The week in Nova Scotia history
Dec. 7, 1964 — The Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada (also known as the Bird Commission, in honour of its chair, Florence Bird) was tabled in the House of Commons, making over 167 recommendations for reducing gender inequality across various spheres of Canadian society.
One of the members of the Commission was Nova Scotian-born Doris Ogilvie (1919 – 2012). After graduating from Mount Saint Vincent University, she later studied law and settled with her family in Fredericton, New Brunswick where in 1965 she became a Deputy Judge in the New Brunswick Juvenile and Provincial courts.
She went on to serve as Chair of the Commission of the International Year of the Child in 1979, reflecting her deep advocacy for children. Besides being a mother of four daughters, she was known also as a lifelong scholar and social pioneer.
Dec. 8, 1975 — Katharine Mclennan died (b. 1892). She was the daughter of John Stewart (J.S.) Mclennan (1853-1939), industrialist, historian, author and publisher of the seminal text Louisbourg From Its Foundation to its Fall.
Katharine served with the Red Cross Society in France and Germany during the First World War. Her brother had also served, dying at Ypres. When she later returned to Nova Scotia, she continued her work with the Red Cross and with the Victorian Order of Nurses in Cape Breton. She also continued her interest in history and the work that her father had begun which eventually led to establishing the Louisbourg Museum in 1936. The museum would spark further government interest to begin the eventual partial reconstruction of the Fortress in the 1960s.
Dec. 9, 1979 — The World Health Assembly declares the smallpox virus has been eradicated — the first and only disease to be driven to extinction through human efforts. Efforts to protect against the disease had begun in 1796. It is estimated that over 300-500 million deaths from smallpox occurred during the 20th century.
During the seventeenth century, smallpox was one of the principal causes of death. In 1755-57, the disease decimated the Indigenous population in the vicinity of the town of Quebec, with the worst sufferers also being “the Acadians who had endeavoured to recoup their fortunes by settling in and around Quebec.” During that time, Halifax was also transforming from a small town into a major military and naval base with over 22,000 soldiers and sailors preparing for an attack on Louisbourg. Though the military brought a great deal of employment and commerce, they also brought smallpox that led to an epidemic in 1755 and 1757. By the time the military force was prepared to leave for their attack on Louisbourg, Admiral Boscawen had to leave two ships behind, the Devonshire and the Pembroke, due to being “sickly.” (Source: Marble, Allan Everett, Surgeons, Smallpox and the Poor, A History of Medicine and Social Conditions in Nova Scotia, 1749-1799.)
Dec. 10, 1948 — The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is issued – the 10 December is now known as International Human Rights Day. The Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission was established in 1967 with 32-year-old
Marvin Schiff appointed as the province’s first director of human rights.
Dec. 11, 1931 — Reflecting political changes that began to occur after the First World War when sacrifices on the battlefields of the Western Front had stirred strong feelings of nationhood and a desire for greater autonomy, the Statue of Westminster was passed by Royal assent on this day, establishing legislative independence of the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire from the United Kingdom and upholding the principles of equality and common allegiance to the Crown, as was set out in the Balfour Declaration of 1926.
The Statue, in many ways, became the foundation of the present-day
Commonwealth which is celebrated on Dec. 11 when the Royal Union Flag is flown along with the national flag on federal buildings, airports, and military bases within Canada, reflecting Canada’s allegiance to the Crown and of Canada’s membership in the Commonwealth.
Dec. 12, 1977 — Jan Todd, an English and History school teacher in New Germany, Nova Scotia, deadlifted 204.7 kg (451.5 lbs), establishing a new world record. She was later named the strongest woman in the world by Sports Illustrated and in 2009 was the first female to be inducted into the International Powerlifting Hall of Fame. She went on to earn her PH.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in Sport
History, Exercise, Sociology and Gender and is a recognized pioneer in the history of women and weight training. She was inducted into the U.S. National Fitness Hall of Fame in 2009. Dec. 13, 1783 — Penal laws against Roman Catholics were repealed allowing them to practice their own religion and own land. When the first Nova Scotia Representative Assembly had met in the fall of 1758 one of their first acts was to render Roman Catholics propertyless, enacting a law that stated, “…no Papist hereafter shall have any right or title to hold, possess or enjoy, any land or tenements other than by virtue of any grant or grants from the Crown, but that all deeds or wills, hereafter made, conveying lands or tenements to any Papist, shall be utterly null and void.” And further, that “Every Popish person exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction and every popish priest or persons exercising the functions of a popish priest, shall depart out of this Province on or before the twenty-fifth of March 1759.” (Source: Laws of Nova Scotia (1758-1803), 32 Geo II Cap 2).
It was estimated by 1760 that there were about 360 Acadia families in Cape Breton and eastern Nova Scotia who had returned from the Isle of Miquelon. There were also about 100 English-speaking Catholics, mainly Irish or Scottish, residing in Halifax. The only Catholic priest tolerated in Nova Scotia till his death in Halifax in August 1762 was the Abbé Pierre Simon Maillard who had also been a missionary to the Mi’kmaq for over twenty-five years.
By the 1770’s, there were growing demands from the Mi’kmaq people seeking another Catholic priest to replace the loss of Maillard. Further, the growing population of Scottish Catholics, as well as the Irish Catholics of Halifax and their non-sectarian society, the Charitable Irish Society, (founded by Richard John Uniacke, Sr.), began to allow for more contacts amongst Catholics, Protestants and government officials such as with Assemblyman and Presbyterian, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, which bore fruit to eventually move authorities to dismantle the Catholic penal laws.
By July 1784, a small woodenframed Roman Catholic chapel was constructed on the corner of Barrington Street and Spring Garden Road called St. Peter’s (current site of St. Mary’s Cathedral). It would be the first catholic parish in Nova Scotia after the Deportation of the Acadians.
By 1786, Catholics were permitted to set up schools – the first would open in 1805 next to St. Peter’s Church by Bishop Edmund Burke. By 1815, the catholic population in Nova Scotia would be estimated at 8,500, more than double that of only fifteen years earlier.
On 17 April 1827, Nova Scotia’s Lieutenant-governor Sir James Kempt, GCB, GCH, would sign the Nova Scotia Bill of Emancipation granting religious liberty to Nova Scotians. It was signed two years prior to the imperial Act of Emancipation coming into being and extended to all the British colonies. Leo J. Deveau is a public historian, researcher, speaker and author of 400 Years in 365 Days — A Day by Day Calendar of Nova Scotia History (2017). His most recent book is Fideliter: The Regimental History of The Princess Louise Fusiliers (2020). He can be reached at 400years@formac.ca