Looking back at Digby County history
From 1960
A fire – believed to have been started by firecrackers – levelled the remaining portion of a former ice house in Conway. Local residents were said to be concerned about the use of firecrackers in the Digby area in recent weeks. The Conway blaze reportedly had started in the afternoon and had been extinguished by neighbours around the supper hour but had flared up again later in the evening. For a while, there was concern the fire would spread to nearby woods. As reported in the Courier, “A volunteer group of Digby firemen with an auxiliary pump responded to a call for help, as did the forestry pumper from Marshalltown, and the fire was brought under control shortly before midnight.”
A family of five was homeless after fire destroyed a house in Weymouth Falls. The fire was discovered at about 9:30 a.m. “but made such rapid headway through the small-frame dwelling” that the occupants – two adults and three small children – were able to escape only with the clothes they were wearing. All their other belongings were destroyed.
There was a water shortage in Digby, with the town operating on a reserve water supply from the dam at Lily Lake. “Water has been shut off from the lake in an effort to conserve this supply and give springs in the lake a chance to raise the lake level,” the Courier reported at the time. Water from the dam was darker than the lake water and, as a precaution, residents were being asked to boil the water before drinking it.
A Parkers Cove resident reportedly was not injured when the car he was driving was hit by a train in Digby. The incident had happened at a railway crossing near the North End Grocery, according to a newspaper story. The man’s vehicle had stalled while it was at the crossing and he was unable to get out of the car before it was struck by the train, which was en route to Yarmouth from Halifax.
The Trinity Anglican church in Digby held 175th-anniversary celebrations. The day’s events included a youth service, where Rev. James Pike, the Trinity rector, spoke about the people who had founded the parish, citing the hardships they had endured in those early years. Later, at an anniversary service in the evening, the church was packed, with a number of special guests on hand for the occasion.
A trip overseas and pilgrimage to Lourdes, Fatima, Rome and Oberammergau was the subject of a talk given by Catherine Comeau of Meteghan at the first monthly meeting of the season of Meteghan’s home-and-school association.
Movies playing at the Capitol theatre in the fall of 1960 included Last Train from Gun Hill, starring Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn, and House on Haunted Hill, starring Vincent Price.
From 1971
Digby was among the stops for Nova Scotia’s Royal Commission on Education, Public Services and Provincial-Municipal Relations. The commission was scheduled to hold public sessions Tuesday, Nov. 2, at Digby Regional High School. The commission was said to be encouraged by the widespread response to its invitation to Nova Scotians to express their views.
Marjory Tupper, former public health nurse in Digby, was among those who received life memberships in the Canadian Health Association, Nova Scotia branch, at the group’s annual meeting. Among those attending the meeting, which was held in Yarmouth, was Digby native Scott MacNutt, Nova Scotia’s health minister at the time and MLA for Dartmouth South.
The popular CBC television show Front Page Challenge had accepted a story idea from Lawrence Snell of Deep Brook, who had suggested they do a segment on the recent discovery of oil off Sable Island. The show invited Allan Sullivan, Nova Scotia’s minister of mines at the time, to be its mystery guest for the segment. Snell was an Annapolis municipal councillor.
A 15-mile walkathon was planned for early November, with proceeds to benefit the Digby Ravens hockey team. The event was to be held in the HillgroveSouth Range area. Money raised from the walk would be used to supplement funding for the Ravens in the upcoming hockey season.