he spent most of 1782-1783. Upon his return he was sent to New Brunswick to help settle the claims of recently-arrived Loyalist refugees who were demanding a redistribution of water lots in Saint John, which, they claimed, had been unfairly assigned to interested officials and their friends. George Leonard, a director of the town and an owner of some of the disputed properties, accused Finucane of crediting “every idle report from Barbers and Grog shops.” Finucane promptly redistributed some of the contested lots. Considered a man of great integrity and an “upright judge,” Finucane died in Halifax in August 1785.
Source: Chief Justices
Provided by: the Executive Office of the Nova Scotia Judiciary
James Ogilvie (c.1740-1813)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 29 June 1798 – 21 June 1799
Ogilvie’s chief contributions to the development of Cape Breton were his bringing 150 troops to protect the colony, undefended since 1793; his organization of the colonial militia after Macarmick’s failure to do so; his improvement of the Sydney harbour defences; and his development of the coal mines.
John Crosskill (1740-1826)
[Not to be confused with his grandson John Henry Crosskill (1817-1857)]
Ship’s captain and landowner
Under the command of John Crosskill, who was described by Beamish Murdoch as “a skilled pilot,” the Earl of Moira – a snow of 135 tons mounting 14 guns which had been built for the Nova Scotia government service in 1794 – was employed in protecting the fisheries along the coast of Nova Scotia and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, convoying merchant vessels to Quebec, driving off smugglers, and watching for privateers. In August 1795, moreover, Lieutenant Governor John Wentworth reported that the vessel had been of great assistance to the local Gaspésian government in quelling disturbances between Indians and fishermen in Gaspé. Early in 1796 Wentworth issued Crosskill letters of marque. Thanks to the Earl of Moira’s light draught, privateers could be chased in shallow water; during the time Crosskill was in command he seized three ships. Wentworth consistently praised the captain’s efforts, and in January 1796 even the Duke of Portland, secretary of state for the Home Department in London, recognized that Crosskill’s services had been “of great utility.”
Gilfred Studholme (1740-1792)
When rebel forces under Jonathan Eddy attempted to capture Fort Cumberland (formerly Fort Beausejour) near Sackville – then in Nova Scotia but now in New Brunswick – in late 1776, the timely arrival of reinforcements under Major Thomas Batt and Major Gilfred Studholme forced their retreat.
Archibald Charles Dodd (c.1740-1831)
It was to escape a clouded past that in 1787 Dodd arrived in Cape Breton, which three years earlier had been separated from Nova Scotia as a distinct colony. Since he was one of only two lawyers there, he was immediately engaged by Lieutenant Governor J.F.W. DesBarres as acting clerk of the Executive Council, the governing body of the island. In 1788, Lieutenant Governor William Macarmick appointed Dodd his private secretary. Dodd’s acumen is revealed by his ability to adapt to shifting political alliances within the colony. On 7 June 1831, the day of his funeral, all businesses in Sydney were closed and ships in the harbour flew their flags at half-mast. Dodd played a key role in the history of the colony of Cape Breton. In his long career he influenced the thinking of every lieutenant governor or administrator, and his decision as to the illegality of the rum tax led directly to the colony’s reannexation to Nova Scotia. He and his family were very influential in Cape Breton society for over 150 years.
Isaac Hildrith (1741-1807)
Builder and surveyor
Jeremy Pemberton (1741-1790)
Jeremy Pemberton was the youngest Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, taking office at age 33. Born in Cambridgeshire, England in 1741, he was the grandson of Sir Francis Pemberton, lord chief justice of England. He attended Lincoln’s Inn and was admitted to law practice in 1762. In 1785 he was appointed to investigate claims of Loyalists in the British North American colonies. He was named Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in August 1788 in the midst of the “Judges’ Affair,” as Loyalist newcomers agitated to impeach the Supreme Court’s two assistant judges – James Brenton and Isaac Deschamps, neither of them legally trained – on allegations of incompetence and bias. While Pemberton provided the legal expertise the court needed, he did not stay long enough to stabilize the court. He resigned in October 1789 and returned to England, where he died on 14 July 1790.
Source: Chief Justices
Provided by: the Executive Office of the Nova Scotia Judiciary
Abraham Cornelius Cuyler (1742-1810)
Mayor of Albany, 1770-1776
In September 1770, twenty-eight-year old Abraham C. Cuyler became the third member of his family to be appointed mayor of Albany, New York. His tenure at city hall paralleled the rapid development of Albany and its hinterland following the end of the last French and Indian War in 1763. It ended in June 1776 when he was arrested by the rebels. This native son lost everything as a result of the American Revolution. Under the Act of Attainder* in 1779, Cuyler’s property was seized and he was condemned to death. Eventually he made his way to Quebec as a destitute Loyalist refugee. In November 1783 Cuyler sailed for England to pressure the British governemt into approving the formation of a settlement on Cape Breton Island for some 3,000 Loyalists then in Quebec. In England, he asked for the separation of Cape Breton from Nova Scotia and, when that was granted, successfully solicited the appointments of secretary and registrar of the new colony. Cuyler was also allowed to bring his Loyalists to Cape Breton, but by the time permission was given it was already October 1784, and most of the prospective settlers decided to remain in Quebec. Hence only 140 persons arrived at Louisbourg and St. Peters that year. Meanwhile J.F.W. DesBarres had been appointed lieutenant governor of Cape Breton, and he and a group of English settlers founded the town of Sydney in the spring of 1785. Cuyler went to Sydney by July, took office, and was sworn into the Executive Council. It soon became apparent that Cuyler and DesBarres could not work together.
* The Act of Attainder named fifty-nine individuals who were banished forever from New York State. Their property was confiscated, and they were condemned to death without trial if caught. Abraham C. Cuyler, the last royalist mayor of Albany, was on the list.
William Macarmick (1742-1815)
Lieutenant Governor of Cape Breton Island, 1787 – 27 May 1795
Though expressly forbidden to grant land to former French citizens, Macarmick allowed a group of refugee Acadians from Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, where they had mainly worked in the fishery, to settle in the early 1790s at Isle Madame and Chéticamp. There they contributed to the island’s fishery and shipbuilding.
Sampson Salter Blowers (1742-1842)
Appointed Chief Justice of Nova Scotia in 1797
Slavery was an important issue to Blowers. On one occasion a black woman arrested in Annapolis Royal was claimed as a slave, and Blowers hinted that an action should be brought to try this claim. The plaintiff could not prove that he had had a legal right to purchase the woman, and his case collapsed. In part because of Blowers’ demands for the proof of its legality, slavery died out in Nova Scotia relatively soon in the 19th century in contrast to New Brunswick, where it was held that slavery was legal.
Francis Green (1742-1809)
Francis Green took part in the siege of Louisbourg, Île Royale, in 1758. He was appointed sheriff of Halifax County in November 1784.
David George (c.1743-1810)
With the outbreak of the revolution in 1775 Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation offering freedom to any rebel-owned slave who joined the loyalist forces. Thousands of slaves, attracted by Dunmore’s offer, deserted their masters and flocked to the British. At Silver Bluff, George later stated, preachers were not allowed to visit the slaves “lest they should furnish us with too much knowledge.”
Charles Baker (1743-1835)
Surveyor, office holder, JP, and judge
Between 1783 and 1785, Charles Baker worked as a surveyor in the Ramsheg (Wallace), Cobequid Road, Westchester, and River Philip regions of Cumberland County. In 1788 he was granted *800 acres in Amherst Township.
* 800 acres = 320 hectares = 1.25 square miles = 3.24 square kilometres
Ranna Cossit (1744-1815)
Church of England clergyman and politician
Cossit visited remote settlements such as Louisbourg, Main-à-Dieu, and Cow Bay (Port Morien). He began the formal education system in Sydney. He was appointed a member of Cape Breton’s Executive Council in August 1786. Cossit was an activist whose mark on Cape Breton was recognized by the opening of his home, Cossit House, as an historic structure in 1977.
John Ritchie (c.1745-1790)
Merchant and office-holder
The Ritchie family’s long and illustrious connection with the courts began in a small way in 1779 with John Ritchie’s appointment as justice of the peace for Annapolis County, Nova Scotia. A son and four grandsons would hold judgeships; one grandson, William Johnstone Ritchie, became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada in 1879.
Benoni d’Entremont (1745-1841)
Mariner, shipbuilder, office holder, JP, and militia officer
John Despard (1745-1829)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island
16 September 1800 – 6 July 1807
Previouly, an appointment as military commander of the colony of Cape Breton included authority as civil administrator, but when Despard arrived in Halifax in May 1800 he was advised by Lieutenant Governor Sir John Wentworth of Nova Scotia that his commission entitled him to the military command only. Despard went to Sydney on 16 June 1800 and at first made no move to supplant Murray as administrator, but by August he had decided to challenge him and was demanding that Murray hand over the government. In September, Wentworth changed his views and informed Despard that as military commander he was ex officio civil administrator. This opinion prompted Despard to move. On 17 September he called a meeting of the colony’s Executive Council to have himself proclaimed administrator, and simultaneously had the local militia assembled. Sydney was in a high state of excitement as both factions collected support, and a mob favourable to Murray gathered; violence was avoided only by the presence of the militia. Despard’s show of force broke the resistance of Murray and his supporters on the council, headed by the Reverend Ranna Cossit. They failed to attend the meeting and were eclipsed by Despard’s adherents, led by Archibald Charles Dodd. Anxious for settlers, Despard offered them land and financial assistance. In early August 1801 the first boatload of Scots sailing directly to Cape Breton arrived in Sydney with 415 passengers. This influx began the great tide that was to transform Cape Breton into Canada’s strongest Scottish enclave. In five years the colony’s population increased from 2,500 to nearly 5,000 and new settlements sprang up all along the coasts. The judgement of history is that John Despard was the most able and successful of Cape Breton Island’s colonial administrators.
Patrick Sutherland (fl.1746-1766)
Military officer
James DeLancey (1746-1804)
Army officer and politician
Near the end of his life Loyalist Colonel James DeLancey of Round Hill, Annapolis County, became involved in a famous debate over the legality of slavery in Nova Scotia. One of his slaves, Jack, ran away to Halifax, where he was employed by one William Woodin. In 1801 DeLancey sued in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court for the payment of the wages Jack had earned. Woodin’s lawyer, Attorney General Richard John Uniacke, argued that Jack was a free man since Nova Scotia had no law to make him otherwise. When the court awarded DeLancey £70 in damages, Uniacke appealed, giving slavery a full airing in the Nova Scotia legal system.
Lancey v. Woodin PANS
Opinions Of Several Gentlemen Of The Law,
On The Subject Of Negro Servitude,
In The Province Of Nova-Scotia 1802
Edward Winslow (1747-1815)
When hostilities broke out on 19 April 1775, Winslow rushed to fight with the British regulars at Lexington,Massachusetts. Commended for valour by his commander, Lord Hugh Percy, he continued to serve the army in a paramilitary capacity throughout the rebels’ eight-month siege of Boston; during this time he was appointed by Lieutenant-General Thomas Gage collector for the port of Boston and registrar of probate for Suffolk County. In early 1776 Winslow made the painful decision to leave his family and his native land and go with the British troops to Halifax, Nova Scotia. In July 1783 Winslow made his provocative suggestion that the area north of the Bay of Fundy be partitioned from Nova Scotia to become a separate Loyalist province.
John M’Alpine (1748-1827)
John M’Alpine’s career had three phases. As a settler in upstate New York he found himself the victim of two sets of circumstances: the rivalry of New Hampshire and New York over the area where he was living, and the crisis of loyalty posed by the outbreak of the American Revolution (1776-1789). As a man of 35 in Nova Scotia he was caught up in the conflict between pre-revolutionary settlers and Loyalist newcomers. Finally, there was the older M’Alpine who made ends meet in Halifax by a fascinating range of activities.
Henry Alline (1748-1784)
In recent times, Henry Alline has begun to take on the character of a folk hero, articulating the concerns of a perplexed people attempting to come to terms with the harshness of everyday life and the rapidly changing developments of the outside world over which they had little control. Alline was rebelling against his society and searching for a new meaning to life. Such responses seem far more comprehensible in our confused modern society than they did to our more optimistic ancestors.
William Forsyth (c.1749-1814)
…inferior quality of goods, disputes over late payments, incompetent and often drunken captains, losses from storm and disease, mutinous and deserting crewmen, thievery, harassment from customs officers…
Charles Stuart Powell (c.1749-1811)
Actor, theatre manager, educator, and office holder
From 1797 to 1802, Powell gave more than 40 performances at his theatre in Halifax, including Shakespeare‘s The Tempest and Richard III, George Lillo‘s The London Merchant; or, the history of George Barnwell, and Sheridan‘s The Duenna.
Alexander Howe (1749-1813)
Alexander Howe was drawn into the social and administrative problems created in Annapolis County by the arrival of the Loyalists in the mid-1780s. The immigrants had all but submerged the established families, who nevertheless were determined to share in the government. In the November 1785 elections for the House of Assembly, Howe was the only pre-loyalist to contest any of the four Annapolis seats.
William McKinnon ( ? -1811)
McKinnon was named secretary and registrar of deeds as well as clerk and member of the Executive Council of Cape Breton. He arrived in Sydney in December 1792. McKinnon steered an eventually successful course through the rocks of factionalism which were characteristic of the first years of Cape Breton’s existence as a colony.
George Panton ( ? -1810)
Church of England clergyman
Ingram Ball (1752-1807)
Ingram Ball came to Cape Breton in 1788 with his wife and six children and settled west of Sydney on the site of the present-day village of Ball’s Creek. He soon became involved in the political life of the colony, being appointed to the Executive Council on 22 June 1789 by Lieutenant Governor William Macarmick.
William Sabatier (1753-1826)
Measures sought by Sabatier’s committee included the establishment of protected markets in Britain for colonial produce, permission to exploit Nova Scotian coal deposits, the relaxation of restraints on colonial trade with Europe, the incorporation of a bank in Halifax, and aid in construction of a canal linking Halifax with the Bay of Fundy.
George Cranfield Berkeley (1753-1818)
In 1806 Berkeley was named commander of the North American squadron. When he reached his headquarters at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in July 1806, Britain’s relations with the United States were strained owing to smuggling and the refitting of French warships in American ports. One of his first letters to the Admiralty spoke of the Îles de la Madeleine as “a receptacle for the smuggled produce of the States of America, and of course a most essential injury to our Newfoundland and Nova Scotia fishery.” His attention, however, focused on Chesapeake Bay, where in September a French squadron, much battered by a hurricane, took refuge and underwent repairs. In order to watch the enemy force he moved his headquarters to Bermuda, where he remained until May 1807. With his ships blockading the French and thus having to put into American ports for wood, water, and other necessary provisions, some desertion inevitably occurred. Berkeley demanded the return of the deserters, several of whom had enlisted in the United States Navy. No article of any treaty between the United States and Great Britain required the surrender of such deserters, but the American government had permitted French naval officers to reclaim their deserters on land. Berkeley resolved that, if necessary, force would be used to assert this right at sea. Thus, when in June 1807 the United States frigate Chesapeake sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, with a crew that included some British deserters, she was challenged by one of Berkeley’s squadron, the Leopard. In Berkeley’s words, Leopard “proceeded to search her, and was by the pertinacity of the American Captain compelled to use force.” Three American seamen were killed, with one officer and 12 seamen wounded. The fury unleashed in the United States by this action caused Berkeley, now back in Halifax, to fear the immediate outbreak of general hostilities; and he at once applied to the Admiralty for reinforcements. “The Province of Nova Scotia,” he remarked, “which contains our only Arsenal, can only be attacked from the Bay of Fundy, where it will be necessary to have a constant naval force.” This unhappy altercation, of little consequence, added perhaps a dram to the growing cupful of American grievances that characterized the years leading to war in 1812. In British North America, however, the provincial administrations considered the situation serious enough for active military preparations to be undertaken, and in 1808 the British government sent troop reinforcements to the provinces.
George Cranfield Berkeley Wikipedia
Adolphus Christoph Vieth (1754-1835)
What makes Vieth unique in Nova Scotia was his enjoyment of feudal rights or fiefs in Germany. He held certain privileges in the Hanoverian lands of Calenberg which allowed him to receive taxes collected there on corn and grain.
John Howe (1754-1835)
Printer, newspaperman, JP, postmaster
Joseph Marshall (c.1755-1847)
Marshall, one of the founders of what is now Guysborough County, played a prominent role in the Guysborough area throughout his long life. He was appointed a justice of the peace in May 1784 and served as a judge of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas from 1799 until 1841. Marshall also represented Sydney County (which then included what is now Guysborough County) in the House of Assembly for two terms. Despite the problems of travelling from one of the most isolated areas of Nova Scotia, Marshall was in regular attendance through the heated debates of the eighth assembly, 1800-1806. He exemplified the many Loyalists of middle rank who became community leaders in their new homes. As a southerner he is more representative of Nova Scotia Loyalists than traditionally has been acknowledged, since analysis of their origins indicates that as many as one in three were from the southern colonies (now southern states).
Thomas Grace, named Father James (1755-1827)
Roman Catholic priest and Capuchin
Grace arrived in Halifax early in 1790 and was appointed to the mission of St Mary’s Bay. The task of a missionary in Nova Scotia required a mixture of qualities almost too great to expect in one man. Since most Catholics in the colony lacked luxuries and had little money to spare, a priest either had to have outside support or be self-sufficient. But the resourcefulness necessary to survive meant more than learning how to provide for oneself without financial assistance from the faithful; it also meant being a jack of all trades, a tactful diplomat, and a skilled linguist. A Nova Scotian missionary had to be carpenter and cook, trail-blazer and oarsman, doctor and lawyer, friend to his flock and to others. He had to be true to his Catholicism yet not arouse the suspicion of the colonial authorities about “popery.” He had to speak French to Acadians, Gaelic to Irish and Scots, English to some, perhaps Micmac to a few, and always remember his Latin for the mass. These demands called for a man of considerable bodily vigour, if not of great physical strength, a man of some presence and psychological stamina who could bear the solitude of being perhaps the only literate man for miles around, cut off for months from the intercourse of his peers. Those who had the fortitude, character, and faith might succeed and even thrive. Unfortunately, Grace was misplaced.
John Merrick (c.1756-1829)
By the mid 1790s, John Merrick was one of three master painters in Halifax and had obtained provincial government contracts for painting and glazing. He would continue to obtain contracts for major building projects through the next three decades. From at least 1802 to 1812 Merrick also provided painting and glazing services to the Royal Navy’s Halifax dockyard and supplies for the army’s wartime building in the town. To private citizens he offered painting and glazing materials.
Richard Stout (c.1756-1820)
Richard Stout was the most important merchant and the main creditor in the Cape Breton colony. In 1792 the lease for the Sydney coal mines was transferred to Richard Stout and Jonathan Tremaine. The mines had been well known for some time, but the British government had persisted in refusing to lease them. Prior to 1784 only the army, a few small operators, and some smugglers had worked the deposits, and in a haphazard fashion, sinking pits and then abandoning them.
Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange (1756-1841)
As Chief Justice in Nova Scotia, Strange’s achievement in keeping the peace and winning respect for the Supreme Court was no mean feat. Although careful not to overlook his primary mission in Nova Scotia, Strange apparently also found time to use his influence as Chief Justice to oppose slavery. His successor, Sampson Salter Blowers, claimed that in cases involving runaway slaves Strange required “the fullest proof of the master’s claim” and that since this was difficult to produce “it was found generally very easy to succeed in favour of the Negro.”
William Cochran (c.1757-1833)
In 1784 he was appointed to Columbia College, New York, as professor of Greek and Latin. In 1791 he was invested as president of King’s College, Windsor, Nova Scotia.
Nicholas Nepean (1757-1823)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 6 July 1807 – 1 June 1813
Though the Napoleonic Wars (1803 to 1815) and the American Embargo Act of 1807 resulted in increased economic activity in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, they affected Cape Breton only indirectly. Her ships were too small to take part in the growing transatlantic and Caribbean trade that the larger colonies enjoyed, but she could ship her goods to those provinces and participate in the economic growth of the region. However, increased trade meant increased inflation – for example, between 1807 and 1808 the price of flour doubled. To stop this trend Nepean allowed the importation of American food-stuffs and forbad the export of food or cattle, but prices continued to rise. Moreover, the attraction of prosperity in Halifax and Saint John and the growing demand for sailors drew away miners, many of whom had been Newfoundland fishermen. Inflation and a scarcity of labour drove up miners’ wages and also production costs, and in 1808 John Corbett Ritchie, the mines superintendent, asked that the price of a chaldron* of coal be raised from 16 to 20 shillings. In 1815 – with the final defeat and exile of Napolean in Europe, and the end of the War of 1812 in North America – the political and economic chaos that began with the French Revolution in 1789 began to subside, but the lingering effects continued to bedevil the tiny and remote colony of Cape Breton Island, and in 1820 it was merged for the second time with Nova Scotia. Far in the future, at the turn of the 20th century, Cape Breton Island was to arrive at the forefront of scientific achievement with the now-famous activities launched by inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Guglielmo Marconi.
* In the old days, coal was often sold by the “chaldron,” a unit of measure frequently encountered in old records but nowadays almost completely forgotten. The chaldron was a measure of volume, not weight. One chaldron is equal to 1164 litres, or 1.164 cubic metres.
Charles Morris [3rd] (1759-1831)
[Not to be confused with Charles Morris [1st] (1711-1781)]
[Not to be confused with Charles Morris [2nd] (1731-1802)]
Army and militia officer, surveyor, office holder, politician, and JP
On 25 September 1749, Governor Edward Cornwallis appointed Charles Morris [1st] (1711-1781) “Chief Surveyor of Lands within this Province.” Charles Morris [1st] was surveyor general of lands for the province for 32 years 1749-1781, a period which saw the founding of Halifax and Lunenburg and the coming of the pre-loyalists, when the colony’s foundations were laid. The Council had every confidence in his decisions and actions, and the chronicler of 18th-century Nova Scotia, John Bartlet Brebner, praised him for his honest impartiality. Charles Morris [2nd] (1731-1802) apparently came to Nova Scotia in 1760. From then until 1781 he assisted his father, Charles Morris [1st], Nova Scotia’s first surveyor general; between 1776 and 1781 he performed the tasks of the office alone. In 1772 the possibility that his father might lose his position spurred Morris [2nd], with his father’s approval, to seek it for himself. He enlisted J.F.W. DesBarres to promote his cause in England and in return looked after DesBarres’s land interests in Nova Scotia. Morris [2nd] however, had to wait until after his fathers death in 1781 to obtain the position. In 1802, Charles Morris [3rd] (1759-1831) succeeded his father, Charles Morris [2nd], as surveyor general. In April 1831 he was replaced by his son John Spry Morris, who served until the office was merged with that of commissioner of crown lands in 1851. Four members of the Morris family — 1749-1781, 1781-1802, 1802-1831, and 1831-1852 — thus held the position of surveyor general of Nova Scotia for its entire existence 1749-1851, a continuity of service rivalled only by that of the Wrights of Prince Edward Island. The Morris family had the reputation in Nova Scotia of being good administrators and surveyors.
James Drummond MacGregor (1759-1830)
[Not to be confused with James Drummond McGregor (1838-1918)]
James MacGregor preached to his parishioners in Pictou, each sermon four times, in English and in Gaelic at two separate locations. Sympathetic to the anti-slavery attitudes emerging in Britain, he put his convictions to practical use by applying £20 of the £27 he received for his first year’s services toward purchasing the freedom of a slave girl from her Nova Scotian master, Matthew Harris, and he subsequently aided in the release of others. MacGregor extended this commitment when he confronted Reverend Daniel Cock of Truro, who was a slave owner, with the immorality of a Christian’s enslaving God’s children. MacGregor’s rebuke to Cock – an open Letter to a Clergyman Urging him to set free a Black Girl he held in slavery*, published in Halifax in 1788 – and the reply on Cock’s behalf by Reverend David Smith of Londonderry, formalized MacGregor’s split with the Presbytery of Truro.
* Three copies of this eleven-page phamphlet are known to exist: two at Halifax at Dalhousie University and the Library of the Nova Scotia Legislature, and one at the Saint John Library.
Hugh Swayne (c.1760-1836)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island
1 June 1813 – 6 February 1816
When Swayne arrived in Sydney on New Year’s Day 1813 to take over from Nicholas Nepean, he faced several problems. The most immediate was how to protect the island, whose defensive works, in the five decades between the capture of the Louisbourg Fortress in 1758 and the outbreak of the War of 1812, suffered the usual effects of benign neglect on the part of a faraway bureaucracy in London, England. In 1811 the garrison had been increased to 168 men and Nepean had made a few feeble moves to organize a militia. In the face of hostilities, however, these measures would be totally inadequate. The greatest danger was from the sea, but only two ships cruised the coasts. This weakness was revealed immediately after the outbreak of war when American privateers attacked fishing and trading vessels off Arichat, upsetting the commerce of that area and of the Strait of Canso. Since Swayne could not count on help from Halifax, he took steps to lessen the colony’s vulnerability. To ensure that the island could feed itself if cut off from outside supplies, in April 1813 he stopped the export of selected foodstuffs for six months. Later that year, as protection for the coal mines, he rebuilt a redoubt and barracks near them and had troops stationed there, to provide at least a show of strength in case of attack. Swayne also reorganized the militia, dividing the island into 20 districts, each with a captain and two lieutenants. He tried to choose as leaders men with previous military experience.
Boston King (c.1760-1802)
As the American Revolutionary War, 1776-1783, drew to a close, thousands of Loyalists converged on New York City. One of them was Boston King, who had been a slave in South Carolina until he was about twenty years old. In New York he supported himself as a servant and casual labourer. The publication of the preliminary peace agreement in late 1782 threatened King’s freedom, for article 7 required the British to return all American property, including slaves. As King wrote later, the prospect of being returned to bondage filled the black Loyalists with “inexpressible anguish and terror,” and their fears were increased when former masters entered New York City and began seizing blacks in the streets and in their homes. At this critical point Sir Guy Carleton, commander-in-chief of British forces, announced that his interpretation of article 7 was that black Loyalists were not in fact American property at the time of the agreement and so must be allowed to evacuate with other Loyalists. Issued with certificates guaranteeing their freedom by Brigadier-General Samuel Birch, the city commandant, New York’s black refugees boarded the transport ships and had their names, descriptions, and personal histories recorded in the “Book of Negroes.” In 1783, 3,000 black loyalists were shipped to Nova Scotia. King, aged 23, sailed for Port Roseway, recently renamed Shelburne, on 31 July 1783. The first Loyalists had reached Port Roseway in May 1783, including a party of blacks who set to work clearing the town-site and preparing roads. A separate town-site for the blacks was laid out at a discreet six miles [10km] from Shelburne. King arrived there on 27 August in time to witness the survey and participate in the establishment of Birchtown, named for their New York protector. A muster held in January 1784 showed that Birchtown, with a population of 1,521 blacks, was the largest free black settlement in North America.
John Butler Dight (c.1760-1834)
[Not to be confused with John Butler (1728-1796)]
[Not to be confused with John Butler (fl.1749-1791)]
John Butler Dight was a protégé of Joshua Mauger, the London-based entrepreneur who dominated Nova Scotian public affairs in the period 1750s-1770s. Nephew to John Butler, Mauger’s chief Halifax associate during the 1760s and 1770s, young Dight came to Nova Scotia in 1773 and later obtained, through the influence of his uncle, a position in the commissariat at Fort Cumberland (formerly Fort Beausejour, near Sackville, New Brunswick). At the end of the 1770s, just before John Butler returned to England, Dight moved to Halifax, setting up as a general merchant and succeeding his uncle as agent victualler to the troops in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. He also took over the administration of both his uncle’s and Joshua Mauger’s real-estate holdings in Nova Scotia. The death of John Butler in 1791 fundamentally altered Dight’s career. Named chief beneficiary of his uncle’s estate, on condition that he adopt the surname Butler, Dight acquired land in England, along with additional Halifax waterfront property and a Hants County holding of almost a thousand* acres. Moreover, he received an invitation to enter Nova Scotia’s Council. Acceptance of the appointment had to be deferred, however, since complications connected with his uncle’s estate obliged him to go to England, probably in 1791 or 1792. At the time he gave every indication of intending an early return. As it happened, over a decade passed before Dight, now Butler, again saw Nova Scotia and Martock, his estate near Windsor. Delays in part were caused by the need to organize his Somerset estate and manœuvre for additional government patronage. In July 1799 the latter activity resulted in his appointment as deputy commissary general for all of eastern British North America.
* 1,000 acres = 1.5 square miles = 400 hectares = 4 square kilometres
Jacob Van Buskirk (1760-1834)
Merchant, office holder, JP, judge, militia officer, and politician
In November 1777, Jacob Van Buskirk and three fellow officers in the 4th battalion of the New Jersey Volunteers were captured by the rebels in a raid on Staten Island, New York, and charged with high treason.
Snow Parker (1760-1843)
In the heyday of privateering, Snow Parker was reputed to be the richest man in Liverpool, Nova Scotia. The outbreak of war with France in 1793 and with the United States in 1812 had raised again both the spectre of privateering and the prospect of making a great deal of money from financing privateers. Liverpool was the centre of privateering activity in Nova Scotia between 1793 and 1815, and Snow Parker was its leading exponent. He built, owned, financed, and acted as agent for several privateers, but did not sail them himself. The cargo of captured vessels could be speedily condemned in the Vice-Admiralty Court at Halifax, acquired cheaply at auction, and then retailed at a handsome profit. Moreover, the prizes themselves could be purchased, refitted, and then sent out as privateers or trading vessels.
Rover (privateering ship) Wikipedia
John Burton (1760-1838)
During and immediately after the War of 1812, roughly 2,000 black refugees left the southern United States under British protection to settle in Nova Scotia. Recognizing Burton’s familiarity with the black community, the Nova Scotia government made him one of those in charge of the refugee settlements in Hammonds Plains and Preston, even giving him the power of magistrate to settle legal matters.
Peleg Wiswall (1762-1836)
Peleg Wiswall was born in Falmouth, Maine. He became a successful lawyer and served as a member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly for Annapolis County from 1812-1816. In 1816 he was appinted associate judge of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court.
Hugh Denoon (1762-1836)
Hugh Denoon was born in Scotland into an established Highland family and should have followed in the paternal footsteps by attending university in Aberdeen and entering the Church of Scotland ministry. Instead Hugh sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia. After engaging in business there he went to the Pictou area, took up land on the East River as early as 1784, and later lived in Merigomish, where he acquired land rights from former members of the 82nd Foot. He subsequently moved to a house about one mile south of the town centre of Pictou, gradually acquiring a number of offices, including collector of customs, deputy registrar of deeds, justice of the peace, and judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and engaging in mercantile activity. Most of Denoon’s adult life was spent in respectable obscurity in Pictou, but at the beginning of the 19th century he acquired a certain notoriety in his native land as the first and most detested of the contractors transporting emigrants from Scotland to North America in the wave of emigration between 1801 and 1803.
William Minns (c.1763-1827)
Printer, publisher, merchant, and office holder
William Minns published the first issue of the Weekly Chronicle on 29 April 1786. By 1810, he was one of the principal retail merchants of Halifax.
Jean-Mandé Sigogne (1763-1844)
After arriving at Halifax in June 1799, and having sworn allegiance to the crown, he sailed in a fishing vessel to the first of his two widely separated parishes, Ste Anne du Ruisseau in the Argyle district at the southwestern tip of the province. Three weeks later he proceeded some 50 miles north through the wilderness to his second parish, Ste Marie in the district of Clare. This mission was to be his headquarters for the rest of his life. At least four times a year for the next two decades, and periodically after 1824, Sigogne was to undertake the onerous journey between Ste Marie and Ste Anne, travelling on horseback over unmade roads. The trip took three days, with overnight stops at Salmon River and Yarmouth.
James Foreman (1763-1854)
Businessman, judge, justice of the peace, politician, and philanthropist
James Foreman joined with Richard Tremain to bring Joseph Howe to trial for having allegedly libelled the municipal authorities.
John Black (c.1764-1823)
A racket had developed by which captured ships and their contents, not properly inspected officially, could be knocked down at low prices to bidders who had inside information. Many naval officers, officials, and merchants were able to make large fortunes. Wartime trade, legal and illegal, and participation in prize-purchase and in privateering ventures all contributed to make the years 1806-1814 the most active and profitable of Black’s business career.
Laurence Kavanagh (1764-1830)
After his father died in a shipwreck, 14-year-old Laurence Kavanagh took charge of the Kavanagh family interests in Arichat, Main-à-Dieu, St. Peter’s, and even present-day New Brunswick. The young man showed much business acumen and shrewdly built the Cape Breton operation into a commercial success by supplying the needs of settlers from the Strait of Canso to the Margaree River, often by barter. In 1797 he and Richard Stout, Sydney’s wealthiest merchant, were described as “owning” three-quarters of Cape Breton’s population. Although this claim cannot be substantiated, there is no doubt that Kavanagh and Stout must have controlled a large proportion of the island’s commerce. When Bishop Joseph-Octave Plessis visited Cape Breton in 1815 he described Kavanagh’s property as a “magnificent estate” and Kavanagh as a “rich Irish merchant, who had a thriving business.” By that time Kavanagh was shipping barrels of fish as far as the Gulf of Mexico. Kavanagh’s wealth made him a powerful figure in southern Cape Breton, and his status was recognized by the provincial government in Sydney, which appointed him a captain of militia. Because of St. Peter’s distance from and poor communications with Sydney, Kavanagh was almost absolute ruler in his district. In 1811, when the colony’s administrator, Nicholas Nepean, ordered a census, Kavanagh refused to divulge the extent of his holdings.
William Cottnam Tonge (1764-1832)
[Not to be confused with Winckworth Tonge (1728-1792)]
William Cottnam Tonge was descended from a prominent and long-established Nova Scotia family. Although little known today, Tonge was a dominant figure in the struggle between the House of Assembly and the lieutenant governor in early 19th-century Nova Scotia and was remembered for decades as the “tribune of the people.”
Sir John Coape Sherbrooke (1764-1830)
John Coape Sherbrooke was appointed lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia in July 1811. He arrived at Halifax in October 1811 to assume his gubernatorial duties and his responsibilities as commander of the forces in the Atlantic provinces. The five years of Sherbrooke’s administration were dominated by war with the United States, which broke out in June 1812, and matters relating to the colony’s defence. With dilapidated fortifications and limited military resources, the needs of the Canadas being more urgent, he could do little to secure the scattered, vulnerable outports against the threat of invasion or the ravages of American privateers beyond mounting guns at harbour entrances and placing the militia in a state of readiness. For the rest, he had to rely on naval protection as British ships patrolled the seas and later blockaded the American coast, occasionally clashing with enemy men-of-war as in the celebrated engagement of the Shannon and the Chesapeake in June 1813. For the dual purposes of security and commerce Sherbrooke issued proclamations declaring a friendly disposition towards the adjacent New England states, where the outbreak of war was highly unpopular, and a willingness to continue trading with them by means of licences, a mutually convenient arrangement extensively supplemented by more clandestine operations throughout the war. Despite his initial anxieties about the shortage of specie and provisions, the war proved to be profitable for Nova Scotia. Sherbrooke’s calculated commercial policy, which stimulated the free exchange of goods with New England, turned the Atlantic provinces into a thriving entrepôt for international trade. The uneasy but lucrative state of commercial cooperation and military neutrality which existed between the Maritime colonies and New England was transfigured in 1814. Adopting a more belligerent posture in North America with the defeat of Napoleon in Europe, the British government instructed Sherbrooke to guarantee winter communications with the Canadas and to put pressure on the United States government by occupying part of present-day Maine. Deciding to strike at the long-disputed borderland between Passamaquoddy Bay and the Penobscot River, Sherbrooke led an expeditionary force in August 1814 which successfully landed at Castine and proceeded to subdue the entire region between the Penobscot and the St. Croix. The eight-month occupation of Castine yielded customs revenues which were subsequently used to finance a military library in Halifax and found Dalhousie College.
Edward Manning (1766-1851)
[Not to be confused with Edward Manning Saunders (1829-1916)]
Manning served as pastor of a very large area, all of Cornwallis Township in Kings County.
William Hersey Otis Haliburton (1767-1829)
Lawyer, office holder, militia officer, politician, and judge
Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (1767-1820)
Prince Edward, the fourth son of King George III, is remembered in Halifax for initiating plans for the construction of the clock tower at the foot of Citadel Hill, for his contribution to the building of St. George’s Round Church, for his active interest in helping Nova Scotians he had known while there, and for his residence on Bedford Basin at Prince’s Lodge which he leased from Lieutenant Governor John Wentworth. He was the father of Queen Victoria.
Lewis Morris Wilkins (c.1768-1848)
[Not to be confused with Lewis Morris Wilkins (1801-1885)]
The father of Lewis Morris Wilkins was a New York Loyalist who brought his family to Shelburne, Nova Scotia, in 1784. From 1798 to 1804 Wilkins served as sheriff of Halifax County. He then resigned and practised as a lawyer, appearing between 1804 and 1814 in a steadily increasing number of cases in the Halifax courts. He also had a large practice in Lunenburg County and in the district of Pictou. Wilkins’s political career began in 1799 with his election to the House of Assembly from Lunenburg Township, a district he represented for his entire career in the legislature.
Edward Mortimer (1768-1819)
In 1818 he successfully outbid competitors for a
21-year monopolistic lease to operate the Pictou coal mines.
Simon Bradstreet Robie (1770-1858)
Lawyer, politician, and judge
George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie (1770-1838)
At age 46, George Ramsay arrived in Halifax on 24 October 1816, bringing to his new position as lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia an intelligent and well-stocked mind, an exacting sense of duty, a readiness to command and an expectation of being obeyed, a cold, aloof manner with a touch of aristocratic hauteur, and a prickly personality reinforced by a dour Scottish Presbyterianism. Conscientious to a fault and full of curiosity, he at once familiarized himself with the province. Dalhousie conceived the idea of a college open to youth of all religions and every class of society. He wanted a school with professors lecturing on classics, mathematics, and eventually moral and natural philosophy. A site was chosen on the Grand Parade in Halifax and the venture, now known as Dalhousie University, was launched through appropriation of the Castine Fund, obtained from customs duties levied in 1814-15 at occupied Castine, Maine.
William Lawson (1772-1848)
During the formative years of the Bank of Nova Scotia,
Lawson was the most influential person in the institution.
John Young (1773-1837)
Agricola
Richard Tremain (1774-1854)
In January 1835 a letter by an anonymous author in Joseph Howe’s newspaper the Novascotian or Colonial Herald, accused the magistrates, including Tremain, of being arrogant, incompetent, and corrupt. Tremain initiated the magisterial demand that Joseph Howe be tried for criminal libel. Tremain’s zeal in defending his honour precipitated a major crisis in Halifax. Several members of the gentry, including Howe’s father, had become convinced of the need for reform in order to conciliate the aroused mass of ratepayers. Taking advantage of these cross-currents within the elite and of public dissatisfaction, Howe turned his libel trial into a forum for renewed rhetorical attack on the deficiencies of magisterial rule. Acquitted by a sympathetic jury, Howe launched into a political career which climaxed some 13 years later with the achievement of responsible government in Nova Scotia.
Enos Collins (1774-1871)
Before he was 20, Enos Collins was captain of the schooner Adamant, sailing to Bermuda. During the War of 1812 (1812-1815) he was a partner in a firm which bought captured American vessels from the prize courts and sold their cargoes at a profit. In the decade after the war Collins participated in numerous business enterprises. He was successful in currency speculation, backed many trading ventures, carried on his mercantile activities, and entered the lumbering and whaling businesses. He was a founding partner in the Halifax Banking Company, known locally as “Collins’ Bank.” This would be Nova Scotia’s first bank. The Halifax Banking Company would merge with the Canadian Bank of Commerce in later years, and eventually the Imperial Bank of Commerce, to form what we know today as the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Collins was an astute, hard headed, and even progressive businessman. With an estate estimated at $6,000,000, he was rumoured to be the richest man in British North America.
Enos Collins by Peter Landry
Enos Collins, privateer & banker by Johanna
Enos Collins, privateer & banker
2006 Nova Scotia Buisness Hall of Fame Inductee
Halifax Banking Company, 1825-1903
Sir Brenton Halliburton (1774-1860)
While in command of York Redoubt, at the entrance to Halifax Harbour, Halliburton was thanked by Prince Edward Augustus in public orders for his endeavours to rescue part of the crew of a wrecked frigate, the Tribune. He was Chief Justice 1833-1860 of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. Halliburton owned two estates in Halifax as well as valuable lands in Pictou and in the Annapolis Valley.
Walter Bromley (1775-1838)
Social reformer, humanitarian, and educator
Bromley’s Royal Acadian School, which opened in Halifax in 1813-14, represented an important departure in education for the colonies. It was non-sectarian and drew as its supporters a cross-section of local society comprised of liberal-minded elements both inside and outside the Church of England. Although the aim of the school was to attack illiteracy, encourage morality, and promote industry, it also challenged the existing notions of privilege and authority in society.
Thomas McCulloch (1776-1843)
On his way to Prince Edward Island, McCulloch arrived in Pictou, Nova Scotia, with his family in November 1803. Warned against attempting to cross Northumberland Strait so late in the year, he wintered in Pictou. Tradition has it that two townsmen, seeing the globes depicting the physical and celestial worlds which McCulloch had brought with him, determined to keep him there.
George Robert Ainslie (1776-1839)
Lieutenant Governor of Cape Breton Island
4 November 1816 – 22 June 1820
Though he was the tenth head of the colony, which had been founded in 1784, Ainslie was only the third lieutenant governor (DesBarres was the first and Macarmick the second). His predecessor as lieutenant governor, William Macarmick, had held the office in absentia from his departure in 1795 until his death in 1815, a succession of administrators taking his place. During Ainslie’s term as Lieutenant Governor, a succession of adverse events made it ever more difficult for the tiny colony of Cape Breton Island to continue without an elected legislature. It was therefore decided that the colony would receive representative government by being reannexed to Nova Scotia. On 22 June 1820, at a meeting of the council in Sydney, it was decided that the senior miltary officer, Captain David Stewart, was the proper person to undertake the administration of Government until Sir James Kempt had completed his arrangements for annexing the Island to the Government of Nova Scotia. General Ainslie, delighted to have been relieved of the burden of governing the colony, lost no time. He left Sydney on June 24th, in the brig Hannah, direct for London, where he arrived on August 3rd. On 16 October 1820 Lieutenant Governor Sir James Kempt of Nova Scotia, following instructions from London, officially proclaimed the end of Cape Breton as a separate colony. After arriving in England, Ainslie sought a retirement allowance of £500 out of the revenue from the Cape Breton coal mines, but the pension was refused because of official disapproval of his conduct in the colony.
Joseph Barss (1776-1824)
Joseph Barss’s skill as a captain and the Liverpool Packet‘s speed made him one of the most successful privateers during the War of 1812. He concentrated his attacks around the approaches to Boston, particularly in the vicinity of the northern shore of Cape Cod, and his name became well known in New England ports, a high reward being offered for his capture. Thirty-three prizes taken under his command were disposed of before the Vice-Admiralty Court in Halifax. Although he boarded many more than that number, some were not worth sending back, some were protected by British safe-conduct passes, some that he did send back were lost in storms, and some were recaptured by American privateers.
Philip Bowes Vere Broke (1776-1841)
On 31 August 1806, Philip Bowes Vere Broke took command of the frigate Shannon. On 1 June 1813, Captain Broke’s Shannon captured USS Chesapeake.
Sir Philip Bowes Vere Broke Wikipedia
Thomas Ritchie (1777-1852)
Lawyer, politician, judge, office holder, and militia officer
John Inglis (1777-1850)
Church of England bishop
In 1816 John Inglis succeeded to the rectorship of St. Paul’s Church, Halifax, the first Anglican cathedral outside of Great Britain. There he acquired a reputation as a devoted pastor and captivating preacher. He was known to all social classes, being a faithful visitor to the poor of the parish and an erudite chaplain to the House of Assembly (Legislature).
Sir John Harvey (1778-1852)
Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia (1846-1852)
Sir John Harvey was an enthusiastic supporter of the proposal to build an inter-colonial railway, and took an active interest in the survey work of Major William Robinson. When the colonies could not agree on financing for the long railway, Harvey openly backed Joseph Howe’s scheme to build a provincial railway financed by public money.
John Barss (1778-1851)
John Barss was born to one of the original families of Liverpool, Nova Scotia. His early life appears to have been spent on merchant vessels, probably those of his father, where he became proficient in the ways of the sea. He gained a body of knowledge not uncommon to Nova Scotian sea captains of his day, knowledge which would allow him secure passage on the Atlantic seaboard from Labrador to the West Indies. With the outbreak of the War of 1812 he associated himself with his brother James and others, including their brother-in-law Enos Collins, as a shareholder in several privateers: the Liverpool Packet (commanded for a time by his brother Joseph), the Sir John Sherbrooke, and the Wolverine.
John Patch (1781-1861)
John Patch was a fisherman from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, who invented one of the first versions of the screw propeller.
John Patch: Inventor of the screw propeller
…Should be Famous… Canadians
Thomas Trotter (1781-1855)
Thomas Trotter arrived at Antigonish, Nova Scotia, in June 1818. The parish at Antigonish covered an extensive area but its population was small. To augment his income Trotter farmed and, in 1819, opened a grammar school. He taught Latin and Greek and lectured on a variety of scientific issues, particularly geology. In addition to his preaching, teaching, and writing on a variety of issues, he also served as a school trustee, devoted considerable time to agriculture in trying to promote better farming methods, and built a grist-mill and later a fulling-mill.
Thomas Nickleson Jeffery (1782-1847)
Over the span of forty years Jeffery performed to the general satisfaction of both his fellow Nova Scotians and his superiors. The respect in which he was held was demonstrated at his funeral, the reporter for the Acadian Recorder commenting that “there was a larger concourse than we ever remember to have seen at any funeral at Halifax.” Even in outports such as Pictou, flags flew at half-mast.
Richard Smith (1783-1868)
General Mining Association
James Bagnall (1783-1855)
A sensational event in Halifax during the fall of 1809 was the trial of Edward Jordan and his wife, Margaret, for piracy and murder on board the schooner Three Sisters. In March 1810 Bagnall published a 59-page report of this trial. It included Jordan’s dying confession and was popular reading material in its time.
William Smith (fl.1784-1803)
[Not to be confused with William Smith (1728-1793)]
[Not to be confused with William Smith (1769-1847)]
[Not to be confused with William Smith (1821-1897)]
William Smith was appointed as garrison surgeon of the new colony of Cape Breton on 28 August 1784. He arrived there in November and was appointed by Lieutenant Governor DesBarres to the Executive Council of the colony.
Joseph Brown Comingo (1784-1821)
Joseph Brown Comingo is believed to have been the
first professional painter born in Nova Scotia.
Anthony Henry Holland (1785-1830)
[Not to be confused with Anthony Henry (1734-1800)]
Shortly after the outbreak of war with the United States in June 1812, Holland issued a prospectus for a newspaper, the Acadian Recorder, to be published in Halifax. When the paper appeared on 16 January 1813 it became the fourth in Halifax, its competitors being John Howe’s Nova-Scotia Royal Gazette, William Minns’s Weekly Chronicle, and John Howe Jr’s Halifax Journal. Unlike the other three, which generally avoided politics and were conservative in outlook, the Recorder intended from the start that “rational and fair discussion of political principles, and candid investigation of the characters of public men and public measures will never be rejected,” and under its young editor and publisher adopted a tone of moderate reform. Aided by public goodwill and wartime prosperity, the venture flourished under Holland’s able and energetic leadership and rapidly became one of the most significant journals in the province. In February 1817 the Recorder became the first paper to print the debates of the Assembly on a regular basis. The following year it published a series of letters by Agricola (the pseudonym of John Young) which aroused widespread interest with their criticisms of the state of farming in the province and their proposals for improvement. One of the original intentions of the Recorder was to make Nova Scotians proud of their heritage and potential and to publicize the beauties and resources of the colony abroad, and Holland never ceased to see a great future in agriculture, mining, and merchandising.
Septimus D. Clarke (1787-1859)
Septimus D. Clarke was one of more than 2,000 former slaves who made their way to Nova Scotia following the War of 1812. Having escaped from plantations in the United States, they travelled along its eastern seaboard in British naval vessels, and in 1815 the majority of the refugee blacks were settled in Preston Township in Nova Scotia. Preston was a township of stones, an infertile land with widely scattered patches of soil and trees and long, damp winters to which the new settlers were not accustomed. The blacks became subsistence farmers.
Edmund Ward (1787-1853)
Printer, newspaperman, author, office holder, publisher’s agent
Young Edmund Ward was trained as a printer in Halifax. In 1809 the governor of Bermuda invited him there to edit a newspaper, which became the Royal Gazette. Edmund Ward’s career in Bermuda ended over the incident of the capture of the American warship President by the frigate Endymion and other ships of a blockading British squadron off Long Island on 14-15 January 1815.
Caleb Seely (1787-1869)
Sea captain, privateer, shipowner, and merchant
Sir Samuel Cunard (1787-1865)
Samuel Cunard, merchant, shipowner, and entrepreneur, had at least 76 sailing ships registered at Halifax between 1817 and 1850. Of the 76 it is estimated that 28 were sold abroad, 21 sold in Halifax, two in Pictou, one in Newfoundland, three in the West Indies and one in Saint John, 14 unknown, and six wrecked. Of the 28 sold abroad, ten were disposed of in London, ten in Liverpool, and one each in other ports. Cunard subscribed £1,000 for stock in the Shubenacadie Canal Company and was chosen a vice-president in 1826. He was an original partner of the Halifax Banking Company formed in 1825, subscribing £5,000 of its £50,000 capital.
As an alert shipowner Cunard was aware of developments in steam vessels and noticed increasing numbers of such vessels at Liverpool and on the Irish Sea. In 1825, in anticipation of the proposed steamship service by the American and Colonial Steam Navigation Company of Great Britain around the British Isles and once a fortnight to Halifax and New York, negotiations were begun for a steamboat operating between Quebec and Halifax to connect with the mail packets* from Falmouth, England. With contrary winds sailing ships sometimes took 23 days to reach Quebec from Halifax. Samuel Cunard was one of over 200 shareholders (including his brothers Henry and Joseph) from Quebec and the Maritimes in the Quebec and Halifax Steam Navigation Company formed in 1830 and incorporated the next year. Samuel was elected head of the Halifax committee of the shareholders.
On 7 November 1838 the British Admiralty advertised for tenders to carry mails by steam from England to New York via Halifax. Two tenders were received from Britain but neither was satisfactory. On 11 February 1839 Cunard offered to provide steamboats of not less than 300 horsepower [220 kilowatts] to carry the mails from England to Halifax and back twice monthly, and also to provide a branch service in boats of not less than 150 horsepower [110 kilowatts] to Boston, and one from Pictou to Quebec while the navigation was unobstructed by ice. For this he asked £55,000 sterling yearly for ten years, and he promised to have the steamers ready by 1 May 1840. The Admiralty accepted Cunard’s offer.
Where to get suitable ships? Cunard consulted J.C. Melvill, secretary of the East India Company. He recommended Robert Napier, a foundry owner and engineer in Glasgow who had provided steamships for the company. On 25 February 1839 Cunard wrote to William Kidston and Sons of Glasgow asking them to obtain estimates from Napier. The latter offered to build a vessel of 800 tons and 300 horsepower for £32,000 but agreed to lower his price to £30,000 when Cunard ordered three vessels. Napier, a leader in establishing Glasgow as a great steamship-building centre, decided before the contract was signed with Cunard on 18 March 1839 that these steamships would have to be larger for safe Atlantic voyages and offered to provide the extra work on the engines at no additional cost if Cunard would pay for the structural changes. Cunard agreed. These three steamships were Acadia, Caledonia, and Columbia. All three were launched in 1840.
(Footnote: )The account books, ledgers, and letter books of the Halifax branch of S. Cunard and Company were destroyed when the firm’s north pier and the Cunard office building and warehouse were demolished in 1911 and 1917. The attic of the old warehouse had been full of chests of old manuscripts and business papers and Dr. Archibald MacMechan, head of the English Department at Dalhousie University, was told that it took three months to burn them on the wharf.
*Packet – a boat that carries mail with a published schedule of sailing dates; a ship employed by government to convey official messages or mail; a vessel employed in conveying dispatches, mails, passengers, and goods, on a fixed schedule.
James Carmichael (1788-1860)
[Not to be confused with James William Carmichael (1819-1903)]
Carmichael was able to build his own ships in New Glasgow for local trade. His first venture was the 14-ton schooner James William, constructed in 1821. The following year, with partners, he built the Perseverance. This 77-ton brigantine was intended for the West Indies trade but was lost on its maiden voyage. This loss was particularly severe because the Halifax agent had pocketed the money intended for insurance. In 1828 Carmichael began to develop a regular coasting trade with the 45-ton schooner Mary Ann. By 1832 this vessel regularly carried oxen and agricultural products to the Richibucto and Miramichi regions in New Brunswick and brought back to Pictou timber and salt for the fishing industry. The salt was probably obtained from the Jersey merchants who brought it as ballast in the ships with which they controlled the fishing trade in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the 1840s he built more ships, including schooners such as the Alert (53 tons), Gem (73 tons), and Georgina (107 tons), the barques Hyndeford (510 tons) and John Geddie (391 tons) as well as the ship Janet Kidston (889 tons). One of the last ships he constructed was the barque Lulan (472 tons). James Carmichael’s active career ended in 1857 when he was thrown from his wagon.
William Machin Stairs (1789-1865)
Halifax Whaling Company
Nova Scotia Electric Telegraph Company
Union Marine Insurance Company
Merchants’ Exchange
Halifax-Dartmouth Steamboat Company
Inland Navigation Company
Union Bank of Halifax
Andrew James Meuse (fl.1821-1850)
Micmac chief
Meuse had applied to Lieutenant Governor Sir James Kempt for land at Bear River, near the Annapolis Basin, and was told that he might have it but would receive no grant lest he transfer it to the whites. He did not succeed in obtaining a freehold grant, but *1,000 acres were set aside on Bear River at the request of Abbé Jean-Mandé Sigogne and judge Peleg Wiswall of Digby. Meuse was to be the man in charge of the experimental settlement. Land was surveyed in 1827 and divided into *30-acre lots. A family that cultivated its land for three consecutive years was to be confirmed in possession of it, but was still not to be given a freehold grant; a family that neglected its holding for three years would forfeit it to another Indian cultivator. The first people moved to Bear River in 1828.
* 1,000 acres = 1.5 square miles = 400 hectares = 4 square kilometres
* 30 acres = 1,300,000 square feet = 12 hectares = 120,000 square metres
Charles Glode ( ? -1852)
Micmac chief and farmer
Glode had the distinction of being one of the few Indians to be granted freehold land in Nova Scotia, and to have left an estate to be administered. He was singular proof to officials that an Indian could become a successful farmer and, in gratitude, they freed him from the legal restrictions that prevented Indians from owning, buying, and bequeathing land as individuals.
Richard Preston (1791?-1861)
A six foot one inch [185cm] mulatto about 25 years old, Richard had been a slave in Virginia before purchasing his manumission. To Haligonians the literate former slave of manly bearing, who was a gifted orator with a disarming sense of humour, must have been an enigma. He had made his way north to Nova Scotia in search of his mother, one of about 2,000 refugee blacks who had left the United States during the War of 1812. Finding his mother must have seemed a hopeless quest to him; yet he persevered in faith, and, after many efforts, as he prepared to cease his search, he found her in the township of Preston. He adopted the surname Preston. In the days of slavery, black people rarely had a chance to express their religion in church. The only time they could congregate was at funerals and other rare situations.
Charles Rufus Fairbanks (1790-1841)
Lawyer, politician, office holder, judge, and entrepreneur
James William Johnston (1792-1873)
Lawyer, politician, and judge
Sir William Robert Wolseley Winniett (1793-1850)
Royal Navy Officer
Governor of the Gold Coast (Ghana)
Active in the suppression of the African slave trade in the 1800s
Andrew Shiels (1793-1879)
Blacksmith, poet, and magistrate
James Crowdy (1794-1867)
Clerk of the Council and colonial secretary of Cape Breton Island, 1814-1820
Alexander Stewart (1794-1865)
Alexander Stewart attained high office and yet remained something of a tragic figure. At first Whiggish (liberal) in political sentiment, he came to be regarded as the most implacable of Tories (conservative). Altogether inflexible, he bluntly rejected the idea of responsible government in a colony. Insensitive to the reaction of others, he created the impression of having traitorously abandoned his earlier political views. The outcome was to make him one of the most detested of all Nova Scotian politicians.
Charles Tupper (1794-1881)
[Not to be confused with Sir Charles Tupper (1821-1915)]
[Not to be confused with Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper (1855-1927)]
Baptist minister, educator, and author
Possessed of a fine mind, he virtually educated himself.
By 1859 he had developed a reading knowledge of ten languages.
John Sparrow Thompson (1795-1867)
[Not to be confused with John Sparrow David Thompson (1845-1894)]
In 1828 John Sparrow Thompson started a private school in Halifax. He had some real talent for teaching, having knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, and being well read in English literature and history. He was also an excellent shorthand writer. It was Thompson who, using his formidable shorthand ability, reported Joseph Howe’s speech at his libel trial of 1835. John Thompson and Joseph Howe remained close friends for life. It was said Howe would rarely write anything of importance that he did not first submit to Thompson’s judgement. It was owing to Howe that Thompson was appointed Queen’s Printer in February 1843.
James Forman (1795-1871)
Banker and embezzler
James Forman, cashier of the Bank of Nova Scotia, was accused in 1870 of embezzling $315,000. A book on Mr. Forman and his circle, Banker, Builder, Blockade Runner, by Pat Lotz, was published by Gaspereau Press in 2002.
— The Globe and Mail, 16 May 2012
$315,000 in 1870 is equivalent to
about $7,000,000 in 2013.
William Blowers Bliss (1795-1874)
Bliss was elected to the first board of directors of the Bank of Nova Scotia on 10 May 1832. He acted as one of the governors of King’s College at Windsor from 1848 to 1853, and as one of the trustees of the Halifax grammar school from 1847 to 1868.
Alexander Keith (1795-1873)
Alexander Keith’s Brewery
Mayor of Halifax
Bank of Nova Scotia
Halifax Fire Insurance Company
Colonial Life Assurance Company
Halifax Marine Insurance Association
Halifax Gas, Light, and Water Company (incorporated 1840)
Provincial Permanent Building and Investment Society
Halifax Water Company (incorporated 1844)
North British Society
Highland Society
Halifax Mechanics Library
Nova Scotia Auxiliary Colonial Society
Nova Scotia grand master of Freemasons
Mather Byles Almon (1796-1871)
Mather Byles Almon was one of the founders of the Bank of Nova Scotia. In 1832 he became a member of its first board of directors and in 1837 became its president. The bank established a branch in Windsor in 1832 and branches in Pictou, Yarmouth, Annapolis, and Liverpool in 1839. During this period the bank also made financial arrangements with the Baring Brothers in London and with the Merchant’s Bank of Boston, as well as with banks in New York, Portland, Maine, Saint John, N.B., and Montreal. This turned out to be the limit of its expansion; during the depression of the 1850s the bank closed its branches in Windsor, Annapolis, and Liverpool. One reason for its failure to grow was revealed by Almon on 28 July 1870 when he disclosed that James Forman, cashier (general manager) of the bank since 1832, had embezzled $315,000* from the bank during a lengthy period of time. Evidence produced in a suit brought by the bank against Forman’s sureties indicated that Forman had carried out his defalcations since 1844. Almon, who was ill and virtually blind, had probably been unable to provide much leadership for some time. In September 1870 he resigned on the grounds that he was unable to sign the notes of the bank as required by law. It would seem obvious that he was incapable of handling any problems created by the loss of funds and any resulting loss of public confidence. The possibility exists that the bank might have been better served if he had resigned before 1870.
* $315,000 in 1870 is equivalent to
about $7,000,000 in 2013.
Robert Foulis (1796-1866)
Engineer, artist, entrepreneur, and inventor
John Mockett Cramp (1796-1881)
Baptist minister, author, and educator
Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865)
In 1820, Haliburton was admitted to the bar and began a lucrative law practice at Annapolis Royal. Six years later he became the MHA for Annapolis Royal in the Nova Scotian assembly. Haliburton’s international and enduring reputation as a writer, however, is based on The clockmaker; or, the sayings and doings of Samuel Slick, of Slickville, of which 22 instalments had appeared in the Novascotian newspaper before a book of that title was published by Joseph Howe at Halifax in 1836. The clockmaker, second series, was published in London by Richard Bentley in 1838, and the third series in 1840. These series were frequently reprinted in Britain and the United States. For a time at least in the mid-19th century Haliburton and his work had a vogue on both sides of the Atlantic which rivalled that enjoyed by Charles Dickens.
Thomas Chandler Haliburton
Wikipedia
Thomas Chandler Haliburton: Bibliography
by Garth Vaughan
Thomas Chandler Haliburton: Bibliography
by Athabaska University
Edmund Murray Dodd (1797-1876)
Dodd was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia in 1832 as the first member for Sydney Township. With his elevation in 1848 to puisne judge of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, he left the political arena. Despite his acknowledged ability as a lawyer, he was not a particularly successful judge. Increasing deafness combined with a tendency toward tedious and verbose explanation handicapped him on the bench.
Abraham Gesner (1797-1864)
If he could come back today and see the great aircraft now propelled over continents and oceans by his kerosene, he would be delighted but not surprised. In the first decade of the 21st century, world-wide production and consumption of kerosene exceeded 130,000,000,000 litres annually.
(On average, about 15,000,000 litres each hour of every day)
William Grigor
Physician, office holder, and politician
Sir William Edmond Logan (1798-1875)
In the summer of 1843 he compiled a detailed section
of the coal-bearing strata near Joggins, Nova Scotia.
James Cuppaidge Cochran (1798-1880)
His editorials in both the Colonial Churchman and the Church Times exhibit strong views on a wide variety of issues such as temperance, education, and railway policy. These journalistic efforts provide a valuable commentary on social and political conditions in mid-19th-century Nova Scotia.
George Rogers McKenzie (1798-1876)
Captain George Rogers McKenzie was a prominent shipbuilder in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. His business flourished during the 1850s and 1860s when wooden vessels from the Maritimes were needed for the timber trade to Great Britain, for the coal trade from Pictou to the United States, and for supplying the British and American armies during the Crimean War (1853-1856) and the American Civil War (1861-1865).
Joseph Cunard (1799-1865)
Joseph Cunard, timber merchant, shipbuilder, and politician, spent his working years mainly in New Brunswick, but he was involved to a significant extent in the businesses of his brother Samuel in Nova Scotia. In 1839 Joseph Cunard accompanied his brother Samuel to England, where Samuel obtained a contract to carry the transatlantic mail by steamship.
James Boyle Uniacke (c.1799-1858)
In 1832 he became an incorporator and one of the first directors of the Bank of Nova Scotia. In 1840 he helped to set up the Halifax Gas, Light and Water Company and before long became its president.
Edmund Albern Crawley (1799-1888)
Lawyer, Baptist minister, businessman, and educator
Sir William Young (1799-1887)
in 1832 Young contested a vacant seat in Cape Breton County, then encompassing the whole island, against Richard Smith, manager of the General Mining Association. The result at the first three polling places was a tie, but when voting began at the fourth and last, Cheticamp, 150 Scotsmen, armed with clubs, expelled Smith’s friends from the hustings in a celebrated riot and secured Young’s election. Young’s will provided $8,000 to complete and ornament a new road, named Young Avenue, from Inglis Street to Point Pleasant Park in Halifax.
John Stewart (c.1800-1880)
[Not to be confused with John James Stewart (1844-1907)]
In 1838 John Stewart, fluent in both English and Gaelic, moved to Fraser’s Mountain (New Glasgow) where he was pastor until his retirement in 1869.
Andrew MacKinlay (1800-1867)
[Not to be confused with Andrew Mackinlay Bell (1847-1918)]
The success of the Halifax publishing firm of A. and W. MacKinlay depended largely on a willingness to venture into areas neglected by their competitors. When the Irish National Series was authorized for Nova Scotia schools in the late 1850s, the MacKinlays stereotyped most of the volumes and reprinted them in Halifax, while their rivals impatiently awaited the arrival of their expensive American editions. Such an astute business manoeuvre paid off; in 1864 the company was awarded the government contract for the Nova Scotia Series of Readers. Maps were another educational venture; the firm’s 1862 chart of Nova Scotia received a bronze medal at the 1867 Paris exposition. In 1842, Andrew MacKinlay he was appointed a director of the Halifax Gas, Light and Water Company, organized in 1840, and served as president from 1855 until 1867. In 1855 his long civic career was rewarded with the office of custos rotulorum for Halifax County.
Edward Barron Chandler (1800-1880)
During the years, 1840s and 1850s, when Chandler was a major influence in the New Brunswick government, that colony (later a province) was caught up in the great era of railway building, and Chandler became a leading advocate of an improved system of transportation within New Brunswick and with its neighbours. In the summer of 1850 Chandler and several other legislators from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia attended a great railway convention* in Portland, Maine. It was at this meeting that the foundation was laid for the European and North American Railway Company (which in the 1880s was associated with the Great American and European Short Line Railway Company – later named the Montreal and European Short Line Railway Company – which constructed the Short Line Railway between Oxford and Pictou in Nova Scotia). At the same time discussions were carried on concerning a railway between Halifax and Quebec.
William Fenwick Williams (1800-1883)
Commander in Chief, North America, 1859-1864
Lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, 1865-1867
Constable of the Tower of London, 1881
Alexander McGillivray (1801-1862)
Alexander McGillivray was inducted in 1833 as minister at Barney’s River and Merigomish. Five years later he became pastor at McLellan Mountain, and ministered there until his death.
Clement Horton Belcher (1801-1869)
Late in 1823 C.H. Belcher began publication of The Farmer’s Almanack, for the year of our Lord 1824… and continued to issue it annually. In 1832 the name was changed to Belcher’s Farmer’s Almanack. Belcher began his almanac only a year after the appearance of The letters of Agricola…, in which John Young urged the farmers of the province to abandon their traditional methods for a more scientific approach to agriculture, and it is likely that Belcher was influenced by Young’s commonsense theories. After extensive reading in agricultural literature he began to intersperse the pages of the Almanack each year with valuable suggestions and hints on the management and maintenance of a farm. Meticulous and methodical, Belcher made every effort to ensure that his information was reliable. Consequently it was only reluctantly that he permitted the inclusion of weather prognostications, always a popular feature. The Almanack eventually became an almost indispensable tool – a business directory, almanac, and book of reference combined – and Belcher’s name a household word throughout the province. After his death the publication’s goodwill passed to the firm of McAlpine and Barnes, but the Almanack continued under the originator’s name until publication ceased in 1930.
Lewis Morris Wilkins (1801-1885)
[Not to be confused with Lewis Morris Wilkins (c.1768-1848)]
In 1833 Wilkins stood as the Tory candidate for Windsor Township in Nova Scotia. The outcome of the election was disputed, but a legislative committee speedily awarded him the seat. A staunch Tory, Wilkins became one of Joseph Howe’s most eloquent foes after the latter’s entry into the assembly in 1837. Their verbal antipathy entertained the legislature for years, as Howe taunted “the stately bird of Hants” who was over six feet [more than 183cm] tall. In January 1838 Wilkins was appointed a member of the Legislative Council.
Matthew McClearn (1802-1865)
In 1828, at age 26, McClearn was sailing vessels for his uncle, Joseph Freeman, of Liverpool, Nova Scotia, in the West Indies trade. For 12 years he sailed in the West Indies trade. During this time he developed a reputation for “intrepidity and coolness in scenes of danger.” He added a substantial piece to his waterfront property in Liverpool, and built up enough capital to acquire, in 1843, a 57-ton schooner, Dolphin. As its master he began the first regular packet* service between Liverpool and Halifax, along Nova Scotia’s south shore. In 1848 Dolphin was replaced by the 78-ton schooner Liverpool. In 1854 McClearn formed a partnership with John Day who took over as master. In 1855 McClearn was elected by acclamation to the House of Assembly. During his years in the packet business, McClearn was also shipping fish and lumber to the West Indies and importing flour, meal, molasses, salt, and other foodstuffs for his wholesale and retail business in Liverpool. By 1857 he had joined with his brother-in-law to form Darrow and McClearn, General Commission Merchants and Ship Agents.
*Packet – a boat that carries mail with a published schedule of sailing dates; a ship employed by government to convey official messages or mail; a vessel employed in conveying dispatches, mails, passengers, and goods, on a fixed schedule.
George Renny Young (1802-1853)
In 1824 Young started a weekly newspaper, the Novascotian, or Colonial Herald, eschewing at the outset anything that savoured of radicalism. The Novascotian contained an amount of original material on provincial agriculture, industry, and commerce that made it unique among the province’s newspapers. In 1846 the Halifax and Quebec Railway became Young’s chief concern and it wasto have a major effect upon the rest of his life.
Grizelda Elizabeth Cottnam Tonge (c.1803-1825)
Poetess
Sir John Gaspard Le Marchant (1803-1874)
In the summer of 1852 Le Marchant went to
Nova Scotia as lieutenant governor…
Laurence O’Connor Doyle (1804-1864)
Lawyer, editor, and politician
William Scarth Moorsom (1804-1863)
Soldier, civil engineer, and author
In a letter to the Novascotian in 1835, Moorsom advocated a railway for Nova Scotia. In 1844 he drew up concrete proposals for a railway line between Halifax and Windsor. In two prospectuses placed before the public in the fall of 1845, Moorsom was named engineer-in-chief for the Halifax and Windsor Railway and one of the engineers for the Halifax and Quebec Railway.
Martin Isaac Wilkins (1804-1881)
Martin Isaac Wilkins and his brother Lewis Morris Wilkins were the grandsons of Isaac Wilkins, a politically active New York Loyalist who had settled in Nova Scotia in 1784, and the sons of Lewis Morris Wilkins, the veteran member of the assembly for Lunenburg and puisne judge of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. He was elected MPP (Member of the Provincial Parliament) in 1851 for the township of Pictou and re-elected in 1855 to represent the county.
Joseph Howe (1804-1873)
Journalist, politician, and public servant
MLA for Halifax County: 1836 – 1851
MLA for Cumberland County: 1851 – 1856
Speaker of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly: 1840-1843
Premier of Nova Scotia: August 1860 – June 1863
Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia: 1873
In December 1827, Howe took over the Novascotian from George R. Young and soon made it the most influential newspaper in the province.
Ingraham Ebenezer Bill (1805-1891)
Bill began preaching in Cornwallis Township, Nova Scotia, in 1827. The following year he moved to Nictaux. In 1830 Bill became minister of the large and sprawling pastorate of Wilmot-Nictaux. He quickly established himself as one of the most effective and popular young ministers in the Maritimes. In a series of dramatic revivals he increased the size of his church until by 1837 it was the largest Baptist church in the Maritime colonies. At a meeting held at Bill’s house in Nictaux in October 1838, the decision was made to found Queen’s College (renamed Acadia in 1841). When the decision was formally approved by the Nova Scotia Baptist Education Society on 15 November, Bill was named to the society’s managing committee and appointed financial agent for the new college. For the next fifty years Acadia would have few more dedicated or hard-working supporters. Between 1838 and 1884 Bill served first on the managing committee and then on the college’s board of governors. He repeatedly canvassed the Maritime colonies seeking financial support and students for the institution. In 1844-45 he travelled as far south as Georgia in his efforts to secure funding. The governor of South Carolina gave him $50, but most other Southerners would not contribute because Maritime Baptists supported the abolition of slavery.
John Pryor (1805-1892)
John Pryor served Acadia College (now University) for nearly twelve years, the last three as its first president, but because of unfortunate historical circumstances he he has not received the credit due him for his role in the founding and development of this important Nova Scotia educational institution.
Benjamin Wier (1805-1868)
In the mid-1840s, Benjamin Wier entered the wholesale trade in Halifax and began specializing in commerce with New England, shipping out fish in exchange for American foodstuffs, tobacco, tar, and other staple commodities. In 1847 he put two small sailing vessels on a regular packet run between Halifax and Boston. During the 1850s Wier acquired a fleet of schooners which traded throughout the Gulf of St. Lawrence, supplying the outports from Halifax and bringing back fish, oil, and timber for trans-shipment to New England. By 1860 he sat on the board of directors of such varied enterprises as the Halifax Marine Railway, the Grand Lake Land Company, the Chebucto Marine Insurance Company, the Union Marine Insurance Company, the Union Bank of Halifax, and the Acadian Iron and Steel Company, firms whose capital investment totalled around $2,800,000. He also became a director of several additional enterprises such as the Nova Scotia Electric Telegraph Company, the Nova Scotia Permanent Benefit Building Society and Savings Fund, the Acadian Fire Insurance Company, the People’s Bank of Halifax, the North Sydney Marine Railway Company, and the Sea Bay Coal Mining Company. Wier’s most famous, or infamous, business venture in this period consisted of acting as Halifax agent for many of the Confederate blockade runners active during the American Civil War (1861-1865). In return for ship repair facilities in Halifax, the Confederates supplied him with valuable cotton for re-export to Britain, a lucrative but hazardous course for Wier which required severing his business connections with New England. By late 1864, faced with the imminent collapse of the Confederacy, Wier found himself in an awkward position. Although he ultimately did re-establish trade with the North and become agent for a steamship service linking Halifax with the Grand Trunk Railway terminus at Portland, Maine, he remained persona non grata in the eyes of the American government and could not get a visa to visit American territory.
James Spike (1807-1879)
Printer and publisher
In 1826 James Spike and Joseph Howe, then 22, bought the Weekly Chronicle from William Minns. They changed the paper’s name to the Acadian and General Advertiser and began publication on 5 January 1827.
Sir Francis Hincks (1807-1885)
Convinced that railways would bring a new era of prosperity to British North America, Hincks was anxious to encourage further railway building. In 1851 Hincks was in discussions with Edward Barron Chandler and Joseph Howe concerning the joint financing by Canada – Lower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada (Ontario) – with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia of a railway from Halifax to Windsor or Sarnia on Upper Canada’s western boundary. They reached an agreement and in August 1851 Hincks piloted a bill through the legislature authorizing Canadian participation in the scheme. But late in the year he was dismayed to learn that the project was in danger. There had been a misunderstanding: the British government was willing to guarantee the interest on a loan to build the railway only if it was located along a route approved by that government, which was not the route favoured by the colonial governments. Hoping to work out a compromise, Hincks and two cabinet colleagues, Étienne-Paschal Taché and John Young, visited New Brunswick and Nova Scotia early in February 1852. A new plan was worked out, which Howe opposed because it would follow the Saint John River valley and thus give Saint John a direct rail link with the Canadas, enabling it to compete with Halifax as the principal ocean port for British North America during the winter shipping season. In a masterful speech in Halifax, Hincks appealed directly to the merchants and people of Nova Scotia and won general support for the plan. Howe agreed to do “all that a Nova Scotian ought, to bring this matter to a successful issue.”
John William Ritchie (1808-1890)
Lawyer, legislator, and judge
Henry Pryor (1808-1892)
Lawyer, militia officer, politician, and magistrate
Mayor of Halifax, 1849-1850
The civil side of Henry Pryor’s authority, covering mainly small debts, occupied only a few days a month. The criminal side demanded his presence six days a week year-round. He was thus brought into intimate contact for nearly twenty years with the under-side – and under class – of Victorian Halifax. Drunks, prostitutes, and vagrants, many of them recidivists, were his daily companions. Family disputes were often before him, as were prosecutions for violations of the liquor licensing laws. After one such successful prosecution in 1884 Pryor received a death threat. He treated all these offenders with an unpredictable mixture of severity and mercy. Untroubled by the finer points of precedent, procedure, or statute-book, he tailored the punishment, or lack of it, to fit the person not the crime.
William Gossip (1809-1889)
About 1831 Gossip moved to Pictou where, in the strongly partisan religious and political climate of the day, he published and edited the Pictou Observer.
Hugo Reid (1809-1872)
In November 1855 Hugo Reid went to Halifax where he became principal of the high school and of the junior school which began in Dalhousie College in January 1856. He was also professor of logic, general grammar, and English, dean of the faculty, and principal of Dalhousie University, which then had a faculty of five and a student enrollment of 15.
Jonathan McCully (1809-1877)
A Father of Confederation
Jonathan McCully was a vigorous, slashing writer, who spared nothing and no one. His support of Joseph Howe in the 1847 election was repaid with his appointment in 1848 to the Legislative Council, a position he continued to hold until 1867. McCully was appointed judge of probate in 1853, an office he held until after the change of government in 1857, when he was duly fired. While in the probate court McCully had supported Howe’s railway projects, one of which was to build, as a government work, a line from Halifax to Truro with a branch to Windsor. His reward was membership on Howe’s railway commission from 1854 until Howe’s government was defeated in 1857. It is remarkable that McCully acquired so many offices; in 1855, for example, he was a member of the Legislative Council, a judge of probate, and a railway commissioner. He was by now beginning to write for the Halifax Morning Chronicle. He rapidly became its leading editorial writer, a position he was to retain until 1865. In 1860 the Liberals returned to power. McCully was promptly appointed solicitor general and also made the sole railway commissioner, while still keeping his hand on the editorial desk of the Morning Chronicle. McCully ran the Nova Scotia Railway from 1860 to 1863 with a ruthless eye to saving money. He was in an excellent position for creating enemies and, being blessed with neither tact nor taste, made good use of his opportunities. He was one of those people who could not do things by halves. He disliked humbug or pretence; he had none of those arts himself.
Stephen Fulton (1810-1870)
Merchant, shipowner, shipbuilder, and politician
Silas Tertius Rand (1810-1889)
Silas Tertius Rand was taught to read by his father and by a succession of country teachers. During his youth he worked as a farm labourer and at 18 embarked on his family’s trade of bricklaying. He went back to school when he was about 22, mastered English grammar, and himself began teaching, alternating seasons of teaching and of bricklaying. At the same time, for short periods he began to attend Horton Academy at Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where he studied Latin and Greek. Over the years he also mastered French, Italian, German, Spanish, modern Greek, Micmac, Malecite, and Mohawk. Rand studied Micmac customs and folklore; by familiarizing himself with the language, he deepened his appreciation of the mental cast of the Indians, whose intelligence he highly esteemed. As the years passed Rand devoted more and more time to his study of Micmac culture, a study which won him recognition abroad and honorary degrees at home as he produced his scriptural translations in Micmac and Malecite, compiled his Micmac dictionary, and collected scores of legends including the time-honoured tales of Glooscap, the mythological hero of the Micmacs.
Sir Hugh Allan (1810-1882)
Vale Coal, Iron and Manufacturing Company
Acadian Coal Company
Alexander Lawson (1815-1895)
Alexander Lawson’s family emigrated to New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, when he was an infant. He went to work as an apprentice in the office of the liberal Colonial Patriot of Pictou in 1828, about six months after its establishment. Having finished his apprenticeship in June 1833, he left for Halifax. Shortly after, he moved to Yarmouth, where at the age of only 18 he launched a newspaper. With the first number of the Yarmouth Herald, Lawson began a remarkable career as editor and publisher, which, apart from an interruption due to ill health between 1845 and 1851, would continue until his death 62 years later. Lawson’s career started in an age of artisan journalism, when the editor (often a former apprentice himself) was also in charge of printing his own newspaper in a small shop with one or two apprentices. Production methods were labour-intensive. The first issue of the four-column newspaper was printed on a small hand press; two employees were able to produce between 200 and 250 copies of one of the newspaper’s four pages in an hour. Gradually the operation grew larger and more diversified. In 1867 the Herald was the first Nova Scotia newspaper to introduce steam power to its printing plant. Lawson staunchly persevered at his work until a week or two before he died, following an acute asthma attack, at the age of 80. At the time of his death he was thought to be the oldest newspaper editor in Canada.
William Johnston Almon (1816-1901)
Physician and politician
Samuel Leonard Shannon (1816-1895)
Shannon as early as 1848 accepted the inevitability of confederation with the other British North American colonies.
David Honeyman (1817-1889)
In 1861 David Honeyman accepted a commission to prepare and take to England an exhibit of Nova Scotia minerals for the London International Exhibition of 1862. He represented Nova Scotia again as commissioner at the Dublin International Exhibition (1865), as executive commissioner at the Universal Exposition in Paris (1867), and at the Philadelphia Centennial International Exhibition (1876). In 1883 he represented Canada at the International Fisheries Exhibition in London. David Honeyman was an amateur who elevated himself to the position of scholarly expert and in the process helped to lay the foundations of a new science. He did much to popularize the field of geology in Nova Scotia, both through his publications and through the provincial museum. Perhaps equally important in an age of religious conformity, throughout his career he was able to combine unimpeachable religious and clerical credentials with a scientific attitude which made him an appropriate publicist for a nascent science still subject to suspicions of heresy by the religious majority.
Rev. Dr. David Honeyman (1817-1889)
Nova Scotia Museum
John McPherson (1817-1845)
Schoolteacher and poet
John Henry Crosskill (1817-1857)
[Not to be confused with his grandfather John Crosskill (1740-1826)]
Publisher, militia officer, newspaperman, and office holder
In 1838 John Henry Crosskill compiled and published in Halifax one of the province’s first textbooks, A comprehensive outline of the geography and history of Nova Scotia, whose 1,000 copies, he claimed in the preface to the second edition (1842), were sold out in “several months.” On 1 October 1840 Crosskill launched the Halifax Morning Post & Parliamentary Reporter. In October 1844 it became the first daily newspaper in Nova Scotia. In February 1844 Crosskill was appointed Queen’s Printer, which included the editorship of the Royal Gazette.
Hiram Hyde (1817-1907)
Transportation and communications entrepreneur, MLA
Hyde had the contract for operating the 1849 dispatch express on behalf of Daniel H. Craig, representing the Associated Press. Hyde is mentioned by name in “The Expresses,” a news item *The British Colonist, Halifax, 10 March 1849. Hyde is also named in “Expresses,” a news item in the **Acadian Recorder, Halifax, 10th March 1849.
Our Own Pony Express
Editorial in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald
15 February 1999
* The British Colonist was a Halifax newspaper, four pages per issue, published Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday of each week.
** TheAcadian Recorder was a newspaper founded in Halifax in 1813 by Anthony Henry Holland. In 1849, it was owned and published by Hugh William Blackadar in partnership with John English.
Walter Shanly (1817-1899)
In 1876, a generic railway statute to incorporate the Halifax and Cape Breton Railway and Coal Company (c.74) was passed by the Nova Scotia Legislature to create a corporate structure that a successful contractor could use as a charter (c.4). The Halifax and Cape Breton Railway and Coal Company was the corporate structure used during the construction of the Eastern Extension Railway between New Glasgow and the Strait of Canso. Walter Shanly and E.W. Plunkett vied unsuccessfully against Sir Hugh Allan and H.B. Abbott to construct the proposed Eastern Extension of the Intercolonial Railway in Nova Scotia from New Glasgow to Louisbourg. The firm, however, did win the contract for the Western Counties Railway between Yarmouth and Digby.
Edward Doran Davison (1819-1894)
By the 1880s E. D. Davison and Sons of Bridgewater, later renamed the Davison Lumber Company, had become the largest lumber business in Nova Scotia, with property totalling *200,000 acres. The company employed 350 men and 50 teams of oxen to supply and run five saw mills. For many years the major market for the company’s products was Argentina. Exports went also to the Azores, Madeira, and the West Indies and eventually to most countries bordering the Atlantic.
* 200,000 acres = 310 square miles = 81,000 hectares = 810 square kilometres
Edward Doran Davison Sr. (1819-1894)
Town of Bridgewater
The Davison House
Town of Bridgewater
Edward Doran Davison (1819-1894)
Wikipedia
Springfield Railway by Colin J. Churcher
(at rocarchives.com)
Springfield Railway by Colin J. Churcher
(at Glinx / Tallships Internet Inc.)
Springfield Railway by John R. Cameron
Davison Lumber & Manufacturing Company by Philip Spencer
Springfield Railway Company Ltd.
Hastings, Annapolis County
George Augustus Constantine Phipps, 3rd Earl of Mulgrave (1819-1890)
Mulgrave’s interest turned to a reorganization of the militia at a time when the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 focused attention on the state of defence in British North America.
Hibbert Binney (1819-1887)
Bishop Binney lived as one of the aristocrats of Halifax. Through his old and prominent family he inherited money, stocks, and property both in Nova Scotia and in England. He also inherited a great deal from his wife’s family.
William James Stairs (1819-1906)
Dartmouth Rope Works
Nova Scotia Steel Company
William Stairs, Son and Morrow
United Fire Insurance Company of London, England
Halifax Gas Light Company
Starr Manufacturing Company
Abel Cutler Robbins (1819-1901)
Merchant, shipowner, and entrepreneur
In the 1860s and 1870s, Robbins was one of the leading shipowners in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. He was a director of the Bank of Yarmouth, the Yarmouth Duck and Yarn Company, the Yarmouth Gas Light Company, the Western Counties Railway, the Yarmouth Woollen Mill Company, and the Burrell-Johnson Iron Company.
James William Carmichael (1819-1903)
[Not to be confused with James Carmichael (1788-1860)]
Acadia Iron Foundry
Nova Scotia Steel Company
Elizabeth Murdoch Frame (1820-1904)
Eliza Frame taught in the public schools of Nova Scotia for 30 years from 1848. Her career took her to small, remote communities but also to Shubenacadie, Truro, Dartmouth, and Maitland, Hants County. While in Maitland her curriculum extended to navigation, which she taught to local ship captains. In the 1860s Frame began her career as a published author. Frame was an active supporter of the Nova Scotia Historical Society from its formation in 1878 until the late 1890s, although she never became a member. Between 1879 and 1892 she prepared four papers for it, but it followed the practice of other provincial societies of that time and her work was always read by a man. It is ironic that in June 1892 Frame was made an honorary life member of the Massachusetts Historical Society when she presented to the MHA her paper on Micmac names in Nova Scotia.
Sir John William Dawson (1820-1899)
His first major assignment, in 1848, for the government of Nova Scotia, was the evaluation of prospects for the mining of coal in southern Cape Breton Island. During the 1850s and 1860s he achieved an enviable reputation for his microscopic studies of fossils, a reputation that continued throughout his lifetime; he was a Canadian pioneer in this field. Charles Lyell, regarded by most earth scientists today as the father of modern geology, visited Pictou in 1842 to examine the great coal deposits at Albion Mines (Stellarton) south of the town. His principal guide was Dawson, and from this encounter grew a lifelong friendship based on mutual respect. In the mid 1840s Dawson, with the encouragement and guidance of Lyell, did considerable field work in Nova Scotia, the results of which were published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London. At the same time, on contract, he undertook exploration programs for mining entrepreneurs in search of commercial mineral and coal deposits in Nova Scotia. In 1850 his friends in the House of Assembly, Joseph Howe and George Renny Young, persuaded him to assume the newly created post of superintendent of education for Nova Scotia. Howe’s most persuasive argument was that because the appointment required travel to every corner of the province, Dawson would be able to continue his private geological survey of Nova Scotia as he carried out his official duties. With the zest for work and accomplishment that was the hallmark of his life, Dawson plunged wholeheartedly into his new career. His first step as superintendent was to visit public schools in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, gathering information on curricula, normal schools, construction of school houses, and school funding. At the outset, he realized the necessity of public support for his proposed reforms, so he systematically visited all the school districts of the province and as many schools as time permitted. In the larger centres he prompted the formation of teachers’ associations and he organized a number of teachers’ institutes, weeklong courses for teachers on various topics with informal discussions on local problems. After two years of travel (1850-51) around the province and investigation into all aspects of education, he recommended the introduction of a standard curriculum taught by trained teachers in local schools. He also recommended a system of taxation to finance these schools and he stressed the importance of a normal school. The Journal of Education for Nova Scotia (Halifax), which he instituted in 1851 and largely wrote, explained and discussed his proposed reforms. The government was slow to react to his proposals, and in 1852 when he had completed his report, Dawson resigned, citing “the requirements of his private interests and duties.”
Charles Fenerty (1821-1892)
Today we take for granted that most paper is made from wood, but in the early 1800s all paper was made from rags. The ever-increasing demand for paper from printing shops and newspaper offices in Europe and North America was outstripping the availability of rags. About 1838, Charles Fenerty took up the challenge of finding a means of producing paper from wood.
Sir John Joseph Caldwell Abbott (1821-1893)
Intercolonial Coal Mining Company
Eastern Extension Railway
Sir Charles Tupper (1821-1915)
[Not to be confused with Charles Tupper (1794-1881)]
[Not to be confused with Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper (1855-1927)]
Physician and politician
Premier of Nova Scotia: 1864 – 1867
Provincial Secretary, Nova Scotia: 1857 – 1860, 1863 – 1867
Participant in the Confederation Conferences at
Charlottetown 1864, Quebec 1864, and London 1866
Father of Confederation: 1867
President, Canadian Medical Association: 1867 – 1870
President of the Privy Council: 1870 – 1872
Inland Revenue: 1872 – 1873
Customs: 1873
Public Works: 1878 – 1879
Railways and Canals: 1879 – 1884
Finance: 1887 – 1888
Secretary of State: 1896
Prime Minister: 1 May 1896 – 8 July 1896 (68 days)
In 1864 Tupper, then Premier of Nova Scotia, passed the first Free School Act, establishing a system of provincially-subsidized common schools, subject to regulation by a superintendent of education under the direction of a Council of Public Instruction, composed of the members of the Executive Council. The act did not introduce local taxation; it simply promised greater financial support to school districts which instituted compulsory assessment. When fewer than half did so, Tupper introduced another act in 1865 imposing compulsory taxation. He appointed Theodore H. Rand as the first superintendent of education.
James Stewart Tupper (1851-1915)
Manitoba Historical Society
William Johnston Tupper (1862-1947)
Tupper & Adams, Winnipeg
William Johnston Tupper (1862-1947)
German Wikipedia
Daniel McNeill Parker (1822-1907)
Physician and politician
Avard Longley (1823-1884)
Avard Longley gave his full support to Premier Charles Tupper’s controversial bill in 1864 which established a public school system supported by compulsory assessment, although many of his Annapolis County constituents opposed the plan. In late 1864 Longley was appointed commissioner of railways for Nova Scotia, a post he occupied until 1869; under his direction, railway lines were constructed between Truro and Pictou Landing, and between Windsor and Annapolis.
Henry Youle Hind (1823-1908)
Teacher, professor, journalist, geologist, explorer, and author
Henry Youle Hind moved his family to Windsor, Nova Scotia, in the autumn of 1866. In Nova Scotia, Hind became a consulting geologist for the provincial government and undertook promotional work for mining groups. He also published a number of scientific articles, as well as some that boosted mineral resources. In 1876 he surveyed the coast of Labrador and became keenly interested in its fisheries and ocean currents. His map of Labrador currents brought him a gold medal and a diploma two years later at the universal exposition in Paris. He was a member of the board of governors of King’s College in Windsor during the 1880s, wrote a history of the college, and received an honorary DCL from it in 1890.
Frederic Newton Gisborne (1824-1892)
In 1849, Gisborne became superintendent and chief operator of the Nova Scotia government telegraph lines, then the only electric* telegraph lines in the province. In March 1851 the Nova Scotia legislature incorporated the privately owned Nova Scotia Electric Telegraph Company to take over the government lines and build additional lines around the province. Gisborne left the employ of the government on 1 July when all the government owned telegraph assets were sold to the new company.
* Long before the invention of electric telegraph communication systems, there were extensive semaphore telegraph communication systems, in Nova Scotia as well as many other locations around the world.
George Patterson (1824-1897)
Journalist, Presbyterian minister, author, and antiquarian
George Patterson published articles on such scholarly and antiquarian subjects as early European exploration and settlement in North America, Indian burial sites, and Newfoundland dialects. His writings brought him honours and recognition. He was a member of the Nova Scotian Institute of Natural Science, the Nova Scotia Historical Society, and the American Folk-Lore Society. In 1874 the College of New‘Jersey (Princeton University) gave him an honorary doctorate in divinity. He received the Akins Historical Prize on three occasions, in 1874 for his history of Pictou County, in 1893 for an essay on French Protestant emigrations to Nova Scotia, and the following year for a history of Sable Island. Dalhousie University awarded him an honorary LL.D. in 1896 “in recognition of the eminent service which he has rendered in the development of local history.” His best known work is his History of the county of Pictou, Nova Scotia. In the preface he describes how “he has spared no effort to gain information. He has ransacked the County and Provincial records, and teased officials with his enquiries; he has plodded his weary way through newspaper files, and works of Colonial history; he has interrogated Micmacs, and, as the Scotch would say, ‘expiscated’ every old man and woman he has met with in the county for years; he has also conducted a large correspondence, and visited various sections of the country in search of facts.” To the present time this work is the bench-mark by which other county histories of Nova Scotia are measured. Few have surpassed Patterson’s high standards.
Peter Wilmot (1824-1932)
In his later years, Peter Wilmot was famous
as the eldest living Nova Scotian.
Sarah Herbert (1824-1846)
Author, publisher, and educator
Archibald Woodbury McLelan (1824-1890)
McLelan was a man of judgement and good sense. In Nova Scotia, he opposed Confederation until impassable barriers had been reached, then made the best he could of it, and tried to persuade his fellow Nova Scotians to do the same. In 1881 McLelan joined the government of Sir John A. as president of the council, Joseph Howe’s old portfolio. In July 1882, he became minister of Marine and Fisheries. He was an unusually good minister, being thoroughly familiar with the shipping business, and being by nature hard-working and judicious. Within a month of his appointment he had already visited Sable Island and all the lighthouses on the eastern coast of Nova Scotia, and was on his way up the St. Lawrence to the Saguenay. On 10 July 1888 he accepted the position of lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia.
John McDougall (c.1825-1892)
Manufacturer and financier
John McDougall was the main financial backer of the Cumberland Railway and Coal Company of Springhill, Nova Scotia.
John Robert Willis (1825-1876)
The first Nova Scotian conchologist
In 1865, Willis was appointed secretary to the new Halifax board of school commissioners. He was elected as a corresponding member of the Liverpool Natural History and Microscopical Society in 1862, of the Boston Society of Natural History in 1863, and of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in about 1866.
George Munro (1825-1896)
George Munro was Dalhousie University’s first major benefactor and the most generous donor to a Canadian university in the 19th century.
Sir Sandford Fleming (1827-1915)
In 1867 the new Dominion government appointed him engineer-in-chief of the Intercolonial Railway, a position he held until 1876. He organized the Intercolonial survey forces, approved contracts for construction, and, prior to Confederation, even carried out the building himself of a railway between Truro and Pictou Landing in Nova Scotia (the track that remains today in regular operation as the main line between Truro and New Glasgow of the Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia Railway). Fleming’s travels had exposed him to the prevailing confusion in the measurement of time in both North America and Europe. The practice of keeping local time – with each individual city and town having its own time based on when the sun was highest over that community – was universal, except in Britain, where the extensive development of railways had led to the adoption of a system of standard time. As the rail network developed in North America, the problems of scheduling and keeping track of trains multiplied. Fleming worked out a plan which was put into effect on 18 November 1883, when the railways of North America adopted the system of one-hour time zones that remains in force today.
Mary Jane Katzmann (1828-1890)
Poet, editor, and historian
Although Mary Jane Katzmann (Mrs. Lawson) has been remembered primarily for her single volume of social history, History of the townships of Dartmouth, Preston and Lawrencetown, Halifax County, N.S., the significance of her earlier career cannot be overlooked. In an age when women accomplished little beyond the circle of home and charity, her success, although limited to the provincial sphere, was threefold: as the capable and youthful editor of a successful, if short-lived, periodical, as an able businesswoman in a circle dominated by male initiative, and as one of the first native Nova Scotian women to achieve literary recognition, and certainly the first to make an enduring impression. Her contribution to the colonial intellectual scene is one which cannot be ignored.
Mather Byles DesBrisay (1828-1900)
Lawyer, politician, office holder, judge, and historian
James McDonald (1828-1912)
In 1863, James McDonald was appointed chief railway commissioner of Nova Scotia, and fought to have the existing Halifax to Truro railway extended to his rapidly industrializing Pictou county riding. Premier Charles Tupper was in no hurry to indulge Pictou County, second largest urban centre in the province, with a railway from Truro, but McDonald continued to press his case, and was successful in 1864. In May 1881, he was appointed Chief Justice of Nova Scotia – a rare case of a lawyer being appointed directly to the post of Chief Justice. When McDonald came to the Supreme Court, it badly needed new blood. Some 15 or 20 important civil cases were in arrears. Two of the judges, aged and in poor health, were not pulling their weight. McDonald was just under 53 years old, and brought to the court energy, affability, and courtesy, though when contradicted he could be outspoken and noisy. Fluent in Gaelic, he once presided over a trial at Baddeck in which he and everyone else involved – lawyers, witnesses and jurors – used only that language. Judges more learned than he there have certainly been, but few more determined to do what was just. His weakness was his sympathy with litigants, and he would strain the law to the breaking-point to save someone. Another weakness, which J.S.D. Thompson noted when he came to the court in 1882, was that McDonald’s law was old-fashioned. He never seems to have felt it his duty to read law assiduously. He also lacked, in Thompson’s opinion, what every first-class judge must have – patience and a retentive mind that was comfortable with detail.
Henry How (1828-1879)
Henry How prepared a collection of Nova Scotia minerals for the Paris Exposition of 1867, and this collection became the basis of the Nova Scotia Museum, founded in 1868. He brought the most recent chemical techniques from Europe to Nova Scotia and provided Nova Scotia students with an alternative to classical studies. In addition to his 25-year career as a teacher, he constantly corresponded with learned men in Great Britain, carried on original research in both analytical chemistry and mineralogy, and served as a consultant to government and industry. Through his pupils and his writings, he strongly influenced science in Nova Scotia in the 19th century.
John Barnhill Dickie (1829-1886)
Teacher, farmer, shipbuilder, and politician
William Neilson Edward Hall (1829-1904)
The son of slaves who escaped the American south during the War of 1812, Hall enlisted in the Royal Navy as an able seaman in February 1852, and he was in the battleship HMS Rodney for four years. During the Crimean War (1853-1856) he took part in the siege of Sevastopol (Ukraine) as the captain of a gun in the siege batteries, and he was present at the battle of Inkerman. In 1856 he was assigned to the frigate HMS Shannon. When the Indian Mutiny broke out in May 1857, Shannon was sent to Calcutta. Naval reinforcements were urgently required to assist the British army, and Hall was one of the seamen and marines from Shannon who were formed into a naval brigade and sent as part of the force marching to the relief of Lucknow, then besieged by mutineers. On 16 November 1857 the expedition arrived before the town. Two 24-pounder guns crewed by the Shannon’s men were set the task of breaching the walls of a mosque which was a strong point of the defence. Within a short time the six men of one gun crew had become casualties, and of the second gun crew only Hall and Lieutenant Thomas James Young were standing. The two worked the gun in a storm of bullets, firing until a breach had been made and British troops had crossed over the walls. Their gallantry contributed materially to the lifting of the siege, and they were successfully nominated for the Victoria Cross. Hall was presented with the award on 28 October 1859, the first black, the first Nova Scotian, and the first Canadian sailor to receive the decoration. Hall retired on 10 June 1876 with the rank of quartermaster and a certificate of good conduct, and he settled on the family farm near Hantsport. In 1945 his remains were reinterred in the grounds of the Hantsport Baptist church, and in 1947 a commemorative cairn was erected there by the Canadian Legion.
Edward Manning Saunders (1829-1916)
[Not to be confused with Edward Manning (1766-1851)]
Saunders was active in the rebuilding of Acadia University after the disastrous fire of 1877. To the end of his life Saunders remained interested in new ideas and experiences. In 1916, at the age of 86, he lamented the departure of a flotilla of submarines from Halifax Harbour before he managed to get on board one of them.
Otto Schwartz Weeks (1830-1892)
In the mid 1860s he set up a practice in Windsor and over the years became widely known for his ability to influence juries, reportedly having few equals in repartee in the court-room.
John Taylor Wood (1830-1904)
Aide to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy
Confederate naval officer, merchant, and insurance broker
Vice-commodore of the Royal Halifax Yacht Club
John Taylor Wood was the grandson of United States President Zachary Taylor, and the nephew of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Wood received a lieutenant’s commission in the Confederate Navy. He was best known for his raids against Union ships. In August 1864, Wood was given command of CSS Tallahassee, with which he terrorized the North, from New York to Maine, capturing or destroying 31 Union vessels before his raiding career was through. He received the rank of Captain in February 1865. Between raids he served on President Jefferson’s staff, and was captured with Davis in May 1865, at the end of the war. He escaped, made his way to Cuba, and eventually settled in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he went into the shipping business. Taylor Wood’s adventures inspired Robert Louis Stevenson‘s work.
John Taylor Wood (1830-1904)
Camp Hill cemetery
John Taylor Wood (1830-1904)
Wikipedia
Loran Ellis Baker (1831-1899)
L.E. Baker was president and a director of the Bank of Yarmouth, and first president of the Western Counties Railway Company. Other business interests in the 1870s and 1880s included the Yarmouth Gas Light Company, Yarmouth Marine Railway Company, Mountain Cemetery Company, Yarmouth Water Company, Yarmouth Woollen Mill Company, and Cowan Gold Mining Company. Baker, through the Yarmouth Steamship Company, is credited with establishing the tourist industry in Nova Scotia.
Robert Grant Haliburton (1831-1901)
Called to the bar in 1853, Haliburton established a practice in Halifax and shortly after became interpreter and translator of German and French in the Vice-Admiralty Court. In 1862 he served as secretary to the Nova Scotia commissioners for the International Exhibition in London. He was the first president of the Nova Scotia Fruit Growers’ Association in 1863. Following the dissolution of the General Mining Association’s monopoly in Nova Scotia in 1858, Haliburton was one of the competitive investors who took up mining rights in the Pictou coalfields.
James Glode (1831-1936)
Micmac (Mi’kmaw) hunter and guide
Simon Hugh Holmes (1831-1919)
In 1858 Holmes founded and become first editor of the Pictou Colonial Standard.
Mary Eliza Herbert (c.1832-1872)
Author and magazine editor
Robert Motton (1832-1898)
In 1882 Motton became one of two legal advisers to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, the major prosecuting body in the magistrate’s court as it brought to trial those accused of abusing women, children, seamen, and animals.
Isaac Sallis (c.1833-1904)
Soldier, tavern keeper, drayman, and florist
Sallis arrived in Halifax in June 1856, and began business in the upper streets of Halifax as a lodging-house keeper and liquor seller, catering to rank-and-file soldiers, naval sailors, and the resident and transient working classes. The marginal liquor trade was risky and highly competitive, fraught with capriciously enforced restrictions and patronized by quarrelsome and unpopular soldiers and sailors. Sallis was tried at least 39 times in the police, city criminal, and supreme courts between 1857 and 1880. In later years, his image was greatly enhanced by his role as an honourable veteran. With the rise of imperialist sentiment as part of the Canadian nationalism of the 1880s came a belated public fascination with local military heroes, especially those who had fought in the Crimean War (1853-1856), and the Indian Mutiny (1857). In Halifax, the only major British military garrison still maintained in Canada, veterans from the ranks such as Sallis found a prestigious patron in Major-General John Wimburn Laurie to help them organize a mutual benefit and social club in 1884 known as the Royal British Veterans’ Society of Nova Scotia (incorporated 1899). Buoyed up by militaristic fervour aroused by the North-West Rebellion (1885) at home, followed by the South African War (1899-1902) abroad, the veterans became a cherished relic of past military glories and were apparently forgiven their low-status civilian occupations and their wayward and dubious experiences.
William George Richardson Hind (1833-1889)
Painter
William George Richardson Hind spent his later years in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and probably worked as a draughtsman for the International Railway Company. [This reference to the “International Railway Company”, which appears in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography source, is a mistake. It should read Intercolonial Railway Company, which in the 1870s and 1880s was by far the largest railway operating in the three Maritime Provinces. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online appears to have no way for mistakes to be corrected (no doubt a relic of the print culture of the original DCB in which, after the book has gone through the press, there really is no way for mistakes to be corrected).] But as an avocation he continued to sketch vignettes in pencil, water-colour, and oil, picturing life in smaller centres such as Shediac, New Brunswick, Matapédia, Quebec, as well as Pictou and Windsor, Nova Scotia. The most delightful, which include Pictou streets, port activities, the repairing of undersea cables, and the building of wooden ships, appear in an 1876 diary converted into a sketch-book. A belated honour for Hind was the inclusion of one of his paintings in the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London in 1886.
Major Theakston (1833-1917)
Although most of the family settled in Halifax, Theakston went to Canning, Nova Scotia, where after a short stint in a shipyard he returned to printing, first as an employee of newspaperman Harold Albert Borden and then in 1865 as proprietor of the Kings County Advertiser. In 1866 he moved to Wolfville and with his brother William began the Acadian and a general printing business. The newspaper failed in 1870. Although his contribution to printing and journalism was significant, Theakston is best remembered as city missionary par excellence. In the 1870s he engaged in largely spiritual work centred on domiciliary visits, prayer meetings, temperance meetings, and the child-focused activities of Sunday schools and temperance bands of hope. Theakston also became well known for his attempt to humanize gruelling relief work sponsored by the Halifax Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, during winters of severe unemployment before World War One. On the spot with coffee and rolls on cold mornings, he tried to raise the spirits of the men who slaved at stone-breaking for a pittance. He died on 11 December 1917 as a result of injuries sustained in the Halifax explosion of 6 December.
James De Mille (1833-1880)
In 1865 De Mille moved to Halifax to become professor of history and rhetoric at Dalhousie College, having in the same year refused an appointment as superintendent of education for Nova Scotia. He spent the rest of his life in Halifax, enhancing his reputation as a teacher and publishing, at the rate of about two a year, a long series of books. He wrote his novels under tremendous pressure, perhaps driven by the debts incurred during his business venture. During this time he also wrote The elements of rhetoric (1878), a well-planned and gracefully executed textbook.
Robert Linton Weatherbe (1834-1915)
Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, January 1905 to March 1907
In February 1868 he was appointed law clerk to the Legislative Council in Halifax. He first practised law alone, and then with another lawyer, before becoming associated with Wallace Nesbit Graham shortly after the latter’s call to the bar in 1871. In 1874 they engaged Robert Laird Borden as an articling clerk. Weatherbe and Graham both developed into extremely successful lawyers and each became Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court.
Charles Fleetford Sise (1834-1918)
In the early 1880s, the Bell Telephone Company of Canada, headed by Sise, acquired all telephone operations throughout Canada. Under his direction, in 1885 Bell Telephone sold its Prince Edward Island telephone business. This was followed by the sale, in 1888-89, of Bell Telephone’s operations in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Bell’s Nova Scotia assets were purchased by the Nova Scotia Telephone Company, which in 1910 was reorganized as Maritime Telegraph & Telephone Company. In 1999, the owners of the major provincial telecommunications companies in Atlantic Canada – Bruncor Inc. (New Brunswick), Island Telecom Inc. (Prince Edward Island), Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company Limited (Nova Scotia), and NewTel Enterprises Limited (Newfoundland) – were merged into one company, Aliant Inc., which then became the the dominant telephone company throughout Atlantic Canada. In 2006, Aliant Inc. was reorganized as Bell Aliant Inc.
Theodore Harding Rand (1835-1900)
With the accession to power in May 1863 of a new provincial government in Nova Scotia, the cause of public education in Nova Scotia was rapidly advanced. A series of school bills, passed in the legislature between 1864 and 1866, called for the creation of a public school system funded by general assessment. The new Premier, Charles Tupper, sought the advice of Alexander Forrester and Theodore Harding Rand on the details of the 1864 legislation and in May of that year appointed Rand as the new superintendent of education. The educational revolution wrought by the introduction of “free schools” in Nova Scotia was scarcely less controversial than the confederation movement, launched at the same time. Once in office, Rand manifested the energy for which he would eventually become legendary. In addition to prodding the government to improve the legislation relating to public schools, he founded the Journal of Education, first published in 1866, to fire the enthusiasm of teachers, encouraged the Provincial Education Association of Nova Scotia to bring educators together in a professional association, and led the assault against the opponents of the new system. These opponents were so numerous that, according to one observer, for a week at a time Rand “never took off his clothes. He would throw himself on a couch in his office for a few hours’ sleep, and then return to his work.” In many parts of the province there was outright defiance of the legislation requiring local assessment, and meetings to choose trustees and sites for new schools often ended in pandemonium. Rand’s reports outlining the progress made in education under the new regime were models of their kind, offering a variety of statistical charts to demonstrate the truth of his claims. His attention to administrative detail and his faith in the value of education for the improvement of individuals and society marked him as one of the new breed of professional school promoters. Although he failed to accomplish all that he set out to do, a goal neatly summed up in his motto, “Schools for all and all for schools,” he managed to lay foundations for a public education system in Nova Scotia that would remain fundamentally unaltered for nearly a century.
John Wimburn Laurie (1835-1912)
Laurie entered the British Army in 1853 and served in the Crimean War (1853-1856) and in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny (1857). Laurie also served during the North-West Rebellion of 1885. He achieved the rank of Lieutenant General in 1887. Laurie was warden for Halifax County in 1880, and represented Shelburne, Nova Scotia in the Canadian House of Commons from 1887 to 1891.
George Monro Grant (1835-1902)
Presbyterian minister, author, and educator
George Monro Grant attended the University of Glasgow from 1853 to 1860 and performed brilliantly. He won prizes in subjects as diverse as Greek and chemistry, and was awarded his MA in 1857 with great distinction. He returned to Nova Scotia in 1861. In 1863 he was called to St. Matthew’s Church in Halifax, the largest and wealthiest Presbyterian congregation in the Maritimes. There he preached frankly to his congregation of merchants and shipowners on the relationship of labour and capital and denounced men who made money by risking the lives of their crews in unseaworthy hulks or saw charity at home as a substitute for justice at sea. Obituary tributes did not hesitate to rank his contribution to Canada with those of Sir John A. Macdonald and Joseph Howe.
William Garvie (1837-1872)
William Garvie was elected to represent Halifax County in the provincial election of May 1871. When the new assembly opened, 22 February 1872, Garvie was too ill to attend, but an attack on the government in the house brought him from his bed despite the expostulations of friends. There he made an impassioned and powerful speech in support of the government on 24 February 1872. It was the first and last day he was ever in the House.
Stephen P. Benjamin (1837-1912)
Lumber baron and mystery entrepreneur
by Ed Coleman, 13 August 2004
Stephen P. Benjamin (1837-1912)
White Rock’s grist and lumber mill
by Ed Coleman, 3 July 1998
S.P. Benjamin Company Limited
Postcard showing the S.P. Benjamin Lumber Mill,
on the south bank of the Gaspereau River
at White Rock, Kings County, 1890s.
Stephen P. Benjamin (1837-1912)
White Rock’s old grist and lumber mill
by Ed Coleman, 26 June 1998
Stephen P. Benjamin (1837-1912)
Old grist mill, old ledgers
by Ed Coleman, 24 September 1999
Stephen P. Benjamin (1837-1912)
Looking back: Wolfville and Gaspereau
by Ed Coleman, 18 September 1998
Stephen P. Benjamin (1837-1912)
In 1901 (a lease was granted) to the firm of Messrs. Calder and Muir of Nova Scotia, of a timber limit upon the Kenamou River (in Labrador). In the fall of 1901, they erected a portable mill at Carter’s Basin; they cut timber throughout the winter and sawed it in the following summer. The lumber was sold to the Grand River Pulp and Lumber Co., which shipped it away. About 1907, Messrs. Carter and Muir sold their limit to S.P. Benjamin of Nova Scotia, who in the winter of that year had a gang of 14 or 15 men on the limit. They cut a large quantity of logs but nothing further was done… [boldface emphasis added]
Dated at Carter’s Basin, Lake Melville (Labrador), this 19th day of July A.D. 1921.
Malcolm McLean
—Source: Voluntary Statement of Malcolm McLean of Carter Basin, Lake Melville
David Pottinger (1838-1938)
Born in Pictou, David Pottinger joined the Nova Scotia Railway as a clerk in 1863, and was station master at Halifax (Richmond) by 1872. He was a cousin of Sir John Thompson, Nova Scotia premier and later Canadian prime minister. Pottinger was chief superintendent of the Intercolonial Railway, 1879-1892. A such he was the mediator of disputes that arose between customers, employees and politicians. He has been praised for his ability to curb the interference of his political bosses and the often slovenly work habits of the employees. He was General Manager of Canadian Government Railways from 1892-1904 and retired in 1913.
James Drummond McGregor (1838-1918)
[Not to be confused with James Drummond MacGregor (1759-1830)]
Mayor of New Glasgow, 1879- ?
MLA representing Pictou County, 1890-1894 and 1897-1900.
Appointed to the Senate in Ottawa, 1903.
Resigned from the Senate in 1910 to become Lieutenant-Governor.
Lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, 1910-1915.
Henry George Clopper Ketchum (1839-1896)
While surveying railway lines across the Chignecto Isthmus, Ketchum conceived the scheme for which he would become famous. The historic crossroads of the Maritimes, Chignecto provides a land-bridge between the peninsula of Nova Scotia and mainland New Brunswick, but at the same time presents a barrier between Cumberland Basin and Baie Verte, and consequently an obstacle to shipping between the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Since the first European settlement of the area, plans have been put forward for a canal through the isthmus to facilitate shipping.
Emil Vossnack (1839-1885)
In New York City, Emil Vossnack instructed classes in mechanical engineering at the Cooper Union and the Mechanics’ Institute, and was associated with Danforth and Cooke‘s Locomotive Shop. In 1870 he moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was employed at the Nova Scotia Iron Works* where he built the first locomotives manufactured in the province – three of these were completed in 1872, and two more in 1873. In June 1876 William and Alexander Moir consulted Vossnack regarding plans to build a waterpower works, flour-mill, box mill, and grain elevator on the Nine Mile River at Bedford. They engaged him to prepare plans for the buildings, to design the machinery, and to superintend the whole works after completion. Vossnack finished this extensive enterprise entirely to their satisfaction, and was thus responsible for building the first grain elevator in the Maritime provinces. During the 1880s he became interested in the sulphite process of making wood-pulp for paper. In 1884 he started a wood-pulp company at Granville Ferry, a pioneering enterprise in the use of the sulphite process in Nova Scotia. He then became involved in promoting wood-pulp mills at Ellerhouse, in Hants County, and at Milton, in Queens County.
“Drawing in public, high & normal schools: a letter from
Emil Vossnack, C.E. to the Council of Public Instruction
for the province of Nova Scotia, and the
School commissioners of the city of Halifax”
by Emil Vossnack, 1879
* The Chebucto Foundry was later better known as the Nova Scotia Iron Works, operated by William Montgomery, and it did build at least eight steam locomotives for the Intercolonial Railway in 1872-73… Chebucto Foundry Employees – ICR
David MacKeen (1839-1916)
Caledonia Coal Company
Dominion Coal Company (DOMCO)
Dominion Iron and Steel Company (DISCO)
Henry Melville Whitney (1839-1923)
Dominion Coal Company (DOMCO)
Dominion Iron and Steel Company (DISCO)
The Dominion Coal Company was incorporated in 1893 with Whitney as president, F.S. Pearson as engineer-in-chief, and B.F. Pearson as secretary. Numerous efficiencies and improvements were quickly evident, and within a decade Dominion Coal had 4,000 employees and production had quadrupled. There was also a long list of expensive mistakes and extravagant expenditures.
Henry Melville Whitney Wikipedia
John Kellum (c.1840-1905)
John Kellum was a black resident of underclass Halifax, where members of minority racial and ethnic groups struggled for survival and were largely denied the opportunity for a decent existence. Crime became a prominent feature of his life. As a teenager, in 1857 he served his first sentence, for assault, in the Halifax bridewell (workhouse), the institution that preceded the city prison of 1860. Between 1857 and 1903 he went to jail about a hundred times, usually for such offences as drunkenness, vagrancy, and larceny, and served sentences ranging from a few days to a year. It is known that John Kellum commanded the respect of the police and prison authorities. William Murray, the hard-nosed governor of Rockhead Prison, eulogized Kellum at the end of his jail career in 1903 as “one of the most trustworthy men that has ever been at the prison… He never will attempt to escape… He was a good worker.”
Louisa Ann Johnson (c.1840-1911)
Dressmaker, shopkeeper, and churchwoman
Her retail businesses were mostly on Gottingen Street in Halifax.
Robert Drummond (1840-1925)
Provincial Workmen’s Association of Nova Scotia
Peter Evander McKerrow (1841-1906)
McKerrow emerged as the most articulate and one of the most active and respected black secular leaders of the last quarter of the 19th century in Halifax. He was the first black historian of the province. After a battle with the Halifax Board of School Commissioners in 1872 over the treatment of his eldest son, McKerrow contributed for the next two decades to the petitions, delegations, and public meetings in favour of equal educational opportunities for African-Nova Scotians in the public schools, arguing that as citizens who shared the same duties as whites, blacks should also have the same rights.
Joshua Slocum (1844-1909)
Slocum decided to celebrate his sailing skills by sailing alone around the world, which no one had done before. He left Boston in the Spray on 24 April 1895. He returned to Nova Scotia for the first time in 35 years to visit childhood friends, and in Yarmouth he bought the one-handed clock he called his navigational chronometer. The joke hid his skills as a navigator, including his ability to find longitude by complex calculations from lunar observations. He crossed the Atlantic to Gibraltar, where, daunted by stories of Mediterranean and Red Sea pirates, he changed direction and headed southwest towards Cape Horn. At the end of the Americas, where the Atlantic and Pacific collide to form the most dangerous sea in the world, Slocum had “the greatest sea adventure of my life.” After completing the difficult 350-mile [570km] passage through the Strait of Magellan, he was driven by a storm for four days towards Cape Horn. He thought, mistakenly, that he had rounded it, and headed north towards one of the greatest death-traps in the oceans, the shallow entrance to Cockburn Channel. In freezing darkness and fierce squalls he struggled to stand off it, and with daylight worked north into the Strait of Magellan…
Nova Scotians claim Slocum as one of their own – a monument to him was unveiled at Westport in 1961. Press articles about him appear with increasing frequency. His defiance of a changing world, once seen as an oddity or a nuisance, is now as honoured as his seamanship.
Joshua Slocum (1844-1909) Wikipedia
Charles James Townshend (1844-1924)
Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court
2 November 1907 to 10 April 1915
Charles Townshend was an able jurist and his legal opinions were well respected in the Supreme Court of Canada; his views, however, tended to be conservative. When in parliament he had opposed women’s suffrage, and in a number of decisions he gave a restrictive interpretation to Nova Scotia’s Married Women’s Property Act of 1884 until it was substantially amended in 1898. While he was best known to contemporaries as a judge, Townshend will be remembered mostly as a historian. His book on the history of the provincial courts of common law and equity marks the first serious institutional study of Nova Scotia courts. Based largely on original documents, it approaches professional historical standards. Townshend delivered the oration at the public celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of representative government in Nova Scotia in 1908. In contrast to early Victorian celebrations, in which representatives of the black and native communities played a part and which sometimes included women, the 1908 event was a white, Anglo-Saxon, male show, arranged to illustrate the superiority of the British race and to bathe provincial institutions in the reflected light of imperial glory.
John James Stewart (1844-1907)
[Not to be confused with John Stewart (c.1800-1880)]
In 1875 John James Stewart, law partner of Robert Sedgewick, became one of 88 shareholders in the last morning daily newspaper to be founded in the 19th century in Halifax, the Morning Herald. In 1878 he became its third editor. The Morning Herald was joined in 1879 by an afternoon companion, the Evening Mail, and quickly became the equal of its rivals in circulation and advertising, and by 1892, the year it was renamed the Halifax Herald, moved into a lead never relinquished. They flourished mainly because the news editor, William Dennis, devoted himself to promotion, circulation, and a vigorous policy of reporting that frequently flirted with the sensational. Stewart and Dennis became fifty-fifty partners in 1897. After Stewart’s death in 1907, Dennis bought his share in the Herald and Mail.
Henry Skeffington Poole (1844-1917)
1872: Appointed government inspector of mines in Nova Scotia
1878: General manager of the Acadia Coal Company in Stellarton
Mary Elizabeth Graves ( ? -1901)
Educator
The destruction by fire in December 1877 of the main building of Acadia forced the board of governors to replan Baptist educational facilities in Wolfville. Although classes at the secondary level had been coeducational since 1873, after considerable controversy it was decided to create a separate female academy. A building was erected during 1878-79, complete with indoor plumbing and hot running water, and Graves was appointed principal of the new female seminary on 22 August 1879. Graves came to Wolfville acclaimed as “a lady of executive ability and a teacher of high reputation,” and she lived up to the description. The presence of Greek, Latin, French, German, zoology, bookkeeping, and chemistry in the curriculum of the seminary makes clear that she intended the course to be a serious academic experience for the young women under her care.
John Thomas Bulmer (c.1845-1901)
Bulmer was called to the Nova Scotia bar in 1875. He would practise law in Halifax for the rest of his life, achieving a considerable reputation as counsel for defendants in criminal trials; he served this clientele primarily because of his sympathy for the underdog. Bulmer served as recording secretary and librarian of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, founded largely on his initiative in January 1878, and edited the first volume of its Collections (1878). Concern about the deteriorating state of the Legislative Library resulted in his appointment as provincial librarian in the summer of 1879. He found a library of some 6,000 volumes, many of dubious value, and would leave behind him one of over 25,000 volumes, including many rare books and a valuable array of old Nova Scotian periodicals. According to some accounts, he had created the second or third largest library in the Dominion by 1882. This feat was achieved without cost, all items being procured by donation or exchange. After black children had been barred from Halifax public schools in 1876, Bulmer was active in the campaign which succeeded in reversing this decision in 1884. He gave encouragement and assistance to James Robinson Johnston, Nova Scotia’s first black lawyer.
Henry Dugwell Blackadar (1845-1901)
Like others of his family, Henry Dugwell Blackadar is inextricably connected with the Acadian Recorder, a newspaper founded in Halifax in 1813 by Anthony Henry Holland, of which his father became joint proprietor in 1837 and sole proprietor in 1857. In the Recorder office, when he was only seven, Henry learned to set type – which required an ability to read English fluently in mirror-image (right to left). The newspaper business was in his blood and on his father’s death in 1863 he became a reporter for the Recorder. His elder brother, Hugh William Blackadar, took over as proprietor and converted the newspaper from a weekly to a tri-weekly and later a daily. Henry became editor in 1867 and held the position for 34 years, until his death. When Hugh William became postmaster of Halifax in 1874, Henry assumed the proprietorship and with his younger brother Charles Coleman Blackadar ran the paper. Henry was eminently qualified for his duties. Fully acquainted with the practical side of the newspaper business from childhood, he knew intimately the people of Halifax and had a wide knowledge of early provincial history. To the envy of other newspapermen, “he could produce an editorial by setting it direct from the case”. During the first three decades of the 20th century, after Henry’s death in 1901, the Recorder went into decline. It did not move with the times, being the last Nova Scotian daily to be typeset by hand. It ceased publication in 1930.
| • YouTube video Learning to set type: How to use a composing stick 9:27 This is a good demonstration of how type is set by hand. It was done this way in Henry Blackadar’s time. |
Annie Emma Affleck (1845-1913)
Her writing style was forceful and brisk, shot through with marvellous gleams of common sense. In July 1870 she married J.S.D. Thompson. In large part, she made Thompson’s career possible. He went to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia in 1882 on his own merits, but she was the one who in 1885, when the opportunity arose for her husband to become minister of justice in Ottawa, virtually pushed him out of the house to take it. She thought he should leave that bunch of “sere old crows” (her words) on the Nova Scotia bench and get out into a world which would better test and demonstrate his talents. He did not really want to go: she was the one who decided.
Annie Thompson Wikipedia
Job Abbott (1845-1896)
On 23 September 1882 a federal charter was issued to Dominion Bridge Company Limited to manufacture iron and steel as well as to fabricate and erect bridges and structural work throughout Canada. Job Abbott became president and chief engineer at a salary of $5,000 and a commission of ten per cent on all company business. Dominion Bridge soon obtained several important contracts. In 1883-84 it constructed an unequal arm cantilever bridge over the Reversing Falls at Saint John, New Brunswick; besides being an early example of cantilever construction in Canada, the bridge was built of steel, which had only recently been developed as a building material. Other structures of note built by the firm include the Grand Narrows Bridge – the longest railway bridge, then and now, in Nova Scotia – built in 1887-89 for the Intercolonial Railway across Barra Strait of Bras d’Or Lake in Cape Breton.
Job Abbott (1845-1896) Wikipedia
Every Bridge Tells a Story by Jay Underwood
(The Story of the Grand Narrows Bridge)
Canadian Rail Magazine n499
March-April 2004, pages 43-47
John Sparrow David Thompson (1845-1894)
[Not to be confused with John Sparrow Thompson (1795-1867)]
Sir John Sparrow David Thompson was a lawyer, judge, politician, and university professor, who served as the fourth Prime Minister of Canada from 5 December 1892 until his death in office on 12 December 1894, as well as the fifth Premier of Nova Scotia in 1882. He was the first Roman Catholic to hold the office of Prime Minister. Thompson was called to the Nova Scotia Bar in July 1865, and from 1878 to 1882 served as Attorney General in the provincial government. He held the office of Nova Scotia premier for 54 days in 1882, 25 May to 18 July. Thompson was then appointed to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. In this role, he was instrumental in founding the Dalhousie Law School in 1883. He taught law courses at Dalhousie in its early years.
John Sparrow David Thompson Wikipedia
Graham Fraser (1846-1915)
Hope Iron Works
Nova Scotia Forge Company
Nova Scotia Steel Company
Nova Scotia Steel and Forge Company
New Glasgow Iron, Coal and Railway Company
Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company
Dominion Iron and Steel Company
Mayor of New Glasgow
Zebulon Aiton Lash (1846-1920)
In May 1876 Z.A. Lash was named chief clerk of the Department of Justice in Ottawa. In 1882 Lash left the Department of Justice to join Edward Blake’s law firm in Toronto. It was in this firm that Lash developed his reputation as the foremost Canadian corporation lawyer of his day. Possessed of a thorough knowledge of federal and provincial laws pertaining to commerce and banking, and astutely aware of jurisdictional disputes over such matters as corporate regulation, he provided unrivalled expertise. In several cases involving business disputes he joined Blake as counsel in appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC); in other cases they provided expert advice. For example, when James Henry Plummer, president of the Dominion Iron and Steel Company (DISCO, based in Cape Breton), became embroiled in an intensely bitter fight with the Dominion Coal Company (DOMCO, also based in Cape Breton), their counsel contributed to a victory for Plummer’s company when the case was heard before the JCPC in 1908-9. Lash was a vice-president and the legal mastermind of the Mexico Tramways Company and the Brazilian Traction, Light and Power Company (both incorporated in Canada). After the federal election of September 1911, in which Laurier was defeated, Lash served as an intermediary between dissident Toronto Liberals and the Conservative government led by Robert Laird Borden. Lash was Borden’s legal adviser on the organization of the Canadian National Railways, mainly in explaining and defending the interests of the Canadian Northern Railway (owner of the Halifax and South Western Railway in Nova Scotia), Mackenzie, Mann and Company, and the Canadian Bank of Commerce.
Zebulon Aiton Lash photograph
Zebulon Aiton Lash
Halifax & South Western Railway Company Limited
Halifax & South Western Railway Company Limited
Halifax & South Western Railway
(persistently misspelled “Southwestern” in this source!)
Jane Bruce (c.1847-1907)
In 1884 Afro-Nova Scotians secured the right, after eight years of protests and petitions, to attend integrated primary schools in wards in which they resided, instead of only the segregated ones in Wards 5 and 6. When the Halifax School Commissioners amalgamated two north end schools, one for “coloured” boys and the other for “coloured” girls, Bruce became principal of the two-department, sexually integrated but racially segregated institution, at a salary of $500 per year.
Andrew Mackinlay Bell (1847-1918)
[Not to be confused with Andrew MacKinlay (1800-1867)]
Andrew Bell served variously as a member of the Halifax School Board, the Board of Regents of the Mount Allison institutions, and the Board of Trade both for Halifax and the Maritime Provinces.
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)
Teacher of the deaf, inventor, and scientist
Frederick William Borden (1847-1917)
F. W. Borden was educated at Acacia Villa School in Lower Horton, Nova Scotia, King’s College in Windsor (BA 1866), and Harvard Medical School in Boston (MD 1868). Upon his return to Nova Scotia, he practised medicine in Canning, a thriving inland port and market town of some 600 people. To supplement his income (there were four other physicians in Canning) he invested in ships and local utilities, bought and sold real estate, and served as an agent, first of the Bank of Nova Scotia (1882-91) and then of the Halifax Banking Company (1891-96). By 1897 he owned two ships and the controlling interest in a third. On the land he planted orchards, grew wheat, hay, potatoes, and cranberries, and established a 150-acre livestock farm at Pereau, a lumbering business at Gaspereau and Blomidon, and general stores in Canning and Blomidon. He also invested in the Cornwallis Valley Railway Company (incorporated in 1887), the Blomidon Railway Company (incorporated in 1911 but the project was scuttled by World War One), the Canning Water and Electric Light, Heating and Power Company (incorporated in 1893), the Western Chronicle (Kentville), and other local enterprises. He held shares in more than seventy other companies elsewhere in Canada and in the United States and Cuba, with interests in insurance, banking, mining, farming, real estate, resources, and utilities. Created a KCMG (Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George) in June 1902, he attended the coronation of Edward VII, dined with the King and Queen in 1907, attended the coronation of George V, was made a Knight of Grace of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in England, and was named an honorary surgeon-general of the British army.
John Naylor (1847-1906)
Real-estate agent and social activist
Naylor performed functions that would today be assigned to several different professionals, with training in law, social work, criminology, and counselling. His modus operandi was to investigate instances of neglect, cruelty, and mistreatment and try to reach a resolution through mediation. Failing that, he would go to court to press charges, which might result in imprisonment of violent husbands and fathers, institutionalization of neglected children, or legal separation of the parties to unsuccessful marriages. His real-estate business was extensive – in 1895 he had listings for 136 houses and 220 building lots for sale in the city, also listings for 180 farms around the province and numerous houses in the country towns.
James Ross (1848-1913)
In 1901 Ross headed a syndicate which acquired the Dominion Coal Company and the Dominion Iron and Steel Company, both in Sydney, Nova Scotia, from Henry Melville Whitney of Boston. At the time of its acquisition the coal company had an unusual and disadvantageous contract with the iron and steel company to provide vast quantities of high quality coal at well below prevailing market prices. Attempts were made to renegotiate the contract immediately after Ross gained control of both companies, but in 1903 relations between the two jointly owned firms became strained.
James Leveson Ross (1848-1913) Wikipedia
James Ross: Canadian Railroad Builder… (1848-1913)
Sir Wallace Nesbit Graham (1848-1917)
Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court
April 1915 to October 1917
Accepting the offer of a partnership with fellow Acadia graduate Robert Linton Weatherbe in 1872 marked a crucial step in Graham’s career. This law firm in Halifax would expand to become a nursery of giants, producing three Chief Justices of Nova Scotia and two prime ministers. J.S.D. Thompson considered Graham the ablest lawyer in the Maritimes.
John Fitzwilliam Stairs (1848-1904)
New Glasgow Iron, Coal and Railway Company
Nova Scotia Steel and Forge Company
Nova Scotia Iron and Steel Company
Robb Engineering Company
Royal Securities Corporation
Robert Sedgewick (1848-1906)
Dalhousie‘s was the first university law school in the British empire to offer a degree in the study of the common law, and Sedgewick is acknowledged to have been the prime mover behind its establishment. As a member of the Halifax Board of School Commissioners during the early 1880s, he worked hard to reverse the policy of racially segregated education the Board had adopted in 1876. Undoubtedly his greatest achievement was the drafting of the Criminal Code of 1892 in conjunction with George Wheelock Burbidge. In 1893 Sedgewick was appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court decisions which show Sedgewick in the least favourable light by modern standards are those involving accidents in the workplace and railway collisions. He was unsympathetic to claims by injured workers and their families and was quick to find contributory negligence by the victim, which was then a complete bar to an action. When employers were alleged to have been negligent, he demanded high standards of proof. In spite of an increasing number of laws respecting safety in the workplace, Sedgewick was reluctant to use breaches of these statutes to create presumptions of negligence or to found causes of action. The railways in particular could do little wrong. His anti-labour views, however, were hardly unique among contemporary Canadian jurists.
Harvey Graham (1848-1907)
Nova Scotia Glass Company
Black Diamond Coal Company
New Glasgow Iron, Coal and Railway Company
Nova Scotia Iron and Steel Company
Nova Scotia Steel Company
Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company
Henry Swift (1848-1891)
Cumberland Railway and Coal Company
William Stevens Fielding (1848-1929)
William Stevens Fielding holds the all-time record – 6908 days – as longest-serving finance minister in Canadian history, nearly nineteen years served in two periods July 1896 to Oct 1911 and Dec 1921 to Sep 1925. Fielding was a reporter and later managing editor of the Halifax Morning Chronicle, 1864-1884; Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) representing Halifax County, 1882-1896; Premier and Provincial Secretary of Nova Scotia, 28 July 1884 to 18 July 1896; resigned as MLA and elected as Member of the House of Commons (MP) in August 1896 representing Shelburne-Queens; federal Minister of Finance and Receiver General, two periods from 1896 to 1925.
Percy Gifkins (1849-1925)
The Dominion Atlantic Railway (D.A.R.), based in Kentville, was a vital component of Nova Scotia’s transportation system for a hundred years – with its predecessor and subsidiary companies, from the 1870s into the 1970s. The entrance of the D.A.R. into the 20th century was announced by the appointment of Percy Gifkins as General Manager in May of 1900. No more able individual could have been appointed to this most important post.
Dominion Atlantic Railway Wikipedia
Flying Bluenose fast luxury passenger train, 1891-1935
The DAR purchased the first Pullman parlor cars
in all of Canada for this train
Passenger Service on CP’s Dominion Atlantic Railway, 1930-1950s
Dominion Atlantic Railway’s Buffet-Parlor Cars, Circa 1949
Dominion Atlantic Railway: Passenger train service, 1949
Dominion Atlantic Railway Steamship Line
George Mercer Dawson (1849-1901)
Dawson City, Yukon, was named in his honour.
Sir William Mackenzie (1849-1923)
Urbane and soft-spoken, William Mackenzie could mesmerize adversaries and supporters alike with his penetrating blue eyes. A natural risk-taker, he was quite incapable of resisting a challenge. In his youth, Mackenzie taught school for a year before dabbling in store-keeping, grist and sawmill operations and local construction, and then turned to building railways. During the 1870s Mackenzie built bridges and other structures for the Victoria Railway and the Credit Valley Railway. By the mid-1880s, William Mackenzie and Donald Mann had formed a working partnership engaged in construction of railways. They developed a reputation for delivering finished work according to their contracts. Their business expanded rapidly. On 13 January 1899, Mackenzie and Mann consolidated all their rail properties into one company and named it the Canadian Northern Railway. The partnership of Mackenzie, Mann and Company built railways all over Canada, including the Inverness and Richmond Railway on Cape Breton Island and the Halifax and South Western Railway between Halifax and Yarmouth on the Nova Scotia mainland. Mackenzie and Mann maintained a remarkable construction record — they built an average of a mile 1.6 km of railway a day, including weekends and holidays, over a period of 21 years. Of course this was not a mile completed each and every day, because railway construction went much better in summer than in winter and railway promotion was much more active in some years than in others, but in the 21-year period 1896 to 1917 they built 7700 miles 12,300 km of track — including all the associated infrastructure such as culverts, trestles, bridges, tunnels, signals, telegraph lines, water tanks, station buildings, etc. — in less than 7700 days.
Halifax & South Western Railway Company Limited
Halifax & South Western Railway Company Limited Wikipedia
Halifax and South Western Railway John R. Cameron
Halifax & South Western Railway
(persistently misspelled “Southwestern” in this source!)
Inverness and Richmond Railway Wikipedia
Inverness and Richmond Railway John R. Cameron
Inverness Railway Colin J. Churcher
William Thomas Pipes (1850-1909)
Premier of Nova Scotia: 3 August 1882 to 15 July 1884
Pipes had an extraordinary ability to marshal complex series
of facts and reach conclusions difficult to challenge.
Pipes introduced, piloted, and perhaps even drafted a bill to establish a
Public Utilities Board in Nova Scotia, with the authority to set rates
for water and electric utilities, the first of its kind in Canada.
Edwin Gilpin (1850-1907)
Firedamp (methane) explosions tended to be localized,
but a coal-dust catastrophe could engulf much of a mine,
as it had in the Vale Colliery explosion of February 1885.
James Gordon MacGregor (1852-1913)
James MacGregor was a born scientific researcher, gifted with a singularly alert mind. He had little equipment at Dalhousie University to work with, but from his laboratory, making do with much homemade apparatus, he produced some fifty papers, mostly on kinematics and dynamics. They earned him charter membership in the Royal Society of Canada and membership in the Royal Society of London. Physics was, he believed, next to literature the best of all subjects for a general education, since it brought the student up against the fundamentals of science. In the 1880s he led a successful attack on the old Dalhousie regimen of classics and mathematics to broaden it and make it more flexible. MacGregor was a radical in spirit, disliking rules and regulations almost on principle. He hated sham and humbug, and that included petty university regulations.
Thomas Robertson (1852-1902)
Civil servant, author, entrepreneur, and politician
In 1871 his essay on Shelburne County came second in the contest for the Akins Historical Prize, and two years later he won with a history of Digby County. Thomas Robertson’s greatest contribution to the area came with his promotion of a local railway line in western Nova Scotia. The Coast Railway Company, which was incorporated in 1893 with Robertson as president, was to construct a narrow-gauge railway between Yarmouth and Lockeport. By 1899 the Coast Railway had been completed between Yarmouth and Barrington Passage.
Sir Donald Mann (1853-1934)
Blunt and feisty Donald Mann seldom made any effort to smooth his rough edges. He reveled in his chosen role as tough-talking frontiersman. He studied for the Methodist ministry but abandoned that ambition to work first as a blacksmith, then in the lumber camps of Ontario and Michigan. On Christmas Day 1879 he brought the first locomotive into Winnipeg, using tracks laid on the ice of the frozen Red River. Shortly thereafter he won a series of construction contracts with the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), then in the midst of building its western main line. Several years later, William Mackenzie also headed west to work on CPR contracts. By the mid-1880s, William Mackenzie and Donald Mann had formed a working partnership engaged in construction of railways. They developed a reputation for delivering finished work according to their contracts. Their business expanded rapidly. In the 1890s, Mackenzie and Mann rapidly expanded their rail holdings, building and acquiring lines running outward from their base in central Manitoba. On 13 January 1899, Mackenzie and Mann consolidated all their rail properties into one company and named it the Canadian Northern Railway. The partnership of Mackenzie, Mann and Company built railways all over Canada, including the Inverness and Richmond Railway on Cape Breton Island and the Halifax and South Western Railway between Halifax and Yarmouth on the Nova Scotia mainland. Mackenzie and Mann maintained a remarkable construction record — they built an average of a mile 1.6 km of railway a day, including weekends and holidays, over a period of 21 years. Of course this was not a mile completed each and every day, because railway construction went much better in summer than in winter and railway promotion was much more active in some years than in others, but in the 21-year period 1896 to 1917 they built 7700 miles 12,300 km of track — including all the associated infrastructure such as culverts, trestles, bridges, tunnels, signals, telegraph lines, water tanks, station buildings, etc. — in less than 7700 days.
Halifax & South Western Railway Company Limited
Halifax & South Western Railway Company Limited Wikipedia
Halifax and South Western Railway John R. Cameron
Halifax & South Western Railway
(persistently misspelled “Southwestern” in this source!)
Inverness and Richmond Railway Wikipedia
Inverness and Richmond Railway John R. Cameron
Inverness Railway Colin J. Churcher
Robert Laird Borden (1854-1937)
Stationmaster at Grand Pre for the Windsor and Annapolis Railway
Prime Minister of Canada 1911-1920
Mary Ellen Braden (1854-1939)
teacher, social activist, and author
Benjamin Franklin Pearson (1855-1912)
For three decades, beginning in the 1880s, Benjamin Franklin Pearson was one of the most powerful people in Nova Scotia, yet in modern times few Nova Scotians have ever heard of him. Pearson’s earliest business ventures included the purchase of a steamship service between Halifax and Dartmouth and a railway connecting Dartmouth and the Musquodoboit valley. In 1887 B.F. Pearson was an incorporator of the Nova Scotia Telephone Company, which later that year bought all of Bell Telephone’s assets in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. [In 1910, the Nova Scotia Telephone Company was renamed the Maritime Telegraph & Telephone Company (MT&T) – for nine decades, from April 1910 until May 1999, MT&T was by far the dominant telephone company in Nova Scotia.] The Halifax Electric Tramway Company was incorporated in 1895 by B.F. Pearson, H.M. Whitney, F.S. Pearson, and W.B. Ross. Its charter of incorporation authorized it to purchase the Halifax Street Railway Company (a horse-powered system), the Nova Scotia Power Company, and the Halifax Illuminating and Motor Company. Pearson intended that surplus gas from People’s Heat and Light’s coal gasification plant would be used to stoke the boilers of Halifax Electric Tramway’s reconstructed power plant delivering electric lighting and transit service to the city. He helped to secure both political support and funding for the Nova Scotia Technical College in 1909. Pearson also became prominent as a publisher. Beginning with the acquisition in 1897 of the Halifax Morning Chronicle, he bought up a number of newspapers, including the Nova Scotian and Weekly Chronicle and the Daily Echo, both of Halifax, the Glace Bay Gazette, and the Saint John Daily Sun.
Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper (1855-1927)
[Not to be confused with Charles Tupper (1794-1881)]
[Not to be confused with Sir Charles Tupper (1821-1915)]
Charles Hibbert Tupper was called to the bar of Nova Scotia in 1878.
From 1882 to 1904 he represented Pictou in the Canadian House of Commons.
Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald put him in charge of the Department
of Marine and Fisheries in 1888, at 32 years of age the youngest Canadian
cabinet minister up to that time. From 1888 to 1894 he was Minister of
Marine and Fisheries in the Macdonald, Abbott, and Thompson governments;
and from 1894 to 1896 he was Minister of Justice in the Bowell government.
In 1892 he was agent for Great Britain in the Behring Sea Arbitration;
and he was created, for his services in this arbitration, a K.C.M.G. in 1893.
William Dennis (1856-1920)
Editor, journalist, newspaper publisher
Canadian Senator, 20 November 1912 to 11 July 1920
Eliza Ritchie (1856-1933)
Scholar, educator, author, aesthete, philanthropist, and feminist
Eliza Ritchie was probably the first female graduate of a Canadian university to earn a PhD (in 1889). In 1908 she was a charter member of the Nova Scotia Museum of Fine Arts, a forerunner of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and she served as vice-president of its governing committee in the late 1920s. In 1917 she joined the board of directors of Halifax’s Victoria School of Art and Design (renamed the Nova Scotia College of Art in 1925).
Thomas Cantley (1857-1945)
Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Corporation
Canadian National Railways
Simon A. Fraser (1857-1901)
Nova Scotia Forge Company
Nova Scotia Steel and Forge Company
Nova Scotia Steel Company
Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company
Mabel Gardiner Hubbard (1857-1923)
Venture capitalist, social reformer and homemaker
At age nine she testified before a committee
of the Massachusetts legislature
Minard Wentworth Graves (1858-1926)
Farmer and manufacturer
In 1913 the apple processing plant owned and operated by M. W. Graves & Company
at Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, was described in the Halifax Morning Chronicle as “one
of the largest and best equipped in the Dominion,” and by 1924 it was producing
400,000 barrels of vinegar a year, most of which was sold on the British market.
Although no longer owned by the Graves family, at the beginning of the 21st century
M. W. Graves and Company Limited is still a major producer
of processed fruits and vegetables.
Charles J. Coll (c.1860- ? )
Hugh Coll was for several years (believed to have been in the 1880s-1890s) the general superintendent of the H.C. Frick Coke Company’s extensive water system in and around Connellsville, Pennsylvania. Hugh Coll had ten children, including Charles J. Coll, Superintendent of the Lemont Coal Mines and Coke Works, Fayette County, Pennsylvania for H.C. Frick Coke Company; and Harry E. Coll, boiler inspector for the H.C. Frick Coke Company. Hugh Coll was an inventor, amongst whose creations was a water ejection or siphon system – U.S. Patent 90,930 dated 8 June 1869, issued to Hugh Coll, of Black Hawk PO, Beaver County, Pennsylvania; U.S. Patent 143,884 dated 21 October 1873; and U.S. Patent 154,224 dated 18 August 1874, issued to Hugh Coll, of Millvale, Pennsylvania – used in ships but probably also in the mining industry. Charles J. Coll and his brother Harry Edward Coll came to Pictou County in Nova Scotia about 1902 to work for the Sir Hugh Allan Company of Montreal, owner of the Acadia Coal Company of New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. These two men had their origins in Pennsylvania, coming from a family of Irish immigrants who worked in the coal mining industry. Both Harry and Charles Coll had graduated from American institutions dealing with mining engineering and had worked for the coal mining magnate, Henry Clay Frick. The brothers Coll were hired about 1902 by the Acadia Coal Company, organized in 1864 by James D.B. Fraser, and at the turn of the century the largest coal mining company in mainland Nova Scotia – part of the powerful and wealthy Allan organization based in Montreal – to bring to Pictou County their extensive experience, gained in the rough and tumble coal mines of western Pennsylvania, to direct the planning and construction of the new Allan Mine, established in 1904 at Lourds on the outskirts of the town of Stellarton. Charles J. Coll became the Manager of the Acadia Coal Company. At this time, the Acadia Coal Company bult a new office which stood on the corner of Foord Street and Acadia Avenue in Stellarton. In 1906, Sir Montague Allan, a Montreal financier, along with Charles J. Coll of Stellarton, general manager of the Acadia Coal Company, with the backing of the Acadia Coal Company, organized the Halifax & Eastern Railway Company, incorporated in 1906 under Chapter 161 of the Nova Scotia Statutes. The H&ER was to build a railway from Halifax-Dartmouth to Dean’s Settlement and from Sunny Brae to Guysborough town (for exporting coal from the Pictou County mines). The total mileage was to be 230 miles (370 km), and the provincial government contracted with the company for a subsidy of $12,000 a mile ($7450 per kilometre), with the federal government kicking in $3200 a mile ($1990 per kilometre). During the summer and fall of 1906, the Nova Scotia government paid for a survey of the proposed route. This was completed in 1907, but a disagreement arose over which route to take, and both Sir Montague Allen and Acadia Coal Company withdrew their support. The plan died. Brothers C.J. and H.E. both eventually worked in other coal mining areas including Cape Breton and Noranda, Quebec.
—https://www.parl.ns.ca/services/genealogy/archives/pdf/muskol.pdf
and other sources
The Louis Frost Notes: Introduction
authored by Louis Frost for the Dominion Coal Company
on or around 1962
The Louis Frost Notes: Acadia Coal Company – Allan Mine
The Louis Frost Notes: Acadia Coal Company – Albion Mine (Abandoned)
The Louis Frost Notes: Acadia Coal Company – Foord Pit (Abandoned)
The Louis Frost Notes: Description of Pictou Coal Field
The Louis Frost Notes: …Conditions Peculiar to Submarine Mining
The Louis Frost Notes: Sixty Appendicies
John Frederic Herbin (1860-1923)
By far the most enduring of J.F. Herbin’s contributions to preserving the memory
of pre-deportation Acadian culture was his success in 1907 in securing 14 acres
of land on which the original Grand Pré community had stood and in spearheading
the movement to establish a memorial park. In November 1917 Herbin sold the
land for $1,650 to the Dominion Atlantic Railway for the creation of a park,
stipulating that the location of the original Saint-Charles-des-Mines church
be deeded to the Acadians for the erection of a memorial to their past.
A plaque was added in 1925 to the commemorative stone cross
that he had placed in the park in 1909.
Alfred Dickie (1860-1929)
In 1900 Alfred Dickie formed, and became president of, the
Grand River Pulp and Lumber Company, which cut pulpwood
in Labrador and held 297 square miles (770 square kilometres)
of timber limits around Hamilton Inlet at the mouth of the Hamilton
River (renamed the Churchill River in 1965). It was these lands
that precipitated the Labrador boundary dispute between
Quebec and Newfoundland. Eventually this dispute reached
the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, the
highest court of appeal in the British Empire. The hearing
did not take place until 1926. Each side submitted arguments
and counter-arguments, and thousands of documents.
The decision was announced on 1 March 1927.
Quebec lost. Newfoundland won.
| Labrador Boundary Case The Labrador Boundary: Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage …In 1902 the Newfoundland government granted a timber concession on both sides of the Hamilton River (297 square miles) to a Nova-Scotia based company, the Grand River Pulp and Lumber Co. Ltd., owned by Alfred Dickie. The Quebec government promptly protested that part of the concession was – by virtue of the 1898 act – in Quebec. The company responded that it was not trespassing on Quebec territory since Newfoundland claimed all lands north of 52 latitude and east of 64 longitude. Quebec appealed to the federal government to intervene… 1902 October 10 From: Secretary for Department of the Interior, Ottawa To: Grand River Pulp and Lumber Company …asked to be informed if Lake Melville was in Canadian territory, and where the boundary line between Newfoundland and Canada runs… 1902 December 05 From: Deputy Minister of Lands, Quebec To: Mr. Alfred Dickie, President of the Grand River Pulp and Lumber Co. …all the territory south of River Hamilton belongs to the Province of Quebec… 1902 December 09 From: Grand River Pulp and Lumber Company To: Deputy Minister of Lands, Quebec …We are not stealing anything… Signed: Alfred Dickie, President, Grand River Pulp and Lumber Company 1902 December From: Minister of Lands, Quebec To: Government of the Dominion of Canada Re: Certain licenses to cut timber alleged to have been granted by the Government of Newfoundland within the limits of the Province of Quebec …my Department wrote on the 6th December instant to the President of said Company to have some information about that affair. To our enquiry we received a letter dated the 9th inst. from M. Alfred Dickie, president of the said Company… The territory for which such timber license was issued by the Government of New-Foundland, is approximately indicated in green on the enclosed map of the Province of Quebec… 1902 December 09 Map showing the territory for which Timber License was issued by the Government of Newfoundland… 1902 December 18 From: Lieutenant Gouverneur of Quebec To: L’honorable Secrétaire d’État, Ottawa Re: Timber License issued by Newfoundland …le mémoire ci-inclus et les pièces ci-annexées concernant une certaine partie de territoire de la Province de Québec, sur la rivière Hamilton… 1903 March 10 From: Clerk to the Privy Council, Ottawa To: The Minister of Justice, Ottawa Re: Extract from a Report of a Committee of the Privy Council …Report by the Minister of Lands, Mines and Fisheries of the Province of Quebec setting out that the Government of the Colony of Newfoundland has issued certain licenses to cut timber to The Grand River Pulp and Lumber Co., Limited, upon both sides of the Hamilton River, and asking that the necessary steps be taken to prevent any encroachment by the Government of Newfoundland upon the territory of the Province of Quebec… The Committee, concurring in the said Report, advise that the Governor General be moved to forward a copy of this Minute to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies (in London) with a view to the cancellation of the timber licenses issued by the Government of Newfoundland… 1903 March 18 From: Lord Minto, Governor General of Canada To: Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, London Re: Grant of Timber License by Newfoundland of lands claimed by Quebec, and requesting that the matter be refresented to Newfoundland with a view to cancellation thereof …submitting a communication from the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, in which attention is called to the issue, by the Government of Newfoundland, of a license to cut timber on lands lying along the Hamilton River, indicated on a tracing attached to the Minute, which are claimed to be within the jurisdiction of the Province of Quebec. You will observe that my Ministers request that the matter may be represented to the Newfoundland Government with a view to obtaining a cancellation of the license as involving an encroachment upon the territory of Quebec… 1903 July 17 Memorandum by: Sir Robert Bond, Premier of the Colony of Newfoundland Re: Copy of Approved Minute of Council of Newfoundland …The Committee of Council (of Newfoundland) had under consideration despatch No. 24 of date of the 8th April (1903), received from the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the accompanying copy of a despatch from the Governor General of Canada on the subject of the issue by the Govt. of this Colony of a license to cut timber on lands now for the first time claimed to be within the jurisdiction of the Province of Quebec. The Committee are unable to admit the claim set up by the Canadian Government, and deny that there has been any encroachment by this Government upon the territory of the Province of Quebec… 1903 July 24 From: Cavendish Boyle, Governor of Newfoundland To: Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, London Re: Transmitting Minute of Newfoundland Council re Representation of Canada …on the subject of the issue by this Government of a license to cut timber on lands claimed to be within the jurisdiction of the Province of Quebec, I have the honour to transmit herewith a copy of an approved Minute of the Committee of Council in which my responsible advisers state with their reasons, their inability to admit the claim of the Dominion Government and deny that there has been any encroachment by this Government upon the Territory of the Province of Quebec. 1903 August 21 From: Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, London To: Lord Minto, Governor General of Canada Re: Despatch received from Newfoundland re Timber License granted …copy of a despatch from the Governor of Newfoundland concerning the issue by his Government of a license to cut timber on lands claimed to be within the jurisdiction of the Province of Quebec. If your Ministers are not satisfied with the reply of the Newfoundland Government they will doubtless take the necessary steps to obtain a legal decision on the matter. 1904 Fevrier 25 Memorandum by: Minister of Lands, Quebec Report by the Minister of Lands, Quebec, re Disputed Territory …Que le Gouvernement de Terreneuve dispute au Gouvernement de la Puissance du Canada et à celui de la Province de Québec un certain territoire sur la rivière Hamilton, dans la région du Labrador… 1904 Fevrier 29 From: Lieutenant Gouverneur of Quebec To: L’honorable Secrétaire d’État, Ottawa Re: Transmitting for consideration of Council report of Minister of Lands of Quebec re Disputed Territory …le mémoire ci-inclus, concernant un certain territoire sur la rivière Hamilton, au Labrador, en dispute entre le Gouvernement de Terre Neuve d’une part, et le Gouvernement du Canada et celui de la Province de Québec, d’autre part… 1904 April 18 From: Clerk to the Privy Council, Ottawa To: The Minister of Justice, Ottawa Re: Extract from a Report of the Committee of the Privy Council Re: Requesting reference of Boundary Question to Judical Committee …The Committee on the recommendation of the Minister of Justice advise that the Governor General be moved to again bring the matter to the attention of the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies (London) with a view to having the questions in dispute referred for a hearing to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council… 1904 May 20 From: Alfred Lyttelton, Secretary of State for the Colonies, London To: Lord Minto, Governor General of Canada Re: Advising that His Majesty’s Government approves of the proposed Reference of Boundary Question to Judicial Committee …His Majesty’s Government concur in the view of your Ministers that the question of the boundary between the Dominion of Canada and Newfoundland in the Peninsula of Labrador is a proper one to be referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council… I have accordingly to suggest that your Government should agree with the Government of Newfoundland to submit the matter to His Majesty in Council and also as to the evidence and case to be submitted… 1922 November 11 Joint Appendix: Documents and correspondence relating to the Labrador Boundary question Terms of reference to Judicial Committee Memorandum of Agreement between the Governments of Canada and Newfoundland, dated 11th November 1920, as amended by an Agreement dated 20th November 1922 In the matter of the Boundary between the Dominion of Canada and the Colony of Newfoundland in the Labrador Peninsula The government of the Dominion of Canada and the government of the Colony of Newfoundland having mutually agreed to submit for reference by His Majesty to the Judicial Committee of His Majesty’s Privy Council for their decision, the following question, viz.: “What is the location and definition of the boundary as between Canada and Newfoundland in the Labrador Peninsula under the statutes, orders-in-council and proclamations?” it is hereby agreed by and on behalf of the respective governments aforesaid that, subject to the approval of the Judicial Committee and to such variations and additions as may be agreed upon, the procedure on such submission shall be as follows… |
Sarah Forbes (1860-1902)
In October 1899 Sarah Forbes volunteered for service with the first Canadian contingent
being raised for the South African War. In May 1900 the nursing staff of No.3 Hospital
was divided and Forbes, with nine other nursing sisters were sent to Kroonstad, headquarters
of Lord Roberts’s army, where for the next month Forbes assisted in establishing a temporary
hospital to care for some 230 sick and wounded, and where they worked under great difficulties,
often short of food, water, and medical supplies. Towards the end of June 1900, when the patients
had sufficiently recovered, the Canadian nurses joined Lord Roberts’s army in Pretoria.
William Bruce Almon Ritchie (1860-1917)
Lawyer and military officer
Ritchie practised alone at Annapolis until 1886, when his brother returned from
Halifax and they went into partnership. His reputation as a litigator was such that
he was asked by Robert Laird Borden to form the firm of Borden, Ritchie, Parker, and
Chisholm in 1889 when Borden’s partner Wallace Nesbit Graham went to the bench.
Robert Edward Harris (1860-1931)
Robert Edward Harris was born at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia
on 18 August 1860. He taught school in nearby Tupperville for
two years, then studied law with a local lawyer and in the firm of
Sir John S.D. Thompson, later the Prime Minister, and Sir Wallace
Graham, who would become his predecessor as Chief Justice.
Harris was admitted to the Nova Scotia bar in 1882 after placing
first in the bar exams. He practiced law in Yarmouth and later in
Halifax. A specialist in corporate law, he was president of Eastern
Trust Company, Nova Scotia Steel & Coal Company and other firms.
He served as president of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society in 1906
and in 1908-1909. Harris was a friend of Prime Minister Borden, who
appointed him to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in June 1915 and
bypassed senior judges to name him Chief Justice in March 1918.
Harris, regarded as “an efficient Chief Justice,” collected many of
the portraits of former Chief Justices and senior judges
that now hang in The Law Courts in Halifax.
Source: Chief Justices
Provided by: the Executive Office of the Nova Scotia Judiciary
Margaret Marshall Saunders (1861-1947)
Margaret Marshall Saunders, daughter of Edward Manning Saunders, is most
famous for her novel Beautiful Joe. It tells the true story of dog that has had a
difficult puppyhood with many obstacles including a cruel owner. It is told from
the dog’s point of view. When the book was published in 1893, both the book
and its subject received worldwide attention. It was the first Canadian book to
sell over a million copies, and by the late 1930s had sold over seven million
copies worldwide in at least ten languages. In 1934, Saunders was
made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
George Henry Murray (1861-1929)
Premier of Nova Scotia: 20 July 1896 to 24 January 1923
Frederick Stark Pearson (1861-1915)
F.S. Pearson first became involved in Canada in 1889 through his Boston consulting
firm, Grant, Pearson and Company, which had been hired to build a gas plant in Halifax
for B.F. Pearson. The plant was meant to convert coal into gas, and since both Fred
Pearson and H.M. Whitney were looking for cheap fuel for their electrical operations in
the Boston area, they joined B.F. Pearson and J.A. Grant in efforts to secure coalfields
in Cape Breton. The Dominion Coal Company was incorporated in in 1893, with
F.S. Pearson as engineer-in-chief, H.M. Whitney as president,
and B.F. Pearson as secretary.
Joseph Andrew Chisholm (1863-1950)
Chisholm’s first job was in a law firm headed by Robert Laird Borden,
a future Prime Minister of Canada. He was elected as Mayor of Halifax
1909-1911. Borden appointed him to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court
in 1916. He was appointed Chief Justice in 1931.
Jennie Grahl Hunter Shirreff (1863-1921)
On 20 May 1920, Jennie Shirreff Eddy offered Dalhousie University in Halifax $300,000 to fund a new women’s residence for the University – a gesture that ranked at the time as one of the largest donations to a university in Canada by a woman. The residence was to be called Shirreff Hall. She had a philosophy for Shirreff Hall: she did not want a Spartan barracks – she had seen enough as a nurse – but rather a residence with some semblance to the girls’ own homes, to round out, as it were, the intellectual training given by the university. She even overruled the architect, Frank Darling of Toronto, insisting on fireplaces in the public rooms (she knew something of Halifax winters), study rooms on the upper floors, and more light for the library.
Ernest Howard Armstrong (1864-1946)
Premier of Nova Scotia: 24 January 1923 to 16 July 1925
Alexander Johnston (1867-1951)
Alexander Johnston was the president of the Sydney Printing Company and managing editor of the Sydney Daily Record. In 1897, he was elected a member of the Nova Scotia Legislative Assembly. He resigned as provincial MLA in 1900 to contest the federal riding of Cape Breton, where he defeated Sir Charles Tupper to take a seat as MP in the Canadian House of Commons. He was twice elected as a member of Parliament, representing the riding of Cape Breton 1900-1904, and Cape Breton South 1904-1908. His greatest achievement was held to be the bringing to Canada of her first wireless (radio) station. A Cape Bretoner, he persuaded Guglielmo Marconi, who had been prevented from continuing further transatlantic wireless experiments from Newfoundland, to postpone his intended return to England and instead to go to Cape Breton. Johnston is credited with persuading Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier to support a federal grant of $75,000 to establish Canada’s first wireless (radio) station at Table Head, near Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. In June 1910, he was appointed deputy minister in the old Marine and Fisheries Department, and remained with that department through the changes to the Transport Department until June 1930, serving under four prime ministers – Laurier, Borden, Meighen and King – in recognition of this public service, he was awarded the KCMG. He played an important part in directing Canada’s policy on wireless, radio broadcasting and civil aviation, all of which at that time came within the jurisdiction of his department. He headed various Canadian delegations abroad to international conferences on life saving at sea, and telegraphy. Following the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912, he led the Canadian delegation to London to participate in the first International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) in November 1913, which led to the development of international regulations for safety at sea. During World War Two, he served for a time as deputy director of censorship.
James Bryson McLachlan (1869-1937)
Coal miner, agitator, journalist, labour leader, educator, organizer
J.B. McLachlan arrived in Cape Breton from Scotland in 1902 to work in the expanding coal industry. In 1909 he was elected Secretary-Treasurer of District 26, United Mine Workers of America. He led the coal miners of Nova Scotia in their struggles for union recognition, united them around ideas of industrial democracy and social reconstruction, and defended their cause in the labour wars of the 1920s. As both union leader and newspaper editor McLachlan kept firmly in mind the two great needs of the coal miners he represented: money enough for their families to live healthy lives, and a safe environment to work in – the two great needs, of course, that the company did not want to satisfy. And it is sad to say that in his quest to satisfy these basic needs, J.B. got no help from church or government and damn little from the United Mine Workers of America. Charged with sedition in 1923, McLachlan’s case was one of the most notorious political trials ever held in Nova Scotia.
J.B. McLachlan is the greatest labour leader Nova Scotia has ever produced. He came to Cape Breton in 1902 to work in the coal mines and by the 1920s was the champion of miners and steelworkers fighting the British Empire Steel Corporation for a decent wages and living conditions. The government of the day openly sided with BESCO and its hard-nosed president, Roy Wolvin, sending in troop and provincial police to intimidate strikers. In July 1923, with the steel plant shut down by a walkout, mounted policemen swept through the adjacent town of Whitney Pier, assaulting residents as they returned home from church. The incident brought out McLachlan’s radical rhetoric, and he circulated a notice urging other mining unions to walk out in support. Branding the Nova Scotia government “the guilty and responsible party” for the attack, he called on his fellow unionists “to spread the fight against (Premier) Armstrong to every mine in Nova Scotia.” McLachlan paid dearly for those words. “Fighting Jim,” as he was known in the press, was convicted in December 1923 of three counts of sedition – unlawfully inciting public disorder or promoting hatred of the government. It was little more than a show trial: Attorney General Walter J. O’Hearn, who prosecuted, insisted on a Halifax trial for fear sympathetic Cape Breton jurors would acquit someone with the courage to champion their cause. In his instructions to the jury, Justice Humphrey Mellish of the Supreme Court, a former coal company lawyer, could barely disguise his distaste for McLachlan and the Marxist ideals he espoused. Legal historian Barry Cahill has labeled it a “gross miscarriage of justice”…
—Source: Quoted from “The Courts of Nova Scotia”
Legal Milestones: R. v. McLachlan: A labour leader stands trial for sedition, 1923
Never defeated in a union election, J.B. McLachlan was a brilliant early twentieth-century Canadian rebel who helped change the balance of power in industrial society and advance the struggle for social and economic justice. An exceptional organizer and a dedicated radical, he continued his role as a powerful and critical voice in Cape Breton, and Canada until he died in 1937.
“J.B. McLachlan: A Biography” review by Sheldon Currie
The Antigonish Review, (date not known)
“J.B. McLachlan: A Biography” review by Matthew Behrens
Quill and Quire, November 1999
“James Bryson McLachlan”
The Canadian Encyclopedia
“The 1923 Strike in Steel and the Miners’ Sympathy Strike”
Cape Breton’s Magazine, number 22, page 1, June 1979
“Cape Breton Red: J.B. McLachlan and Canadian Labour Radicalism”
Second Annual Robert S. Kenny Prize Lecture
University of Toronto,28 April 2000
“Sleuthing pays off with two national prizes”
UNB Sightings, Issue 38 Spring 2000
https://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Sightings/bin/get2.cgi?directory=Issue_38/&filename=frank.html
(Note: You can access this online article by using your
browser’s Copy and Paste feature to copy this URL whole and
then to paste the whole URL into your browser’s URL window.)
Alexander Stirling MacMillan (1871-1955)
Premier of Nova Scotia: 10 July 1940 to 8 September 1945
William Duff (1872-1953)
William Duff was born at Carbonear, Newfoundland. He received his early education at Carbonear and Falkirk, Scotland. In 1895 he settled in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, becoming the publisher of the Bridgewater Enterprise and then the Lunenburg Progress, later amalgamating the two newspapers as the Lunenburg Progress-Enterprise. He was president of the Lunenburg Marine Railway Company and the Lunenburg Mutual Marine Insurance Company. He was clerk-treasurer of Lunenburg Municipality 1904-1916, and mayor of Lunenburg 1916-1922. He was elected as the Member of Parliament for the federal ridings of Lunenburg (1917-1925), Lunenburg-Queens (1925-1926), and, upon losing the 1926 election, for Antigonish-Guysborough via a byelection, from 1927 to 1936. He was summoned to the Senate of Canada on 28 February 1936 – the only Canadian Senator sworn in under the reign of King Edward VIII.
James Henry Winfield (1874-1963)
For nearly five decades, spanning the first half of the twentieth century, J.H. Winfield was a central figure the top management of the largest telephone company in Nova Scotia – the Nova Scotia Telephone Company until 1910 and then its successor Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company (MT&T). Early in his managerial career, he compiled a list of the telephone companies then (1905) in operation in Nova Scotia – a rare and historically valuable document produced by someone thoroughly familiar with the telephone industry at that time, more than a decade before there was a Public Utilities Board to gather and publish reliable information about the telephone industry in Nova Scotia – which he placed in the public record on 2 May 1905. At that time, there were about thirty telephone companies supplying telephone service in various parts of Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia Telephone Company, which had its head office at 88-92 Hollis Street in Halifax, was the largest by far, with more subscribers (telephones installed) than all of the others combined. In April 1910, the Nova Scotia Telephone Company was reorganized as the Maritime Telegraph & Telephone Company, which was Nova Scotia’s largest telephone company from 1910 until May 1999. (The Winfield family was influential in the telephone industry in Nova Scotia for many decades. In 1950, Mr. W.A. Winfield was President of the Maritime Telegraph & Telephone Company.)
James Henry Winfield’s father, Rev. James Abbott Winfield arrived in 1891 in Halifax from England, with his wife and two sons, to serve as a lay missionary at St. Paul’s Anglican Church. After being ordained, he moved on to serve at New London and Alberton in Prince Edward Island. He went to Africa and Palestine as a missionary prior to coming back to Nova Scotia and serving the church in Bedford as well as in Berwick before retiring to Kentville, where he died in 1945.
James H. Winfield was born in Derby, England on September 13th, 1874. James attended High School in Halifax and after graduation he began his long career as an employee of the Nova Scotia Telephone Company. During the day he sold and installed telephone service, while in the evenings he did “night operating.” Two years later he transferred to New Glasgow as the new local manager. He returned to Halifax in 1900 and was promoted to Superintendent of Service. A year later he was appointed Assistant General Manager and within the next few years he was promoted to General Manager. By 1917 he was a Director of the Company, 1922 Managing Director, 1931 Vice-President, 1935 until 1943 was President and Chairman of the Board until 1948.
His wealth of knowledge in the field of public utilities and his many undertakings were well known throughout Nova Scotia and the West Indies. Mr. Winfield held prominent positions on various Boards of several Halifax companies. To name only a small number of these positions: Chairman of the Board of the Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company; Director of the Island Telephone Company, the Atlantic Utilities Ltd., the Eastern Electrical and Supply Company, Thompson Adams and Co., Eastern Trust Company, Maritime Life Insurance Company, Lord Nelson Hotel, and the Tobago Plantation Ltd.; as well as the Managing Director of the Moncton Gas and Electric Co., the Eastern Electric Co., and the Canada Electric Co.
J.H. Winfield was also instrumental in playing a role in the development of the Masonic Temple in Halifax. He was initiated into the Society in 1903 and continued to be active in the organization for nearly sixty years. He was presented with the 50 year Jewel in June 15, 1953 and given possession of the Erasmus J. Philipps Medallion. He also was an Ex-Commodore of the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron and the Chester Yacht Club. He died in Somerset, Bermuda, in 1963.
SOURCE:
Case #H00197: Application to consider 76 Peregrine Crescent, GolfLinks Park, Bedford, as a Municipally Registered Heritage Property submitted to Mayor Kelly and Members of Halifax Regional Council, 8 May 2007
https://www.halifax.ca/council/agendasc/documents/070508ca1121.pdf
1940: J.H. Winfield of Halifax is the Managing Director of Eastern Utilities Limited, an investment holding Company which owns all the issued shares of Canada Electric Company Limited; The Eastern Electric and Development Company Limited; and with the exception of 33 shares, all of the 11,254 shares (par value $100) of the Moncton Electricity and Gas Company Limited; also the majority of common (voting) shares of Maritime Coal, Railway and Power Company Limited; and all the issued shares of Joggins Coal Company Limited.
Source: A prominent display advertisement in the Kentville Advertiser, 9 May 1940, by Johnston and Ward, a large Montreal brokerage firm, offering for sale shares of Eastern Utilities Limited.
Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937)
Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, known as the father
of long distance radio transmission and for his development of
the first commercially viable wireless (radio) telegraph system.
In 1909,Marconi shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with K.F.
Braun “in recognition of their contributions to the development
of wireless telegraphy”. The two radio operators aboard Titanic
– Jack Phillips and Harold Bride – were employees of the Marconi
International Marine Communication Company, not the White Star
Line (owner of Titanic). When Marconi died in Rome in 1937,
Italy held a state funeral for him. As a tribute, all radio stations
throughout the world observed two minutes of silence.
Marconi Station: Glace Bay, Nova Scotia
Wikipedia
Marconi Wireless Telegraph in Nova Scotia
As reported in contemporary newspapers
Transatlantic Wireless Today
Clipping from the Halifax Morning Chronicle
17 October 1907
Congratulations for Marconi
Clipping from the Halifax Morning Chronicle
21 October 1907
Second Test of the Marconi Over-Ocean Wireless System…
Clipping from the Sydney Daily Post
24 October 1907
Wireless Station in Constant Operation
Clipping from the Halifax Morning Chronicle
24 October 1907
Sir James Hamet Dunn (1874-1956)
A number of foundations, buildings and academic Chairs bear his name including:
• The Sir James Dunn Law Library, the Sir James Dunn Building for Physics and the
Sir James Dunn Theatre at the Arts Center at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia
• The Sir James Dunn Jubilee Scholarship at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia
• The Sir James Dunn Chair in Geology and the Sir James Dunn Building at Mount Allison University
in Sackville, New Brunswick for the computer science, mathematics and physics departments
• The Sir James Dunn Residence at the University of New Brunswick, Saint John campus
• The Sir James Dunn Hall at Saint Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick
• The Sir James Dunn Wildlife Research Fund of the University of New Brunswick
Leonard Rosser Johnstone (1875- ? )
Leonard Rosser Johnstone was born in Hampton, Virginia, on 16 September 1875. Johnstone, living in Dartmouth in the mid-1930s, recalled the first radio broadcast of music to be heard in Nova Scotia. On 17 October 1907, Johnstone was a telegraph operator working for the Marconi Company at Marconi Towers, Glace Bay, and he had “personally handled most of the sending of numerous official telegrams… addressed to rulers, statesmen, scientists and publishers’” during Marconi’s official opening ceremonies. As Johnstone recalled, in 1909 the “steam yacht Hirondelle with the owner aboard, the Prince of Monaco, passing Halifax, though out of sight, treated operators at Camperdown Wireless Station to four musical selections, including the Merry Widow… The operator on the yacht explained a piano was hooked to a wireless transmitter and the Prince wished to know if the scheme was a success.”
[The quotes are from the book First Things in Acadia by John Quinpool [John William Regan], published in Halifax in 1936.]
Marconi Operator L.R. Johnstone
James Robinson Johnston (1876-1915)
Johnston entered Dalhousie University in 1892. His was the first generation of African
Nova Scotians to penetrate the province’s halls of higher learning. Johnston graduated
with a B.Litt. in 1896, the first black to earn a Dalhousie degree, and an LLB in 1898.
In the latter stages of his legal studies he was articled to Frank Weldon Russell.
Johnston was admitted to the Nova Scotia bar in July 1900. His legal career was
considerably enhanced by the patronage of John Thomas Bulmer, who had represented
many prominent black men in their legal battles with the establishment during the last
decades of the 19th century. Bulmer took Johnston into his law firm to complete his
studies and begin his practice. Bulmer’s early death in 1901 enabled Johnston to take
over the firm. He was the only black to practise law in Nova Scotia before World War One.
He carved out a successful practice in criminal and military law and dabbled in politics –
active in the Conservative party, he was seen as a future candidate for Halifax city council,
and perhaps as a judge. But Johnston’s promising career was cut short in 1915, when he
was just 39. He was shot to death by his wife’s brother, Harry Allen, during an altercation
at his Halifax home. Allen was convicted of murder and served 14 years in prison despite
his lawyer’s dubious effort to portray Johnston as an abusive husband. Some 10,000
people attended Johnston’s funeral and Prime Minister Robert Borden sent a telegram
expressing sadness at the death of a man described as “an ornament” to the legal profession.
Harold Lothrop Borden (1876-1900)
Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier’s cabinet, after a difficult debate, decided in October 1899
to permit recruitment of Canadians for service with the British army fighting the Boers in
South Africa. Borden soon left medical school to volunteer. In English-speaking Canada
the popular enthusiasm was such that Borden, like many young militia officers, had to
accept a lower rank as the price of being included. Lieutenant Borden of B squadron
of the 1st Canadian Mounted Rifles disembarked with his regiment in Cape Town on
21 March 1900… Queen Victoria asked F.W. Borden for a photograph of his son, Laurier
praised his services, and in his home town a monument was erected to his memory.
Edgar Nelson Rhodes (1877-1942)
Premier of Nova Scotia: 16 July 1925 to 11 August 1930
Oswald Theodore Avery (1877-1955)
Oswald Theodore Avery was born on 21 October 1877 in Halifax, Nova Scotia,
the second of three sons of Elizabeth Crowdy and Joseph Francis Avery.
A Baptist minister in England, Joseph Avery and his wife emigrated to Canada
in 1873. After establishing himself as a well-respected pastor in Halifax, he
moved his family to New York City in 1887. The Nobel laureate Arne Tiselius
said that Oswald Avery was the most deserving scientist to not receive the
Nobel Prize for his work. Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg stated that Avery
and his laboratory provided “the historical platform of modern DNA research” and
“betokened the molecular revolution in genetics and biomedical science generally.”
Concept 17: A gene is made of DNA – Oswald Theodore Avery (1877-1955)
an animated primer of 75 experiments that made modern genetics
DNA as the “Stuff of Genes”…
United States National Library of Medicine (NLM.nih.gov)
National Institutes of Health (nlm.NIH.gov)
United States Department of Health & Human Services
John James Kinley (1881-1971)
[Not to be confused with John James Kinley (1925-2012)]
Years of Federal Service: 13026 Days (35 years, 7 months, 29 days)
Kinley was the youngest mayor of the town of Lunenburg from 1911 to
1913. He was president of the Lunenburg Foundry Company Limited.
Kinley was a minister without portfolio in the province’s Executive Council
from 1923 to 1925. He served during World War One (1914-1918) and
was awarded the King Haakon VII Liberty Cross for distinguished
service to Norway during World War Two (1939-1945).
Charles Hemmeon Wright (1882-1929)
Charles H. Wright was a legendary Wolfville contractor and master builder born in Canard, Nova Scotia in 1882. Wright built numerous homes and landmark commercial and public buildings throughout the town of Wolfville, such as the Baptist Church, the Royal Bank, Acadia University’s War Memorial Gymnasium, the rink, the United Church and the Festival Theatre building on Main Street. He also built the Kentville Sanatorium, the Baptist Churches in nearby Canard and Canning. Wright was also interested in hydro electricity and in 1917 partnered with Roy A. Joudrey in developing the Stivers Falls electric generating station on the Gaspereau River about three miles south of Wolfville. In 1921, the Avon River Power Company was incorporated by Roy Jodrey and Charles Wright. The company had its head office in Windsor. In 1927, Wright and Jodrey established the Minas Basin Pulp and Power Company in Hantsport. On 16 July 1929, while he was working on the construction of Kings County Academy in Kenvtille, Wright’s car was hit on a railway crossing by the Flying Bluenose, a fast passenger train operated by the Dominion Atlantic Railway. He was killed along with his daughter Jean and son Graham, as well as his sister-in-law and his father-in-law. The quintuple tragedy stunned the community. Wright’s remaining daughter, Rhoda, married internationally-acclaimed artist Alex Colville, who served as chancellor of Acadia University from 1980 to 1991.
Biography coming on Valley Pioneer
by Ed Coleman, 29 July 2005
Book on Valley Pioneer coming October 22
by Ed Coleman, 14 October 2005
Acadia Memorial Gymnasium
photograph taken shortly after completion
Gordon Sidney Harrington (1883-1943)
Premier of Nova Scotia: 11 August 1930 to 5 September 1933
Winthrop Pickard Bell (1884-1965)
On 7 August 1914 Dr. Bell wrote his doctoral exams at Göttingen University
and was awarded his doctorate magna cum laude. This timing could hardly
have been worse, as just three days earlier, on 4 August 1914, the United
Kingdom had declared war on Germany. His doctoral exams were conducted
under extraordinary circumstances which he described as follows: “I was caught
in Germany by the outbreak of the first world war. In fact, my oral examination
took place after the war had broken out, and under most unusual circumstances.
I was in ‘protective custody’, having been hauled out of bed in the middle of the
night when England declared war… The professors with whom I was to have my
examination enquired and found that there was no actual rule that a candidate
must be examined in the Aula [traditional hall for examinations] and must wear
“Frack” [formal dress] for it, so they together with the distinguished man who
was to be chairman of the affair, came to the place of my “Haft” [detention]…
and examined me there.” Dr. Bell was placed under house arrest at Göttingen
University and the faculty later decided to annul his doctorate. Dr. Bell was
subsequently transferred to the Ruhleben Prison Camp for enemies of the
state near Berlin, Germany. He spent the next three years interned there.
Biography of Dr. Winthrop Pickard Bell
Mount Allison University Archives
A catalogue of the Winthrop Pickard Bell Collection of Acadiana
held in the Ralph Pickard Bell Library, Mount Allison University
as of January 1, 1973
Google Books
Izaak Walton Killam (1885-1955)
Killam rose from paper boy in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, to become one of Canada’s
wealthiest individuals. As a young banker with the Union Bank of Halifax, Killam
became close friends with John F. Stairs and Max Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook) who
put Killam in charge of his Royal Securities. In 1919, Killam bought out Aitken
and took full control of the company. Killam’s business dealings primarily involved
the financing of large pulp and paper and hydro-electric projects throughout Canada
and Latin America. Killam was believed to be the richest man in Canada at the time.
Ralph Pickard Bell (1886-1975)
During World War Two (1939-1945) Ralph P. Bell served as Director-General
for Aircraft Production in Canada, 1940-1944. He was also a prominent
business man who was involved with the timber trade and fisheries in
Nova Scotia. He spearheaded the creation of National Sea Products
Limited and also served as a Vice-President of the Bank of Nova Scotia.
The War Economy and Controls: Aircraft Production
Canadian War Museum
Canada Produces War Plane Types
Hamilton Spectator, 26 July 1943
Background of Airborne Battle
The Financial Post, 26 January 1945
William Henry Dennis (1887-1954)
Editor, journalist, newspaper publisher
Canadian Senator, 3 February 1932 to 18 January 1954
William Davis (1887-1925)
The largest funeral ever seen in New Waterford.
Only the North-West rebellion of 1885 had brought
more military forces into an internal conflict…
Roy A. Jodrey (1888-1973)
In 1922, Roy Jodrey and his business partners formed the Avon River Power Company. Five years later, they established the Minas Basin Pulp and Power Company. Over the next 45 years Jodrey’s empire continued to grow, at one point encompassing 40 companies.
Nova Scotia’s Jodrey dynasty splits up with a smile
Globe and Mail: Report on Business Magazine, December 2011
Dawn (Don) Fraser (1888-1968)
a.k.a. Oswald Vincent Fraser
Angus Lewis Macdonald (1890-1954)
Premier of Nova Scotia
(1) 5 September 1933 to 10 July 1940
(2) 8 September 1945 to 13 April 1954
Admiral Percy Walker Nelles (1892-1951)
Admiral Percy W. Nelles transformed the Royal Canadian Navy from a barely
adequate coast guard to one of the most powerful navies of World War Two (1939-1945).
Henry Bruce Jefferson (1893-1970)
Henry Bruce Jefferson, newspaper reporter, editor, civil servant, and
author, was born at Moncton, New Brunswick. He began his career with
the Moncton Times and Transcript. Jefferson moved to Nova Scotia
about 1918 and worked for the Halifax Herald as a reporter and Cape
Breton resident correspondent. He was later news editor and editor of
the Sydney Record until its merger with the Cape Breton Post. In 1933,
Jefferson moved to Yarmouth as editor and publisher for the local
weeklies, The Yarmouth Herald and The Yarmouth Telegram. He then
returned to Halifax as editorial and feature writer for the Daily Star, and
in 1939 was appointed Atlantic Regional censor of publications and radio
during the Second World War. In 1949, he joined the Nova Scotia
Information Service and in 1950 he became editor of the Nova Scotia
Hansard. He also researched and authored numerous articles,
particuarly on the history of Nova Scotia railroads, which appeared
in the Chronicle-Herald from 1957 to 1961 under the pen name
J.B. King. Jefferson returned to Moncton as interim editor of the
Free Press before retiring in 1966. He died at Moncton in May 1970.
Lauchlin Daniel Currie (1893-1969)
Lauchlin Daniel Currie served in the province’s Executive Council
as Minister of Mines from 1940 to 1947, Attorney General from
1947 to 1949 and Minister of Public Welfare from 1948 to 1949.
In 1949 he was named to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia.
He was Chief Justice of Nova Scotia from 1967 until
he retired from the bench in March 1968.
Col. William Coates “Bill” Borrett (1894-1983)
History of Radio Station CHNS-FM
by The Canadian Communications Foundation
History of Radio Station CHNS-FM
Wikipedia
James Lorimer Ilsley (1894-1967)
Minister of National Revenue: 23 Oct 1935 to 7 Jul 1940
Minister of Finance and Receiver General: 8 Jul 1940 to 9 Dec 1946
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada: 10 Dec 1946 to 30 Jun 1948
Ilsley was Canada’s delegate to the League of Nations and in 1947 to the United Nations. Appointed to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in May 1949, he was named Chief Justice less than a year later.
Watson Kirkconnell (1895-1977)
Watson Kirkconnell was a Canadian scholar, university administrator and translator. He collaborated with the most distinguished scholars and academics of his time in perfecting the translations.
John Bartlet Brebner (1895-1957)
Brebner, who never resided in Nova Scotia, wrote several influential books about Nova Scotia’s history, including New England’s Outpost (1927), The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia (1937), The North Atlantic Triangle (1945) and, with M.L. Hansen, The Mingling of the Canadian and American People (1940). His explanation for the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755 and the neutrality of Nova Scotia during the American Revolution (1776-1789) is still widely regarded as a classic account.
Rear Admiral Leonard W. Murray (1896-1971)
William Gordon Ernst (1897-1939)
In the 1926 federal election, William “Billy” Ernst was elected MP for the riding of Queens-Lunenburg in Nova Scotia. He was re-elected in 1930. He was the federal Minister of Fisheries for two months in 1935, under Prime Minister Bennett.
Tancook Island Ferry William G. Ernst
as shown on
CBC TV News, Halifax, 1 November 2012, 6:08pm
“Tancook Island ferry to receive repairs after shutdown”
CBC News, 1 November 2012
George Clyde Nowlan (1898-1965)
Minister of National Revenue: 21 June 1957 to 8 August 1962
Minister of Finance and Receiver General: 9 August 1962 to 21 April 1963
Harold Joseph Connolly (1901-1980)
Premier of Nova Scotia: 14 April 1954 to 29 September 1954
Charles Brenton Huggins (1901-1997)
Charles B. Huggins attended the public schools in Halifax, Nova Scotia; Acadia University (BA 1920), Wolfville, N.S.; and Harvard University (MD 1924), Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Huggins, in collaboration with two of his students, published three papers in 1941 that demonstrated the relationship between the endocrine system and the normal functioning of the prostate gland. He was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering that hormones could be used to control the spread of some cancers. This was the first discovery that showed that cancer could be controlled by chemicals.
Charles B. Huggins: Biography
Official Web Site of the Nobel Prize
Charles B. Huggins M.D., (1901-1997)
Urological Sciences Research Foundation
Vice Admiral Henry George “Harry” DeWolf (1903-2000)
Alan Bruce Creighton (1903-2003)
Alan Bruce Creighton was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia on 5 October 1903. He attended the Victoria School of Art and Design and the Halifax Conservatory of Music, playing violin. In the Halifax area he was employed as a reporter for the Halifax Chronicle, and played piano to accompany silent films at Acker’s Theatre in Dartmouth. He also attended business school, became a farmhand, and worked in an automobile factory in Detroit, Michigan. Upon moving to Toronto he worked at Canadian Forum Magazine and the Old Favourites Antiquarian Bookstore. Additionally, he was an editor of A New Canadian Anthology, published in 1938. Throughout his life he was a prolific writer of diaries, short stories, poems and reminisces, as well as an active artist doing mainly sketches and watercolours. Many of his poems and stories were printed in magazines and newspapers. His artwork is extensive and primarily in the form of sketches and watercolours, with a few oil paintings. Many of his sketches are in albums, and many of those are used exclusively for one particular aspect of his studies; labelled, for example, “People,” “Trees,” “Skies,” “Rock Formations,” “Buildings,” “Railway Sketches,” (scenes from train journeys) and “Outdoors.” Others identify a place and time – for example, “At the Zoo,” “Nova Scotian Sketches 1951,” “South Shore 1982,” and “Toronto 1996.” He died in Toronto on 24 June 2003 at the age of 99 years.
—Source: Dalhousie University Archives Online Finding Aids: Alan Creighton fonds
https://www.library.dal.ca/DUASC/FindingAids/MS_2_701/
Thomas Head Raddall (1903-1994)
Writer of history and historical fiction
Raddall’s civic history of Halifax, Warden of the North, remains the most influential history of the city and continues to shape the city’s heritage interpretation and promotion. His depiction of Canadian privateering in books such as The Rover: Story of A Canadian Privateer and Nova Scotia’s battle of identity during the American Revolution (1775-1783) in The Path of Destiny shaped stories of these themes which influence scholars and tourism in Nova Scotia today. Raddall also greatly contributed to Nova Scotia’s heritage through his work with the Queens County Historical Society, the Historic Sites Advisory Council of Nova Scotia, and the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. He played a role in preserving the Diary of Simeon Perkins, an early colonial document published in three volumes (the fourth has yet to be published) between 1948 and 1978.
Irvin William Akerley (1904-1995)
In 1955, I.W. Akerley was elected mayor of Dartmouth.
Donald Olding Hebb (1904-1985)
Chancellor of McGill University, 1970-1974
Donald Olding Hebb was a Canadian psychologist who was influential in the area of neuropsychology, where he sought to understand how the function of neurons contributed to psychological processes such as learning. He was raised in Marriott’s Cove, near Chester, Nova Scotia. Donald’s parents were both physicians. Donald’s mother was heavily influenced by the ideas of Maria Montessori, and she home schooled him until the age of 8. He performed so well in elementary school that he was promoted to the 7th grade at 10 years of age. Although his rebellious attitude and disrespect for authority may have contributed to his failing the 11th grade, he graduated from the 12th grade two years later. (At that time in Chester, the 9th, 10th and 11th grades were taught in the same classroom by the same teacher. The year Donald failed the 11th grade, most of the students in the three grades failed the provincial exams and hence their year. Those failing the 9th and 10th years were moved to the next grade despite their failures. There was no 12th grade in Chester for Donald to be moved to and so he repeated the 11th grade. The following year, then living in Dartmouth, he successfully completed the 12th grade at Halifax County Academy in Halifax.) He entered Dalhousie University aiming to become a novelist. He wasn’t an exceptional student – his best subjects were math and science – but he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1925. Afterward, he became a teacher, teaching at his old school in Chester. Later, he became a farmer in Alberta and then traveled around, working as a laborer in Quebec. At the age of 23, he asked William Dunlop Tait, the chairman of the psychology department at McGill University (a post Hebb would one day hold) what he’d have to do to get in and was given a reading list and told to come back in a year’s time. During this year of study, he went back to teaching. In 1928, he became a part-time graduate student at McGill University, and at the same time, he was appointed headmaster of a troubled school in the suburbs of Montreal.
Dr. Hebb was, during his lifetime, an extraordinarily influential figure for the disciplines of psychology and behavioral and computational neuroscience. Since his death, Hebb’s seminal ideas exert an ever-growing influence on those interested in the mind – natural minds (cognitive science) and artificial minds (computer science) – as well as the brain (neuroscience) and how the brain implements the natural mind (cognitive neuroscience). When the book he drafted at Yerkes Laboratory of Primate Biology, The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory, appeared in 1949, it was greeted enthusiastically as “a breath of fresh air.” Since then it has become a landmark work that has recently been described (along with Darwin’s “Origin of Species”) as one of the two most important books in Biology. He has been described as the father of neuropsychology and neural networks.
Donald Olding Hebb in Scholarpedia
Donald Olding Hebb in Wikipedia
D.O. Hebb by Stevan Harnad
The Hebb Legacy by Raymond M. Klein
Wilfred Arthur Charles “Wilf” Carter (1904-1996)
a.k.a. Montana Slim
Wilf Carter created a body of work as unique and distinctive as any singer/guitarist of his era, romantic, playful, and upbeat. He was born Wilfred Arthur Charles Carter, one of nine children. The family was poor, and by the time he was eight or nine, he was helping to support them by working in the fields in the nearby Annapolis Valley. When he was 16, he left home in a dispute with his father, a strict Baptist preacher, over attending prayer services. He began singing at local dances, and he auditioned for a spot on the radio in 1925. By 1929, he’d moved to Calgary and competed in local rodeos. When he sang, it was mostly for money on the street. Finally, in 1930, he got a job with a Calgary radio station CFCN, singing one night each week. This led to a job offer from the CBC, and he also signed a contract as a songwriter with a Toronto publishing house. Carter had taken up the guitar by then, which he taught himself. He was hired as a trail hand and entertainer by the Canadian Pacific Railway, which ran tours for Easterners seeking a taste of the real West. Eventually he became the company’s major entertainer. Finally, late in 1933, he got to Montreal for a chance to audition for RCA, and this resulted in a contract early in 1934 and the release of his first record, a 78 rpm ten-inch shellac record with one song on each side – My Swiss Moonlight Lullaby and The Capture of Albert Johnson. The record went became a hit in Canada. In 1935, while in New York, he began broadcasting on the CBS radio network as “Montana Slim.” Wilf Carter recorded over 40 original and compilation LP records for RCA and its affiliates, including Nuggets of the Golden West, Christmas in Canada, Songs of the Rail and Range, Songs of Australia, Wilf Carter Sings Jimmie Rogers, and Let’s Go Back to the Bible. A 1962 compilation LP, comprised of recordings made from 1933 through 1950 — the oldest was My Swiss Moonlight Lullaby recorded in Montreal on 20 December 1933, and the latest was The Blue Canadian Rockies recorded in 1950 — was released in West Germany as Reminiscin’ with Montana Slim and in Australia as Reminiscin’ with Wilf Carter. 32 Wonderful Years was released in 1965, followed by Balladeer of the Golden West in 1966 and No Letter Today in 1967. How My Yodeling Days Began was released in 1970. In 1971, Wilf Carter was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1979, he served as the grand marshal at the Calgary Stampede. He was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1984, and the following year, he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame a.k.a. the Juno Awards Hall of Fame. In 1983 he rerecorded many of his most popular songs for Fifty Golden Years. A video documentary was released in 2000, called The Last Round-up: The Wilf Carter Story, which examined Carter’s distinguished career. In 1988, Carter recorded his last album, What Ever Happened to All Those Years. In 1991, at age 86, he made his last concert tour, appropriately called The Last Round-up Tour, with shows throughout Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Manitoba. He retired the following year.
Wilf Carter Fieldwood Heritage Society
Wilf Carter’s Records Fieldwood Heritage Society
Wilf Carter The Canadian Encyclopedia
Wilf Carter biography Allmusic
| The Wayback Machine has archived copies of this obituary We’ll Miss Wilf Calgary Sun, 7 December 1996 (The correct date of publication is 1996, not 1997.) Archived: 1997 August 08 https://web.archive.org/web/19970808221248/https://www.nucleus.com/~cowboy/WilfCarter/WilfCarterCalSunDec796.html Archived: 1998 December 03 https://web.archive.org/web/19981203104917/https://www.nucleus.com/~cowboy/WilfCarter/WilfCarterCalSunDec796.html Archived: 1999 May 04 https://web.archive.org/web/19990504013656/https://www.nucleus.com/~cowboy/WilfCarter/WilfCarterCalSunDec796.html These links were accessed and found to be valid on 7 June 2012. |
| The Wayback Machine has archived copies of this obituary Carter’s Music Will Live for a Long Time Halifax Herald, 7 December 1996 Archived: 1998 December 06 https://web.archive.org/web/19981206030148/https://www.herald.ns.ca/chronicle/sat/free/articles/leadstory2.html Archived: 1999 February 21 https://web.archive.org/web/19990221211330/www.herald.ns.ca/chronicle/sat/free/articles/leadstory2.html These links were accessed and found to be valid on 7 June 2012. |
| The Wayback Machine has archived copies of Wilf Carter, The Golden Balladeer Archived: 1997 August 06 https://web.archive.org/web/19970806045309/https://www.nucleus.com/~cowboy/WilfCarter.html Archived: 1998 December 02 https://web.archive.org/web/19981202225755/https://www.nucleus.com/~cowboy/WilfCarter.html Archived: 1999 April 28 https://web.archive.org/web/19990428004731/https://www.nucleus.com/~cowboy/WilfCarter.html These links were accessed and found to be valid on 7 June 2012. |
| The Wayback Machine has archived copies of this obituary Wilf Carter Never Forgot His Fans Calgary Herald, 7 December 1996 Archived: 1997 August 08 https://web.archive.org/web/19970808221158/https://www.nucleus.com/~cowboy/WilfCarter/WilfCarterCalHerDec796b.html Archived: 1999 February 04 https://web.archive.org/web/19990204010512/https://www.nucleus.com/~cowboy/WilfCarter/WilfCarterCalHerDec796b.html Archived: 1999 September 12 https://web.archive.org/web/19990912172934/https://www2.nucleus.com/~cowboy/WilfCarter/WilfCarterCalHerDec796b.html These links were accessed and found to be valid on 7 June 2012. |
| The Wayback Machine has archived copies of Wilf Carter Remembrances, Calgary Herald, December 1996 Tribute: People Who Made A Difference, Wilf Carter, A Fan’s Fan Calgary Herald, 11 December 1996 Archived: 1999 May 03 https://web.archive.org/web/19991008225015/nucleus.com/~cowboy/WilfCarter/WilfCarterCalHerDec1096.html This link was accessed and found to be valid on 7 June 2012. |
Alexander Hugh McKinnon (1904-1973)
Alexander H. McKinnon was first elected to the provincial assembly in a 1940 by-election. He served in the province’s Executive Council as Minister of Public Health and Welfare from 1949 to 1950 and Minister of Mines and Labour from 1949 to 1953. He was named a county court judge for Antigonish County in 1953 and, in 1966, was appointed to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. He was named Chief Justice for Nova Scotia in 1968.
Rear Admiral Hugh Francis Pullen (1905-1983)
Hugh Francis Pullen was born 9 July 1905 at Oakville, Ontario, but was stationed in Halifax for most of his career. He entered the Royal Naval College at Esquimalt, B.C. in 1920. He spent two years at sea with the Canadian Pacific Steamships and rejoined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1924. In 1944 he received the Order of the British Empire for his services while commanding a convoy escort group. He retired from the navy in 1960, his last appointment as flag officer Atlantic Coast, Maritime commander Atlantic, and commander Atlantic Sub-Area (NATO), 1957-1960. His retirement home was at Chester Basin, Nova Scotia. Rear-Admiral Pullen held executive positions in several voluntary organizations such as the United Appeal, The Royal Commonwealth Society, The Royal Life-Saving Society of Canada, the Canadian Mental Health Society, and the Anglican Church of Canada. He served as a member of the National Council of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards, 1963-1969. He was also co-founder of the Maritime Museum of Canada (now Maritime Museum of the Atlantic) and the Halifax Grammar School, and first commodore of the Nova Scotia Schooner Association. He was the author of several books and articles on Maritime history. Among his best known works are Atlantic Schooners (1967), The Shannon and the Chesapeake (1970), and The Pullen Expedition (1979), for which he won the John Lyman Book Award in 1980 from the North American Society for Oceanic History
Source: PANS, Public Archives of Nova Scotia
https://webarchives.nsarm.gov.ns.ca/webcat/…
Admiral H.F. Pullen’s effort
to preserve Hall legacy
deserves a medal
James Frank Willis (1908-1969)
It happened fast. Three men were suddenly trapped 43 metres [141 feet] underground when Nova Scotia’s Moose River gold mine collapsed on April 12, 1936. Fellow miners flocked to help, and reporters from across Canada gathered to cover the dramatic rescue effort. For one of them it was a career-changing event. For 56 hours straight, J. Frank Willis of the CRBC (precursor to the CBC) stayed awake to give radio reports every half-hour until two survivors were rescued on April 23. His reports on the rescue of three men trapped 141 feet underground at the Moose River Gold Mine, were carried by every one of Canada’s 58 radio stations, and some 650 stations across the United States – also they were picked up by the BBC in the U.K. and broadcast to Europe. In 1950, the newspapers of the Canadian Press voted the Moose River rescue as the biggest radio news story in North America, of the first half-century – a period that included World War Two (1939-1945). Willis’s groundbreaking round-the-clock coverage changed perceptions of the purpose of radio, and influenced the path CBC Radio would take in its formative years.
Moose River mine disaster
The Canadian Communications Foundation
Image of the Day: Moose River mine disaster
Looking back at Moose River, 50 years later
Moose River Mine Disaster 1936
Nova Scotia Public Archives
The Moose River Gold Mine Rescue
The History of Westville
People In Holes
National Public Radio (NPR)
People In Holes, Transcript
Muriel Helen Duckworth (1908-2009)
Muriel Duckworth was the first woman in Halifax
to run for a seat in the Nova Scotia legislature.
Norman Charles Creighton (1909-1995)
Norman Creighton lived on Avon Street in Hansport, where his keen insight into Valley life, his wry sense of humour, and his obvious love of the natural world provided ample material for his weekly CBC radio broadcasts during the 1960s and 70s. Born in Bedford, Nova Scotia, he graduated from the Maritime Business College in Halifax in 1929, where he took classes in correspondence, typing, and shorthand. He worked as a private secretary until he was struck down by pulmonary tuberculosis in his early twenties. After his recovery three years later, Creighton settled in Hantsport, where he established a plant nursery and began beekeeping. He spent most of his adult life in Hantsport. Creighton’s writing career began in 1941, when he was in his early 30s. That year he created “The Gillans,” a dramatic serial about a farming family for CBC radio’s Maritime version of the Farm Broadcast. The serial was highly successful, but very demanding of Creighton, who was required to write five scripts a week. He resigned in 1949 but continued to do freelance work for CBC Radio as a writer for the short-lived weekly serial “Three of a Kind,” and as a writer and broadcaster of radio talks. These short talks were among Creighton’s most popular works, and he created them on a regular basis for over three decades. In the early 1950s, Creighton began writing for print. His short stories were routinely rejected by magazines, but his non-fiction articles were more successful, appearing in the Atlantic Advocate and Maclean’s. Although he had several published articles, Creighton’s career as a magazine writer never became anything more than flirtatious; his attentions were directed at radio and the new medium of television. In 1955, Creighton moved to New York City to take a course on television writing at Columbia University. He spent five years in New York, but his career as a writer for the new medium never took off, and he was forced into menial office work to pay the bills. After leaving New York, Creighton returned to Hantsport and resumed his career as a freelance writer and broadcaster. During the 1960s he worked on special projects for CBC Radio and CBC International, which included interview shows on the town of Lunenburg and the V.E. Day riots in Halifax, and a short series of comedy shows called “The Rum Runners.” In addition to his regular radio talks, Creighton also wrote radio plays, acted in several CBC Radio dramas, and penned the occasional magazine article. Creighton took on fewer projects as the 1970s progressed, but he researched and recorded radio talks until his retirement in the 1980s. Creighton was a member of the Radio Writers’ Guild, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA), and a founding member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS). Creighton was a prolific writer, but little of it has been published.
—Source: Dalhousie University Archives Online Finding Aids: Norman Creighton fonds
https://www.library.dal.ca/DUASC/FindingAids/MS_2_689#a1
Combined Series and File Level Descriptions: CBC Scripts 1949-1978
This series contains scripts for short serials, programs, and plays
written by Norman Creighton for CBC Radio.
Dalhousie University Archives Online Finding Aids
George Isaac Smith (1909-1982)
Premier of Nova Scotia: 13 September 1967 to 28 October 1970
Robert Henry Winters (1910-1969)
Electrical engineer, politician, corporate leader
In the 1945 federal general election, Robert Winters was elected MP for the riding of Queens-Lunenburg in Nova Scotia. He was re-elected twice, in all representing the Lunenburg area constituency for twelve years, 1945-1957. He was appointed to Cabinet in November 1948, and under Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent served as Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (15 Nov 1948 to 17 Jan 1950), Minister of Resources and Development (18 Jan 1950 to 16 Sep 1953), and Minister of Public Works (17 Sep 1953 to 20 Jun 1957). Defeated along with the St. Laurent government in the 1957 general election, Winters entered the corporate world, becoming a Chief Executive Officer at a series of companies. He was persuaded to return to politics by Lester Pearson, and won the Toronto seat of York West in the 1965 election, becoming minister of trade and commerce in Pearson’s government. Pearson, who had been Liberal leader since 1958 and Prime Minister since 1963, announced in December 1967 that he would be retiring in April 1968. The ensuing Liberal Party of Canada leadership election of 1968 was contested by nine candidates, including Robert Winters. With three names on the fourth and last ballot, Winters came second to Pierre Trudeau. Winters then left politics, to become president and director of the giant Brazilian Traction and a vice president of CIBC (then beginning to explore the dawning IT era – in 1967, the CIBC branch office at Yonge and Bloor in Toronto had been the first bank branch in Canada to use a computer to update customer bankbooks rather than have a teller do it manually).
James Bell Ferguson (1910?-2000)
Builder of 24 Park Class Merchant Ships
Pictou mourned the death today (30 January 2000) of well-known Pictou businessman and shipbuilder James Bell “J.B.” Ferguson, at age 89. In 1935 he obtained a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from McGill University. Following graduation, he returned to Pictou and worked at the family-owned Pictou Foundry and Machine Company. In the early 1940s, this company worked in cooperation with the Foundation Company of Canada in building 24 Park Class Merchant Marine ships, in addition to operating a ship repair division. After the war (World War Two, 1939-1945) ended, he and his brothers, Allan and Thomas, founded Ferguson Industries Limited. The Ferguson shipyard built and repaired numerous commercial, military, and fishing vessels from the late 1940s to the early 1970s.
[Pictou Advocate, 2 February 2000]
The Park Fleet pages 246-254
The Park Ships Veterans Affairs Canada
The Parks
Pictou Shipyard Pictou, Nova Scotia
The Hyde Park Declaration 20 April 1941
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
Elizabeth Bishop is considered to be one of the most important and distinguished American poets of the 20th century. She was the recipient of the 1976 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 and the National Book Award for Poetry winner in 1970. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artists’ retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia dedicated to her memory.
Portia May White (1911-1968)
“One of the great contralto vocalists
in the history of Canadian classical music”
Reuben Aaron “Rube” Hornstein (1912-2003)
In March 1940 Mr. Hornstein was transferred to Halifax as officer-in-charge of the meteorological section of Eastern Air Command, administering meteorological services for all three branches of the Armed Forces from 1940 to 1946, with special emphasis on the RCAF Coastal Command and the naval convoy operations. His service was recognized by the granting of membership in the Order of the British Empire, by King George VI in 1946. From 1946 to 1972 he was officer-in-charge of the Halifax Atlantic Weather Centre. He began doing radio reports for the CBC in 1946 and hosted a popular show called “Ask the Weatherman”. When the CBC launched a TV news program, Gazette, in 1954, Mr. Hornstein did the weather forecasts. He was awarded membership in the Order of Canada 1991. “He was just one of the last great gentlemen,” said Don Tremaine, a longtime friend and television colleague. “They don’t make those birds anymore.”
Robert “Bobby” Beaton (1912-2007)
Beaton boxed professionally as a welterweight and his record was 12-0 with nine TKOs. In 1941 he began refereeing. Until his retirement in 1983, he officiated at over 500 boxing bouts, including 41 Canadian, five British Commonwealth and one World Championship. Beaton is credited with conceiving the three-judge system in boxing, now standard practice in the sport. He was Referee-in-Chief and Adviser to the Nova Scotia Boxing Authority from 1978 until 1994.
Boxing great Bobby Beaton dies at 94
New Glasgow News, 13 June 2007
Desmond William Piers (1913-2005)
Desmond W. Piers (1913-2005) served with the Royal Navy (RN) and with the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) during 1932-1967, attaining the rank of Rear Admiral. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he attended the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) and joined the Royal Navy in 1932 as the first ex-cadet of the RMC. After spending time at the Royal Naval College he returned to Canada and served on Canadian Destroyers. He served on HMCS RESTIGOUCHE as Escort Commander in charge of Allied convoys from Newfoundland to the United Kingdom during the years of 1941-1943. He was involved in operations to Murmansk and the Normandy Invasion. At the end of World War Two (1939-1945) he had spent a total of sixty-three months at sea. In 1949 became the Director of Plans and Operations at the Naval Headquarters in Ottawa. He attended the Naval Defence College of Canada and was subsequently promoted to Assistant Chief of Staff for Personnel and Administration on the Naval Staff of the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic. He was promoted to Commodore and appointed as the first naval Commandant of RMC and Honorary Aide-de-Camp to the Governor General in 1957. He then returned to Ottawa as Assistant Chief of Naval Staff responsible for Plans, Operation, and Intelligence. He was promoted to Rear Admiral in 1962 and made Chairman Defence Liaison Staff Washington and Canadian Representative on NATO Military Committee 1962 to 1966. Retired in 1967. Agent-General for Nova Scotia in the UK and Europe 1977 to 1979. Made a Freeman of the City of London in 1978. Honorary DMSC from RMC in 1978. He retired in Chester, Nova Scotia. In 2004, Admiral Piers was awarded the Legion of Honour in recognition of his service and contribution to the D-Day victory.
Rear Admiral Desmond William Piers in Wikipedia
South Shore Naval Association: Honourary President
Admiral Desmond Piers Naval Association (ADPNA)
Naval Historical Section: A Brief History of HMCS Algonquin
Obituary: Rear Admiral Desmond Piers The Guardian
Obituary: Rear-Admiral ‘Debby’ Piers The Telegraph
Obituary: Rear Admiral Desmond Piers The Lunenburg County Progress Bulletin
Monument to Rear Admiral Desmond Piers unveiled
Source: The Lunenburg County Progress Bulletin
https://southshorenow.ca/archives/viewer.php?sctn=2007/060607/news&article=10
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John Joseph Jodrey (1913-2012)
While still in his twenties John joined the family business of Minas Basin Pulp and Power Company Limited and shortly thereafter Canadian Keyes Fibre Inc., Hantsport, Nova Scotia. In both companies he rose to the office of President and Chairman. His tenure was to last several decades and under his guidance these companies expanded into new markets and product lines including new divisions in British Columbia and Ontario. He also served as President of Scotia Investments Limited for over sixty years. His was a corporate director in several companies including Avon Valley Greenhouses Limited, Ben’s Limited., L.E. Shaw Ltd., Halifax Developments Ltd., and Moirs Ltd. He also served as Chairman of Maritime Paper Products Limited and Minas Basin Holdings Limited for several years. He also served as a director of several public companies including Algoma Central Corporation, Crown Life Insurance Company, Extendicare (Crownx) and the Bank of Nova Scotia… He served on the Board of Governors of Acadia University during which time the Jodrey School of Computer Science was established. He also served on the board of King’s-Edgehill School for several years. At L’Université Sainte-Anne he provided an endowment for the creation of the Jodrey Centre. He served as Chancellor of the Technical University of Nova Scotia (DalTech) for several years and was elevated to Chancellor Emeritus. He also served as a director of the Dalhousie Medical Research Foundation and was a member of the Dalhousie Bureau of Industry… He was awarded Honorary Degrees from Acadia University, Technical University of Nova Scotia and Dalhousie University. He was inducted into the Nova Scotia Business Hall of Fame in 1994… For his significant achievement and remarkable service he was inducted into the Order of Canada in February 2000, as a Companion of Merit.
Source: The National Post, 22 February 2012
John Joseph Jodrey obituary
Globe and Mail, 22 February 2012
Businessman Jodrey remembers charities in will
Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 16 May 2012
James Malcolm Cameron (1913-1995)
Born in New Glasgow, James Malcolm Cameron began his writing career as a proof reader at the Evening News, New Glasgow in 1930. He was later a reporter and local Canadian Press representative on the Evening News staff until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. With the rank of lieutenant, he entered active service with the Royal Canadian Artillery and served in Canada, the United Kingdom and Northwest Europe, retiring with the rank of major. In 1946, he returned to his writing career and became publisher-editor of the weekly newspaper The Eastern Chronicle. In 1953, he founded the radio station CKEC and managed it and the publishing company until 1964. In 1965, he was appointed a member of the Canadian Pension Commission and for the next 13 years, he and his wife lived in Ottawa where he adjudicated pension claims submitted by war veterans. In 1978, he retired and returned to the county where he continued his longtime hobby of researching and writing about Pictou County, Scottish, military and Canadian political history. He was a leading authority on local history. In addition to writing fifteen books of history, which included The Pictonian Colliers (1974); Murray the Martyred Admiral; Pictonians in Arms; Political Pictonians, and Ships, Seamen and Shipbuilders of Pictou County, he had given papers on historical subjects of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society and the Royal United Service Institute in Ottawa and Halifax. In 1963, the Canadian Historical Society awarded him a Certificate of Merit, while a similar award was given to him by the American Association for State and Local History in 1967 for his book Political Pictonians 1767-1967. He was made a fellow of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society in 1978; member of Order of Canada in 1980 and received an honorary LLD from St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish in 1984.
Donald Kennedy Crowdis (1913-2011)
Donald Crowdis was a museum curator, broadcaster, and one of the world’s oldest bloggers. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he became curator and later director of the Nova Scotia Museum of Science in 1940. He served at the museum for 25 years focusing on the growth of its science collection until his departure in 1965. After World War Two, Crowdis spearheaded an effort which led to the construction of the Halifax Memorial Library in 1951 (now the Spring Garden Road Memorial branch of the Halifax Public Libraries system). Don wrote the Nova Scotia Museums Act and established the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. He served as Executive Director of the Society for the Commemoration of Alexander Graham Bell. In 1965 Don moved to Ontario to become Associate Director of the Ontario Science Centre, following which he became the Assistant Superintendent in charge of University, College and Adult Programming for the Ontario Education Communications Authority. Don was a founding member and President of the Canadian Museums Association and a founding member of the American Museums Association and Ontario Museums Association. He was a host of the popular CBC television series The Nature of Things in its early years. He was the recipient of a Science and Technology award as a 2008 Inductee into the Discovery Centre Hall of Fame in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Crowdis was one of the last living survivors of the Halifax Explosion.
Donald Kennedy Crowdis Globe and Mail
Complete list of Discovery Awards recipients
Crowdis is a curious kind of blogger. His entries are all hand-written. Since the blog began, in July 2006, he has been sending them, by regular mail, to a family member, a man who remains anonymous by request. The entries ultimately find their way to the website.
— Toronto Star, 25 February 2007
Arthur Russell Harrington (1914-2006)
On graduation from Nova Scotia Technical College, Russell Harrington joined Nova Scotia Light & Power Company Limited and rose to the position of President and C.E.O. Other positions he held included Vice President of Halifax Developments Limited and Nova Scotia Savings and Loan Company. He was director of several other companies and served as a member of Nova Scotia Labour Relations Board, Chairman of Nova Scotia Voluntary Planning, Chairman of Atlantic Management Training Centre and on the Board of Governors of Dalhousie University and Technical University of Nova Scotia. He was a Past President of the Waegwoltic Club and the Halifax Y.M.C.A.
Robert Lorne Stanfield (1914-2003)
Premier of Nova Scotia: 9 November 1967 to 21 February 1976
Clarence Eugene “Hank” Snow (1914-1999)
Hank Snow’s professional career started at CHNS Radio in Halifax in 1933 where he had his own radio show. He changed his name to “Hank, The Yodeling Ranger” because it sounded more western. Throughout the 1930s and 40s he toured the Maritimes and Western Canada playing at county fairs and local radio stations. In 1936 he made his first recording in Montreal with RCA Victor‘s Bluebird label and signed a contract that would last 47 years, the longest continuous contract in the history of the recording industry. Ernest Tubb invited Hank to the Grand Ole Opry on 7 January 1950. He performed at the Opry for 46 years. His first few appearances received only luke-warm appreciation, until he wrote and recorded the song “I’m Movin’ On”, which became the top country song of 1950 and still holds the country music record for number of consecutive weeks at the number one chart position. In 1954 another top country song of the year followed, Hank’s “I Don’t Hurt Any More”. Hank Snow was voted Canada’s top country performer ten times. He sold over 70 million records in his career that spanned 78s, 45s, extended play 45s, LPs, 8-track cassettes and CDs.
Hank Snow Wikipedia
Hank Snow Home Town Museum Liverpool
Hank Snow Hits
YouTube
• Hank Snow: My Nova Scotian Home 2:31
• Hank Snow: The Wreck Of The Old 97 2:23
• Hank Snow: Ben Dewberry’s Final Run 3:44
• Hank Snow: I’ve Got a Tangled Mind 2:38
• Hank Snow: Squid Jiggin Grounds 3:15
• Hank Snow: Address Unknown 3:54
• Hank Snow: The Restless One 2:49
• Hank Snow: I’ve Been Everywhere 2:43
• Hank Snow & Anita Carter: Mockin Bird Hill 2:01
• Hank Snow & Anita Carter: No Letter Today 2:26
• Hank Snow & Anita Carter: I Dreamed of an Old Love Affair 2:51
• Hank Snow & Anita Carter: When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again 2:40
• Hank Snow & Anita Carter: Down The Trail Of Aching Hearts 2:16
• Hank Snow: Music Makin’ Mama From Memphis 2:30
• Hank Snow: When Mexican Joe met Jolie Blon 2:20
• Hank Snow: The Blind Boys Prayer 4:31
• Hank Snow: I Don’t Hurt Anymore 2:54
• Hank Snow: A Fool Such As I 2:49
• Hank Snow: Nobody’s Child 3:24
• Hank Snow: I’m Movin’ On 4:26
• Hank Snow: Miller’s Cave 2:40
• Hank Snow: Hello Love 2:47
• Hank Snow: Old Shep 3:42
• Hank Snow: Little Buddy 3:20
• Hank Snow: The Last Ride 2:37
• Hank Snow: Black Diamond 2:54
• Hank Snow: Blind Boy’s Dog 2:51
• Hank Snow: You Pass Me By 2:47
• Chet Atkins & Hank Snow: Wheels 2:34
• Chet Atkins & Hank Snow: Difficult 2:26
• Hank Snow & Chet Atkins: Tiptoeing 2:21
• Chet Atkins & Hank Snow: Poison Love 2:59
• Chet Atkins & Hank Snow: I Saw The Light 2:09
• Chet Atkins & Hank Snow: Under The Double Eagle 2:34
• Hank Snow with Chet Atkins: Reminiscing 2:17
• Chet Atkins & Hank Snow: Limbo Rock 2:17
• Hank Snow talks about Jimmie Rodgers 2:34
• Hank Snow: The Soldier’s Last Letter 3:08
• Hank Snow: Vanishing Breed 2:49
Arthur James Cochran Wilson (1914-1955)
Arthur Wilson ranked amongst the world’s leading crystallographers for almost half a century. Born in 1914 in Springhill, Nova Scotia, Wilson was educated at King’s Collegiate School, in Windsor, Nova Scotia. He received his BSc in 1934 and MSc in 1936 from Dalhousie University, Halifax, and proceeded to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his first PhD in 1938. His book X-ray Optics, first published in 1949, is still a definitive work on the subject.
Obituary: Professor Arthur Wilson
The Independent (newspaper)
A. J. C. Wilson, FRS (1914-1995)
International Union of Crystallography
Obituary: A. J. C. Wilson, FRS (1914-1995)
James Murray Beck (1914-2011)
The author of seven books and the editor of two others, he wrote “The Government of Nova Scotia,” “Pendulum of Power; Canada’s Federal Elections,” “Joseph Howe, Anti-Confederate,” the two-volume “Politics of Nova Scotia,” “The Shaping of Canadian Federalism; Central Authority or Provincial Right?” and the “Evolution of Municipal Government in Nova Scotia.” He also wrote 25 biographies of Nova Scotians for the “Dictionary of Canadian Biography” and about fifty other articles and reviews on Canadian and Nova Scotia history and government. During his retirement he did considerable research and writing on Lunenburg’s historical development and completed a study of Lunenburg’s provincial and federal elections between 1758 and 1999.
J. Murray Beck wrote 25 biographies
for the Dictionary of Canadian Biography:
Samuel George William Archibald (1777-1846)
John Alexander Barry (c.1790-1872)
Henry Dugwell Blackadar (1845-1901)
Jotham Blanchard (1800-1839)
Edward Cornwallis (1713-1776)
John Creighton (1721-1807)
William Hersey Otis Haliburton (1767-1829)
Philip Carteret Hill (1821-1894)
John Howe (1754-1835)
Joseph Howe (1804-1873)
Dettlieb Christopher Jessen (1730-1814)
Alfred Gilpin Jones (1824-1906)
Philip Augustus Knaut (1716-1781)
Thomas Fletcher Morrison (1808-1886)
George Murray (1825-1888)
Richard Nugent (1815-1858)
William Thomas Pipes (1850-1909)
Simon Bradstreet Robie (1770-1858)
William Rudolf (1791-1859)
Alexander Stewart (1794-1865)
James Boyle Uniacke (1799-1858)
Otto Schwartz Weeks (1830-1892)
Charles Smith Wilcox (1852-1909)
George Renny Young (1802-1853)
William Young (1799-1887)
Richard M. Steele (1915?-2010)
During World War Two (1939-1945), Richard Steele served at sea in enemy actions in the North Atlantic, the North Sea, the Norwegian and Barents Seas and with the North Russian Convoys to Murmansk. He was the Navigating Officer for HMCS Algonquin when that warship, with several other destroyers, went in thirty minutes ahead of the main Normandy Invasion and destroyed strategic enemy gun batteries. In the Korean War (1950-1953), Captain Steele was Commanding Officer of HMCS Nootka, when that destroyer served along the coast of North Korea. For over 50 years, Richard Steele has made outstanding contributions to horticulture in Canada. One of North America’s leading experts in rhododendrons and azaleas, he is renowned for having developed hundreds of new hybrids that can withstand Atlantic Canada’s harsh growing climate. Captain Steele was a founding member of the Atlantic Chapter of the Rhododendron Society of Canada and in 1998 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Rhododendron Society of Canada. In the spring of 2004, Steele was made a Member of the Order of Canada. Bayport Plant Farm, 2740 highway 332, Bayport, Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, his nursery of 30,000 ornamental plants, will be a living legacy for generations of Canadians who share his passion.
Ian Malcolm MacKeigan (1915-1996)
Ian Malcolm MacKeigan had no previous judicial experience when he was appointed Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court – the first Nova Scotia lawyer named Chief Justice “off the street” since James McDonald in 1881. Born in 1915 in Saint John, New Brunswick, MacKeigan graduated from Dalhousie Law School and was admitted to the Nova Scotia bar in 1938. After working in Ottawa for the federal government for a decade, he returned to Halifax, where he practiced law from 1950 to 1973. He chaired the Atlantic Development Board, was a member of the Economic Council of Canada, and served as a director of major companies including John Labatt Ltd. and Gulf Oil Canada. He was president of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society from 1959-1960. His tenure as Chief Justice was marred by a case that began before he assumed office in 1973 — Donald Marshall Jr.’s wrongful murder conviction in 1971. When the case was brought before the Appeal Division in 1982, MacKeigan and four other judges cleared Marshall of the crime but, in effect, blamed him for the miscarriage of justice. The inquiry into the Marshall case tried to force the judges to explain themselves and later criticized the court’s effort to exonerate the justice system. In 1985, in the midst of the Marshall controversy, MacKeigan stepped down as chief justice.
Source: Chief Justices
Provided by: the Executive Office of the Nova Scotia Judiciary
Henry Davies Hicks (1915-1990)
Premier of Nova Scotia: 30 September 1954 to 20 November 1956
Vice Admiral Kenneth Lloyd Dyer (1915-2000)
He was appointed as a Naval Cadet RCN (with seniority dated 01 Sep 1933). He served in HMCS Stadacona 1933. He served in HMS Frobisher for Cadet Training in 1933. He was appointed as a Midshipman RCN (with seniority dated 01 Sep 1934). He served in HMS Hood for Training Afloat 1934. He served in HMS Furious for Carrier Training 1934. He served in HMS Enterprise for Training Afloat 1936. He served in HMS Victory 1936. He served in HMS President for RN College Greenwich 1936. He was appointed as an Sub-Lieutenant RCN (with seniority dated 01 Jan 1937). He served in HMS Dryad for Courses 1937. He served in HMS Excellent For Courses 1937. He served in HMS Victory for Courses 1937. He was appointed as a Sub-Lieutenant RCN (with seniority dated 01 Jan 1937). He served in HMCS Stadacona. He served in HMCS Venture 1938. He was appointed as a Lieutenant RCN (with seniority dated 01 March 1938). He served in HMCS Saguenay for Navigating and Watchkeeping Duties 1938. He served in HMS Excellent for Specialist Gunnery Course 1938. He served in HMS Excellent Attached to Captain Greenock for Gunnery Duties and HMS Drake for Gunnery Duties 1940 – he participated in Evacuation of Dunkirk and Saint-Valery. He served in HMS Dominion and HMCS Niobe as Executive Officer 1941. He served in HMCS Niobe as Commanding Officer 1941. He served in HMCS Stadacona as Officer-in-Charge RCN Gunnery School 1941. He served in HMS Walker for ASW Destroyer Familiarization 1942. He was appointed as an Lieutenant-Commander RCN (with seniority dated 15 Jun 1942. He served in HMCS Skeena (In command) 1942. He was awarded the DSC for “distinguished services before the enemy” while in HMCS Skeena under his command had shared in destruction of U-558 31 July 1942. He served in HMCS Kootenay (In command) 1943. He served in HMCS Acadia as Senior Instructional Officer 1944. He served in HMS Malabar as Senior Canadian Training Officer 1944. He was appointed as an Commander RCN (with seniority dated 15 Aug 1944). He served in HMCS Somers Isles as Senior Training Officer 1944. He was appointed as a Lieutenant-Commander RCN (with seniority dated 15 Aug 1944). He served in HMS Glory for Carrier Experience 1945. He was appointed as a Commander RCN (with seniority dated 01 Jul 1945). He served in HMCS Somers Isles (Training Commander) 1945. He served in HMCS Niobe to Stand By 1st Light Fleet Carrier and for Carrier Experience USS Intrepid 1945. He served in HMCS Warrior as Executive Officer 1945. He served in RN Staff Course 1948. He served in a Course at Joint Services Staff College 1948. He was appointed as a Captain RCN (with seniority dated 01 Jan 1949). He served in NHQ as Deputy Chief of Naval Personnel 1949. He served in HMCS Magnificent (In command) 1951. He was appointed as a Commodore RCN (with seniority dated 09 Apr 1953). He served in HMCS Naden as Commanding Officer and as Commodore RCN Barracks Esquimalt 1953. He was appointed as an Hon. AdC to Governor General 1953. He served in NHQ as Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Warfare) and Member of the the Naval Board of Canada 1954. He served in NHQ as Naval Comptroller and Member of the Naval Board of Canada 1956. He served in National Defence College of Canada 1956. He was appointed as a Rear-Admiral RCN (with seniority dated 30 Jul 1957). He served in NHQ as Chief of Naval Personnel and Member of the Naval Board of Canada 1957. He served in HMCS Stadacona as Flag Officer Atlantic Coast and as Senior-Officer-in-Chief Command and as Commander Canadian Sub-Area and as Maritime Commander Atlantic 1960. He was the Flag Officer Atlantic Coast during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. He served in NHQ as Vice Chief of Naval Staff and Member of the Naval Board of Canada 1963. He served in NHQ as Acting Chief of the Naval Staff and Chairman of the Naval Board of Canada 1964. He was appointed as a Vice-Admiral RCN (with seniority dated 01 Aug 1964). He served in CFHQ as Chief of Personnel 1964. He resigned in 1966 effective 02 Jul 1967.
Source: The Nauticapedia Project Nautical Biography Database
https://nauticapedia.ca/dbase/Query/Biolist2.php?name=Dyer, Kenneth Lloyd&id=6354&Page=1&input=Dyer, Kenneth Lloyd
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“Admiral Dyer Dies,” Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 11 October 2000
“The Canadian Angle During the Cuban Missile Crisis” by David Robinson
“Our Navy played role in Cuban missile crisis,” Montreal Gazette, 14 April 2012
Shirley Burnham Elliott (1916-2004)
Shirley Elliott’s first job was at the public library in Brookline, Massachusetts, 1940-1946. After that, she was hired for a time by the University of Rhode Island library 1946-1949, and then came home to Nova Scotia when she landed a plum position as the chief librarian of the Colchester-East Hants library in Truro. In 1954, she became Nova Scotia’s Legislative Librarian – a post she held until 1982. She was instrumental in the collection, arrangement and preservation of Nova Scotia’s rich heritage both at Province House and elsewhere in the province.
Sorrow At Passing of Nova Scotia Legislative Historian
Nova Scotia Premier’s Office
Shirley Burnham Elliot
Ex Libris Association
Shirley B. Elliott wrote seven biographies
for the Dictionary of Canadian Biography:
Benjamin Belcher (1743-1802)
Clement Horton Belcher (1801-1869)
Duncan Campbell (1818-1886)
Francis Blake Crofton (1842-1911)
Robert Fletcher (fl.1766-1785)
Angus Morrison Gidney (1803-1882)
Andrew Hay Johnson (1836-1914)
Rear Admiral William Moss Landymore (1916-2008)
Admiral Landymore enrolled at the Royal Military College in Kingston in 1934 and entered the Royal Canadian Navy in 1936. He distinguished himself in both war and peace, serving in 13 ships of the Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy during World War Two (1939-1945). Additionally, he trained the gunnery crews of seven allied ships at Scapa Flow. He survived the sinking of HMCS Fraser and HMCS Margaree. He saw active service in Palestine, the North Atlantic, the Pacific, and was awarded a Mention-In-Dispatches on the Murmansk Convoys. During the Korean War (1950-1953), Admiral Landymore commanded HMCS Iroquois on two tours, was appointed Canadian Commander Destroyers Far East and awarded the Order of the British Empire. Following the war, he commanded HMCS Bonaventure, our last aircraft carrier. He also served as Flag Officer Pacific Coast and Flag Officer Atlantic Coast. In 1967, Defence Minister Paul Hellyer fired Admiral William M. Landymore for his opposition to the unification of the armed forces, and other problems.
The Late William Moss Landymore, OBE, by Senator Bill Rompkey
Austin Willis (1917-2004)
Artist of multiple talents, Austin Willis delighted Canadians for forty years on radio, stage, television and film. He was a regular presence on the CBC, hosting and acting in radio and television programs, including Of All Things and Cross-Canada Hit Parade. He began his career in radio, landing a job with radio station CHNS in Halifax as World War Two began in 1939. He went on to perform in plays in London’s West End and on Broadway, as well as at home in Canada. His movie credits included small roles in The Mouse That Roared with Peter Sellers (1959) and the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger. Willis also starred opposite Tony Curtis in The Boston Strangler in 1968.
George Charles Stewart Bain (1920-2006)
Journalist, author, educator
Born in Toronto, Ontario, George Bain started with the Toronto Telegram at the age of sixteen, eventually becoming a general reporter and City Hall reporter. During World War Two, he served with the Royal Canadian Air Force as a bomber pilot. After the war, in 1945, he joined The Globe and Mail as a general reporter for City Hall and Provincial Affairs in October 1945. He became a National Affairs reporter and columnist serving as a correspondent in London and Washington. In 1973, the Toronto Star lured him away; it offered a lot more money to the man its reader research showed to be the most-read writer on the Toronto papers. In 1979, he became director of the School of Journalism at University of King’s College, Halifax. Bain retired in 1985. He bought four acres of land on Sleepy Hollow Road in Lunenburg County, overlooking Mahone Bay harbor, an hour’s drive from Halifax. There he and his wife, Marion, lived in a Cape Cod-style house that Bain designed himself, surrounded by trees and rhododendrons.
Standing on the Shoulders of a Giant: The uncompromising legacy of George Bain…
Ryerson Review of Journalism, 15 December 2010
More in Anger: George Bain’s bitter leave-taking from The Globe and Mail
Ryerson Review of Journalism, Spring 1988
George Bain
The Canadian Encyclopedia
Robert Walter Timbrell (1920-2006)
Canadian navy officer who commanded a luxury yacht at Dunkirk, rescuing a total of 900 stranded troops. Timbrell told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1980: “On the third or fourth trip we got bombed. We were hit on the fo’csle. I lost about five of the crew and both my anchors snapped. The fuel pipes were severed so both engines died. We drifted up on the beach.” He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by King George VI at Buckingham Palace in 1940 for his efforts, the first Canadian naval officer to be decorated in the Second World War.
The Lost Leadership Cadre: Navy, Part 42
The Legion Magazine, 25 December 2010
…As the British army prepared to evacuate the continent at Dunkirk, Bob Timbrell – all of 20 years – was summoned to the captain’s office, given a slip of paper and told to report to a ship called the Llanthony… They kept at it for twelve days and brought 600 soldiers safely to the United Kingdom. When it was over, His Majesty’s Ship Llanthony was a shambles. Timbrell simply climbed onto a local bus bound for Portsmouth…
Chester Basin admiral last surviving skipper of evacuation of Dunkirk
Obituary: Rear Admiral Robert Timbrell The Guardian
Obituary: Rear-Admiral Bob Timbrell The Telegraph
Rear Admiral Robert Timbrell remembered for service to country
Source: SouthShoreNow.ca
https://southshorenow.ca/archives/viewer.php?sctn=2006/042606/news&article=18
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Kenneth Joseph Chisholm Mackinnon (1921-2007)
Dr. MacKinnon graduated from St. Francis Xavier University and Dalhouse Medical School. He received his post-graduate medical training at McGill University, joining the staff of the Royal Victoria Hospital and McGill University in 1953. He was appointed Urologist in Chief at the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1959 and Professor of Surgery and Chairman of the Division of Urology at McGill University in 1969. In his latter years at the Royal Victoria Hospital, he was Chairman of the Medical Board and Director of Professional Services. In 1958, he was a key member of the transplant team which performed one of the first successful kidney transplants in the world. He held visiting professorships at 13 medical centres in Canada, the U.S. and Israel. In 1979, he and Ann moved to Nairobi, Kenya where he was Executive Director of the Aga Khan Hospital. They returned to Nova Scotia in 1982 where he became Chief of Staff at the Halifax Infirmary and Adjunct Professor of Urology at Dalhousie University. He established a Palliative Care Unit at the Halifax Infirmary. He and Ann moved to Antigonish and in semi-retirement, he directed the Palliative Care Unit at St. Martha’s Hospital and helped establish others around the province. Among many honours, Dr. MacKinnon was awarded Doctor of Laws by Dalhousie University and St. Francis Xavier University and received the Canadian Urological Association Achievement Award. He was a Fellow of The Royal College of Surgeons of Canada (F.R.C.S.C.). He served as President of the Canadian Urological Association and the Canadian Academy of Urological Surgeons.
Phyllis Ruth Blakeley (1922-1986)
Phyllis Blakeley’s contributions to Nova Scotian history and to the archival profession in Canada will not soon be forgotten. A generation of schoolchildren first developed an interest in their provincial history through her textbooks. Two generations of pupils were captivated by her witty and enthusiastic school tours through the old Archives building on the Dalhousie campus. And a multitude of university students and faculty have been inspired by her great love – the story of our past, which she presented as a gift to all those who wished to learn.
Obituary: Phyllis Ruth Blakeley, 1922-1986
Archivaria
Phyllis Blakeley wrote 39 biographies
for the Dictionary of Canadian Biography:
Charles Baker (1743-1835)
John Charles Beckwith (1789-1862)
Hugh Bell (1780-1860)
William Blowers Bliss (1795-1874)
Sampson Salter Blowers (1742-1842)
Richard Bulkeley (1717-1800)
Silvanus Cobb (1710-1762)
James Cochran (1802-1877)
Samuel Cunard (1787-1865)
Benoni Danks (c.1716-1776)
Robert Denison (1697-1765)
Shubael Dimock (1707-1781)
James Forman* (1795-1871)
John Geddie* (1815-1872)
Francis Green (1742-1809)
Brenton Halliburton (1774-1860)
William Alexander Henry (1816-1888)
Mary Eliza Herbert (c.1832-1872)
John Homer (1781-1836)
Henry How (1828-1879)
Richard Hughes (c.1729-1812)
George Moir Johnston (1817-1877)
Leonard Lockman (c.1697-1769)
Angus McAskill (1825-1863)
Richard McLearn (1804-1860)
Alexander McNutt (1725-c.1811)
James Monk (c.1717-1768)
Charles Morris (1711-1781)
Frederick William Morris (1802-1867)
George Elkana Morton (1811-1892)
Elizabeth Osborn (1715-1798)
Henry Joseph Philips (1811-fl.1850)
Temple Foster Piers (1783-1860)
Nathan Pushee (1758-1838)
Andrew Shiels (1793-1879)
Anna Haining Swan (1846-1888)
Lewis Morris Wilkins (c.1768-1848)
Montagu Wilmot ( ? -1766)
William Robert Wolseley Winniett (1793-1850)
*(in collaboration with Diane M. Barker)
Clive Edward Schaefer (1922-2012)
Longtime radio newsman Clive Schaefer, whose voice was heard across Nova Scotia’s airwaves for more than fifty years, was only a young boy when he was bitten by the radio bug, appearing on a CHNS quiz show in the 1930s. By 1949, he had joined CHNS in the news department. He also worked for a time with CJCH and CBC Radio. Former colleague Michael Cranston first met Schaefer in 1979. As a a former news director at the Maritime Broadcasting System, Cranston was there when Schaefer returned to work one day in 2000. “He went on the air and did a newscast for us,” Cranston said Thursday (15 August 2012). “We did that because we wanted him to be able to say he had worked for the Maritime Broadcasting System over six separate decades. He sounded just like he always sounded. He was fabulous. He could have gone on the air that day and probably worked another two or three years.” Cranston describes Schaefer as one of the most polished news presenters he worked with. “He was such a professional… You could throw anything at him and he’d handle it like a real pro.” After he retired, Schaefer volunteered with Accessible Media Inc., a 24-hour, national audio news service that provides newspaper stories primarily for the visually impaired through digital and cable television and online…
— Source: Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 16 August 2012
There aren’t many of the really veteran broadcasters left. Don Tremaine. Pat Connolly. I am having a hard time thinking of any more from all those years ago. Now, there is one less, as Clive Schaefer moves on to a better place.
— Source: Bevboy’s Blog, 14 August 2012
The CHNS Broadcasting Team of the Sixties was, beyond doubt, an unbelievably outstanding group of professional communicators. Led, for most of the Sixties, by born leader and communicator, Fred W. Arenburg, that Team was unbeatable for the better part of an entire decade.
As Metro’s first radio station, CHNS’ proud history was built in the first part of the Twentieth Century by notables such as Major William C. Borrett, J. Frank Willis, Cecil Landry, Anna Dexter, G.J. Redmond, John Funston and latterly, Don Tremaine and many others including Clive Schaefer, both of whom were unflappable! In fact, the story is still told of the time Tremaine crept into Schaefer’s studio while he was reading the 8am news live on the air, and used a cigarette lighter to ignite Schaefer’s newscast! I’m told that not one listener was ever aware of the excitement behind the microphone that day.
Personalities of that era of the Sixties… folks like Bob Oxley, Frank Cameron, Brian Sutcliffe, Mike MacNeil, Hal Blackadar, Bob Huggins. Mike Duffy, Clive Schaefer, Jack Lynch and many others, were first class radio communicators, to be sure. The names still bring goosebumps of delight and respect, long after many radio and television stations’ unfortunate decline in today’s convoluted communications world. We salute your wonderful decades of service to Metro and Nova Scotia, Clive! May God Bless!
Respectfully, [A friend and colleague]
Orville Pulsifer
— Source: Bevboy’s Blog, 17 August 2012
James “Jamie” MacLeod (1923-1996)
In 1967, for his many contributions to broadcasting
in Nova Scotia, he received the Centennial Medal.
Finlay MacDonald (1923-2002)
In 1956, he was elected President of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, and in 1961, was one of the founding Directors of the CTV Television Network. In his political career, Finlay MacDonald in 1972 was Chief of Staff for Opposition Leader Robert Stanfield, and in 1983 was Chairman of the Brian Mulroney Transition Committee. He was summoned to the Senate in 1984.
Bertha Wernham Wilson (1923-2007)
Born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, Bertha Wilson earned a Master’s degree from the University of Aberdeen, and emigrated to Canada in 1949 with her husband, John Wilson, a Presbyterian minister. John took up a ministry in Renfrew, Ontario, and later, during the Korean War, served a six-year secondment to Halifax as a naval chaplain. Wilson joined him in Halifax and enrolled at Dalhousie Law School. Had Bertha Wilson meekly followed the patriarchal advice handed down to her when she inquired about doing a law degree in the mid-1950s, the Canadian judicial system might have looked very different today. “Madam, we have no room here for dilettantes. Why don’t you just go home and take up crocheting,” Horace E. Read, the dean of the law school at Dalhousie University barked at her when the minister’s wife and former school teacher appeared before him, seeking admission to the school in the fall of 1954. He finally relented, according to Madam Justice Wilson, who recounted the story in a rare interview with the late journalist Sandra Gwyn in Saturday Night magazine in 1985. “From my very first day of classes, I knew the law was my thing,” she said. “I just soaked it up like a sponge.” She graduated near the top of her class. She was called to the Nova Scotia Bar in 1957. She moved to Toronto in 1959, was called to the Ontario Bar, and joined the law firm of Osler Hoskin Harcourt, where she practised for nearly two decades. In 1975, she became the first woman appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal. In 1982, she became the first female Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, appointed by then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
The decision to appoint her to the Supreme Court was not without opposition. “The ‘establishment’ in the Ontario legal community was shameless in making the case that she [Madame Justice Bertha Wilson of the Ontario Court of Appeal] wasn’t ‘ready,’ and that there were other [male] candidates who were better ‘qualified,’” according to Eddie Goldenberg in The Way it Works: Inside Ottawa. “Even chief Justice Bora Laskin, who had his own preferred candidate at the time, made that argument very vociferously to Prime Minister Trudeau at the time,” wrote Mr. Goldenberg, who was then special constitutional adviser to Minister of Justice Jean Chretien. “It was not just her brilliant mind, which was remarkable in its rigour, it was the serendipitous presence of Bertha Wilson and Brian Dickson on the Supreme Court of Canada. I call them the Fred and Ginger of the Charter,” said Madame Justice Rosalie Abella of the Supreme Court of Canada. “They choreographed the Charter. They gave it the muscular interpretation that launched the Charter in its first decade,” especially in contrast to the legalistically anemic Bill of Rights that preceded it. Speaking of the jurisprudence that Madam Justice Wilson developed, she said that her commitment to fairness was “unshakeable” and her legacy was “profound” in so many areas.
Bertha Wilson joined the Supreme Court the year the Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into effect, and she supported a broad application of the Charter. She is well known for concurring in the 1988 Supreme Court decision striking down Criminal Code of Canada restrictions on abortion (R. v. Morgenthaler, 1988) and for her acceptance of the battered-wife syndrome as self-defense in R. v. Lavallee, 1990. She has, over the years, been the recipient of Honorary Degrees from Canadian Universities, from the Law Society of Upper Canada and from her alma mater the University of Aberdeen. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1991 and appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1992. Ultimately, because Wilson “was such a highly respected member of the Court, it became much easier for governments to appoint women to the Court,” said Toronto legal scholar Peter Hogg. A few months after she left the court, then prime minister Brian Mulroney appointed her to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People to conduct a three-year investigation into the history of native-white relations and the social and economic problems facing Canada’s First Nations. At about the same time, the Canadian Bar Association asked her to chair its Task Force on Women in the Legal Profession. In 1993, Wilson chaired a Canadian Bar Association task force on gender equality in the legal profession. Its highly critical report, which was called Touchstones, stressed the difficulties faced by women lawyers with children, urging the profession to measure a lawyer’s performance by standards other than hours billed. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, on behalf of the Supreme Court of Canada, said at the time of Wilson’s death: “Bertha Wilson was known for her generosity of spirit and originality of thought… As a member of this court, she was a pioneer in Charter jurisprudence and made an outstanding contribution to the administration of justice. She will be sorely missed by all who were privileged to know her.”
—Sources:
Bertha Wilson Wikipedia
Obituary, Globe and Mail, 30 April 2007
Obituary, Toronto Star, 1 May 2007
Obituary, Ottawa Citizen, 1-4 May 2007
Bertha Wilson Honour Society: 2012 Inductees Announced November 2012
The Honourable Madam Justice Bertha Wilson Supreme Court of Canada
Supreme Court of Canada Wikipedia
Willard Sterling Boyle (1924-2011)
Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for “the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor”. Smith said later that “after making the first couple of imaging devices, we knew for certain that chemistry photography was dead.”
Calvin Woodrow Ruck (1925-2004)
Calvin Ruck, a soft-spoken social activist and author who served in the Canadian Senate, received honorary doctorates from Dalhousie University and the University of King’s College in 1994 and yet had left school in Grade 10. Born in the close-knit community of Whitney Pier in Sydney, his first job was at Dominion Steel and Coal Corp. From 1945 to 1958 he worked as a porter on the Canadian National Railways and later became a caretaker at Shearwater air force base, outside Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. But when he tried to buy a home in the white Dartmouth neighbourhood of Westphal in 1954, residents circulated a petition trying to keep him out. They failed, but the incident was his call to action. In the late 1970s, Mr. Ruck returned to school and graduated from the Maritime School of Social Work at Dalhousie University, which now gives an annual scholarship in his name. He served on the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission from 1981 to 1986. During this time he also began to take an interest in the little-known story of the only all-black battalion to serve in World War One. He published two books about the Number Two Construction Battalion – a group of more than 600 blacks who served, fought and died in the unit. As result of Mr. Ruck’s crusade, a monument to the battalion was erected on the waterfront in Pictou, Nova Scotia, in 1993. In 1998, Mr. Ruck was appointed to the Senate, only the third black person to enter the upper chamber. He retired in 2000 at 75, the mandatory retirement age for the Senate.
Sorrow at Passing of Calvin Ruck Nova Scotia Premier’s Office
Calvin Ruck Canadian Parliament biography
Calvin Ruck by Michael John Savage MP
Calvin Ruck by Local 4400, CUPE
Calvin Ruck Wikipedia
John James Kinley (1925-2012)
[Not to be confused with John James Kinley (1881-1971)]
29th Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia
23 June 1994 to 17 May 2000
J.J. Kinley practiced professional engineering for more than fifty years in executive positions at Lunenburg Foundry & Engineering Co. Ltd. and Lunenburg Marine Railway. He owned Chrysler and Volkswagen dealerships, and had business associations with Ford, Irving Oil, and Apple Computer. He was the Honorary Chair for Life of the Nova Scotia Branch of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, a former chair the Offshore Trade Association of Nova Scotia and a former director of the Canadian Foundry Association. He served in the Canadian Merchant Marine and Royal Canadian Navy and in Canada’s Naval Reserve and Retired as Lieutenant Commander in 1958. He was a president of Branch #23, Royal Canadian Legion in Lunenburg, former president of the Navy League of Canada, Honorary Colonel of the #14 Airfield Engineering Squadron, Canadian Air Force and the West Nova Scotia Regiment. He was appointed the first Grand President of the Nova Scotia Command, Royal Canadian Legion.
John James Kinley The Canadian Encyclopedia
Former lieutenant-governor Kinley dies at 86
Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 02 May 2012
John James Kinley… dies at 86
The Huffington Post, 02 May 2012
Ref: John James Kinley
Dalhousie Engineering,
Summer 2012, page 6
Willard Aubrey Bishop (1926-2005)
Graham W. Dennis (1927-2011)
Publisher and CEO of The Halifax Herald Limited
Obituary: Graham W. Dennis The Chronicle-Herald
Graham Dennis, publisher of Nova Scotia’s newspaper by Jim Meek
Obituary: Graham W. Dennis The Huffington Post
“A role model for so many” The Chronicle-Herald
Tributes pour in for Dennis The Chronicle-Herald
Charles Arnold “Arnie” Patterson (1928-2011)
Charles Arnold Patterson, known to almost everyone as Arnie, grew up in Dartmouth and became Pierre Trudeau’s press secretary. He was media manager for Dominion Steel and Coal during the Springhill coal mine disaster which claimed 76 lives. At one point Patterson was General Manager of Moosehead Breweries in Dartmouth. He was the founder and owner of radio station CFDR in Dartmouth.
History of Radio Station CFDR, in Wikipedia
History of Radio Station CFRQ-FM, by The Canadian Communications Foundation
The Late Mr. Arnie Patterson, by Senator Terry Mercer
Obituary: Radio station founder Arnie Patterson dies
Joyce Margaret McCulloch (1928-2012)
As a “Service Wife”, Joyce saw the world with her husband, RCN officer Paul Lancelot Steele McCulloch, and family and made long-lasting friendships wherever she went. After several stints spent on both Canadian coasts and different overseas postings to Greenwich, England, Rome, Italy and Brussels, Belgium, she and Paul spent their considerable energy and talents in retirement to lovingly restoring two historic heritage homes in Nova Scotia: The Bollard House in downtown Halifax, and the Peter Smyth stone house in Port Hood. Joyce, a passionate heritage activist and conservationist, was active in several organizations dedicated to preserving the history and heritage of Nova Scotia. She was a Past President of the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia and was an active and vocal member of the Friends of the Halifax Common, Friends of the Public Gardens, the Chestico Historical Society, Port Hood and the St. George’s Round Church, Halifax.
— Source: Victoria Times-Colonist, 12 May 2012
Merritt Alexander Gibson (1930-2010)
Author of several books, including “Seashores of the Maritimes”, “Gibson’s Guide to Birdwatching: and Conservation”, “The Old Place: A Natural History of a Country Garden”, “Bald Eagles In the Maritimes”, “Winter Nature: Common Mammals, Birds, Trees And Shrubs Of The Maritimes”, “Nature Notes For Nova Scotian Summer”, and “Nature Notes For Nova Scotian Winter”.
John Patrick Savage (1932-2003)
Premier of Nova Scotia: 11 June 1993 to 18 July 1997
Harry John Flemming (1933-2008)
Born in Boston, Harry Flemming was raised in Truro and went on to graduate from Dalhousie Law School but never practiced. He was a feisty and opinionated Nova Scotia journalist and political commentator who relished poking a stick at politicians of all stripes, for years with the former Halifax Daily News and on television for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on CBHT’s supper hour news show First Edition between 1986 and 1995. Flemming, “a writer who knew no fear, a character who knew no peers,” won two Atlantic Journalism Awards for commentary and was nominated for several others, had a legendary ability to remember details of Nova Scotia politics, Canadian history, and baseball seasons of yesteryear.
Obituary Amherst Daily News
Obituary New Glasgow News
Obituary Truro Daily News
Remembrance Truro Daily News
Alden Albert Nowlan (1933-1983)
Poet, novelist, playwright
Fred Dickson (1937-2012)
Fred Dickson’s towering accomplishment was a pair of offshore deals he negotiated with Ottawa. In 1980, Pierre Trudeau’s government was clashing with Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and British Columbia about jurisdiction over offshore waters. Newfoundland and British Columbia took the government all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, but the Nova Scotia government went in a different direction. Dickson, as chief negotiator, brokered a deal to co-manage the offshore industry that guaranteed the province a cut of Crown share offshore revenue. That proved to be the right move, as the Supreme Court went on to rule against Newfoundland and B.C. Newfoundland would later negotiate its own deal based on the Nova Scotia model, and Quebec has been trying to do the same ever since. After Brian Mulroney became prime minister, he abolished Trudeau’s National Energy Program, and with it the Crown share payments. Dickson went to Ottawa with a previously unheard of demand: Nova Scotia should be compensated for the value of its lost Crown share revenue. Mulroney was swayed, and in 1986 the two sides signed a deal that guaranteed the province compensation for its offshore resources. “He set, not just for the province of Nova Scotia, he set the template I think for Canada,” said Alison Scott, a provincial lawyer at the time the deals were signed. Scott would go on to become Nova Scotia’s deputy energy minister in 2004 and later saw Dickson’s deal become an $830-million windfall for Nova Scotia when the prime minister of the day, Paul Martin, agreed to hand over Crown share payments that had been clawed back from equalization. That arrangement is expected to pay out another $300 million to $400 million over the next eight years. “I’d sum him up as a great unsung champion for Nova Scotia,” said Halifax journalist and author Jim Meek, who co-wrote the book Offshore Dream: A History of Nova Scotia’s Oil and Gas Industry. “Fred was part of a team, and I’d say the key guy in the team, whose work resulted in literally, over the years, more than a billion dollars in offshore revenues going into provincial coffers.”
Obituary Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 9 February 2012
Obituary Cape Breton Post, 9 February 2012
Obituary Toronto Star, 9 February 2012
Obituary CBC News, 9 February 2012
Obituary The Huffington Post, 9 February 2012
Obituary Yahoo News Canada, 9 February 2012
Prime minister attends Fred Dickson funeral in Truro
Truro Daily News, 19 February 2012
Daurene Elaine Lewis (1943-2013)
The first black female mayor in Canada
Donald Marshall, Jr. (1953-2009)
Marshall was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, and spent eleven years in jail before being acquitted by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal in 1983. When Marshall’s conviction was overturned, the presiding judge – Ian MacKeigan, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia – placed some blame on Marshall for the miscarriage of justice, calling him “the author of his own misfortune.” This was viewed as a “serious and fundamental error” by the Royal Commission report. His conviction resulted in changes to The Evidence Act in Canada which was amended so that any evidence obtained must be presented to the defence on disclosure. Prior to this case, Crown Attorneys had discretion to present what they determined to be pertinent to a case. After 1983, the Crown Attorney must provide all evidence with no determination on its usefulness. The rationale of the law is that it is more appropriate for the defense to determine what may or may not assist an accused.
Wrongfully convicted by the CBC
Donald Marshall CBC-TV News in Review
Reluctant Hero: The Donald Marshall Story by the CBC
The Marshall Decision and the Maritime Canadian Fishery by the CBC
Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall Jr Prosecution
Donald Marshall Jr. commentary by Daniel N. Paul
Mackeigan v. Hickman Wikipedia
Mackeigan v. Hickman at CanLII
Supreme Court of Canada, 5 October 1989
Mackeigan v. Hickman at Lexum
Supreme Court of Canada, 5 October 1989
All Things Marshall Local 6, Maritime Fishermen’s Union
Also see:
• # Cape Breton Colony
• # Coal Mining
• # Nova Scotia Biographies
• # Nova Scotia History
Cape Breton Colony
Historical Biographies
26 August 1784 – 9 October 1820
Governors and Administrators of Cape Breton Island
26 Aug 1784 - 1787 J.F.W. DesBarres
1787 - 27 May 1795 William Macarmick
27 May 1795 - 29 Jun 1798 David Mathews
29 Jun 1798 - 21 Jun 1799 James Ogilvie
21 Jun 1799 - 16 Sep 1800 John Murray
16 Sep 1800 - 6 Jul 1807 John Despard
6 Jul 1807 - 1 Jun 1813 Nicholas Nepean
1 Jun 1813 - 6 Feb 1816 Hugh Swayne
6 Feb 1816 - 4 Nov 1816 Jonas Fitzherbert
4 Nov 1816 - 22 Jun 1820 George Robert Ainslie
22 Jun 1820 - 9 Oct 1820 David Stewart
The following are among the more prominent people
in the history of the Colony of Cape Breton Island,
arranged chronologically by birth date:
Samuel Johannes Holland (1728-1801)
In 1765 Holland had surveyed the Îles de la Madeleine, and then moved
on to Cape Breton Island, where work had been begun by Charles Morris
in 1764. It was divided in the same manner as St. John’s Island (Prince
Edward Island), into counties of approximately 500,000 acres, parishes
of around 100,000 acres, and townships of about 20,000 acres, surveyed
with precision by fixing latitudes and longitudes from astronomical
observation; he also took careful soundings in coastal waters.
The completed maps and reports, which Holland had sent to London by
July 1767, indicated that in addition to its fisheries Cape Breton was
valuable chiefly for its coal, building stone, and gypsum, although it
was also suited in a few areas to agriculture. In 1768 Holland expressed
the view that Cape Breton Island could not develop its resources
energetically as long as it remained administratively dependent on
Nova Scotia; it was separated from that colony in 1784. While the
survey on Cape Breton Island was being finished, in 1767 Holland’s
survey parties were working in the Gaspé around Baie des Chaleurs
and on Anticosti Island. Holland made his home at Louisbourg
for much of the period 1765-67.
David Mathews (c.1732-1800)
Mayor of New York City 1776-1783
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 27 May 1795 – 29 June 1798
John Murray (c.1739-1824)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 21 June 1799 – 16 September 1800
Before leaving Halifax in mid-June 1799, Murray was given all the lurid details of the political
quarrelling in Cape Breton. The contending parties, both trying to gain the ear of the
colony’s ruler, were headed by the Reverend Ranna Cossit and Attorney General David Mathews.
When Murray arrived in Cape Breton on June 21st he was particularly suspicious of Mathews,
about whom he had been warned in Halifax. But in an effort to follow the non-partisan path
of the absentee lieutenant governor, William Macarmick, he appointed his Executive Council
from both parties. Mathews made it practically impossible to maintain this balance.
James Ogilvie (c.1740-1813)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 29 June 1798 – 21 June 1799
Ogilvie’s chief contributions to the development of Cape Breton
were his bringing 150 troops to protect the colony, undefended
since 1793; his organization of the colonial militia after
Macarmick’s failure to do so; his improvement of the Sydney
harbour defences; and his development of the coal mines.
Archibald Charles Dodd (c.1740-1831)
It was to escape a clouded past that in 1787 Dodd arrived in Cape Breton, which three years
earlier had been separated from Nova Scotia as a distinct colony. Since he was one of only two
lawyers there, he was immediately engaged by Lieutenant Governor J.F.W. DesBarres as acting clerk
of the Executive Council, the governing body of the island. In 1788 Lieutenant Governor William
Macarmick appointed Dodd his private secretary. Dodd’s acumen is revealed by his ability to adapt
to shifting political alliances within the colony. On 7 June 1831, the day of his funeral,
all businesses in Sydney were closed and ships in the harbour flew their flags at half-mast.
Abraham Cornelius Cuyler (1742-1810)
Mayor of Albany, 1770-1776
In September 1770, twenty-eight-year old Abraham C. Cuyler became the third member
of his family to be appointed mayor of Albany, New York. His tenure at city hall paralleled
the rapid development of Albany and its hinterland following the end of the last French
and Indian War in 1763. It ended in June 1776 when he was arrested by the rebels.
Under the Act of Attainder in 1779, Cuyler’s property was seized and he was condemned
to death. Eventually he made his way to Quebec as a destitute Loyalist refugee.
In November 1783 Cuyler sailed for England to pressure the British governemt into
approving the formation of a settlement on Cape Breton Island for some 3,000 Loyalists
then in Quebec. In England, he asked for the separation of Cape Breton from Nova Scotia
and, when that was granted, successfully solicited the appointments of secretary and
registrar of the new colony. Cuyler was also allowed to bring his Loyalists to Cape
Breton, but by the time permission was given it was already October 1784, and most of
the prospective settlers decided to remain in Quebec. Hence only 140 persons arrived at
Louisbourg and St. Peters that year. Meanwhile J.F.W. DesBarres had been appointed
lieutenant governor of Cape Breton, and he and a group of English settlers founded the
town of Sydney in the spring of 1785. Cuyler went to Sydney by July, took office,
and was sworn into the Executive Council. It soon became apparent
that Cuyler and DesBarres could not work together.
William Macarmick (1742-1815)
Lieutenant Governor of Cape Breton Island, 1787 – 27 May 1795
Though expressly forbidden to grant land to former French citizens, Macarmick allowed
a group of refugee Acadians from Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, where they had mainly
worked in the fishery, to settle in the early 1790s at Isle Madame and Chéticamp.
There they contributed to the island’s fishery and shipbuilding.
Ranna Cossit (1744-1815)
Church of England clergyman and politician
Cossit visited remote settlements such as Louisbourg, Main-à-Dieu,
and Cow Bay (Port Morien). He began the formal education system in Sydney.
He was appointed a member of Cape Breton’s Executive Council in August 1786.
Cossit was an activist whose mark on Cape Breton was recognized by the
opening of his home, Cossit House, as an historic structure in 1977.
John Despard (1745-1829)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 16 September 1800 – 6 July 1807
Previouly, an appointment as military commander of the colony of Cape Breton included
authority as civil administrator, but when Despard arrived in Halifax in May 1800 he
was advised by Lieutenant Governor Sir John Wentworth of Nova Scotia that his commission
entitled him to the military command only. Despard went to Sydney on 16 June 1800 and
at first made no move to supplant Murray as administrator, but by August he had decided
to challenge him and was demanding that Murray hand over the government. In September,
Wentworth changed his views and informed Despard that as military commander he was
ex officio civil administrator. This opinion prompted Despard to move.
On 17 September he called a meeting of the colony’s Executive Council to have himself
proclaimed administrator, and simultaneously had the local militia assembled.
Sydney was in a high state of excitement as both factions collected support, and a
mob favourable to Murray gathered; violence was avoided only by the presence of the
militia. Despard’s show of force broke the resistance of Murray and his supporters
on the council, headed by the Reverend Ranna Cossit. They failed to attend the
meeting and were eclipsed by Despard’s adherents, led by Archibald Charles Dodd.
Anxious for settlers, Despard offered them land and financial assistance. In early
August 1801 the first boatload of Scots sailing directly to Cape Breton arrived in Sydney
with 415 passengers. This influx began the great tide that was to transform Cape Breton
into Canada’s strongest Scottish enclave. In five years the colony’s population
increased from 2,500 to nearly 5,000 and new settlements sprang up all along the coasts.
The judgement of history is that John Despard was the most able and successful
of Cape Breton Island’s colonial administrators.
Edward Winslow (1747-1815)
When hostilities broke out on 19 April 1775, Winslow rushed to fight with the British regulars at
Lexington,Massachusetts. Commended for valour by his commander, Lord Hugh Percy, he continued
to serve the army in a paramilitary capacity throughout the rebels’ eight-month siege of Boston;
during this time he was appointed by Lieutenant-General Thomas Gage collector for the port of
Boston and registrar of probate for Suffolk County. In early 1776 Winslow made the painful
decision to leave his family and his native land and go with the British troops to Halifax, Nova
Scotia. In July 1783 that Winslow made his provocative suggestion that the area north of the
Bay of Fundy be partitioned from Nova Scotia to become a separate Loyalist province.
William McKinnon ( ? -1811)
McKinnon was named secretary and registrar of deeds as well as clerk and member
of the Executive Council of Cape Breton. He arrived in Sydney in December 1792.
McKinnon steered an eventually successful course through the rocks of factionalism
which were characteristic of the first years of Cape Breton’s existence as a colony.
Ingram Ball (1752-1807)
Ingram Ball came to Cape Breton in 1788 with his wife and six children and settled
west of Sydney on the site of the present-day village of Ball’s Creek. He soon became
involved in the political life of the colony, being appointed to the Executive Council
on 22 June 1789 by Lieutenant Governor William Macarmick.
Richard Stout (c.1756-1820)
Richard Stout was the most important merchant and the main creditor in the Cape Breton colony.
In 1792 the lease for the Sydney coal mines was transferred to Richard Stout and Jonathan
Tremaine. The mines had been well known for some time, but the British government had persisted
in refusing to lease them. Prior to 1784 only the army, a few small operators, and some smugglers
had worked the deposits, and in a haphazard fashion, sinking pits and then abandoning them.
Nicholas Nepean (1757-1823)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 6 July 1807 – 1 June 1813
Though the Napoleonic Wars (1803 to 1815) and the American Embargo Act of 1807 resulted
in increased economic activity in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, they affected Cape Breton
only indirectly. Her ships were too small to take part in the growing transatlantic
and Caribbean trade that the larger colonies enjoyed, but she could ship her goods to those
provinces and participate in the economic growth of the region. However, increased trade
meant increased inflation – for example, between 1807 and 1808 the price of flour doubled.
To stop this trend Nepean allowed the importation of American food-stuffs and forbad the export
of food or cattle, but prices continued to rise. Moreover, the attraction of prosperity in
Halifax and Saint John and the growing demand for sailors drew away miners, many of whom had
been Newfoundland fishermen. Inflation and a scarcity of labour drove up miners’ wages and
also production costs, and in 1808 John Corbett Ritchie, the mines superintendent, asked that
the price of a chaldron of coal be raised from 16 to 20 shillings. In 1815 – with the
final defeat and exile of Napolean in Europe, and the end of the War of 1812 in North America –
the political and economic chaos that began with the French Revolution in 1789 began to subside,
but the lingering effects continued to bedevil the tiny and remote colony of Cape Breton Island,
and in 1820 it was merged for the second time with Nova Scotia. Far in the future, at the turn
of the 20th century, Cape Breton Island was to arrive at the forefront of scientific achievement
with the now-famous activities launched by inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Guglielmo Marconi.
Hugh Swayne (c.1760-1836)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 1 June 1813 – 6 February 1816
When Swayne arrived in Sydney on New Year’s Day 1813 to take over from Nicholas Nepean,
he faced several problems. The most immediate was how to protect the island, whose
defensive works, in the five decades between the capture of the Louisbourg Fortress in
1758 and the outbreak of the War of 1812, suffered the usual effects of benign neglect on
the part of a faraway bureaucracy in London, England. In 1811 the garrison had been
increased to 168 men and Nepean had made a few feeble moves to organize a militia. In the
face of hostilities, however, these measures would be totally inadequate. The greatest
danger was from the sea, but only two ships cruised the coasts. This weakness was revealed
immediately after the outbreak of war when American privateers attacked fishing and trading
vessels off Arichat, upsetting the commerce of that area and of the Strait of Canso.
Since Swayne could not count on help from Halifax, he took steps to lessen the colony’s
vulnerability. To ensure that the island could feed itself if cut off from outside
supplies, in April 1813 he stopped the export of selected foodstuffs for six months.
Later that year, as protection for the coal mines, he rebuilt a redoubt and barracks near
them and had troops stationed there, to provide at least a show of strength in case of attack.
Swayne also reorganized the militia, dividing the island into 20 districts, each with a captain
and two lieutenants. He tried to choose as leaders men with previous military experience.
NOTE: Hugh Swayne was succeeded as administrator of Cape Breton Island
by Colonel Jonas Fitzherbert, the commander of the garrison, who was the
administrator of Cape Breton Island, 6 February 1816 – 4 November 1816.
George Robert Ainslie (1776-1839)
Lieutenant Governor of Cape Breton Island, 4 November 1816 – 22 June 1820
Though he was the tenth head of the colony, which had been founded in 1784,
Ainslie was only the third lieutenant governor (DesBarres was the first and Macarmick
the second). His predecessor as lieutenant governor, William Macarmick, had held
the office in absentia from his departure in 1795 until his death in 1815, a succession
of administrators taking his place. During Ainslie’s term as Lieutenant Governor,
a succession of adverse events made it ever more difficult for the tiny colony of Cape
Breton Island to continue without an elected legislature. It was therefore decided that
the colony would receive representative government by being reannexed to Nova Scotia.
On 22 June 1820, at a meeting of the council in Sydney, it was decided that the senior
miltary officer, Captain David Stewart, was the proper person to undertake the
administration of Government until Sir James Kempt had completed his arrangements
for annexing the Island to the Government of Nova Scotia. General Ainslie, delighted
to have been relieved of the burden of governing the colony, lost no time. He left
Sydney on June 24th, in the brig Hannah, direct for London, where he arrived on
August 3rd. On 16 October 1820 Lieutenant Governor Sir James Kempt of Nova Scotia,
following instructions from London, officially proclaimed the end of Cape Breton as a
separate colony. After arriving in England, Ainslie sought a retirement allowance
of £500 out of the revenue from the Cape Breton coal mines, but the pension
was refused because of official disapproval of his conduct in the colony.
NOTE: George Robert Ainslie was succeeded as administrator of Cape Breton Island
by Captain David Stewart, who was the administrator 22 June 1820 – 9 October 1820.
William Smith (fl.1784-1803)
[Not to be confused with William Smith (1728-1793)]
[Not to be confused with William Smith (1769-1847)]
[Not to be confused with William Smith (1821-1897)]
William Smith was appointed as garrison surgeon of the new
colony of Cape Breton on 28 August 1784. He arrived there
in November and was appointed by Lieutenant Governor
DesBarres to the Executive Council of the colony.
James Crowdy (1794-1867)
Clerk of the Council and colonial secretary of Cape Breton Island, 1814-1820
Also see:
• # Cape Breton Colony
• # Coal Mining
• # Nova Scotia Biographies
• # Nova Scotia History
Coal Mining in Nova Scotia
Historical Biographies
The following are among the more prominent people
in the history of coal mining in Nova Scotia,
arranged chronologically by birth date:
John Murray (c.1739-1824)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 21 June 1799 – 16 September 1800
Murray’s main achievement, during his fifteen months running the Cape Breton colony,
lay in increasing the production of coal. He wanted a new pit dug at the mines since
he felt that the existing one would soon run out of coal. The lessees of the mines,
Jonathan Tremain and Richard Stout, claimed that there was still plenty of coal, but
Murray mistrusted their assessment and thought that the partners would let their lease
expire and force the government to pay the cost of opening a new pit. He concluded that
the government should assume control, but realized that this scheme would be expensive
and therefore bargained with Tremain and Stout, offering to sink a new pit if they would
renew their lease. In October 1799, as the contract was about to be signed, James Miller,
the superintendent of mines, died. Murray was loath to let Tremain and Stout run the mines
without Miller’s supervision and allowed the lease to lapse. Stout meanwhile mercilessly
stripped the pit. Murray, placing the mines under crown control, appointed Campbell
superintendent to work with Miller’s sister, Jane, a woman with good business sense and
knowledge of mining. A new pit was opened without delay, and by the summer of 1800 this
pit and a new pier had resulted in increased shipments of coal. Murray also made the
first important innovation in the treatment of the miners when he began paying them in
cash at regular intervals. The change broke Tremain and Stout’s economic hold on the
miners, who had previously had to take their wages in supplies.
John Despard (1745-1829)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 16 Sepyember 1800 – 6 July 1807
In November 1801 Despard leased the coal mines to the acting attorney general,
William Campbell, but when he became dissatisfied with his work assumed control
in the name of the crown in February 1804, appointing John Corbett Ritchie,
a Halifax merchant, as superintendent. Under Ritchie’s guidance the level of
the mines was extended, a new pit was completed, and the wharf at the mines
strengthened and lengthened to deeper water for the easier loading of large ships.
These improvements greatly expanded coal production, which increased by almost
2,000 chaldrons from 1805 to 1807, and Sydney was now able to supply
Halifax and Newfoundland with adequate amounts of coal.
Richard Stout (c.1756-1820)
In 1792 the lease for the Sydney coal mines was transferred to Richard Stout and Jonathan
Tremaine. The mines had been well known for some time, but the British government had persisted
in refusing to lease them. Prior to 1784 only the army, a few small operators, and some smugglers
had worked the deposits, and in a haphazard fashion, sinking pits and then abandoning them.
Nicholas Nepean (1757-1823)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 6 July 1807 – 1 June 1813
Though the Napoleonic Wars (1803 to 1815) and the American Embargo Act of 1807 resulted
in increased economic activity in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, they affected Cape Breton
only indirectly. Her ships were too small to take part in the growing transatlantic
and Caribbean trade that the larger colonies enjoyed, but she could ship her goods to those
provinces and participate in the economic growth of the region. However, increased trade
meant increased inflation – for example, between 1807 and 1808 the price of flour doubled.
Inflation and a scarcity of labour drove up miners’ wages and also production costs, and in
1808 John Corbett Ritchie, the mines superintendent, asked that the price of a chaldron of coal
be raised from 16 to 20 shillings. Nepean had also to face the poor state of the mines, which
were still suffering from Campbell’s mismanagement. Production was lagging just when the
increasing number of troops in Halifax had created a demand for coal. To solve the problems
of high wages and low production, Nepean put 30 of the New Brunswick Fencibles stationed
in Sydney to work in the mines. The output of coal rose until the summer of 1811, when
Lieutenant-General Sir George Prevost, the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, ordered the
troops to stop working, perhaps because he hoped to open the Pictou coalfields in his own
colony. In frustration, Nepean leased the mines to the Halifax merchants Jonathan and John
Tremain, but allowed the lease to expire after they asked for an increase in the price of coal.
Negotiations were proceeding with another merchant when Nepean’s term ended.
Hugh Swayne (c.1760-1836)
Administrator of Cape Breton Island, 1 June 1813 – 6 February 1816
When Swayne arrived in Sydney on New Year’s Day 1813 to take over from Nicholas Nepean,
he faced several problems. Under Swayne’s predecessors the mines had usually been
leased to private operators, who paid a royalty to the government on each ton of coal
exported, but by the time Swayne arrived they were virtually abandoned because no lease
had been negotiated. In order to keep prices down in the face of wartime inflation, late
in 1813 Swayne had to accept a bid with a low royalty from Ritchie and Leaver, a firm
which had operated the mines previously. Despite Swayne’s efforts the Nova Scotia
legislature complained of the high cost of Cape Breton coal and in 1815 petitioned
successfully to be allowed to open mines in its own province. Swayne nevertheless
carried on with Ritchie and Leaver, and Nova Scotia continued
to purchase all the coal Cape Breton could ship.
Edward Mortimer (1768-1819)
In 1818 Mortimer successfully outbid competitors for a
21-year monopolistic lease to operate the Pictou coal-mines.
Richard Smith (1783-1868)
General Mining Association
Sir Samuel Cunard (1787-1865)
In 1834 the General Mining Association (GMA) appointed Cunard as their local
business agent and a director of the corporation. When Cunard became GMA
agent, the company owed the Bank of Nova Scotia over £16,000. By April 1835
the overdraft had risen to £25,480 and at the request of William Lawson,
president of the bank, Cunard reduced it by £6,000. In the financial crisis of
1837 the board prevailed on Cunard to reduce it to £10,000. In 1839 Cunard’s
Halifax firm was awarded the contract to supply coal to the Halifax Dockyard.
Large capital expenditures were made in expectation of almost unlimited
demand for coal in the United States, but the company was meeting
increasing competition from American anthracite coal. When the United
States increased its tariff on foreign coal in 1842, Cunard asked the
Nova Scotian government for a reduction in royalties and threatened
that the GMA would lay off miners unless the government agreed;
the royalties were reduced and the annual £3,000 rent was waived.
Cunard’s letters reveal his complete devotion to the interests of the
corporation. Cunard’s connections with the GMA gave him a
power base in Pictou County where he wielded political
and business influence behind the scenes.
Sir William Edmond Logan (1798-1875)
In the summer of 1843 he compiled a detailed section
of the coal-bearing strata near Joggins, Nova Scotia.
Sir Hugh Allan (1810-1882)
Vale Coal, Iron and Manufacturing Company
Acadian Coal Company
James William Carmichael (1819-1903)
[Not to be confused with James Carmichael (1788-1860)]
Acadia Iron Foundry
Nova Scotia Steel Company
Sir John William Dawson (1820-1899)
His first major assignment, in 1848, for the government
of Nova Scotia, was the evaluation of prospects for the
mining of coal in southern Cape Breton Island…
Sir John Joseph Caldwell Abbott (1821-1893)
Intercolonial Coal Mining Company
Eastern Extension Railway
Frederic Newton Gisborne (1824-1892)
He superintended the development of four coal mines
on Cape Breton Island, the building of several
associated railway branch lines, and the upgrading
of port facilities at Sydney and Louisbourg.
Robert Grant Haliburton (1831-1901)
Called to the bar in 1853, Haliburton established a practice in Halifax
and shortly after became interpreter and translator of German and French
in the Vice-Admiralty Court. Following the dissolution of the General Mining
Association’s monopoly in Nova Scotia in 1858, Haliburton was one of the
competitive investors who took up mining rights in the Pictou coalfields.
As spokesman for the Nova Scotia Coal-Owners’ Association, in the late 1860s
he went to Ottawa, where he strongly advocated a tariff on American coal.
David MacKeen (1839-1916)
Caledonia Coal Company
Dominion Coal Company (DOMCO)
Dominion Iron and Steel Company (DISCO)
Henry Melville Whitney (1839-1923)
Dominion Coal Company (DOMCO)
Dominion Iron and Steel Company (DISCO)
Whitney Pier
The Dominion Coal Company was incorporated in 1893 with Whitney as
president, F.S. Pearson as engineer-in-chief, and B.F. Pearson as secretary.
Numerous efficiencies and improvements were quickly evident, and within a
decade Dominion Coal had 4,000 employees and production had quadrupled.
There was also a long list of expensive mistakes and extravagant expenditures.
The coal and steel industry that Henry Melville Whitney promoted would employ
many thousands throughout the 20th century and left an indelible mark on Cape
Breton Island. Although he and his business friends did not have a monopoly
on mismanagement, they helped to ensure that the early years of the modern
industry in Cape Breton would be difficult ones. The continuing problems led
to his early withdrawal from the region; his controlling interest in the coal and
steel companies passed to a group headed by Montreal financier James Ross
in 1901. He resigned from the Dominion Coal board in December 1903 and
although he continued to be linked with smaller concerns in Cape Breton
and remained on the steel board until 1909, his focus
was redirected to New England.
Robert Drummond (1840-1925)
Provincial Workmen’s Association of Nova Scotia
Henry Skeffington Poole (1844-1917)
1872: Appointed government inspector of mines in Nova Scotia
1878: General manager of the Acadia Coal Company in Stellarton
Graham Fraser (1846-1915)
Hope Iron Works
Nova Scotia Forge Company
Nova Scotia Steel Company
Nova Scotia Steel and Forge Company
New Glasgow Iron, Coal and Railway Company
Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company
Dominion Iron and Steel Company
Mayor of New Glasgow
John Fitzwilliam Stairs (1848-1904)
New Glasgow Iron, Coal and Railway Company
Nova Scotia Steel and Forge Company
Nova Scotia Iron and Steel Company
Robb Engineering Company
Royal Securities Corporation
James Ross
In 1901 Ross headed a syndicate which acquired the Dominion Coal Company and the
Dominion Iron and Steel Company, both in Sydney, Nova Scotia, from Henry Melville
Whitney of Boston. At the time of its acquisition the coal company had an unusual and
disadvantageous contract with the iron and steel company to provide vast quantities of
high quality coal at well below prevailing market prices. Attempts were made to
renegotiate the contract immediately after Ross gained control of both companies, but
in 1903 relations between the two jointly owned firms became strained. Both claimed
that the other had reneged on vital aspects of the contract to supply coal. Ross resigned
as president of the steel company that year, confident that Dominion Coal would prove
profitable and that it had sufficient legal grounds to escape its onerous contractual
obligations. The ensuing legal struggle degenerated into a protracted, costly, and bitter
battle which eventually went to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London.
In 1909 the committee recognized that the contract was unbalanced and that there had
been violations on both sides, but found that a legally enforceable contract had been
signed. The case of the Dominion Iron and Steel Company was upheld and further
negotiations were ordered to settle damages and other financial details. After this
defeat, Ross withdrew from the Dominion Coal Company, paving the way
for the amalgamation of the two firms in 1910.
Henry Swift (1848-1891)
Cumberland Railway and Coal Company
Edwin Gilpin (1850-1907)
Firedamp (methane) explosions tended to be localized,
but a coal-dust catastrophe could engulf much of a mine,
as it had in the Vale Colliery explosion of February 1885.
Benjamin Franklin Pearson (1855-1912)
During the winter of 1891-92 B.F. Pearson obtained options to buy most of the coal
mines in eastern Cape Breton. Pearson was in England negotiating the purchase of
the Nova Scotia collieries owned by the General Mining Association when he was
informed that Whitney and his group had withdrawn. Intimate with Nova Scotia
Premier Fielding and his cabinet, he immediately returned to lobby the government.
After meetings between Whitney and Fielding in April-May 1892, a compromise was
reached. Pearson and his American associates received an extremely generous
99-year lease in return for paying a higher fixed royalty of 12.5 cents per ton.
The length of the lease was unprecedented and faced stiff opposition inside and
outside the legislature. The Liberals controlled the house, however, and the
Dominion Coal Company (DOMCO) was incorporated early in 1893. The board of
directors included B.F. Pearson (corporate secretary), H.M. Whitney (president),
F.S. Pearson (engineer-in-chief), and David MacKeen (resident manager).
The Halifax Electric Tramway Company was incorporated in 1895 by B.F. Pearson,
H.M. Whitney, F.S. Pearson, and W.B. Ross. Its charter of incorporation authorized
it to purchase the Halifax Street Railway Company (a horse-powered system), the
Nova Scotia Power Company, and the Halifax Illuminating and Motor Company.
Pearson intended that surplus gas from People’s Heat and Light’s coal gasification
plant would be used to stoke the boilers of Halifax Electric Tramway’s reconstructed
power plant delivering electric lighting and transit service to the city. All the while, he
tried to get Dominion Coal into the business of iron and steel making, the major
industrial user of coal, even suggesting a merger with the Nova Scotia Steel Company
of New Glasgow. Rejected by Scotia Steel, he established his own steel company in
association with the same group that had helped him form Dominion Coal. After
lobbying his close friend George Henry Murray, the Liberal premier of Nova Scotia,
as well as W.S. Fielding, now minister of finance in Ottawa, he got the terms he wanted,
and the Dominion Iron and Steel Company (DISCO) was incorporated in March 1899.
Almost overnight, the company became one of the largest manufacturing enterprises
in the country, and Dominion Coal’s single largest customer.
Thomas Cantley (1857-1945)
Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Corporation
Canadian National Railways
Simon A. Fraser (1857-1901)
Nova Scotia Forge Company
Nova Scotia Steel and Forge Company
Nova Scotia Steel Company
Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company
James Bryson McLachlan (1869-1937)
Coal miner, journalist, labour leader
William Davis (1887-1925)
The largest funeral ever seen in New Waterford.
Only the North-West rebellion of 1885 had brought
more military forces into an internal conflict…
Regnal Years
In the old days, Acts were often dated not by the calendar year but by the year of reign of the current sovreign. Example: The Act to incorporate the Windsor Kerosene Gas Light Company is often listed as “15 Vic. c. 44”, meaning chapter (Act) number 44 passed in the 15th year of the reign of Queen Victoria. Most of the legislative references in this history have been converted to the calendar year, but the reignal year may be needed if you want to look up the original Act. Example: to find the 1840 Act to incorporate the Halifax Gas, Light & Water Company you will need to ask for 3 Vic. c. 16. The conversion between a reignal year and a calendar year is not just a simple addition or subtraction, because the beginning of a reign rarely coincides with the beginning of a calendar year.
“3 Wm. IV” means 26 June 1832 to 25 June 1833
“6 Wm. IV” means 26 June 1835 to 25 June 1836
“5 Vic.” means 20 June 1841 to 19 June 1842
“10 Vic.” means 20 June 1846 to 19 June 1847
“15 Vic.” means 20 June 1851 to 19 June 1852
“20 Vic.” means 20 June 1856 to 19 June 1857
“25 Vic.” means 20 June 1861 to 19 June 1862
“30 Vic.” means 20 June 1866 to 19 June 1867
“35 Vic.” means 20 June 1871 to 19 June 1872
“40 Vic.” means 20 June 1876 to 19 June 1877
“45 Vic.” means 20 June 1881 to 19 June 1882
“50 Vic.” means 20 June 1886 to 19 June 1887
“55 Vic.” means 20 June 1891 to 19 June 1892
“60 Vic.” means 20 June 1896 to 19 June 1897
“4 Edw. VII” means 22 Jan. 1904 to 21 Jan. 1905
“8 Edw. VII” means 22 Jan. 1908 to 21 Jan. 1909
“5 Geo. V” means 6 May 1914 to 5 May 1915
“10 Geo. V” means 6 May 1919 to 5 May 1920
Regnal year Wikipedia