Losing our history

There was a house in Avonport. It was old. Very old. Over 200 years, they said. The 1760s. Before the American Revolution, before the French Revolution, thick in the turmoil of the expulsion of the Acadians from the province. Yet young enough to have survived in the living memory of the great-great-or-more-grandparents of those who today are ancient themselves. The old Reid House, they called it.

I visited the old Reid house in the 1980s. As I drove up the highway from Halifax, suddenly there it was: distantly gleaming in the sunlight, deeply anchored in the landscape, a sight as inviting to me in the 20th century as it must have been to thirsty travelers near the beginning when it was known as Witter’s Tavern, named after the man, Samuel, who probably built it. I imagined it without the modern roadways, and later learned that when these were constructed, transecting the property, there were battles to stop expropriation and demolition. The house won, that time.

Arriving at my destination, I saw a pleasing jumble of buildings, some added on at various stages in the house’s history. The outstanding feature, the one that enchanted most with its innate beauty, was the sweep of the roof down over the porch viewed from the gable ends. As well, the almost symmetry of the windows gave a warming sense of attempts at harmony, balance and proportion.

Inside, the air, the atmosphere, quivering with the past, welcomed and embraced. “This is you. This is everyone,” it seemed to say. Of course it was.

Work was being done inside. Questions: how to preserve the sense of place in the details. The rare beehive oven, the woodwork. But above all, the most amazing discovery: under layers of wallpaper, done in graphite on the plaster wall, was a drawing. It portrayed a man in an early soldier’s uniform embracing a woman with closed eyes. Gentle, sad, whispering softly to those who would listen. To me, the woman seemed like a mother, breathing her last, perhaps, or already starting her last sleep; or possibly a couple parting as if forever. A timeless historical document.

Poignant. Fundamental.

And now, it has all gone. A few days ago, at the beginning of December, the developers came in with their bulldozers and flattened everything. The whole thing. Chaos. Rubble. Extinction. The Reid house was designated a provincially registered historic property in 1993. The point of having these registrations on old buildings is to save their intrinsic cultural and historical value, to prevent their being transformed beyond recognition, and to preclude their demolition. It says so in black and white in the Heritage Property Act of Nova Scotia. Permission can, however, be granted for de-registration depending on circumstances. But no request for de-registration of the Reid House was ever submitted.

How is it, then, that the director of planning and inspections for Kings County could have issued a demolition permit, maintaining that the municipality had “no grounds to refuse to issue the permit.” Well, the municipality DID have grounds for refusing the permit — and official grounds at that. Nevertheless, this government-sanctioned vandalism proceeded.

The conclusions to be drawn from all this are two-fold. First, that the government is at best incompetent and inept, or at worst duplicitous and corrupt, or perhaps has touches of all of these. Second, that the historical architectural resources of the province are seen by those in control as toys — playthings — not to be taken seriously, especially in the face of “development.”

“Oh,” I can hear some scoffing, “It’s only fluffy-brained, nostalgia-ridden obsessives who are interested in this stuff.” No. It isn’t. That’s not it at all. “This stuff” is part of the very essence of what makes Nova Scotia what it is; “this stuff” places us firmly in the tides of our own history; “this stuff” is who we are. We see it. We feel it. Identity. Tradition. Us.

All this piece can be is a heartfelt plea for a better understanding and better communication between government, government departments, developers and those involved in and interested in preserving the wonderful architectural history of our province, so that nothing like the destruction of the Reid House ever happens again.

That informative, talkative, all-embracing, lovely old house has now gone forever.

‘This stuff’ is who we are. We see it. We feel it. Identity. Tradition. Us.

The two-and-a-half-storey, 16-room Reid House in Avonport, built in the 1760s, was demolished Dec. 6 despite being a registered provincial heritage property. In recent years, the property has been owned by Nanco Developments. The matter is under investigation by the province.