This Week in Nova Scotia History: Feb. 24-March 1
24 February 1979 — A methane explosion in the #26 Colliery, Glace Bay, eight kilometres (2,500 ft.) beneath the surface, killed 12 miners and injured four, and many more suffered from shock for some period after.
The suspected cause was a coal shearer that had hit sandstone and created sparks in a “corner where methane had built up, unchecked…” causing an explosion. A later inquiry also found “several shortcomings in the mine operation,” with inadequate wall face ventilation and safety training, and “some employees were unqualified for the jobs they held.”
(Reference: “No. 26 Colliery Explosion, Place Bay, 1979.” Museum of Industry. URL: bit.ly/4bawd0a.)
25 February 2013 — The Halifax Women’s History Society (HWHS) was founded to research and make known the untold story of the remarkable contributions that countless women have made to the history of Halifax.
The Society’s first project was the commission of a monument called “The Volunteers/les Bénévoles" designed by sculptor, Marlene Hilton Moore, and announced on 9 March 2017 at Halifax City Hall — to honour women volunteers during the Second World War and acknowledge the numerous contributions and the essential services that women provided. It was later unveiled on 16 November 2017 on the Halifax Waterfront, located across from what was the former Seaport Farmers’ Market.
Janet Guildford, chairperson at that time of the Society, commented, “This is the first monument to women in the city’s 268-year history ... Women’s history has not had very much visibility and lots of research has been done but most of it is tucked away in archives and libraries. Transferring the information to a piece of public art I think will go a long way to making women’s history more visible to people in Halifax and visitors to Halifax.”
(Reference: Ray, Carolyn. “Halifax’s first monument for women to honour war volunteers.” CBC News. URL: bit. ly/48nwuav.)
26 February 1914 — The Canadian Bioscope Company (founded in Halifax in 1912, with offices also in New York) advertised in New York’s The Moving Picture World the release of their new “film classic from Beginning to End — Evangeline” in five reels — “Made in Annapolis Valley amongst the Actual Scenes Described in the Poem.” At the time, the company was advertising to sell “State rights” to distribute the film in the United States.
The poem referred to was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline (1847), which told the tragic story of the 1755 Deportation of the Acadians from Nova Scotia, framed within the love story of Evangeline and Gabriel. The poem had been adapted into a screenplay by Marguerite Marquis (who also performed in the film as an indigenous woman).
The movie was shot in 1913 as a 35 mm black-and-white silent film, on a budget of $30,000. and seventy-five minutes in length. It was the first commercially produced, full-length motion picture in Canada. It was shown in New York at the Empire Theatre, which was also operated by the Canadian Bioscope Company. It had been shown earlier in Halifax and distributed to various communities in the province.
The film received positive reviews in Halifax. The Halifax Evening Mail wrote that it was a, “... masterpiece ... a splendid representations of the immortal poem in moving pictures.” No known copy of the film exists today and the company was dissolved in 1915.
(References: Nova Scotia Archives & Records Management. “Eastern Eye: A Nova Scotia Filmography, 1899-1973.” URL: bit.ly/3sja7d0. And “Canadian Bioscope Company.” Wikipedia. URL: bit.ly/3i3ho2r.)
27 February 1891 — In preparation for the summer tourist season, Charles G.D. Roberts’ guidebook was published by D. Appleton of New York. Entitled:
Canadian Guide Book: The Tourist’s and Sportsman’s Guide to Eastern Canada and Newfoundland.
The guidebook reflected a growing trend in mass tourist travel to the Maritimes. As historian Jay White has noted, “The combination of urban growth and more efficient steampowered transportation inexorably extended the geographical limits of leisure travel.”
At the time of his guide’s release in 1891, Roberts was a professor of English Literature at King’s College, Windsor, N.S. With a population of nearly 4,000 at the time, he wrote of Windsor that its “shipping business is enormous, and it ranks as the third largest ship-owning port in Canada.” He also named the various hotels in the town, none of which exist today — such as the Dufferin Hotel, the Victoria, Mounce’s and Somerset House.
Roberts noted that “A cab is usually in attendance at the [train] station, and carries travellers to the hotels or points in town for 25 cents.” A cab in 1891 was a horse and buggy — and the “livery charges of the establishments furnishing these cabs (Townshend’s, Jenkin’s, and Smith’s stables) are very moderate.”
As for other modes of transportation, steamers on “the Saint John and Minas Basin Line run between Windsor and Saint John, calling at Hantsport, Kingsport, Parrsboro, and Spencer’s Island…” all running daily “with the tide.”
The guidebook included a great deal of advertising and was so popular that it was reprinted over the next four years. The 1895 version can be viewed at: bit.ly/3opfdji .
(Reference: White, Jay. “Canada’s Ocean Playground. The Tourism Industry in Nova Scotia, 1870-1970.” Nova Scotia Archives. URL: https://archives.novascotia.ca/tourism/background/early/.)
28 February 1890 — H. Hesslein & Sons, proprietors of the Halifax Hotel, considered the largest hotel in the Maritime provinces at the time - located at 97-99 Hollis Street (currently a parkade in downtown Halifax) - published The Halifax Hotel Guide to the City of Halifax and for the Province of Nova Scotia.
Built in 1840, the Halifax Hotel had previously served many purposes, including at one time being used by the British Government as an “Officers’ Quarters.” However, by 1861 H. Hesslein had purchased the building and made various changes to it, inside and out.
As their guide explained, in 1887 the hotel went through extensive “alterations and improvements,” and was “lighted throughout with electricity and gas . ... The hot water service (was) extended all over the house, and bathrooms to be found on every floor. The kitchen affords cooking facilities for one thousand guests at a time…the ventilation of the building has been lately improved . ... ”
The Mcalpine’s City Directory of 1889-1890, indicates that just across the street from the Halifax Hotel was also a convenient service for hotel guests — the Metropolitan Stables for “Boarding, Hack and Livery Stable ..., (with) Ponies and Pony Carriages, suitable for Ladies to drive.” And if one could not get a room at the Halifax Hotel, just down the street at 109-to115 Hollis was also the Queen Hotel.
(Reference: The Halifax Hotel Guide, 1890. URL: https://www.canadiana. ca/ view/oocihm.06938/8.)
29 February 1893 — The Belcher’s Farmer’s Almanack of 1893 listed 61 newspapers published regularly in Nova Scotia. As the listing indicated, many communities in fact had their own newspaper.
The almanack also informed its readers that the Western Union Telegraph Company had 82 offices in Nova Scotia, and its services were also available at every railway station. Its cables “landed in Halifax Harbour,” and provided “direct and independent communication with Europe” at 25 cents per word.
1 March 1749-1800 — Around this time of year in early settlement Nova Scotia, kitchen pantries and cookhouses might start to get thin in a variety of food supplies. This would depend a lot on the previous year’s crop, as well as how skilled one was at hunting and fishing and if trading opportunities were possible.
At that time, the Maritime region’s population consisted of the resident Indigenous population (estimated to be 3,459 in the 1871 census), and settlers including French, English, Jewish and other Europeans such as German, Irish and Scots, and soon the arrival of the Loyalists (over 30,000 in 1783-84), as well as many free and enslaved people of African descent (3,500). They all had a variety of methods and regular practices in preparing meals. But for all of them, knowledge of planting and gathering various foodstuffs, as well as methods in proper storage and preparation, especially for the winter supply, could mean survival and better health, or not. The sharing of recipes was a common practice amongst neighbouring families, which were often printed in newspapers, or shared in letters and diaries. Some recipes were also more than just about food and included various remedies.
This is evident in the research that was undertaken by Dr. Edith Snook (UNB) and Dr. Lyn Bennett (Dalhousie) when they released the Early Modern Maritime Recipes database in 2019. As Snook points out, “The recipes in the database have been categorized as medicine…cosmetic…veterinary medicine, food, drink, household, construction, and miscellaneous … (they) tell complex stories about the circulation of knowledge, people, and goods in the Atlantic world.”
Their research and the database were created with the assistance of research assistants, archivists and librarians, the Centre for Digital Scholarship at the University of New Brunswick, and financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The Early Modern Maritime Recipes database can be accessed at: https://emmr.lib.unb.ca.
(Reference: Snook, Edith. “The Early Modern Maritime Recipes Database, Part 1: What is a Recipe?” Early Canadian History. URL: bit.ly/48pugpk.)
CORRECTION: In my column for February 10-16, members of the Cape Breton Symphony Fiddlers (formed in 1974), included at one time, not only Wilfred Gillis, Jerry Holland, Bobby Brown, Tom Szcyesniak, Peter Magadini, Winston “Scotty” Fitzgerald and John Allan Cameron, but also John Donald Cameron, Sandy Macintyre and Buddy Macmaster.