All about those ruins
Fortifications are clues to harbour’s past
Brian Douglas Tennyson, PhD, is a retired teacher and researcher who taught history and international studies for a total of 38 years, first at Xavier Junior College in downtown Sydney, and later at the University College of Cape Breton, on the Sydney - Glace Bay highway.
At the present time Tennyson, who now lives in Bridgewater on the mainland, is Professor Emeritus at Cape Breton University.
The author or editor of at least 17 books, his main area of research was Cape Breton history, especially as it referred to the First World War, and Canada’s military contribution to that terrible conflict.
Back in the early 1990s he also had a well-researched article that appeared in The Northern Mariner, an academic journal produced by the Canadian Nautical Research Society.
A few years ago I came upon a copy of that particular story, which appeared in the April 1991 edition of the above journal. It was titled “Sydney Harbour in World War Two,” and it made for some fascinating reading, especially with regard to the various coastal fortifications that were put in place around our wonderful harbour.
With reference to those seven major harbour forts, Tennyson had this to say with regard to their physical state following the end of the Second World War: “… the fortifications ringing Sydney harbour were stripped and allowed to deteriorate, to the point where they now are in ruins, and constitute a growing danger to anyone trespassing on the sites, sad though somewhat romantic reminders of a more heroic past.”
I was especially interested in this aspect of our local military history, ever since my days as a young student at Xavier Junior College. Back then, during my first year of studies (1960), I was assigned a research project by Father Everett MacNeil, a Sydney native who would later go on to an illustrious career both as a teacher, and later as the chancellor of the Diocese of Antigonish. The title of my project, or “term paper” as we called it, was “Sydney Harbour Coastal Fortifications.”
Keep in mind that 1960 was only 15 years since the end of the Second World War, and that many of the individuals who were involved in the construction of these harbour forts were still alive, as were most of the servicemen and women who would have served in them. In fact, I would later find out that my uncle George MacLean, a carpenter, had been involved in the construction of at least one of these forts.
“Happily, however, a group of local citizens has been formed with a view to preserving and restoring at least one of them, the Chapel Point site in Sydney Mines, in an effort to remind people of Sydney Harbour’s important contribution to our naval and military history,” Tennyson would say later in his report (1991).
By 1993 Dillon Consulting Limited of Sydney had actually prepared a very detailed report on the possible restoration of the Chapel Point location. However, for various reasons this proposal did not go anywhere, and this particular site was allowed to remain undeveloped, and open to the elements, and the ravages of time and coastal erosion.
Over the years I have made many visits to the Chapel Point site, known to the locals as “The Barracks.” My latest was two years ago, in July of 2015, when my young cousin Yanick MacLean from Ottawa was visiting,
and expressed a desire to see more of our coastal forts.
A student at the University of Ottawa, Yanick had over his younger years developed quite an interest in Canadian military history, especially that which pertains to Sydney Mines, his father’s hometown.
Merry Christmas
Next month: the restoration of Chapel Point Battery.