Peace & Promise in Pictou County
Thirty-seven Estonians escaping the remains of war forge a new beginning in Nova Scotia
It was cold and damp on a late October night when we stepped off the CN train that had taken us from Levis, Que., to the village of Hopewell, in
Nova Scotia’s Pictou County. As we stood on the platform of the small railway station, some villagers watched silently as this curious collection of strange, tired, hungry and poorly dressed refugees emerged, looking around in bewilderment for someone to take them somewhere.
We were a motley group of 37 Estonian men, women and children, survivors of a DP camp in the wreckage of what was left of Germany, who had somehow found a sponsor in rural Nova Scotia. The luxury liner Samaria, converted to a military transport during the war, had dropped us off in Quebec City. It was
1949, four years after the end of World War II. We were among thousands of refugees who had survived the war, having lost our homelands and sometimes members of our families, still huddled in DP camps, waiting for countries to allow us in. Canada was being cautious, but Maj. M.C. Bordet, second-in-command of the 8th army corps’ DP camp section, concluded: “Latvians and Estonians are honest, ingenious and good workers; they would make good immigrants.”
After leaving the railway station, we were directed to the nearby Presbyterian church, where members of the congregation served us meals on blue plates. Our expectations were low as we later took our seats in Pictou County Power Board buses and travelled the two miles to Marshdale and the farm of our sponsor, David Wilson, a teacher and former Canadian officer who was converting part of his farmland into a handcrafters’ village. He’d been impressed by the work of Estonian craftspeople in a camp in Schwarzenbek, Germany, and had received permission from the federal government to bring refugees over to his farm.
Among those welcomed to the Wilsons’ home that first evening was our family: my father, Olaf, mother, Gertrud, and brother, Henn-ants. After coffee and sweets, we retired to our two-room huts, each with bedding, groceries and a blazing country stove.
That first weekend, dozens of cars carrying curious villagers lined the road. The kids venturing out were warned not to get too close in case Communist agents were among the group, urging people to return to their Communist-ruled homelands.
Warm Blend of Cultures
The hospitality shown us by the Wilsons and other Pictonians over the months was overwhelming, led in large part by publisher Harry Sutherland of The New Glasgow Evening News, who urged Pictonians to offer help. Residents—mainly of Scottish ancestry, whose enlisted sons and daughters had only recently served overseas as allies of Russia—stepped up, even if most had never heard of Estonia. Clothes, furniture and household goods by the truckload arrived as snow began to fall and the men wrapped their huts in tar paper, built outhouses and cut firewood. Salt cod sent by Lutheran congregation in Lunenburg was welcome, but no one knew what to do with it.
As we settled in, the inability to speak English was our first obstacle to overcome. Annie Crockett, a retired teacher, took the boys to her farmhouse to teach us our first words in English. As time passed, and with the help of radio and comic books, the language fog began to lift. By the following fall, we attended school in Hopewell.
The adults had greater difficulty with the language. For instance, at Alvin Archibald’s grocery store, one lady asked for butter and was handed a pound of putty, then later asked for a dozen eggs and was handed an axe. It was all in the pronunciation. My
mother, who spoke several languages, including some English, often went along to help. As the language barrier faded, nearby residents began visiting and friendships were formed.
When the grocer threw out pigs’ heads, the ladies turned them into delicious pork dinners, following old country recipes. Suddenly, pigs’ heads were a profitable commodity, at 50 cents apiece. Meanwhile, the men had been busy in their workshops and were ready to display their work at an exhibit at the New Glasgow Goodman department store the following year. Locals were amazed at the quality of the leather and knitted goods, hunting knives, pipes and inlaid intarsia plates with Estonian motifs, but few were ready to buy. Nova Scotia’s economy was stagnant in the postwar period. Thoughts turned to Quebec, Ontario and the West, where many Estonians had settled and were starting to thrive.
One evening, as my parents sat despairing about feeding two young sons, there was a knock at the door. There stood prominent local lumberman and landowner Gordon Mackay and his young son Elmer (a future federal cabinet minister), offering work in the woods at nearby Trafalgar. Most of our men signed up, eventually buying a used military vehicle to get back home on weekends.
Wilson continued to bring more refugees to Hopewell and Marshdale. A new optimism grew in our community. Gardens were planted and vegetables harvested. When a farmer delivered milk by sleigh that first winter, residents who’d previously had nothing but powdered milk were amazed at the cream popping out of the icecold bottles.
Gradually people began leaving when it became evident that Wilson’s handicraft-village experiment had failed for lack of sales. But some refused to leave, moved to New Glasgow where work was more plentiful, and eventually purchased or built homes and saw their families thrive.
Our family moved our house and possessions to a hilltop property in New Glasgow overlooking the town. Work soon began to enlarge the house, plant trees and a garden, and raise chickens to supplement Dad’s income as a carpenter at Eastern Woodworkers.
In 1973, when my father passed away, our old supporter Harry Sutherland recalled in an editorial our group’s early days in Pictou County: “They elected to stay where people had been friendly to them. They did fit into our county. One of those Estonians was
Olaf Soosaar, whose end came last week. He came a displaced person. He went as a Pictonian, a Nova Scotian and a Canadian.”
An earlier version of this story appeared in “Saltscapes” magazine.