This Week in Nova Scotia History: April 6-12
6 April 1881 — The Halifax Sugar Refinery began operations on this date. It was later named the Acadia Sugar Refining Company in 1894. It went on to become Atlantic Sugar Refineries in 1912, with a refinery also in Saint John, N.B. It would later merge with Lantic Sugar in Montreal in 2000).
Located on Halifax’s North End waterfront, off Richmond Street (now Barrington Street), the Halifax Sugar Refinery became one of the largest employers in the city. However, the building was later destroyed and tragically most of its workers were killed in the 1917 Halifax Explosion. Following the explosion, the company moved what was left of its Halifax operations to its Saint John refinery.
(Reference: Cahill, J.B.. “Dustan, George Gordon.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. URL: bit.ly/3j35z35.)
7 April 1828 — On this date, the north-western District of Cape Breton was divided into four townships - Canso, Port Hood, Ainslie and Margaree. A township was essentially a form of land division and local administration established during the British colonial settlement era of the 18th century, sometimes referred to as the Virginia county model.
One of the first local government-structured townships formed outside Halifax was at Lunenburg in 1753. Besides appointing military personnel to civil positions such as Colonel Charles Lawrence to supervise the planning of the town, the British government also appointed some newly arrived “foreign Protestant” immigrants, such as Sebastian Zouberbuhler, to be a justice of the peace to encourage community stability. Thus, “Religion rather than the place of origin or language was the key to active citizenship.” In doing so, Lunenburg became “… the first community in what is present-day Canada to entrench ethnic diversity in the mechanisms of local government.”
Later, in 1759, when the British issued a proclamation to attract New England Planters to Nova Scotia, “the political structure erected in Lunenburg were extended throughout the colony, thereby reinforcing the county-based form of local government ...”
When Responsible Government began in 1848, most townships returned a member to the General Assembly of Nova Scotia. However, by 1879, when many towns and counties started to incorporate for civil administration purposes, many of the townships had become obsolete.
(Reference: Haliburton, Thomas Chandler (1829). A historical and statistical account of Nova Scotia. Halifax: Joseph Howe. Internet Archive. bit.ly/3j3fxes. Also Paulsen, Kenneth S.. “Lunenburg and the Formation of Local Government in Nova Scotia.” Planter Links: Community and Culture in Colonial Nova Scotia. Eds. Conrad, Margaret; Moody, Barry. Fredericton, N.B.: Acadiensis Press. 2001. Pp.144-)
8 April 1820 — Sir John Wentworth died at Halifax, age 84 (b. 1737). He served as Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia from 1792 to 1808. In 1769, he married his first cousin, the widowed Francis Atkinson (née Deering, 17451813). At the age of sixteen, she married Theodore Atkinson Jr. in 1762, who later died of consumption at age 32, leaving her widowed at 23. But thirteen days later, she married the then Governor of New Hampshire, John Wentworth, whom she had known since childhood.
In 1775 the couple were forced to flee Portsmouth, New Hampshire for England during the American Revolution. But they later returned to North America and settled in Halifax where he would eventually serve as Lieutenant Governor of the province for sixteen years.
It was known Francis was not happy with Halifax and was later to have an affair with the visiting Prince William (later William IV), twenty years her junior, who was the third son of King George III. It is said that their dalliance occurred each spring and fall from 1786 to 1789 when the Prince was serving in Halifax with the Royal Navy in the Western Atlantic. It was also rumoured that Francis had persuaded the Prince to recommend the vacant governorship of Nova Scotia to her husband. The governorship became open with the death of Governor Colonel John Parr in 1791.
John Wentworth would later inform the King of his displeasure over the dalliance, and Prince William was sent packing back to England. However, it was also known that Wentworth himself had a number of affairs during his tenure in Halifax.
During his tenure, Wentworth laid the cornerstone for the construction of Government House in 1800. His wife, Francis, would later die in England in 1813 at the age of sixty-eight. Following his death in 1820, John Wentworth was buried beneath St. Paul’s Church.
9 April 1917 — The Battle of Vimy Ridge began on this date. It was Easter Monday. By the 12th, the 85th Battalion (Nova Scotia Highlanders) of the 4th Canadian Division had control of the ridge.
The battle had cost four Canadian Divisions 10,602 casualties, (3,598 killed and 7,004 wounded). Four members of the Canadian Corps received Victoria Crosses for their actions during the battle. Amongst the Nova Scotians who died at Vimy Ridge was Windsor native, Lieutenant Alfred S. Churchill (b. 1895), son of Ezra and Mary Churchill, while serving in The Royal Canadian Regiment. He was later buried at the Ecoivres Military Cemetery, Mont-st. Eloi, Pas de Calais, France. His mother later received the Memorial Cross for her son’s service.
The Canadian National Vimy Memorial is located on the highest point of the Vimy Ridge, overlooking the Douai Plain. It was designed by monument sculptor, Walter S. Allward. Constructed over eleven years, it was unveiled by King Edward VIII on 26 July 1936. It is the centrepiece of a 100-hectare (250-acre) preserved battlefield park and is Canada's largest and principal overseas war memorial dedicated to all Canadians who had lost their lives in World War One. Also etched on the forward wall of the monument are the names of 11, 285 Canadian soldiers who have no known grave in France.
10 April 1945 — Kline’s, a popular clothing store in Halifax, advertised on this day that it had moved to a new location at 29 Gottingen Street. During that time, Halifax was experiencing immense growing pains experienced by the economic and population growth due to the Second World War. As a result, retail businesses flourished.
Many workers for the nearby naval shipyards also lived in the North End and with increasing population densities along Gottingen Street, it had become a commercial corridor radiating from the city centre, competing with the central downtown business district on Barrington Street. By 1940, many retail businesses had begun to open on Gottingen, including Woolworths, which was the street’s first modern department store. Other notable stores included Rubins Men’s and Boys’ Wear, Macy’s Ladies Wear, the Metropolitan Storie and Withrow Drugs.
By the early 1950s, Gottingen Street was a busy residential and business area with over 130 retail and commercial use activities lining the corridor between Gerrish and Cogswell Streets. Further, when the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge opened in 1955, linking the urban cores of Halifax and Dartmouth, Gottingen Street became an important artery “for downtown-bound automobile traffic.” Such efforts to facilitate automobile travel and modernize the city also came with more housing needs which would also impact the Gottingen Street commercial corridor.
However, within twenty years, by 1970, when residential patterns had changed due to urban planning renewal decisions, the customer base for many local businesses also changed. “In a single decade, the (Gottingen) neighbourhood lost approximately 5,200 residents, or 42 per cent of its 1950 total population… (and) Gottingen’s commercial corridor diminished to 95 in 1970.” Later, Woolworths would close, as did Kline’s later in 1980.
As one observer noted, “What was evident was that the place had become insulated from the rest of the city. Very one-dimensional in terms of who lived there. I mean there was diversity within it, but economically speaking, it was one-dimensional. And more or less it was cast adrift.”
(Reference: Roth, Nathan. Jill L. Grant, “Commercial growth, decline, and gentrification on Gottingen Street in Halifax.” Urban History Review, 10 July 2014. Halifax: Dalhousie University.)
11 April 1885 — Volunteers from the 66th Battalion, “Princess Louise Fusiliers,” and other members of the ‘Halifax Provisional Battalion,’ left Halifax on the Intercolonial Railway heading west to the North-west Rebellion.
Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James J. Bremner, the battalion would arrive in Winnipeg on the 22 April and serve in the Swift Current, Moose Jaw area securing communications lines. They would be gone for three months. Upon their return, the City of Halifax placed a commemorative plaque on the main wrought iron gates of the Halifax Public Gardens acknowledging the services of the Halifax Provisional Battalion.
12 April 1791 — In 1759, 10 years after the British settlement was established at Halifax, the town had become “a seat of power for Britain’s Royal Navy, whose North Atlantic and West Indies Squadron ruled the waves on this side of the Atlantic” from Halifax to Bermuda. Just a year before, in 1758, over 22,000 military personnel had crowded into Halifax preparing for an assault on Fortress Louisbourg. In fact, Fort George, that granite and ironstoned Citadel that loomed over the town, had been designed to “protect the Royal Naval Dockyard below and the town that lay at its feet.” A number of young men from Halifax would also serve in the British Royal Navy.
On this day in 1791, (Sir) Provo William Parry Wallis, GCB, was born in Halifax (d.1892). He would later become a notable Royal Navy officer who took part in the capture of the USS Chesapeake by HMS Shannon. After many exploits at sea and in battle, Wallis became Admiral of the British Fleet in 1875.
Dying at the age of 100, his life spanned practically the whole of the nineteenth century, witnessing many innovations in technology such as the use of steam in marine and rail transportation, the electric telegraph in communications, free public education and also a new confederation that transformed Halifax from being a capital “of a semi-independent colony into the capital of a province of the Dominion of Canada . ... ”
(Reference: Naftel, William D.. Halifax A Visual Legacy. Halifax: Formac Publishing. 2015, p.5.)