Where are you?

I have lived in Wolfville for four years, and visited the town all my life. I am very much wondering where the RCMP are in town. The extent of speeders, roller skates and bicycles breaking the law is unreal. I live across from the Anglican Church, and can hear tires squealing, due to speed coming and going around the sharp turn… on the Church Hill, on any day and night.

Many years ago when the town had their own police force, there was a chief who was able to find many speeders by parking behind the church. If this practice was to take place today, there is no doubt or question whatsoever, they would have to start operating another printing shop to keep enough ticket books available. Nearly every vehicle would be fined coming and going.

I do some work at this church cemetery during the spring and summer, when I enter and leave on foot. I have to go down a long way going into town, so I can see, and be well away from speeding vehicles, especially ones coming into the town. I am by no means the only person with these complaints, but sadly I do seriously believe, and have been told by persons, that they have the same question and complaints on their minds. Will anyone do anything? I do hope that the proper authorities will at least try and curb this longstanding problem, which is getting more extreme, before a tragedy takes place.

George Beatty Wolfville

While reading early deeds on property in Kings County, historian Gary Young discovered that road names sometimes originated with the prominent people who lived on them.

Take Oakdene Avenue in North Kentville, for example. In his research, Young learned that the avenue once was referred to as Barnaby Road simply because only Barnabys lived on it. Young found that some deeds he looked at also called the avenue Westcott Road, due to a blacksmith named Westcott having a shop at its far end.

I’ll have more later on the prodigious amount of research Young has done on the origin of roads and the history of areas such as Pine Woods and Aldershot. For now, I’d like to concentrate on a hill and a road in Kentville’s north side that deserves recognition. Actually, this is a challenge to the Kentville Historical Society and Kings Historical Society. Is it not possible for these societies to recognize that according to old deeds, historical documents and newspapers, Kentville’s infamous Gallows Hill and Cornwallis Street were once known as Joe Bell Hill and Joe Bell Road?

As Young’s research reveals, Joe Bell Hill and Joe Bell Road refer to a person associated with these places. So, you may ask, who was Joe Bell? First of all, I have no birth or death dates for the gentleman but I’ve established that he was an African Nova Scotian who lived along the section of Cornwallis Street that runs up Gallows Hill. Kentville collector Louis Comeau told me a few years ago that a Kentville Hospital Association document from the 1920s lists a property along Gallows Hill as Joe Bell’s cottage. This document establishes Joe Bell’s residence there