This Week in Nova Scotia History: March 23-29
23 March 1965 - 404 Maritime Patrol Squadron Argus 20727 (RCAF) from 14 Wing Greenwood, N.S., was lost, 96 km off the coast of Puerto Rico during night exercises. All 14 of her crew and two scientists on board died.
Records indicate that during night training on antisubmarine warfare exercises, the aircraft was completing a low pass over the surfaced submarine HMS Alcide. After the pass, the submariners “saw the glow of a crash reflected in the (night-time) sky.” No trace of the aircraft nor the 16 occupants was found, and no “official explanation of the crash was given.”
The Argus patrol aircraft was produced for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) between 1957 and 1960. It was retired from the CAF in 1982. In Nova Scotia, there is an Argus aircraft on static display at the Greenwood Military Aviation Museum.
(Reference: “RCAF welcomes the Argus.” Legion Magazine. 27 March 2019. URL: bit. ly/493rbvd.)
24 March 1866 - Following discussions in Charlottetown (September 1864), and at the Quebec Conference (October 1864), concerning the unification of the British colonies into a single country, 72 resolutions were developed to form the basis of Confederation and of Canada’s Constitution.
Subsequently, a delegation proceeded to Britain to discuss the union of the British North American colonies at the London Conference. Nova Scotia sent five delegates: Adams G. Archibald, William A. Henry, Jonathan Mccully, John W. Ritchie, and Premier Charles Tupper. The results of their deliberations were passed by the British Parliament and became law on 1 July 1867 (also known as Canada Day).
At the time, Joseph Howe had also led an Anti-confederation group to London, called the “People’s Delegates,” to lobby against the plan.
Accompanying him was William Annand, owner of the Morning Chronicle, Hugh Macdonald from Antigonish County and Jared C. Troop from Annapolis County. Their efforts came to no avail.
However, later in the Nova Scotia election of 22 May 1867, Howe’s Anti-confederation Party won 36 of the 38 seats. But Charles Tupper was still premier until September 1867, and in supporting the efforts for confederation, he believed it would provide Nova Scotia with greater influence and prevent annexation by the United States. Thus, he used his government’s majority at the time to pass the terms of Confederation. Yet in the next federal election that occurred on 18 September 1867, Nova Scotian voters continued to express their displeasure. Out of the province’s 19 seats in Ottawa, 18 went to Howe’s Anti-confederation Party.
(Reference: Richard Foot, Andrew Mcintosh. “Quebec Conference, 1864.” 12 December, 2019. The Canadian Encyclopedia. bit. ly/4cabw5h.)
25 March 1943 - On this day, amid the Second World War, radio station CJFX began broadcasting for the first time from Antigonish, N.S. At the time, the station proclaimed itself as the “University of the Air.” As historian Mark G. Mcgowan notes, “In 1943, the priestprofessors of St. Francis Xavier University (St. F.X.), in association with the Sisters of St. Martha, as well as both Catholic and non-catholic allies across eastern Nova Scotia, managed to secure a radio license for CJFX under the auspices of it being primarily an educational station.”
Given that Father Moses M. Coady was also involved through the Extension Department at St. F.X. (established earlier in 1928), the radio station was also seen as a product of the Antigonish Movement in continuing to foster “…the growth of credit unions, libraries, group housing and other co-operative ventures….”
At the time of its launch, the station was owned and operated by Atlantic Broadcasting Ltd. (ABL), which had applied cooperative principles in forming a joint stock company that pooled the resources of 323 shareholders who came from all walks of life, including many St. F.X. alumni. ABL’S first president, Reverend Dr. Daniel Mccormack, who, besides being a Catholic priest, was also a trained electrician, had built the station’s first studio and soundboard.
The station’s close partnership with St. F.X. University was reflected in the remarks by then president, Rev. Dr. Daniel Macdonald, who had been supportive of the initiative, when he stated two days after the station’s launch, “Public opinion determines the kind of democracy we shall have. If public opinion is not well-informed, democracy is a failure. The members of a democracy should be endowed with social knowledge…radio will be a great help in moulding public opinion so that democracy will not only be for the people, but by the people.”
In its first decade, CJFX managed to also become “a training ground for social activists and broadcasters who would make their names outside of Antigonish.” This was the case for such personalities as sports broadcaster Danny Gallivan, television executive E. Finlay Macdonald, and then Professor, later turned politician, Allan J. Maceachen.
J. Clyde Nunn, who had gained previous radio experience at CJCB in Sydney, helped launch the CJFX and would serve as the station’s General Manager until his death in December 1970.
(Reference: Mcgowan, Mark G. “The People’s University of the Air: St. Francis Xavier University Extension, Social Christianity, and the Creation of CJFX.” Acadiensis, 41(1). URL: bit.ly/3vugq7n.)
26 March 1921 - A famous day for all Nova Scotians when the Bluenose schooner was launched at the Smith and Rhuland shipyard in Lunenburg.
Designed by William J. Roué, it was constructed from Nova Scotian spruce, birch, pine and oak (with masts from Douglas fir). With a crew of 20, she was intended for both fishing and racing, later becoming a celebrated racing ship, a provincial icon for the province and an inspiring symbol for all Nova Scotians during the 1920s and 1930s.
At the time, she sailed under the command of Captain Angus Walters, carrying eight dories, each manned by two members of the crew (called dorymen) who would fill their dories with fish and return to the ship, usually four times a day. The fishing season of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland ran from April to September with the men staying out at sea for over eight weeks at a time until her holds were full and she needed to return to shore.
Once the season was over, the Bluenose raced in the International Fisherman’s Cup which she won in October 1921 off Halifax, and in 1922 off Gloucester, MA. More races were to come. In those heady days of the 1920s, she represented Nova Scotia’s prominence in the fishing industry and international trade. Walters and her crew also were greatly admired for their spirit of adventure, hard work and courage in the face of the
unrelenting danger at sea.
By 1938, after her last Fisherman’s International Race (which she won) her glory days had passed and she was sold out-of-country and became a tramp schooner in the Caribbean. While she was hauling freight near Haiti, she hit a reef and sank in 1946. Later, a replica of the ship, Bluenose II, was launched in 1963.
(More information and a synopsis of the races the Bluenose participated in can be read at “Bluenose.” Wikipedia. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluenose.)
27 March 1946 - For 26 years (1946-to-1972) Reuben “Rube” A. Hornstein, CM, MBE, MA, D Litt., served as officer-in-charge of the Halifax Atlantic Weather Centre. He was more popularly known for his radio reports for the CBC at that time in a show called “Ask the Weatherman.”
Later, when the CBC launched its TV new program Gazette, from Halifax in 1954, Hornstein became a popular weather forecaster. He retired from the meteorological service in 1972 after 34 years. His longtime friend and television colleague, the late Don Tremaine, once said of Hornstein, “He was one of the last great gentlemen. They don’t make those birds anymore.”
(Reference: “Reuben (Rube) Aaron Hornstein (1912-2003).” Canadian Metrological and Oceanographic Society.)
28 March 1886 - On this day, Ralph Pickard Bell was born in Halifax (d. 1975). Educated in Halifax and at Mount Allison University (1907), he later became a wellknown Nova Scotia industrialist involved in the timber trade and the fishery.
During the Second World War, Bell had been the Director-general of Aircraft Production in Canada. In the postwar years of 1945 to 1953, he would go on to spearhead “the creation of National Sea Products Ltd.,” and later was President of the Halifax Insurance Company, and served as Vice-president of the Bank of Nova Scotia.
When Bell retired to Martins Point in Lunenburg County, he became a generous benefactor to many causes, including his alma mater, Mount Allison University, where he had become their first Chancellor in 1960, and where the Ralph Pickard Bell Library was established and opened in 1970.
Bell was also the younger brother of Dr. Winthrop Pickard Bell (1884-1965) who was also a graduate of Mount Allison University (19001907), and later Harvard University (1909), and Gottingen University (1914). As Dr. Jason Bell outlines in his recent book Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Canada’s Greatest Spy (2023), Winthrop Bell, later became a secret agent for M16, working undercover for Canadian and British governments as a Reuters reporter in Germany. He would later write, The “Foreign ‘Protestants” and the Settlement of Nova Scotia (1961).
Of interest - Ralph and Winthrop’s maternal grandfather, Rev. Humphrey Pickard, was the first President of Mount Allison University. Their mother, Mary Emrancy Pickard, had taught music at the university before she married.
(Reference: “Pages through the Ages: A History of Mount Allison’s Libraries & Archives: Ralph Pickard Bell Library.” Mount Allison University Archives. URL: bit.ly/48yhq6b. And “The Purple Land - Winthrop Pickard Bell.” Book Lives. URL: bit.ly/4aiccin.)
29 March 1841 - The Nova Scotia House of Assembly passed an act “to make it unlawful to punish people by placing them in the pillory” or whipping, nailing their ears to the pillory, or worse, cursing off their ears.
Punishments would be changed to either imprisonment, solitary imprisonment if necessary, or hard labour if the Court so decreed.
(Reference: “The Pillory.” Jocelyn Freeman. Historical Stories of Nova Scotia. 15 October, 2020.)