Postcards from the past
Westville native collecting, sharing pieces of Nova Scotia's history
After four decades of collecting historical postcards, Westville’s Sandy Lays decided to stop collecting and start sharing.
Most days, he posts eight to 10 of his 2,000 postcards on historical Facebook pages, including Westville Past n Present, Stellarton Past and Present and New Glasgow Past and Present. It is slow but rewarding work since Lays became partially paralyzed, losing the use of his dominant right arm when he suffered a hemorrhagic stroke a year ago.
"Westville had a site for historical photos for a long time, but I made sites for Stellarton and New Glasgow, so I could put up cards that might interest the local people and others could add to them. I also post on Nova Scotia Past and Present and sites for other areas if I have a suitable photo."
Often, he will post the back of the card, as well as the front, in hopes that someone might recognize who sent or received it.
"I just gave away one of my favourite cards to a woman whose grandmother’s name was on it. She saw it and contacted me, telling me how close she had been to her grandmother, so I told her she could have the card."
The front of the card featured the Westville train station, which featured long, covered walkways.
Changing times
Lays said Pictou County has changed a lot since his days of growing up on Dufferin Street, one of 13 children, including a set of Siamese twins who did not survive, born to a coal miner and his wife.
"As a child growing up, one of the things I remember most is my mother and father at the table, talking about who was killed or hurt in the mines and how this family or that family was going to have a hard go."
His father eventually left the Macbean mine in Thorburn, which closed around 1971, the last mine to operate before Westray.
"It was a hard mine to work because you had to lay on your side to pick. My mother begged my father to give up the mine before he was hurt or killed. Finally, he did but there were no other jobs, so he had to go on relief. In order to get relief, you first had to work three days for the town. He was a good worker and it wasn’t long before the town hired him."
In later years, his father worked as a school janitor.
"One of my brothers would go along with him, but I never paid any attention until one day my mother told me I had to go. When we got to the school, I saw the day janitor had left him a note telling him what had to be done. That’s the day I learned, as a teenager, that while my father could sign his name, he couldn’t read or write. That was why one of us always went with him."
Despite losing half her children at young ages, Lays said his mother was a woman of great faith.
"She was nearly dead after having 13 children and she asked the parish priest for permission to go on the (birth control) pill. Well, the priest had to ask the bishop for his approval and maybe the pope had to agree, too. It was no comparison to today, an altogether different world." Collecting history Besides postcards, Lays has an extensive collection of Halifax Explosion memorabilia, including a plaque that features a rivet from the French cargo ship SS Mont-blanc, which exploded in the harbour on Dec 6, 1917.
"I suppose my interest goes back to my father, who was born in Westville, the day after the Halifax Explosion. Halifax was hit by a terrible snowstorm that day and Pictou County was no better. Someone had to go out an upstairs window to go for the doctor to deliver my father. I grew up with that story and it tied into the explosion in my mind."
Years later, one of his daughters brought the classic Canadian novel, Barometer Rising by Hugh Maclennan, home from school, and he read it.
"I was fascinated by everything that went on leading up to and after the explosion. I started to collect items related to it and gradually, I got a good collection."
Many of his postcards were purchased while he was on the road working for Sobeys.
"After a while dealers got to know me and they’d save them for me to have a look at. I wasn’t the only one collecting, though. Chuck Facey of Westville had a nice collection and his pockets were deeper than mine, but there were a few other local guys, including George Dooley, who also collected."
The late George Coady gave him a few prized postcards, including one that showed the Fay Hotel in Sheet Harbour shortly before it burned. Another card which he picked up somewhere is written entirely in Gaelic and he has the odd French one, as well. One card, posted from Halifax to Bangor, Maine, has a man named Jack passionately lamenting why he ever left, "the good old USA for this place."
"I have a good many cards that were sent to people in the United States by people in Pictou County. I’d love to know how the cards ever made their way back to Nova Scotia."
Many others were sent locally, an example being someone from one part of Pictou County arranging to meet a relative or friend at a specific location and time. Needing help
About 20 years ago, Lays moved to the Moncton area to be closer to his two daughters, who settled in Moncton and Dieppe, but in recent years, he began thinking of moving back home. His plans were made last year, but he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on one side and initially unable to speak.
His wife, Mary, said it was obvious he would need help.
"We’d been separated for years, but with daughters and granddaughters, we always remained good friends. He was in bad shape and I could see he could not go to our daughters because both of them have too many stairs. I suggested he come home and move in with me. I told him I’d help him get through it."
Lays is not sure how he, his little dog and his collections would have fared without Mary.
"She’s been very, very good to me."
He is relieved to have his power of speech back and he still exercises his right arm in the hope that he will regain more use of it, but he has had to learn to write with his left hand.