Nova Scotia Quotations

...Canada's oldest town street...

Queen Anne's town: Annapolis Royal anchors Nova Scotia's colonial history; in the Calgary Herald, 5 August 2006, referring to St. George Street, in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.

The argument can be made that the Valley is the birthplace of Canada, with the French settling Port Royal in 1605 and the region being a battle-ground in the numerous wars between the French and English for colonial supremacy.

Mike Parker, author of Historic Annapolis Valley: Rural Life Remembered, 162 pages, Nimbus Publishing, Halifax, 2006, as quoted in Jeffrey Simpson's review of that book in the NovaScotian, a section in the Halifax Sunday Herald, 24 December 2006.

There are many valleys in Nova Scotia but there is only one Valley.  It is widely known that when one speaks of the Valley or goes to the Valley or is from the Valley, it is the Annapolis Valley.  No other valley in Nova Scotia can lay claim to that.

The British conquest of Acadia in 1710 is not an event that figures largely in standard histories of Canada.  Historically, it has not been considered significant either for Acadia (today's Nova Scotia) or for Canada as a whole, being regarded as simply a stepping stone to the decisive 1760 conquest, when Canada became part of the British Empire.  The authors of the nine studies that make up this book think otherwise... The British takeover was not well organized and was marked by inaction and a laissez-faire attitude.  In the midst of imperial rivalries and administrative ineptitude, private commercial ventures expanded rapidly, mostly from New England... the result was that Acadia devolved into being neither entirely a colony nor entirely a commercial outpost...

Review in The American Historical Review, February 2005, of (book) The "Conquest" of Acadia, 1710: Imperial, Colonial, and Aboriginal Constructions, by John G. Reid, William Wicken, Geoffrey Plank, Barry Moody, Maurice Basque, Elizabeth Mancke, University of Toronto Press, 2003, 297 pages.

My kin got run out of this place sometime in the 1700s.

High-profile American political consultant James Carville, an outspoken political junkie from Louisiana, referring to the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755 by the British government.  Mr. Carville was in Halifax on 25 January 2007 to deliver a speech before a meeting of the Nova Scotia Liberal Party, as reported in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald the next day.  Mr. Carville, the legendary "ragin' Cajun" who ran Bill Clinton's election campaigns, said he had never before been to Nova Scotia – his "ancestral homeland."  (Cajun is a Louisiana variation of Acadian.)

We're high above the point where the Bay of Fundy runs into the Minas channel and yet, the clifftops of Cape D'Or tower over us.  Winding down and around the jagged cliffs and thick forest, a rough road resembling a logging trail ends at a ledge that juts out into the Bay.  Perched on this ledge, the Lighthouse of Cape D'Or overlooks the hauntingly remote panorama of the Fundy shoreline.  Our arrival at the lighthouse turned bed and breakfast was a scheduled lunch stop on a two-day driving program – a Canadian press launch for General Motors new Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks... We'd reached our rest stop via the harrowing forest road, bordered only by a battered guardrail.  Parking our trucks and making our way to the edge of the cliff, more than one person remarked that it could just be the end of the earth...

Source: 2007 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra First Impressions by Lesley Wimbush, Auto123.com, 24 November 2006

The Mi'kmaq knew that they might look about as threatening as a parent-teacher association when they sat down with Georgia-Pacific.  The company boasts of $27-billion (U.S.) in revenue and 85,000 employees, making it bigger than the combined governments of Atlantic Canada... Head office in Atlanta, Georgia had been warned about Canada, not that the people there needed to be told.  For half a century, the company had helped to build America's suburbs with gypsum from Cape Breton.  Getting its way with the Nova Scotia government was seldom a problem.  But this time, as Georgia-Pacific prepared to open its third mine on the island, the Atlanta-based multinational with more annual revenue than all but two African countries was warned of two new realities up north: the Greens and the natives...

Source: How the Mi'kmaq Profit from Fear, by John Stackhouse, in The Globe & Mail, 6 November 2001

After months of research, in 1986 they visited Cape Breton, an island connected by a causeway to the Nova Scotia mainland.  It's a four-hour drive from Halifax (and an hour-and-a-half flight from Boston).  A year later (they) found their Walden: a cozy three-room cabin on the banks of Cape Breton's Margaree River, some of the finest Atlantic salmon water in North America.  The Moores got in early on Cape Breton, the long-overlooked, easternmost part of the peninsular province of Nova Scotia, whose mainland has been a hot real estate ticket since the early 1990s.  Mainland Nova Scotia was said to feel like New England fifty years ago, a friendly, uncrowded maritime paradise with vast tracts of cheap, desirable land.  It was discovered by wealthy Americans and Europeans (mostly Germans), who showed up in droves to buy waterfront property for $200,000 an acre in Chester and other tony shore towns west of Halifax.  But those mainland bargains are harder to find now, as prices have risen to $850,000 a waterfront acre for prime locations... Cape Breton today is where Nova Scotia was a decade ago.  Its oceanfront acreage, compared with the mainland's, goes for less than half the price; and a mile or two inland, it's cheaper still.  Lots on the Margaree River are available for $850 an acre... perhaps the most famous early settler was Alexander Graham Bell, who fell in love with Cape Breton because it reminded him of his home country of Scotland.  Weary of telephone patent battles in the U.S., Bell and his wife, Mabel, in 1893 built a 37-room summer home styled after a French chateau.  Beinn Bhreagh (pronounced "ben vreyah", Gaelic for "beautiful mountain") still stands on a promontory that juts into the Bras d'Or Lakes near the village of Baddeck...

Source: Eden at a Discount by Monte Burke, Forbes, 28 November 2005

I have travelled around the globe.  I have seen the Canadian and American Rockies, the Andes, the Alps and the Highlands of Scotland, but for simple beauty Cape Breton outrivals them all.

Alexander Graham Bell

I have been privileged to travel freely around the world... Few places around the world are still pristine.  None comes close to the Bras d'Or Lakes.

Gilbert Grosvenor, Chairman of the National Geographic Society and great-grandson of A.G. Bell, speaking at the Bell Museum in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, on 18 October 1996.

Driving along Cape Breton's world famous scenic drive, the Cabot Trail, I'd seen kilometres of rocky cliffs trail down to empty beaches.  Outside small villages, houses stood far apart, strung infrequently along the shoreline.  Fishing boats bobbed at small piers.  In wet, misty spots the narrow, winding road disappeared when I drove through a very low cloud.  I half expected to see a leprechaun leaping out of the smoky whirls twined with the thick forest.  And beyond, whales spouted offshore in white caps under a low, damp, grey sky that rarely revealed the sun.  It had a stormy black and white beauty, and it was clearly not a propserous place.  I had glanced at a local paper and noticed homes selling for $14,000; Cape Breton may be the only place in North America where you can buy an oceanfront home on your VISA card.

Steve Cohen in The Globe and Mail, 10 August 2002, page R12

Four centuries after the debut of the first play written in North America, its portrayal of aboriginals in what is now Nova Scotia has outraged a theatre troupe enough to stage a protest – literally.  Written and first performed on 14 November 1606, the Theatre of Neptune in New France includes the god of the sea and four Tritons as characters, as well as four Mi'kmaq, who are referred to as "savages."  The four natives confirm their allegiance to the French crown and express their joy that the French have returned to the French settlement at Port Royal, now a national historic park in Nova Scotia...

Marc Lescarbot wrote the Theatre of Neptune in New France in 1606.  Lescarbot, a lawyer from Paris, had been put in charge of the French settlement at Port Royal while the leader of the colony searched for a more inviting site for the settlers.  When Governor Jean de Biencourt de Poutrincourt's ship appeared on the horizon on 14 November 1606, a theatre troupe went out to meet the vessel to perform the play.

It was the first published theatrical script produced in North America.

Source: 400-year-old play stirs controversy in Nova Scotia CBC News, 14 November 2006

Port Royal, 1606 — The settlers were restless.  Even the natives were restless.  Poutrincourt and Champlain, the leaders had been away almost three months exploring the eastern seaboard.  In the only ship, the settler's only link to France.  The previous two winters, more than half the settlers had died of scurvy, and now, a new winter was upon them.

Marc Lescarbot – the settlement's historian, a disillusioned lawyer and passionate writer, had a brainstorm.  Let's put on a play: a surprise reception for the ship's return.  A morale booster.  The rehearsals and set production would keep everyone occupied.

Thus, November 14th, 1606, the history of theatre in Canada began.  Marc Lescarbot's Le Theatre de Neptune en la Nouvelle France / The Theatre of Neptune in New France was mounted, welcoming Poutrincourt.  It was the first written, first performed play in Canada and in the continental North America, north of the Spanish settlements in Mexico.  A signature moment...

Source: Nova Scotia: Birthplace of Canadian Theatre, 1606-2006 by Ken Pinto, Atlantic Fringe Festival

(Marc Lescarbot's) Theatre de Neptune...is a kind of nautical spectacle, organized to celebrate Poutrincourt's return to Port Royal.  The god Neptune comes in a bark to bid the traveller welcome; he is surrounded by a court of Tritons and Indians, who recite in turn, in French, Gascon, and Souriquois verse, the praises of the leaders of the colony, and then sing in chorus the, glory of the king, while trumpets sound and cannon are fired.  This performance, a mixture of barbarism and mythology, in the impressive setting of the Port Royal basin, was the first theatrical presentation, and no ordinary one, in North America.

Excerpted from Marc Lescarbot in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online

2006 marks the four hundredth anniversary of a major theatrical event in the history of North American drama.  The Theatre of Neptune in New France by lawyer, poet and historian Marc Lescarbot was a masque of welcome performed on the Bay of Fundy by members of the tiny French colony of Port Royal on 14 November 1606.  It celebrated the return of the ship bearing the Sieur de Poutrincourt and navigator-explorer Samuel de Champlain from their travels along the coastline as far south as Cape Cod in search of a more temperate site for the colony...

— Spectacle of Empire: Marc Lescarbot's Theatre of Neptune in New France (400th Anniversary Commemorative Edition)
http://www.talonbooks.com/index.cfm?event=titleDetails&ISBN=0889225478
by Jerry Wasserman, Professor of Theatre at the University of British Columbia
Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: Talonbooks, Vancouver (2006)
ISBN: 0889225478

John and George Maxwell were identical twins.  The only language they spoke and understood was "the Gaidhlig" – Scots' Gaelic.  The Maxwells were black.  They may have been the only black Gaelic-speaking "Highlanders" in the world.  For sure, there were no other Gaelic-speaking blacks in Nova Scotia.  The Maxwell twins were born June 18, 1864, on Cameron Island in Bras d'Or Lake in the West Bay-Marble Mountain area of Cape Breton Island.  Their father was the son of a West Indies slave who emigrated to Halifax from the United States after the American War of Independence.  George met Rudyard Kipling in the port of Gloucester, Massachusetts.  Kipling had many fixed addresses.  He was born in India but lived in England, Burma, South Africa, Canada and the United States... His wife was from Gloucester and he was living there when he met George... Kipling was quite fascinated by George Maxwell and they spent several evenings together.  At the time, Kipling was researching and writing Captains Courageous, a novel about Gloucester fishermen on Newfoundland's Grand Banks.  He decided to add a black character.  So, George Maxwell became the cook on the fishing schooner...

Pat MacAdam in The Ottawa Sun, 29 October 2006

The cook was a huge, jet-black negro, and, unlike all the negroes Harvey had met, did not talk, contenting himself with smiles and dumb-show invitations to eat more. 

"See, Harvey," said Dan, rapping with his fork on the table, "it's jest as I said.  The young an' handsome men – like me an' Pennsy an' you an' Manuel – we're second ha'af, an' we eats when the first ha'af are through.  They're the old fish; and they're mean an' humpy, an' their stummicks has to be humoured; so they come first, which they don't deserve.  Ain't that so, doctor?"  The cook nodded.

"Can't he talk?" said Harvey, in a whisper.

" 'Nough to git along.  Not much o' anything we know.  His natural tongue's kinder curious.  Comes from the in'ards of Cape Breton, he does, where the farmers speak home-made Scotch... "That is not Scotch," said "Pennsylvania."  "That is Gaelic.  So I read in a book."

Rudyard Kipling in Captains Courageous, published 1896

In 1907, Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature,
making him the first English language writer to receive the prize,
and he remains today its youngest-ever recipient.

Go To:   Project Gutenberg, online text of Captains Courageous
    http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/cptcr11.txt

Less than three per cent of Canada's population lives in Nova Scotia, but more than 16 per cent of Canada's soldiers killed in Afghanistan came from this province.  Seven of the 42 Canadian soldiers killed in the war-torn country since 2002 came from this province.  Only Ontario, with more than 13 times the population, has seen a higher death toll.

Page A1, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 23 October 2006

...It took a two-hour flight to Halifax, Nova Scotia, this week, followed by a 90-minute motorcade north up Highway 102 to Pictou County, for (Secretary of State Condoleezza) Rice to find herself linked to someone with similar star appeal: Peter MacKay of Canada, the single, sophisticated foreign minister, routinely named Canada's sexiest M.P. by The Hill Times in Ottawa, and the closest thing to eye candy on the diplomatic circuit.  Tall, athletic, young, blond and recently dumped by his girlfriend, a fellow member of Parliament, Belinda Stronach, who parted with him when she switched parties, Mr. MacKay does not look like your usual foreign minister.  He has a tan and the build of someone who spends his time on the rugby field, not holed up reading G-8 communiques.  Sure, at 40 years old, he is younger than Ms. Rice, who is 51, but that did not stop gossips from engaging in baseless speculating ...Mr. MacKay, wearing a pearl gray suit, pink and blue striped tie ...mentioned Nova Scotia's rich black history, citing the "black loyalist community, Canada's oldest community of African heritage"...

"Dance of Diplomacy Provides Grist for the Gossip Mill", New York Times, 13 September 2006

Fig. 1	Fig. 2
Fig. 3	Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

Figs. 1 to 4:  Screenshots from The Colbert Report, 14 Sep 2006.
Figs. 1 and 3:  Stephen Colbert discusses the article "Dance of Diplomacy Provides Grist for the Gossip Mill", New York Times, 13 Sep 2006.
Fig. 2:  View of the article "Dance of Diplomacy Provides Grist for the Gossip Mill", New York Times, 13 Sep 2006.
Fig. 4:  The Colbert Report shows a shot (from CNN, 13 Sep. 2006) of Peter MacKay and Condoleezza Rice in front of the steam locomotive Albion in the Museum of Industry, Stellarton, Nova Scotia.
Compare fig. 4 with figs. 5 and 6, showing partial views, photographed on 28 Mar 2006, of the steam locomotive Albion in the Museum of Industry, Stellarton, Nova Scotia.

Reference: The Colbert Report by Wikipedia

Remarks With Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay At the Museum of Industry
by Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Stellarton, Canada, September 12, 2006

Remarks at the Museum of Industry
by Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Stellarton, Nova Scotia, Canada, September 12, 2006

Remarks at 9/11 Commemoration Ceremony With Citizens of Halifax
by Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax NS, Canada, September 11, 2006

Remarks to Halifax International Airport Officials and Staff
by Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Halifax International Airport, Halifax NS, Canada, September 11, 2006

The fact that she chose, on the anniversary of nine-eleven, to be here in Halifax, here in Nova Scotia, I think says a great deal about the fact they do appreciate what Canada, and what Nova Scotia has done... The fact that she came here on that anniversary – she could have gone anywhere else in the world – to me sends a very powerful message...

Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald, speaking about the two-day visit by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Nova Scotia, 11-12 September 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001.  This was part of Mr. MacDonald's 2006 year-end interview broadcast on CPAC (Canadian Parliamentary Affairs Channel), a cable television channel distributed all over Canada.  The interview was broadcast on CPAC several times in late December 2006, and at 12:15am AST 2 January 2007.

We have been diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia.  All airspace in North America has been closed.

The pilot of Delta flight 777 from London Gatwick, England, to Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday, 11 September 2001, speaking on the plane's intercom to the passengers, halfway across the North Atlantic, as described by passenger Don Tooker, in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 15 September 2001.  D.K. Tooker received his navy wings and commission in April 1947 and later served with the United States Marine Corps, retiring in 1968 as a Lieutenant Colonel.  In 1950 he graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara.  In Korea he logged 133 combat missions in Corsairs and jets.  In the early 1950s he flew helicopters and observation aircraft, but went back to jets in the 1960s, flying the F8 Crusader and commanding the VMF-323 (Marine Fighter) squadron.  From 1966 to 1968 he commanded VVMO-5, flying the Iroquois and the Bronco.  His decorations include two Distinguished Flying Crosses, ten Air Medals, two Navy Commendation Medals, and the Presidential Unit Citation.  His book, The Second Luckiest Pilot: Adventures in Military Aviation, ISBN 1557508216 was published in May 2000 by the Naval Institute Press, in Annapolis, Maryland.

Last Tuesday [September 11, 2001] my wife, Peri, and I were headed home to California from London.  Midway on our flight from Gatwick to Atlanta, our Delta flight captain made the following solemn announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have some terrible news. The Pentagon and the two World Trade Center towers have been hit by terrorists who've apparently hijacked four commercial jets.  The two towers have collapsed and are no more."

A moment's silence, then, "We have been diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia.  All airspace in North America has been closed." Not since the shocking Pearl Harbor news [7 December 1941] had I ever been more stunned...

In all some forty aircraft were parked (at the Halifax airport) on an alternate runway; our Delta 777 was No. 39... Some seventeen hours after the London takeoff, we clambered down the jet stairway and into transit vehicles, then through Customs and into school buses, headed for a place called Shearwater Naval Base... To all Canadians, especially you Nova Scotians, you've done well!  You've done a fantastic job on short notice, a service that none of us will ever forget...

42 planes parked at Halifax International Airport, 11 September 2001
They were carrying 9,080 people, passengers and crew.
Source: Halifax Daily News, 11 September 2002

This past week, I was an unintentional visitor to Halifax, a traveller aboard an Air France flight bound for Philadelphia and diverted to your city.  The traumatic and tragic events which took place in the United States occasioned a poignant and emotional experience for me in Canada, which I would like to describe to you Canadians with my heartfelt appreciation and my awe at your outpouring of support for us ... It was a challenge of major proportions to every aspect of your cities and, in my view, you shone ... Authorities at Halifax Airport were efficient, cautious and professional ... I happened to arrive at Exhibition Park, along with 1,500 other travellers.  What followed was a demonstration of volunteerism that you should be tremendously proud of.

I have vivid memories of young people with smiles on their faces, pumping away to get those mattresses ready.  Bravo to their generation! I was told that some 800 Halifax residents came by the facility to offer their homes for overnights stays or for us to take showers and to simply relax away from the press of people ... You displayed behavior that we should all aspire to in the face of human tragedies.  Thank you, officials of Halifax.  Thank you, Exhibition Park.  Thank you, Canadian Red Cross.  Thank you, Canadian Salvation Army.  Thank you, all the private citizens of Halifax who gave your time and yourselves.

Alan G. Ringgold, in a letter dated 15 September 2001, addressed to "Dear Canadians" and sent to Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly, as reported on the front page of the Halifax Sunday Daily News, 16 September 2001.  Alan Ringgold, formerly a deputy assistant director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was one of 1,500 passengers who slept on a cot at Halifax's Exhibition Park when his Air France flight to Philadelphia was diverted to Halifax on September 11th.  Before he retired, Ringgold was the agent overseeing all FBI law enforcement outside the United States.  He appeared numerous times before committees of the United States Congress, updating politicians on FBI operations in cases such as the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which killed nineteen U.S. soldiers.  He now lives in Geneva, Switzerland.

May it be recorded; may it be inscribed forever in the Book of Life: Bless the good people of Halifax...

From "An Ode to Human Decency" by Stephen Jay Gould, in The Globe and Mail, 20 September 2001.  His flight from Milan to New York was one of 45 diverted to Halifax on September 11th.  Dr. Gould is among the best known and widely read scientists of our present generation.  He is currently the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard University, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology in the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, and adjunct member of the Department of the History of Science. He has established a reputation as one of Harvard's most visible and engaging instructors, offering courses in paleontology, biology, geology, and the history of science. Since 1996, he also has been Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University and now divides his time between New York and Cambridge.

...My first actual encounter with Maritime Canada, as a teenager on a family motor trip in the mid-1950s, sparked nothing but pleasure and fascination, as I figured out the illusion of Moncton's Magnetic Hill, marvelled at the tidal phenomena of the Bay of Fundy (especially the reversing rapids of Saint John and the tidal bore of Moncton), found peace of spirit at Peggy's Cove and learned some history in the old streets of Halifax.  I have been back, always with eagerness and fulfilment, a few times since, for reasons both recreational and professional ...

My latest visit among you, however, was entirely involuntary and maximally stressful ... I live in lower Manhattan, just a mile from the burial ground of the Twin Towers.  As they fell victim to evil and insanity on Tuesday, September 11, during the morning after my sixtieth birthday, my wife and I, enroute from Milan to New York, flew over Titanic's resting place and then followed the route of her recovered dead to Halifax.  We sat on the airport tarmac for eight hours and eventually proceeded to the cots of Dartmouth's sports complex, then upgraded to the adjacent Holiday Inn.

On Friday, September 14, at three o'clock in the morning, Alitalia brought us back to the airport, only to inform us that their plane would return to Milan.  We rented one of the last two cars available and drove, with an intense mixture of grief and relief, back home...

Halifax sat on the invisible periphery of a New York epicenter, with 45 planes, mostly chock full of poor strangers from strange lands, arrayed in two lines on the tarmac, and holding 9,000 passengers to house, feed, and especially to comfort. May it be recorded; may it be inscribed forever in the Book of Life: Bless the good people of Halifax who did not sleep, who took strangers into their homes, who opened their hearts and shelters, who rushed in enough food and clothing to supply an army, who offered tours of their beautiful city and, above all, who listened with a simple empathy that brought this tough and fully grown man to tears, over and over again.  I heard not a single harsh word, saw not the slightest gesture of frustration, and felt nothing but pure and honest welcome ... We, 9,000 strong, are forever in your debt, and all humanity glows in the light of your unselfish goodness...

And so Canada, although you are not my home or native land, we will always share this bond of your unstinting hospitality to people who descended upon you as frightened strangers, and received nothing but solace and solidarity in your embrace of goodness...

• Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History (1977)
• The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (1980)
• The Mismeasure of Man (1981)
• Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History (1983)
• The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History (1985)
• Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Ecological Time (1987)
• An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books (1987)
• Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (1989)
• Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History (1991)
• The Book of Life: An Illustrated History of the Evolution of Life on Earth (1993)
• Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History (1993)
• Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History (1995)
• Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (1996)
• Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History (1998)
• Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (1999)
• The Lying Stones of Marrakech: Penultimate Reflections in Natural History (2000)

I was flying from Frankfurt to New York for a vacation, but landed in heaven.

A quote from an anonymous passenger on one of the transatlantic airplane flights diverted on short notice to land in Halifax on September 11th, 2001.  It is inscribed on a plaque presented to Halifax and its citizens by Dennis Holland, national director of the Canadian Red Cross, to commemorate their "humanitarian efforts" in coping with the sudden emergency.  "You can imagine the magnitude of caring for eight thousand people who came to dinner unexpectedly, that takes quite a significant amount to effort," Holland said at a meeting of Halifax Regional Council where the plaque was presented, as reported in the Halifax Daily News, 4 October 2001.

Mr. Dennis Holland, President, and Mr. John Byrne, Regional Director, Canadian Red Cross, made a presentation to Council to thank HRM (Halifax Regional Municipality) and to recognize the community at large for their assistance during the U.S. Disaster.  In their presentation, Mr. Byrne made the following points:
  • 8,666 people were displaced over a twelve hour period.
  • Over a four day period, 1,622 volunteers assisted in the efforts.
  • 72,000 meals were served in four days.
  • 18 comfort shelters as well as numerous private homes were offered to accommodate the displaced passengers.
In response, Mayor Kelly thanked the Red Cross for their work.

Quoted from Halifax Regional Council minutes, 2 October 2001
http://www.halifax.ca/council/Minutes/2001/c011002.PDF

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, as word spread of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, 224 commercial planes were immediately diverted to 17 airports across this country: to British Columbia and Alberta, to Yukon and the Northwest Territories, to Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec – but mostly here, to runways across Atlantic Canada.  These aircraft carried some 33,000 people.  Most of them were Americans – some heading off on business trips or vacations, others bound for home.  Many were told that they would be setting down in Halifax or in St. John's, in Moncton or Stephenville, in Goose Bay or in Gander.  These were places that many aboard had never heard of.  They are now places that few of the passengers will ever forget.

Prime Minister Paul Martin, in a speech delivered at Pier 21 in Halifax on 1 December 2004, with United States President George W. Bush present.

In Windsor, one of the great dreams of my life – to serve as a soldier in a Jewish Unit to fight for the liberation of the Land of Israel (as we always called Palestine) – became a reality, and I will never forget Windsor, where I received my first training as a soldier and where I became a corporal.

David Green, a.k.a. David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), in a hand-written letter – now held by the West Hants Historical Society – addressed to "Mayor, Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada" and dated at Haifa "3 7 66" (1966) when Ben-Gurion was eighty years old, as described in The Valley Today (daily newspaper) 12 January 2007.  Ben-Gurion was Prime Minister of Israel 1949 to 1963, except for a period of two years 1954-1955.  Israel's largest airport, Ben Gurion International is named in his honour.  During World War One, 1914-1918, the British Army used Fort Edward in Windsor for training Jewish men to fight in Palestine against the Ottoman Turks, then fighting in the war on the German side.  Photographs and first-hand accounts of the time indicate that the men lived in tents on the hillside below the Fort Edward blockhouse. More than a thousand non-commissioned officers were trained in Windsor.

Glace Bay? A little fishing village.  My father had Simon's Dairy, a grocery with a candy counter.  In the back he cut kosher meat.  As a family, five kids, we all worked in the store, and my father taught us work ethics, how to treat people and work with people.  My father, he was probably not a good businessman, but I've seen him with people who owed him money – he'd give credit, and if we didn't have milk in the store that evening, he would take money out of the cash register, because they had young kids, so they could go to another store to buy milk.  On the other hand, I would look at my father as a businessman, and I'd say, "Why aren't you doing this, why aren't you expanding, why aren't you ...?" Even at 13, 14 years old.  But my father wasn't a risk taker, and that held him back.  You know, if anything, today I think taking a risk is always something I'm willing to do, and that's probably from seeing what my father didn't do in life.  He was a loved man, but there were times when I was a kid and I made $2,000 in the summer, cutting grass – in Glace Bay it wasn't a long summer.  I would have to help my father out with that couple thousand dollars when he was overdrawn at the bank ... At 17 I'm off to school in Halifax, St. Mary's University, and I wanted to go there because it was good and it was small.  I could be effective, and just like in high school I was a B and C student but very involved – student council, senate, ran for president.  I was paying for my schooling with campus-police jobs and desk-clerk jobs and I became a don in residence, in charge of a dorm, so that was free housing, and being a don, the Moosehead Brewery rep used to give me like ten cases of beer each week to give out as samples.  I said, "Wait a minute, I can't give this away..."

Irwin Simon Chairman and CEO of Hain Celestial Group Inc., as quoted in The Apprenticeship of Irwin Simon by Hesh Kestin, Inc magazine, March 2002

"...the same Irwin Simon who was stocking bottles of Heinz ketchup at age ten in his father's 900-square-foot grocery, in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia..."

— Source: The Apprenticeship of Irwin Simon

...Simon looks away, and at once you know that he is back in Glace Bay, carefully arranging those bottles of Heinz ketchup, and his father is in the back cutting meat for the Passover rush, and outside the Nova Scotian wind is whipping up off the North Atlantic, and little Irwin is thinking about growth and risk...

Now, admit it.  A good 57.9 percent of you didn't know your Nova Scotia from your focaccia until the Penguins lucked out and landed the hockey player of the millennium, Sidney Crosby of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.  If you're geographically handicapped, Nova Scotia is a beautiful island northeast of Maine...

The Morning File by Peter Leo in the Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 25 August 2005

I imagine that the good people of Nova Scotia will be rather surprised to find that their province is an island (except for those from Cape Breton, which IS an island.) It would appear that being 'geographically handicapped' is an ironic condition.

Kent A. Harries Ph.D, letter in the Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 26 August 2005

To the zealots who would ban smoking in all public places: there was a man who loved dogs and children and abhorred smoking and drinking.  There was another man who had a weak whiskey with his breakfast, gradually progressing throughout the day to postprandial strong brandy.  Their names, respectively, were Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill.

Harry Flemming, well-known commentator on current events in Nova Scotia, in the Halifax Daily News, 23 October 2002.

With his criss-crossing of narratives and careful research, Kimber has given Haligonians, Nova Scotians and all Canadians a history of events as they can finally be agreed upon.

David Bentley, in his review in the National Post, 12 October 2002, of Stephen Kimber's book Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs: Halifax at War, published in October 2002 by Doubleday Canada, a history of Halifax during the Second World War.

The war was over.  They'd done all anyone had asked of them, and more.  They'd won the Battle of the Atlantic.  They's seen friends die.  And now, on the very day when they should have been celebrating with their comrades and thanking whatever gods there are for Allied victory and their own survival, the ungrateful, narrow-minded, mean-spirited burghers of this godforsaken city had shut down the liquor stores, shuttered the movie theatres, boarded up the shops, stopped serving dinner.

Stephen Kimber, commenting on the Halifax VE-Day riots of May 1945 in his book Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs: Halifax at War, quoted with approval by Brian Flemming in his review of Kimber's book in the Halifax Daily News, 16 October 2002.

Q:   What's your favorite rail trip?
A:   I'd have to say from Port Hawkesbury on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia to Inverness, on Canadian National, CNR.  When I was a kid, I used to ride with the conductor, a friend of the family, who would take me on the overnight trip.  We'd go to Inverness and spend the night; I'd sleep in the caboose, get up in the morning, and come back.  I guess that's probably the start of all this.
Q:   Are you retired for good this time?
A:   Who knows?  I still love trains: It's my life.

David Gunn, former President and CEO of Amtrak, in an interview with Carolyn Kleiner Butler, by telephone from his family home in Nova Scotia, published as "Still In Love With Railroads", in U.S. News and World Report, 5 December 2005.

What is Amtrak?
The U.S. Congress created Amtrak – National Railroad Passenger Corporation is the official name of the company – in 1971 to provide intercity passenger railroad service.  During Mr. Gunn's time, Amtrak carried about two million passengers each month, to more than 500 destinations in 46 states over a system covering about 22,000 miles [35,000 km]. Amtrak owns about 730 route miles of track in the Northeast Corridor (Washington - Baltimore - Philadelphia - New York - Boston, including the Corridor branches to Springfield, Atlantic City, and Harrisburg); the remainder of the track used by Amtrak trains is owned by various freight railroads.  Like most passenger carriers around the world, Amtrak is unable to pay its way wholly from fares, and requires financial assistance each year, partly from states but mostly from the federal government, to cover operating losses and capital investment.  Amtrak spent close to $60 million each week during Mr. Gunn's time in charge.

Amtrak by Wikipedia

David L. Gunn by Wikipedia

(Congress) put Amtrak on this fanciful search for self-sufficiency. There's not a rail passenger system in the world that doesn't require government subsidy for either capital or operating or both ... I believe in this thing (Amtrak). I didn't come from Nova Scotia to Washington (to preside over the closure of Amtrak)...

David Gunn, President and CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of Amtrak (National Railroad Passenger Corporation) in response to a question from Jim Lehrer on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, aired at 7:40pm ADT, 13 June 2002, from WGBH, the PBS (Public Broadcasting System) television station in Boston. Mr. Gunn told Mr. Lehrer that Amtrak operates 265 trains each day, carrying 60,000 passengers. The complete transcript of the interview is available at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/transportation/jan-june02/gunn_6-13.html

Amtrak Board Chairman John Robert Smith today (26 April 2002) announced the appointment of David L. Gunn as President and CEO of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) effective May 15, 2002. Gunn has previously headed up both the largest transit system in the United States and in Canada, serving as President of the New York City Transit Agency from 1984 to 1990 and as Chief General Manager of the Toronto Transit Commission from 1995 to 1999...
Source: National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) press release, 26 April 2002
    http://www.amtrak.com/press/atk20020426065.html

...Gunn also said he will propose a massive reorganization of Amtrak management today to the Amtrak board of directors, reducing the number of "vice president" titles in the company from 84 to about 20 and eliminating three business units while concentrating management in Washington in a "traditional railroad structure." As a part of the process, he said he is establishing a policy of total openness on Amtrak's finances, with detailed monthly updates that will be open to the public ... Gunn's rapid and sweeping moves – and his candor – are consistent with a management philosophy which in the past has created trouble for him in political circles. But he said bold moves are necessary to put Amtrak back on a sound footing, and if the political system decides that it doesn't like what he's doing, he can return to retirement in Nova Scotia.

News item in the Washington Post, 6 June 2002

I'm excited to join. This is the most exciting job I've ever had. I have every incentive to tell the truth. If they can't handle it, well – I'll just return to my home in Nova Scotia. Here's how we're organizing planning at Amtrak: Short Term and Long Term. Everything Short Term is before July 1, 2002. Everything long term is after July 1, 2002...

David Gunn, President and CEO of Amtrak, speaking at the APTA (American Public Transportation Association) Commuter Rail Conference in Baltimore, 12  June, 2002.
    http://www.trainweb.com/news/2002/2002f14c.html

David L. Gunn's Nova Scotia home is at St. Georges Channel,
Richmond County, on Cape Breton Island.
Online map: http://www.geocities.com/PicketFence/1286/roadmap.html

I want to dispel any notion...that I can just shut down our operations and happily return home to Cape Breton. You can depend on me to do everything possible to keep our operations going – that's my commitment to you. I did not take this job to shut down our railroad.

David Gunn, President and CEO of Amtrak — on the job for all of five weeks — in his fifth letter to Amtrak employees, distributed by e-mail and fax on June 24th, 2002.
    http://www.nationalcorridors.org/df06272002.shtml

Oh, no. I'm not going to resign. You've got to fire me.

David Gunn, President and CEO of Amtrak — during a meeting in Washington at 8:30am, 9 November 2005, with David Laney, Chairman of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak), and Floyd Hall, a member of Amtrak's Board of Directors, as quoted in "Throw David Gunn From The Trains: His Amtrak Sack" by Matthew Schuerman, in The New York Observer, 12 December 2005.

Mr. Schuerman's article continues:
...So at age 68, Mr. Gunn, who has run the Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C., transportation systems and received praise on all fronts, was cut loose in the wilderness – the wilderness of Nova Scotia, where he is living on his ancestral farm, splitting kindling and taking calls from the occasional reporter... Mr. Gunn will remain primarily in Cape Breton, though he will also have an office in Washington, D.C...

Those Were the Days

Letter, Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 20 July 2005

[The plaintiff's position was that] the flats in question were and are part of an arm of the sea called Annapolis Basin, which was and is a common and public and navigable arm of the sea in which the tides and waters of the sea flow and reflow, and therefore all the King's subjects had and have a right to fish therein and to carry away the fish taken, and the plaintiff, a British subject, in the exercise of such right, did on or about the 30th of August, 1904, and at other times, fish for and dig clams on said flats between high and low water mark and carry a quantity of them away, doing no injury to the soil of said flats and remaining no longer than was necessary for the purpose aforesaid.

[The judge wrote:] The distance between high and low water mark on the flats is apparently in the neighbourhood of three hundred yards [three hundred metres] or more. The clams were dug by the plaintiff about two hundred feet [sixty metres] from low water mark, and from there to the line of ordinary high tides is upwards of three hundred feet [one hundred metres]. In an average tide there is twenty to thirty feet [six to nine metres] of water, when the tide is in, at the 200 feet [60 metres] line mentioned.

[The judge quoted a standard legal reference:] Although, prima facie, every subject is entitled to fish in the sea and tidal waters yet, prior to Magna Carta, the Crown could, by its prerogative, exclude the public from such prima facie right and grant the exclusive right of fishery to a private individual ... The Great Charter restrained this prerogative for the future, but left untouched all fisheries which were made several to the exclusion of the public by act of the Crown not later than the reign of Henry II...

[The judge wrote:] I assess the value of the clams taken by the defendants at the sum of two dollars.

From the decision, January 4th, 1907, of Justice Meagher in Nova Scotia court in the case of Donnelly versus Vroom, which dealt with such questions as the public right to take shell fish from the mud flats between high and low tide, and who owns these flats, as reported on pages 358-364 of the Eastern Law Reporter, volume II number 8, 1 March 1907, published by the Carswell Company, Toronto.

I could not resist this — it isn't often that one finds an
authoritative quote that includes an explicit application of
the Magna Carta (signed by King John on 15 June 1215),
not to mention King Henry II (reigned 1154-1189),
to a court case in Nova Scotia.

To hell with that, we'll get our own.

Vice-Admiral Percy Nelles, Chief of the Naval Staff of the Royal Canadian Navy, 28 April 1942, responding to an acute shortage of oil on Canada's east coast – stocks of fuel at Halifax and St. John's had dwindled to a meagre 45,000 tons, only fifteen days supply, a serious threat to operations of Allied warships, including transatlantic convoys, at the height of World War Two.

— Source: "We'll Get Our Own": Canada and the Oil Shipping Crisis of 1942 by Robert C. Fisher
    http://www.familyheritage.ca/Articles/oilarticle.html

By any measure the Canadian oil convoys (of 1942) enjoyed great success. Some 2.5 million barrels of petroleum were shipped to the refineries of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and Montreal for domestic consumption.  Another 1.5 million barrels arrived in Canada for trans-shipment to Britain.  The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) escorted fourteen convoys, including seventy-six tankers, between Halifax and the West Indies without the loss of a single vessel, despite the heavy concentration of U-boats in these waters.  During the months from May to August 1942, when U-boats ravaged the waters of the western Atlantic mercilessly, the Canadian oil convoys escaped attack.  Given the high number of independent ships sunk in these waters, it is clear that without these convoys several Canadian tankers would have been lost...

— Source: "We'll Get Our Own": Canada and the Oil Shipping Crisis of 1942 by Robert C. Fisher
    http://www.familyheritage.ca/Articles/oilarticle.html

When Admiral Doenitz launched Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat) in December of 1941, the five U-boats – U-125, U-123, U-66, U-130, U-109 – of the initial wave sent against the United States found the east coast, for all practical purposes, undefended.  This was a vast area extending from the St. Lawrence River down to North Carolina.  The Paukenschlag boats arriving on the United States east coast in January 1942 found the merchant fleet sailing unescorted and with lights on at night.  There was no radio discipline; ship and shore stations operated as if in peace time, broadcasting time signals and weather reports.  Shoreside cities blazed with lights at night.  The U-boats, hardly believing the bonanza offered them, rampaged up and down the coast with impunity, sinking everything in sight.  Operation Paukenschlag lasted but ten days, during which 25 ships totaling about 200,000 tons were sunk.  Not a U-boat was damaged much less sunk.  Those five boats were only about 12 percent of the U-boats at sea but they accounted for 70 percent of the Allied shipping sunk in January 1942.

Excerpted from the uboat.net website operated by Gudmundur Helgason of Iceland.

Source: Operation Paukenschlag – U-boats off the East Coast of the U.S.
    http://www.uboat.net/allies/ships/us_10thfleet.htm

Early in 1942, Admiral King made the decision not to request blackouts on the United States eastern seaboard and not to convoy ships.  As a result of this, the attack by the German U-boats on U.S. costal shipping during the Second Battle of the Atlantic became known by the U-boat crews as the "second happy time".  It was not until convoys were introduced in May 1942 that the "second happy time" came to an end, with the loss of seven U-boats.

Excerpted from the answers.com and nationmaster.com websites.

Sources:
King, Ernest Joseph http://www.answers.com/topic/ernest-king
King, Ernest http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Ernest-King

Within recent months German submarines have been very active on the Atlantic seaboard, in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.  Occasional figures have been published covering shipping losses generally, but little information about tanker losses has been made public.  I regret to say these losses have been colossal.  At one period, the submarine situation was so grave that all tankers were held in port for twelve consecutive days.  There were times when we had no crude oil at all in storage at either Halifax or Portland, Maine, a most alarming situation.  We were so hard-pressed that we had to use every available railway tank car to haul fuel oil from Sarnia and Montreal to Halifax, in order to keep our navy and the convoys operating.

Munitions Minister C.D. Howe, in a speech carried over the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) national radio network on 17 September 1942, as reported in the Toronto Globe & Mail, 18 September 1942.

When the Sydney to Port aux Basques ferry Caribou was torpedoed in 1942, Canadian censorship kept the news from the Canadian people for three days.  Lord Haw-Haw broke the news the same day the ferry was sunk.

Pat MacAdam in The Ottawa Sun, 31 July 2005.

William Joyce, an American with a British passport, was a supporter of Alolf Hitler.  He lived in Berlin during World War Two, and delivered in English a daily radio program that the German government broadcast all over the world on a high-power radio transmitter, of propaganda – selected news items and commentary favourable to Germany and highly critical of Great Britain and the United States.  Joyce was known throughout the British Empire as Lord Haw-Haw.  A third of the population of England listened to Lord Haw-Haw every day.  In January 1946, Joyce was hanged by the British.

William Joyce by Wikipedia

Tonto is the Lone Ranger's partner and friend.  He is clean-cut and well-groomed and, although he speaks a form of broken English, he is neither dumb nor stupid.  For the most part, other native Americans in the series are treated in a demeaning and disrespectful manner.  While Tonto is sometimes so treated by others, he is never so treated by the Lone Ranger.

Justice David Chipman of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal, writing in a 6 October 2004 summary of the ruling of an independent Board of Inquiry set up by the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, as reported on page A1 (the front page) of the National Post, 2 November 2004.  The Board was investigating a complaint dating back to October 1999, that the repeated use of the term "kemosabe" – Tonto's word for his white friend the Lone Ranger – by a white employer in Sydney, Cape Breton, when speaking to a Mi'kmaq employee, was offensive.  The Board of Inquiry spent a whole day watching Lone Ranger episodes before deciding that being called kemosabe did not demean the Mi'kmaq woman, a resident of Membertou, Nova Scotia.  Several Mi'kmaq witnesses who testified about the word's meaning were divided on whether it was offensive.  The Board's conclusions, handed down on 17 February 2004, were upheld by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal.

What does Kemo Sabe mean?
    http://www.write101.com/kemosabe.htm
It is quite plausible that 'giimoozaabi' means something like 'scout'.
'Giimoozaabi' is pronounced pretty much the same as 'kemosabe'...

The Lone Ranger started as a radio series in Detroit in January 1933.  The long-running radio series is said to have extended to 2,596 episodes.  Beginning in 1937 a series of short films were made to be shown in movie theatres before the main feature.  The Lone Ranger came to television as a series of half-hour shows on the ABC TV network – episode 1 ran on 15 September 1949, and the final episode 221 ran on 6 June 1957.  Another Lone Ranger series of 30 episodes ran on CBS TV from September 1966 to March 1968.  From the 1930s to the 1960s there were many newspaper strips and comic books, and a series of books.  There was a feature film in 1981... (There was even a series of bank commercials whose central character was the Loan Arranger.)

National Post, page A10, 23 December 2004

One perspective on "kemosabe" can be found in The Far Side, Gary Larson's series of cartoons that often features Western themes. In one memorable cartoon, the Lone Ranger discovered the true meaning of "kemosabe". Tonto had always intimated that it was a term of endearment and great respect. In the end, though, it actually described the south end of a northbound horse...

Letter in The Globe & Mail, 28 December 2004

The acquaintance who first told me the story said, "Governor Griffin invited the survivors to recuperate on Jekyll Island, but the last man out was black."  I was instantly captivated – a black miner?  Insulted by white supremacist Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin?  When I learned the disaster had occurred in a Nova Scotia coal mine, my esthetic interest was piqued even more: if I understood correctly, a black man, an Afro-Canadian coal-miner, had been treated as an equal by his white comrades during the disaster, in the coal-black pure darkness of the pit; but, when rescued, and treated to a vacation on the sunniest spot on earth, whites saw him again as a Negro, a "mulatto," or worse, and he was segregated.

Black/white, darkness/light, inner light/inner darkness.  Where men were blinded by darkness, they behaved as if Maurice Ruddick were their equal; where sunlight lit up the scene, they allowed race politics to isolate him.  A friend of mine, who happens to be a federal judge, imagined what Griffin would have said: "Boy," he imagined him drawling, [pronouncing it "Bwa"], "Boy, you thought being in that PIT was bad..."

Melissa Fay Greene, author of Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster, the compelling story of a group of men who spent nine days trapped inside a coal mine at Springhill, Nova Scotia, that collapsed on 23 Octover 1958, trapping 174 miners underground; 75 died.

Source: Melissa Fay Greene Etude: New Voices in Literary Nonfiction
    http://etude.uoregon.edu/spring2003/greene/


Reference: Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster by Melissa Fay Greene
    http://www.melissafaygreene.com/pages/lastmanout.html

...The story gets interesting after the rescue of 19 men, who are subsequently exploited by various factions, including the media and the public relations aide to a segregationist U.S. governor, who arranges to fly the survivors and their families to a beach resort the governor's state is looking to promote.  The presumed PR goes horribly awry when it's learned that one miner is black, as are his 12 children...

Excerpted from a book review in Publishers Weekly

I name this ship Queen Mary 2. May God bless her and all who sail in her.

Queen Elizabeth II as she officially launched Queen Mary 2, the world's longest, widest, highest and largest cruise liner, on 8 January 2004 in Southampton, England.  The Queen blessed the ship in the traditional way by breaking a bottle of champagne against its hull.  QM2 was built in France for the historic Cunard Line, founded in 1839 by Samuel Cunard of Halifax, Nova Scotia.  It was the first time in more than thirty years that a new trans-Atlantic liner had been launched and the first time since 1967 that the Queen had christened a ship.  About 2000 invited guests attended the ceremony.  Accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen toured the 150,000-tonne liner that stands as tall as a 23-storey building.  It is twice the size of her predecessor, the Queen Elizabeth II, which was launched in 1967.  QM2 carries 2620 passengers.  It has six restaurants, five swimming pools, a theatre, a cinema and a swimming pool.  Cunard Line Limited is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Carnival Corporation, the world's biggest cruise line.  Carnival Corp. is incorporated in Panama, with its head office in Miami, Florida.

No transoceanic navigational undertaking has been conducted with more ability, no business dealings have been crowned with greater success.  In twenty-six years Cunard ships have made 2,000 Atlantic crossings without so much as a voyage canceled, a delay recorded, a man, a craft, or even a letter lost.

Jules Verne in Chapter One, 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, published 1869.  Translated from the original French by Frederick P. Walter.

No one is unaware of the name of that famous English shipowner, Cunard.  In 1840 this shrewd industrialist founded a postal service between Liverpool and Halifax, featuring three wooden ships with 400-horsepower paddle wheels and a burden of 1,162 metric tons.  Eight years later, the company's assets were increased by four 650-horsepower ships at 1,820 metric tons, and in two more years, by two other vessels of still greater power and tonnage.  In 1853 the Cunard Company, whose mail-carrying charter had just been renewed, successively added to its assets the Arabia, the Persia, the China, the Scotia, the Java, and the Russia, all ships of top speed and, after the Great Eastern, the biggest ever to plow the seas.  So in 1867 this company owned twelve ships, eight with paddle wheels and four with propellers.

Slide #24

Major North Atlantic steamship disasters before 1912

Source: http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~branderr/titanic/NDIA/24_disaster.html

Here's a ledger the accountants didn't keep.  I've listed only the major deaths on Atlantic steamship lines, to capital ships, or we'd be here all night.  The question of safety of design was really the least of it – a lot of these ships were lost in disasters like going onto rocks, that no design would have survived.  Speed was a major competitive advantage, and also a matter of great pride, so they often went at full speed in bad weather.  Everyone wanted to fly the coveted Blue Riband, signifying the current record-holder for the crossing.

You will note that the Cunard line is not mentioned here.  They are the good guys in this story: Samuel Cunard, (born in Halifax, Canada, in 1790) and all his successors were adamant that speed was important, but could be sacrificed to safety – it's all in the nuance of how you instruct your captains.  They were the classic Victorian British: stodgy, careful, conservative.  The line survives to this day, and has yet to lose a passenger to a wreck in peacetime. [boldface emphasis added]

An American line run by Edward Knight Collins in the 1850s was the opposite.  They briefly seized half of Cunard's business by beating them with glamour and speed.  They drove their ships near to breakdown, wasting fuel to cut half a day off the trip.  Newspapers lionized them and made fun of stodgy old Cunard.  In 1854, the Collins steamer Arctic had a collision running at full speed in the fog, and only 52 of 330 on board survived.  Among the dead were Collins' wife, son and daughter...

Risk Management by Roy Brander, presented to the National Defense Industrial Association Conference, Vancouver, 29 February 2000

Source: Slide 24: Disaster List
    http://web.cuug.ab.ca/~branderr/risk_essay/NDIA/NDIA_lecture.html

We are entirely unacquainted with the cost of a steamboat, and would not like to embark in a business of which we are quite ignorant.

Samuel Cunard, in a letter dated at Halifax, October 28th, 1829. The letter, declining an offer to participate in a steamship enterprise, addressed to Messrs. Ross and Primrose of Pictou, Nova Scotia, and signed S. Cunard and Company, is quoted in Spanning the Atlantic, (a history of the Cunard Steamhip Company) by F. Lawrence Babcock, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1931. Ten years later, in 1839, Samuel Cunard established the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company — usually known as the Cunard Line — principally to carry the Royal Mail to Canada and the USA. Cunard's company operated independently and continuously for 131 years, until 1971, when it was taken over by Trafalgar House PLC. In 1996, Trafalgar House, parent company of Cunard, was bought by the Norwegian business group Kvaerner for £850,000,000. In 1998, it was taken over by Carnival Cruise Lines of Miami.

The Cunard Steamship Company is planning to place orders in the United States for 114 passenger steam ships, at a cost of $120,000,000, according to an announcement by the company's agents in Philadelphia on April 1st, 1917. The new ships, it was said, will mostly be from 8,000 to 17,000 tons in size.

Flashback (25 Years Ago) in The Halifax Herald, 1 April 1942.

Work started in a French shipyard yesterday [16 January 2002] on the world's biggest cruise liner — Queen Mary 2, a345-metre-long behemoth that will cocoon 2,620 passengers in 1930s luxury with modern high-tech underpinnings. Pamela Conover, president of Miami-based Cunard Line, was on hand as the keel of the 150,000-tonne vessel was laid by Chantiers de l'Atlantique workers in the port city of St. Nazaire, western France. The new $1,200,000,000 ship is Cunard's first luxury liner to be built in a generation. She will be the fourth in the dynasty launched by the British company in the 1930s, with the first Queen Mary, and continued with Queen Elizabeth and Queen Elizabeth 2. But her origins go even further back to Britannia, built in 1840 for Canadian businessman Samuel Cunard to carry mail between Britain and North America. When finished, Queen Mary 2 will be the height of a 23-storey building and will contain some of the most luxurious accomodations ever seen afloat ... There will be 1,250 crew members...

News item: "Construction Begins on World's Largest Luxury Cruise Ship," in the National Post, 17 January 2002. [Boldfaced emphasis added]

Cunard is a luxury brand (in the cruise-ship business) with new ships worth US$1.2-billion on order, including Queen Mary 2, which will be the largest passenger vessel ever built ... When it enters service in January 2004, Queen Mary 2 will be the first transatlantic liner built in more than three decades, (with accomodations for) 2,620 passengers...

News item in the National Post, 28 May 2002

Carnival's Cunard Line is a unique, global, internationally recognized premium and luxury cruise operator that provides a sophisticated, upscale cruise experience aboard its vessels, Caronia and the world famous Queen Elizabeth 2. Cunard currently has under construction two new vessels; the 150,000 gross-registered-ton Queen Mary 2, which will be the world's largest passenger ship and the first transatlantic liner constructed in more than three decades, scheduled to enter service in January 2004, and an as-yet-unnamed 85,000-ton ship scheduled for delivery in January 2005. These two vessels represent a $1,200,000,000 investment in the future of Cunard Line and demonstrate Carnival's full commitment to growing this world recognized brand...

Carnival Corporation press release, 27 May 2002
    http://www.carnivalcorp.com/
    http://www.cunardline.com/
    http://www.cunard.com/
    http://www.cunardline.com.au/
    http://www.cunardline.com.au/britannia.html
    http://www.cunardline.com.au/sir_samuel_cunard.html (see archive below)
    http://www.cunardline.com.au/cunard_firsts.html
Cunard Line Limited is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Carnival Corporation, the world's biggest cruise line. Carnival Corp. is incorporated in Panama, with its head office in Miami, Florida.

It was like looking at Westminster through the wrong end of a telescope ... the Government party said there never was such a good speech; the opposition declared there never was such a bad one...

Charles Dickens' description of the official ceremonies marking the opening of the Nova Scotia Legislature in Halifax on 20th January 1842. Dickens was travelling from Liverpool to the United States on Samuel Cunard's steamship Britannia. Under the terms of the Admiralty contract, each trip of Cunard's transatlantic steamship service between England and the United States stopped at Halifax briefly, to refuel and to drop and pick up passengers and mail. On this trip, Britannia happened to be in Halifax for a few hours just at the time when the Nova Scotia Legislature was starting its annual session, and Dickens seized the opportunity to go ashore and look around. The Legislature met in Province House, only a couple of blocks from the Cunard wharf. The complete paragraph reads as follows:

It happened to be the opening of the Legislative Council and General Assembly, at which ceremonial the forms observed on the commencement of a new Session of Parliament in England were so closely copied, and so gravely presented on a small scale, that it was like looking at Westminster through the wrong end of a telescope. The Governor, as her Majesty's representative, delivered what may be called the Speech from the Throne. He said what he had to say manfully and well. The military band outside the building struck up "God Save the Queen" with great vigour before his Excellency had quite finished; the people shouted; the in's rubbed their hands; the out's shook their heads; the Government party said there never was such a good speech; the opposition declared there never was such a bad one; the Speaker and members of the House of Assembly withdrew from the bar to say a great deal among themselves and do a little: and, in short, everything went on, and promised to go on, just as it does at home upon the like occasions.

Complete text of chapter 2 of American Notes, by Charles Dickens, which contains this paragraph on the Nova Scotia Legislature.
    http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/300/nova_scotias_electronic_attic/07-04-09/www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/dickens1842.html
Thanks to J. Murray Beck, who located this piece and quoted it in his book The Government of Nova Scotia, University of Toronto Press, 1957.

It is a frozen country down here — drab and desolate; a country of scrub and second growth; of rock — rock — relentless, hard, cruel-hard. It is against rock of this sort that miners for the past week have fought and fought, grim-lipped, determined. And they're winning their fight — inch by inch the rock is retreating...

Excerpted from the transcript of one of the live radio broadcasts made by J. Frank Willis in April 1936, from the site of the Moose River Gold Mine in Halifax County, Nova Scotia. This was rebroadcast on 25 July 2003 by NPR (United States National Public Radio) in an audio documentary titled People in Holes. "History tells us that the public will always respond to stories about people trapped in holes..." People in Holes is available online, in RealAudio format. The above excerpt, recorded live as Frank Willis delivered it, appears 2 minutes 35 seconds into this audio documentary. A second clip, by Willis, appears 3 minutes 10 seconds in. These clips, especially the first, give us an idea why Frank Willis' special reporting style turned the Moose River disaster into the biggest radio story in North America before 1940.

Source: People in Holes 25 July 2003
    http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts/transcripts_072503_holes.html

The Frank Willis clips also appear in: Baby Jessica Anniversary 18 October 2002
    http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts/transcripts_101802_babyjessica.html

The most memorable CRBC program achievement was the coverage of the Moose River
Mine Disaster in April 1936 in Nova Scotia ... The CRBC made Frank Willis's reports
available to all Canadian radio stations and over 650 stations in the U. S. as well
as the BBC in Great Britain...

Source: The Birth and Death of The Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (1932-1936)
    http://www.broadcasting-history.ca/networks/networks_CRBC.html

Frank Willis' hourly updates jump-started the Canadian radio industry. And his reporting style turned the Moose River disaster into the biggest radio story of the first half of the twentieth century...

Shirley Collingridge in Ten Days in Hell: The 1936 Moose River Mine Disaster

Source: Ten Days in Hell: The 1936 Moose River Mine Disaster by Shirley Collingridge
    http://www.shirleycollingridge.com/mooseriver.htm

Moose River Gold Mine memorial
    http://ns1763.ca/hfxrm/moosegoldm.html

J. Frank Willis: biography
    http://www.broadcasting-history.ca/personalities/personalities.php?id=30

Many Canadians think Nova Scotia is an island and Cape Breton is a province. Many Canadians don't know how to pronounce the words Newfoundland and Dartmouth...

Letter to the Editor, written by a resident of Oshawa, Ontario, in The Globe & Mail, 11 August 2003

The only indication that you're any closer to your destination, a village sitting on the northernmost point of Cape Breton Island, is a sign that inspires excitement and just a little nausea: "Paved Road Ends," followed by "Meat Cove 8 km"...

As you push on that extra kilometre to the end of the road, pause atop the hill to take in the campground. You'll see a small section of land, attached to the rest by only a thread of rock. Sheer stone and pounding surf come skyward to meet it. Your eyes are not deceived. It's one of the daring campsites by the sea you have to choose from ... In Meat Cove, one misstep in the night and you could know the secrets of the sea ... There are no fences separating this place from the Cabot Strait, and no flat campsites either. This is where the Appalachian Mountain chain takes its last breath before sliding into the Atlantic Ocean. Everything is on a gradual slope. You may wonder just what's keeping those RVs from rolling over the precipice...

Greg Bonnell writing for the Canadian Press, 22 May 2001

— Beyond the Cabot Trail: Nova Scotia's Meat Cove offers a little something different
    http://www.canoe.ca/TravelCanada/ns_meatcove_010522-cp.html

In Nova Scotia, two septuagenarians own most of Oak Island, a slice of land that has been stealing lives and millions of dollars in fruitless searches for hidden riches since 1795. Last month, they said they would give up their treasure hunt if they found a suitable taker ... (The asking price) of Oak Island: $7 million. But island resident and co-owner Dan Blankenship, who began searching for buried treasure in 1965, said the property is worth $50 million if the buried booty — rumoured to be Captain Kidd's gold, William Shakespeare's manuscripts or France's missing crown jewels — is taken into account. That doesn't factor in the opportunity for a new owner to die in the dig. Six have already perished, but local lore says seven must croak before the island will cough up its secret...

Unsigned editorial in The Globe & Mail, 11 January 2003

The story of this "long trek" of two hundred miles in those days before well-developed roads, before motels, before restaurants, before insect repellants, before exact maps and before most people had wheeled vehicles and the animals to pull them, is one that needs to be celebrated to be recalled.

"The MacLeans and Their Long Walk" by Jim St. Clair in his regular weekly column "Then and Now: The Heritage of Inverness County " in The Inverness Oran 20 October 2003.

Online source:: http://oran.ca/columns/jim/index.shtml

The "long trek" was a journey made in 1807 by some (and perhaps in 1808 by others) from the Cumberland County communities of Cape d'Or, Advocate Harbour and Fraserville to the western coast of Cape Breton. Take out your map of Nova Scotia and look for Cape d'Or, two hundred miles west from Port Hastings, at the point of land almost directly across the Minas Channel from Grand Pre and Cape Blomidon. It is at the place where Route 209 makes a sharp right angle swing in a northerly direction towards Amherst... More research needs to be done about the route followed and the circumstances of the migration. But certainly, we know that many followed the present routes which are numbered 2 and 209 along the shore. This is indeed a drive through much of Nova Scotia cultural and natural history. But it is as well the route of a great adventure for many ancestors of people now living in Inverness County. "The Long Trek" is one of the great stories of Nova Scotia, as are the stories of the journeys to New Zealand and the wanderings of the Acadians – all parts of our heritage...

Nova Scotians believe that Scot ascendancy began with the arrival of the ship Hector in Pictou in 1773. Others point to the beginning of the Scots' beachhead with a boatload of emigrants at Iona, Cape Breton.  That's what local historians believe.  Most Cape Bretoners have never been to Baleine (Whale) Cove, halfway between Louisbourg and Main-a-Dieu. Most Cape Bretoners, myself included, have never heard of the crossroads settlement.  I was born less than 20 miles away and was stunned to learn that the first Scottish settlement in Nova Scotia was in Baleine Cove in 1629.  James Stuart, Lord Ochiltree, son of the Earl of Arran and a Baronet, arrived there in July 1629, with 60 Scottish emigrants.  They built a fort...

Pat MacAdam in The Ottawa Sun, 22 October 2006

Go To:   Map showing location of Baleine
    http://ns1763.ca/marconi100/marpic90.html

...In 1762, the state (Massachusetts) raised a regiment of men to go to Halifax. It was commanded by Col. Jonathan Hoar, and Maj. Winslow was Lieut. Colonel under him. As there was no recruiting officer near him, Col. Winslow persuaded me to enlist once more into the service. I had orders to enlist what men I could; and having obtained a number of recruits, I proceeded with them to join the Regiment at the Castle, near Boston, and was directed to enter Capt. Abel Cain's company. Here I was appointed a sergeant. We shipped for Halifax, arrived there without any occurrence of note, and encamped a little out of the town, in tents. We were employed in wheeling off the top of Citadel Hill, so called, in order to erect a fort upon it. Our duty was pretty hard, but then we worked without any apprehensions of being fired upon by an enemy.

There is one thing I would here notice, which shows a specimen of British cruelty without a parallel, I could hope, in the history of that nation. Three men, for some trifling offence which I do not recollect, were tied up to be whipped. One of them was to receive eight hundred lashes, the others five hundred apiece. By the time they had received three hundred lashes, the flesh appeared to be entirely whipped from their shoulders, and they hung as mute and motionless as though they had been long since deprived of life. But this was not enough. The doctor stood by with a vial of sharp stuff, which he would ever and anon apply to their [noses, and finding, by the pain it gave] them, that some signs of life remained, he would tell them, "d-mn you, you can bear it yet" – and then the whipping would commence again. It was the most cruel punishment I ever saw inflicted, or had ever conceived of before – by far worse than death. I felt at the time as though I could have taken summary vengeance on those who were the authors of it, on the spot, had it been in my power to do it.

Recollections of an Old Soldier by Capt. David Perry, born in 1741 in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, and died in 1826 at Ira, Vermont.  Capt. Perry wrote Recollections of An Old Soldier in 1819, at age 78.  It was originally published in 1822 by Republican & Yeoman Printing Office, Windsor, Vermont; reprinted in 1971 by Polyanthos Press Inc., Cottonport, Louisiana.  The above quote is from the 1998 electronic edition by D.G. Jones, Centerville, Utah.
    http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~dagjones/captdavidperry/chapter05.html

Stewart: ...Where's your next stand-up performance going to be?
Newhart: I go to Halifax, Canada.
Stewart: Big comedy town.
Newhart: Big comedy town.
Stewart: You know, it's always nice to go to a comedy whaling town.
Newhart: This will be my first whaling town.
Stewart: Oh really?
Newhart: So I'm a little nervous.
Stewart: I think you're going to be great.
Newhart: Yeah – and the whales will like it, I'm sure. I'm not worried about the whales.
Stewart: It'll be tremendous. And from there it's off to...
Newhart: To Toronto and then White Plains, New York...

Part of a conversation between Bob Newhart and Jon Stewart on Stewart's regular half-hour television program The Daily Show produced on 5 November 2003, and broadcast that evening on the Comedy Network, a cable television channel. This exchange was seen in Nova Scotia at 12:20am and 4:20am on 6 November 2003.

Stewart: ...Let me ask you this – this was the first implementation of a new doctrine of pre-emptive attacks, so, I guess this has lowered the standard of that – the standard for this pre-emptive attack should be "imminent danger".
Colbert: Jon, all standards accomplish is to set limits on what we [the United States] as a nation can do. What really excites me about this revelation is that it actually lowers the standard for the next invasion...
Stewart: ...Stephen, I don't think the international community is going to stand for that.
Colbert: Well, you know what they say, Jon – the first unjustified military action is always the hardest. This time there was a lot of outrage, but next time the world will just say "there they go again". And by the time we're carpet-bombing Nova Scotia, it'll seem kinda cute. We'll be like the world's crazy uncle...

Part of a conversation between Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert on Stewart's regular half-hour television program The Daily Show produced on 29 January 2004, and broadcast that evening. With "Senior Nuclear and Biochemical Weapons Analyst" Colbert, Stewart was discussing the testimony of David Kay, CIA former Chief U.S. Weapons Inspector, before the United States Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington, D.C., on 28 January 2004, that, after searching Iraq for months, he concluded it had no WMD (weapons of mass destruction). This exchange was seen in Nova Scotia three times on the Comedy Network, a cable television channel, at 12:10am, 4:10am, and 6:10pm on 30 January 2004. It was also broadcast at 12:10am on 30 January on the over-the-air television station ATV (Atlantic Television Network), the Halifax station of CanWest Global, a Canadian television network.

In Senate testimony Wednesday (January 28th), Kay said that his months of searching in Iraq had convinced him that Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction immediately before the war, and he called for an independent inquiry into why U.S. intelligence agencies were so far off the mark.
— Front page of The Washington Post, 30 January 2004

Middleton (population 1744) is a two-hour drive from Halifax.  The highway runs north through lakes and forest, then makes a sharp left, stretching west along the red mud flats of the Bay of Fundy.  Apple orchards and fields dotted with hay bales appear as the highway unfolds.  Across the valley, new metal barns, hog and poultry operations, glint in the morning sun while old wooden barns sag.  Apples in baskets and pyramids of pumpkins are stacked at roadside stands...

113 Marathon Runners, One Horse by Meg Federico, in the Personal Life column in the National Post, 2 December 2002, describing how she "entered the St. Andrew's Half Marathon in Middleton, Nova Scotia." She quoted one of the event organizers:

"We've had up to 113 runners, well, 114 counting the horse that joined us a few years back."
The horse?
"He jumped a fence and ran pretty well in the middle of the pack.  Some fellow grabbed him around the neck.  But the horse was determined.  He broke away and ran the first eight miles.  We had to call the farmer, who took him home in a truck..."

There are few more stirring views in all of Nova Scotia than those offered after coming up from the Annapolis Valley over the North Mountain and down toward the Fundy shore on a sunny day.  As you descend, the blue of sky meeting the deeper blue of sea delights the eyes.  There are a number of roads in Kings County alone that climb out of the Valley and then fall seaward to small communities along the Bay of Fundy, places such as Scots Bay, Halls Harbour, Baxters Harbour, Canada Creek, and Morden.  But none offer a more stunning panorama than the road leading north from Berwick to Harbourville...

Scott Milsom in Harbourville: A Great Place to Run out of Gas,
Coastal Communities News, volume 8, issue 3, Jan-Feb 2003

    http://www.coastalcommunities.ns.ca/nwslttr.html#cp

Reference: Website: Harbourville, Nova Scotia
    http://www.harbourville.ednet.ns.ca/

View northwest from Harbourville, across the Bay of Fundy.
Beyond Isle Haut, the New Brunswick shoreline is seen.

Photographed 9 October 2002

I've known since the day I first set foot on Canadian soil that I was home at last.  I knew it when I discovered that an old friend I'd come to visit in Nova Scotia literally had no way to lock his home from the outside.  "Lock my door?" he said, astounded.  "Suppose somebody came by while I was away: How would they get in?"

Spider Robinson, describing how he came to the decision to apply for Canadian citizenship, in his "I'm Canajun now, says Citizen Keen," in The Globe & Mail, 7 September 2002; reprinted in the Halifax Sunday Herald, 27 October 2002.

"Citizen Keen" is derived from Orson Welles' great film "Citizen Kane".

Two generations ago, I suspect there wouldn't have been a locked door in the village, and that's even when people went away for the weekend.  I'm afraid those days are numbered.

Philip Milo, a member of the Annapolis County Municipal Council, as quoted in The Valley Today (daily newspaper) 2 January 2007 in a story about the murder on 23 December 2006 of the bartender at the Royal Canadian Legion in Lawrencetown, Annapolis County.

We're going to have to start locking our doors...

Annette Dumbrell, president of the Royal Canadian Legion in Lawrencetown, Annapolis County, as quoted in The Valley Today (daily newspaper) 2 January 2007 in a story about the murder on 23 December 2006 of the Legion bartender.

I expect some morning to open my windows at Versailles and see the walls of Louisbourg rising above the western horizon.

Louis XV, King of France from September 1715 to May 1774, commenting on the enormous expense of the ambitious fortress being built at his command on an island off the east coast of North America.  In the 1700s the best — fastest, easiest, lowest cost — route between Europe and central North America was along the St. Lawrence River, and Louisbourg, the largest fortress in North America in the 1750s, commanded the approach through the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  There is little doubt that this is the most famous Nova Scotia quotation of all time.  It has appeared many times in many places, including the National Post, 13 December 2000.

On the southeast side of Cape Breton Island, in a very commanding position, was a small town which had been known as English Harbour, but which in the many vicissitudes of Acadia had passed into the hands of the French and had been by them christened Louisburg, after the king.  After the treaty of Utrecht, the French refused to surrender Cape Breton Island on the ground that the name "Acadia" applied only to Nova Scotia in the strictest sense, excluding the adjacent islands.  About 1720 the French began fortifying this place, and went on until they had spent a sum equivalent to more than $10,000,000 of our modern (1902) money, and had made it one of the strongest places in the world, scarcely surpassed by Quebec or Gibraltar.  With reference to Canada, France, and the West Indies, this place occupied a central position.  It blocked the way to any English ascent of the St. Lawrence, such as had been attempted in 1690 and 1711, and it afforded an admirable base of supplies from which a powerful French squadron might threaten Boston or any other English city upon the Atlantic coast...

Chapter VII of New France and New England by John Fiske, published in 1902 by Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, Boston and New York.

Source: Classics of American Colonial History
Dinsmore Documentation, Westfield, Massachusetts
    http://www.dinsdoc.com/fiske-1-7.htm

Some twenty-five years ago [about 1878-1880], when we were rebuilding the eastern transept of Harvard College Library, I discovered in a gloomy corner an iron cross about thirty inches in height, which had stood in the market-place at Louisburg and was brought to Cambridge [Massachusetts] as a trophy. I thought it a pity to hide such a thing, so I had it gilded and set up over the southern entrance to the library, where it remained several years, until one night some silly vandals, presumed to be students, succeeded in detaching this heavy mass of iron and carrying it away. Fortunately it has since been returned, and is now in the library.

Before the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, which resulted in the cession of all of Acadia by the French Government to England, the present Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and at least all of that part of Maine that was east of the Kennebec River [Bangor] were collectively called Acadia. Article XII of this treaty declared that the most Christian King of France ceded to the Queen of England in perpetuity Acadia or Nova Scotia entire, according to its "ancient boundaries"...

No one concerned in the making of this treaty appears to have had any intelligent conception of what the "ancient boundaries" of Acadia were, and from the indefiniteness regarding them disputed questions of boundary immediately arose. The two governments once agreed to settle the contentions by commissioners of the two powers, but their meetings were delayed from time to time for forty years, and then their discussion ended in the Seven Years War...

The fact that ancient Acadia, by treaty and conquest, passed nine times between England and France in the period of 127 years, and that none of these events conclusively decided what were its actual boundary lines, would seem to clearly demonstrate the general confusion and misunderstanding that existed during all of Sebastian Rale's time [1657-1724] regarding the whereabouts of these lines...

John Francis Sprague in his book Sebastian Rale: A Maine Tragedy of the Eighteenth Century, Heintzemann Press, Boston, 1906

Source: Sebastian Rale: A Maine Tragedy of the Eighteenth Century
Androscoggin Historical Society
    http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/me/somerset/rale.html

THAT the most Christian King shall take care to have delivered to the Queen of Great Britain, on the Same Day that the Ratifications of this Treaty shall be exchanged, Solemn and authentic Letters and Instruments, by Virtue whereof it shall appear, that the Island of St. Christophers is to be possessed alone hereafter by British Subjects; Likewise all Nova Scotia or Acadia with its ancient Boundries; as also the City of Port Royal, now called Annapolis-Royal, and all other Things in those Parts which depend on the said Lands and Islands; together with the Dominion, Property, and Possession of the said Islands, Lands and Places, and all Right whatsoever by Treaties, or by any other way obtained, which the Most Christian King, the Crown of France or any the Subjects thereof have hitherto had to the said Islands, Lands and Places, and the Inhabitants of the same are yielded and made over to the Queen of Great Britain and to her Crown forever as the most Christian King does at present yield and make over all the Particulars abovesaid, and that in such Ample Manner and Form, that the Subjects of the most Christian King shall hereafter be excluded from all Kinds of Fishing in the Seas, Bays and other Places on the Coast of Nova Scotia, that is to say, on those which lie towards the East within thirty Leagues, beginning from the Island Commonly called Sable inclusively, and thence stretching along towards South-West.

Article XII of the Treaty of Utrecht, signed on 11 April 1713

Although the Treaty of Breda restored Acadie to France in 1667, there was still a dispute over just what territory was involved ... In 1676, the Dutch named Cornelius Steenwyck governor of the "coasts and countries of Nova Scotia and Acadie," but nothing ever came of it...

Jim Bradshaw in "Treaty of Breda gave no definition of 'Acadie'",
Lafayette, Louisiana, Daily Advertiser, 23 February 1999

Source: Treaty of Breda gave no definition of 'Acadie'
Lafayette, Louisiana Daily Advertiser, 23 February 1999
    http://www.carencrohighschool.org/la_studies/ParishSeries/
          Acadie/TreatyofBreda.htm

The same quote appears here: Treaty of Breda gave no definition of 'Acadie'
    http://www.lft.k12.la.us/chs/la_studies/ParishSeries/
          Acadie/TreatyofBreda.htm

And here: Treaty of Breda gave no definition of 'Acadie'
    http://www.doucetfamily.org/heritage/Treaty.htm

The Dutch in August 1674 with a ship under Captain Jurriaen Aernoutsz attacked the French fort and military headquarters of Pentagouet in Penobscot bay (Acadia) which surrendered to them after a two hours siege, then they sailed to the Saint John River were they conquered another French fort (Jemseg), this conquest was short-lived, Aernoutsz claimed all Acadia as a Dutch colony, but when he left the forts in search of reinforcements, the Dutch garrison was routed by an expedition of New Englanders.

In 1676 the Dutch Government ... named Cornelis Steenwyck Governor of the Coasts and Countries of Nova Scotia and Acadia, but at that time he had only the title and not the land.

Source: Acadia was also Dutch! This is a curious history
The Dutch and Swedish settlements in North America
    http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Styx/6497/newnether.html

In America, under the terms of the Peace of Paris in 1763, Britain secured Canada, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and the adjoining islands, and the right to navigate the Mississippi, important for Red Indian trade. In the West Indies, Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago were acquired. From Spain she received Florida.

A History of the English Speaking Peoples, Volume Three: The Age of Revolution, by Winston S. Churchill, McClelland & Stewart, 1957.

His Majesty ... has thought it proper that the Province of Nova Scotia should be divided into two parts...

King George III in Council at the Court at St. James's, the 18th day of June, 1784

...a great Number of your Majesty's loyal Subjects who have been driven from their Habitations within the revolted Colonies having taken refuge in the Province of Nova Scotia, and settled upon the Banks of the Rivers St. John and St. Croix, and the country adjacent, with a considerable Body of disbanded soldiers who must of course be put to great inconvenience in having recourse to the Courts of Justice by their distance from the present Seat of Government at Halifax, and His Majesty having taken the same into His Royal Consideration has thought it proper that the Province of Nova Scotia should be divided into two parts...

...That the part of the Province of Nova Scotia remaining, should have annexed to it the Islands of Cape Breton and St. John...

Complete text of the Order in Council Separating New Brunswick from Nova Scotia, 18 June 1784
    http://webhome.idirect.com/~cpwalsh/nb/acts/ukoic1784.htm

No law of the Nova Scotia Legislature passed prior to the erection of the Province of New Brunswick has any force in the province of New Brunswick.

Section 6 of The Interpretation Act (of New Brunswick)
    http://http://www.gnb.ca/acts/acts/i-13.htm

I, Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, printer, late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to the Court of France, now President of the State of Pennsylvania, do make and declare my last will and testament as follows: — To my son, William Franklin, late Governor of the Jerseys, I give and devise all the lands I hold or have a right to, in the province of Nova Scotia, to hold to him, his heirs, and assigns forever. I also give to him all my books and papers, which he has in his possession, and all debts standing against him on my account books, willing that no payment for, nor restitution of, the same be required of him, by my executors. The part he acted against me in the late war, which is of public notoriety, will account for my leaving him no more of an estate he endeavoured to deprive me of...

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and Seal this twenty-third day of June, Anno Domini one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.
B. Franklin.

The Last Will and Testament of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Sources:
    http://www.realtimelaw.com/franklin.htm
    http://personal.pitnet.net/primarysources/lastwill.html
    http://sln.fi.edu/franklin/family/lastwill.html
    http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/biography/app09.htm

January 1st, 1765 — An agreement was signed by Benjamin Franklin to have four Townships in Nova Scotia alloted to him and his partners. His agent, Anthony Wayne, set sail for Nova Scotia to acquire the grant. (Nova Scotia then included the region now known as New Brunswick.) It was up to Franklin to acquire settlers to develop these lands.
    http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/6817/info.html

William Franklin was the last royal governor of New Jersey.

Planters were not the first privateers in Nova Scotia, as the trade had deep roots, going back to French privateers operating from Port Royal as early as the 1690s and later from Louisbourg. Halifax also fielded a considerable number of privateers in the Seven Years War. It is, however, the Planter families who settled in Liverpool in the 1760s who produced the most successful privateers in the British North American colonies ... In the peak years, the scale of privateering was impressive as Liverpool, Nova Scotia, became a hive of supply, organization, and dispersal for private sea warfare. Small squadrons of privateers, sometimes with as many as three ships and 250 men, put to sea to scour the Caribbean for up to six months. They attacked four Spanish forts, fought sharp battles with French privateers, chased enemy crews and cargoes on land into jungles, and established island repair bases thousands of miles from home. To feed their large crews, cattle drives crossed the province from the Annapolis Valley. Bakeries in Shelburne, Lunenburg, Halifax, and even as far away as New York and Quebec City were put to work making bread.

Large amounts of gunpowder, scores of cannons, and hundreds of muskets and cutlasses flowed into the town. Indeed, so many sword blades were imported to Liverpool that Halifax customs officials in 1798 briefly held up their shipment, alarmed that something nasty might be brewing. Privateer ships and their prizes seriously crowded the port of Liverpool, requiring new wharves and warehouses. Auctions of captured ships attracted schooner-loads of Halifax's wealthiest merchants...

Excerpted from They Plundered Well: Planters as Privateers, 1793-1805, by Daniel Conlin, Curator of Marine History, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and published in Planter Links: Culture and Community in Colonial Nova Scotia, edited by Margaret Conrad and Barry Moody and published by Acadiensis Press, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton.
    http://ace.acadiau.ca/history/AdobeAcrobat/Summer2001.pdf

...On the eighth of August 1776, the president of Congress personally presented a commission to me as captain in the U. S. Navy. It was the first that the Congress had granted since the Declaration of Independence on the preceding fourth of July.

Congress had ordered the construction of 13 frigates, but because none of them was ready, I was ordered to put to sea alone and to engage the enemy in the manner I judged most favorable to the interests of the United States. The Providence was a lightly armed ship carrying only 70 men and 12 small cannon.

Near the Bermuda Islands I encountered the frigate Solebay of 32 guns with a convoy. She was part of Admiral Parker's squadron which had been defeated and driven from Charleston; she was bound for New York. I wanted to avoid an engagement with such a superior force but my officers and crew stubbornly insisted that it was the fleet from Jamaica, and as it was necessary at this point in the war to command by persuasion, the result was a serious engagement lasting six hours, which at the end was carried out at pistol range. An audacious maneuver being my only recourse, I tried it with success and disengaged myself.

Soon thereafter I took some important prizes and afterward sailed toward the coast of Acadia [Nova Scotia] to destroy the whale and cod fisheries there.

Near Sable Island I encountered the Milford, an enemy frigate of 32 guns, with which it was impossible to avoid an engagement. We cannonaded each other from 10 o'clock in the morning until sunset, but the battle was neither as close nor as hot as that with the Solebay. At length I disengaged by passing the flats of the island, and the next day I entered the port of Canso where I did indeed destroy fisheries and shipping.

The morning of the following day I set sail for Isle de Madame where I made two raids, destroying the fisheries and burning all of the vessels that I could not carry away. This expedition took place during stormy weather and on a dangerous coast, heavily populated with residents and in a ready state of defense, but I had the good fortune to succeed despite all of these obstacles.

From there I sailed to Rhode Island, where I arrived six weeks and five days after my departure from the Delaware. During that time I had taken 16 prizes, not counting the vessels that were destroyed.

The commander in chief, who had not put to sea since the expedition of the Providence, then adopted a plan which I had proposed to him. This was, first, to destroy the enemy's coal vessels and fisheries at Isle Royale [Cape Breton Island]. Second, to release more than 300 American citizens who were imprisoned in the coal mines. Three vessels were designated for this service, the Alfred, the Hampden, and the Providence; but the Hampden, damaged when grounding on a rock, could not accompany me.

On November 2, 1776, I continued on my route with the Alfred, which I commanded, accompanied only by the Providence. Off the coast of Acadia I captured a vessel from Liverpool and immediately after, on the latitude of Louisbourg, I took the Mellish, a large armed vessel, having on board two English naval officers and an army captain with a company of soldiers. The Mellish was carrying 2,000 complete sets of uniforms to Canada for the army posted there under the command of Generals Carleton and Burgoyne.

The Providence then became separated from the Alfred during the night for no reason whatsoever. I was left alone, and during the bad season, on the enemy coast; but despite being embarrassed by my prizes and prisoners, I did not want to abandon my project. I made one raid on the coast of Acadia and burned a transport vessel of great value that the enemy had run aground on the beach. I also burned the warehouses and some whaling and codfishing vessels; there was a great quantity of oil consumed, too, with the warehouses.

I then captured, near Isle Royale, three transports and a fourth transport loaded with codfish and furs. I learned from one of these ships that the harbors of Isle Royale were closed by ice, which made the expedition I was planning impractical. These prizes had been escorted by the frigate Flora, then close by but hidden from view by fog. The next day I captured a privateer from Liverpool carrying 16 cannon; I then made sail to bring my prizes to some United States port...

From Extracts from the Journals of my Campaigns by Paul Jones, (usually known as John Paul Jones) written in 1785 and first published in French; translated to English and published in the United States in the early 1800s.

Online source: Extracts from the Journals of my Campaigns
    http://www.americanrevolution.org/jpj.html

Gentlemen of the Council and House of Assembly: I Have the Satisfaction of acquainting you, that, since your last meeting, the Success which has attended the King's Forces, affords a Prospect of Peace being soon restored to his Majesty's American Dominions, and that those unhappy People, who deluded and misled, have been contending for certain Slavery and Oppression, will be relieved from a Train of Miseries, which they have brought on themselves during this obstinate Contest.

As to this Province, I have in general, received many Testimonies from the Inhabitants of their Disposition to continue in Duty and Allegiance to the King, and every Thing has remained quiet, except at Cumberland, where an Insurrection has been excited by a few desperate People, who sollicited and gained Assistance from New England, and were joined by some Indians from St. John's River, but their attempts were soon frustrated, and themselves dispersed, by the timely Aid sent from the Commanders of the King's Forces in this province; most of the Inhabitants who had been concerned in this daring Enterprize soon laid down their Arms and submitted, and from the Reliance I have on the loyal and firm Attachment of the Settlers from Yorkshire, and some other well disposed Persons, every Thing will remain Quiet...

Marriott Arbuthnot, Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, addressing the House of Assembly in Halifax on Friday June 6th, 1777, as reported in the Journals and Votes of the House of Assembly for the Province of Nova Scotia, 1777, (spelling and capitalization as printed).
— Source: Early Canadiana Online (formerly CIHM) http://www.canadiana.org/

The "obstinate Contest" was the war we know as the American Revolution (1775-1783). Arbuthnot's view that there was "a Prospect of Peace being soon restored to his Majesty's American Dominions" turned out to be overly optimistic.  The "Insurrection" in Cumberland refers to the Eddy Rebellion in November 1776 at Fort Beausejour, a couple of miles north of present-day Amherst, Nova Scotia.  His reference to "some Indians from St. John's River" refers to the area now known as Baie Verte, on the Northumberland Strait shore of the Isthmus of Chignecto.

Many cases could be given of the lower beds of a formation having been upraised, denuded, submerged, and then re-covered by the upper beds of the same formation, facts, showing what wide, yet easily overlooked, intervals have occurred in its accumulation.  In other cases we have the plainest evidence in great fossilised trees, still standing upright as they grew, of many long intervals of time and changes of level during the process of deposition, which would never even have been suspected, had not the trees chanced to have been preserved: thus, Messrs Lyell and Dawson found carboniferous beds 1400 feet 430m thick in Nova Scotia, with ancient root-bearing strata, one above the other, at no less than sixty-eight different levels.  Hence, when the same species occur at the bottom, middle, and top of a formation, the probability is that they have not lived on the same spot during the whole period of deposition, but have disappeared and reappeared, perhaps many times, during the same geological period...

On the Imperfection of the Geological Record, a chapter in the book "Origin of Species," by Charles Darwin, original edition published in November 1859 by John Murray, Albemarle Street, London, England.

There are numerous online sources – some noted below – which supply the text, including the above quote, of On the Imperfection of the Geological Record (Chapter 9 or 10, depending on the edition)

    http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter9.html
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/darwin/origin/oos10_4.htm
    ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/metalab.unc.edu/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext99/otoos610.txt
    http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext99/otoos610.txt
    ftp://ftp.archive.org/pub/etext/etext99/otoos610.txt
    ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/gutenberg/etext99/otoos610.txt
    http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/origin_of_species/Chapter10.html
    http://www.zoo.uib.no/classics/darwin/origin.chap10.html
    http://human-nature.com/darwin/origin/chap10.htm
    http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/d36_orig/chapter9.htm
    http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/darwin/origin/or10.htm
    http://www.tbi.univie.ac.at/Origin/origin_10.html
    http://www.popular-science.net/books/originofspecies/chapter09.html
    http://pages.britishlibrary.net/charles.darwin/

...the finest example in the world of a natural exposure in a continuous section ten miles [about fifteen kilometres] long, occurs in the sea-cliffs bordering a branch of the Bay of Fundy, in Nova Scotia.  These cliffs, called the "South Joggins," which I first examined in 1842, and afterwards with Dr. Dawson in 1845, have lately been admirably described by the last-mentioned geologist in detail, and his evidence is most valuable as showing how large a portion of this dense mass was formed on land, or in swamps where terrestrial vegetation flourished, or in fresh-water lagoons.  (Acadian Geology second edition 1868.)  His computation of the thickness of the whole series of carboniferous strata as exceeding three miles [5 km], agrees with the measurement made independently by Sir William Logan in his survey of this coast...

Sir Charles Lyell in his 1871 book The Student's Elements of Geology

There are numerous online sources – some noted below – which supply the text, including the above quote, of The Student's Elements of Geology:

    ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/metalab.unc.edu/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03/geogy10.txt
    http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03/geogy10.txt
    ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/gutenberg/etext03/geogy10.txt
    ftp://ftp.archive.org/pub/etext/etext03/geogy10.txt

Last season was by far the hardest ever to buy steer oxen.  I looked for a long time for this team.  The demand is now for the ones without horns, so soon these animals will all be gone.  I don't think you will see any in ten years' time.

Annapolis County farmer Fred McGill, as quoted in The Regional, 21 May 2002 (reprinted in the Halifax Sunday Herald, 30 June 2002).  Mr. McGill, a keeper and trainer of oxen for 25 years, bought a pair of oxen last fall for his brother, and says he was lucky to find them.  He said this particular breed of animal is dying off, because farmers are now breeding oxen without their characteristic large wide-span horns.  McGill's team is seven years old and together they weigh 1450 kilograms 3200 pounds.  They are named Bright and Lyon.  Mr. McGill, whose farm is on McGill Road just east of Middleton in Annapolis County, isn't sure why those names stuck but it has been a tradition in western Nova Scotia for generations.  The going price for a pair of oxen is about $3500 to $5000.

In 2002 (and continuing until mid-2005) The Regional was a weekly newspaper published by Kentville Publishing – a division of Cameron Publications, New Minas – and distributed as an enclosure in the Kentville Advertiser, the Windsor Hants Journal, the Berwick Register, the Middleton Mirror-Examiner, the Bridgetown Monitor, the Annapolis Spectator, and the Digby Courier. Mr. McGill said:

Ninety-nine percent of oxen's names are the same.  If you ask ten different farmers they'll all have Bright and Lyon.  Mine are named Bright and Lyon too...

William "Willie" Meisner with Lion and Bright, circa 1945
Source: The Blandford and Area Historical Society
Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia
http://www.aspotoganpeninsula.com/historical.htm

Most families in our community owned a pair of oxen or a single ox. Lion and Bright were the favourite names for a team...

Beasts of Burden, The Days of Oxen in Blandford written in August 1999 by Lily M. Zinck, Blandford.
    http://www.aspotoganpeninsula.com/beastsofburden.htm

You'd think after eighty years of going to the South Shore Exhibition that Lawrence Wentzell would have had enough.  But no.  The retired Auburndale lumberjack, who's never missed a year since 1922, is as keen about being at Bridgewater's annual fair this week as he was as a young lad when he made the trip to town with his father and a team of oxen.  "We walked in those days.  There were no trucks or trailers," Mr. Wentzell, 86, said Monday [22 July 2002] as he sat on a bench in the dairy barn.  The seven-kilometre trek from Auburndale with Bright and Lion took almost two hours.  The oxen hauled a wagon loaded with hay to last the four days of what was then the Lunenburg County Exhibition and enough food for Nicholas Wentzell and his six-year-old son.  In the 1920s, farmers and their children never left the exhibition grounds and used to sleep in wooden bunkhouses by the barns.

Page A1, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 23 July 2002

It seems upon their arrival in Halifax, many of the [troops] were obliged to Incamp, although the ground was covered deep with Snow; and the [civilian Loyalists] to pay Six dollars a week for sorry upper Rooms, and stow in them Men, Women, & Children as thick (comparatively) as the hair upon their heads.

Excerpted from a four-page letter written by George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution, on 9 May 1776 to Charles Lee, his third-in-command.  The remarkably detailed letter discusses the British evacuation of Boston, a successful campaign in Charleston and the aftermath of the battle of White Plains, the controversial resignations of Continental Generals Artemas Ward and Joseph Frye, and the harsh treatment received by Boston Loyalists when they arrived in Halifax.  The letter, with other historic documents, was sold at auction on 22 January 2005 by Sotheby's in New York.  The hammer price, including the premium to cover the auctioneer's fee, was US$174,000 for this letter alone.  Washington's comment, paraphrased in modern language, said that Haligonians confined the British troops to outdoor camps in winter weather, and packed the civilian Loyalist refugees into overcrowded and shabby accomodations rented at exorbitant rates.

Sources:
http://www.nieuwsbank.nl/en/2005/01/22/r001.htm
http://music.lycos.com/news/story.asp?section=Culture&storyId=974576
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--washingtonletters0112
      jan12,0,7494411.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire
http://www.shareholder.com/bid/news/20050112-152665.cfm
The National Post, 14 January 2005
The Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 15 January 2005
The Halifax Daily News, 15 January 2005
http://www.revwar75.com/library/rees/bowers.htm

George Washington's wrath at Halifax
National Post, 14 January 2005

One is reminded of the expression used by the American revolutionaries — "Hell, Hull, and Halifax." They being happy to send the British troops and their sympathizers to any one of these three places.  I'm sure that the troops and the families that came in to Halifax that April of 1776 would have preferred Hull, and likely would have easily equated the other two places.

Peter Landry in his
History of Nova Scotia, Book #2: The Awakening of English Nova Scotia (1760-1815)
Part #2, Revolution And The 14th Colony (1760-1783)
Chapter 11 – "The Events of 1776"

Source: Footnote 5
    http://www.blupete.com/Hist/NovaScotiaBk2/Part2/Ch11fn.htm#fn5

There is a Proverbe, and a prayer withall,
That we may not to these strange places fall,
From Hull, from Halifax, from Hell, 'tis thus,
From all these three, good Lord, deliver us...
— Thieves Litany by John Taylor (1580-1654)

Hell needs no explanation; Hull and Halifax were the last places in Yorkshire to have a gibbet. Halifax is small rural town in West Yorkshire, England.  The allusion is to the Halifax Gibbet Law, that the theft of goods to the value of 13 pence subjected the thief to immediate execution "by a jyn" (engine, meaning the notorious Halifax Gibbet).  John Taylor's poem, which was phrased as a thief's prayer, expressed the fervent hope of Yorkshire thieves to avoid Halifax and the acute danger of swift and severe punishment.

Source: http://www.metaphor.dk/guillotine/Pages/gibbet.html

The phrase "Hell, Hull, and Halifax." was well-known in Yorkshire, England, in the early 1600s.  Originally, it had nothing to do with Halifax, Nova Scotia, (first settled in 1749, more than a century after the phrase entered the language).  During the American Revolution (1775-1783), when Halifax, Nova Scotia, was the North American base for the British government's military effort to defeat the revolutionaries in the breakaway Thirteen Colonies, the phrase was taken up by the revolutionaries as a way to heap scorn on their opponents.

The first Loyalists to land on Nova Scotia soil were refugees from Boston in March of 1776.  Forced to leave Boston as the British evacuated the city in the face of an invasion by General George Washington and his troops, a thousand or so of the British merchants, customs and government people hastily boarded the waiting transport ships in Boston Harbour on a blustery early spring morning in March 1776 and left for Halifax, the only British port left on the Atlantic seaboard.

Halifax, a military garrison settlement, was not prepared to receive so many civilians, and so the Loyalists were more or less left to their own devices for shelter and food.  Many stayed on board the ships, although some ventured forth and lived in a tent city which had been set up by the military on one of the many parade grounds used by the military to practice drill...

Elizabeth Barclay-Lapointe U.E., B.A. in Nova Scotia Loyalists

(Note: The quotation next below is the context in which the above appears.)

Writers such as Canada's genealogist, Angus Baxter, have stated in their works that the Loyalist exodus from New York Province in 1783 to Nova Scotia was one of the six all-time great migrations which took place on the North American continent, rivalling even the huge migration of Irish to the continent in the mid-1800's during the infamous Irish Potato Famine.

What made the Loyalist event so important to Canada is they were the first great influx of British settlement to the country, which before then had been mainly French in character.  Also, the Loyalists brought with them the American system of representative government, British laws, and a mixture of British-American social ethic which was so unlike the French system already in place.  It could be said that the Loyalists were the English counterpart of the French settlers of the seventeenth century sent to colonize the North American continent.

The first Loyalists to land on Nova Scotia soil were refugees from Boston in March of 1776.  Forced to leave Boston as the British evacuated the city in the face of an invasion by General George Washington and his troops, a thousand or so of the British merchants, customs and government people hastily boarded the waiting transport ships in Boston Harbour on a blustery early spring morning in March 1776 and left for Halifax, the only British port left on the Atlantic seaboard.

Halifax, a military garrison settlement, was not prepared to receive so many civilians, and so the Loyalists were more or less left to their own devices for shelter and food.  Many stayed on board the ships, although some ventured forth and lived in a tent city which had been set up by the military on one of the many parade grounds used by the military to practice drill.

Their stay in Halifax was short lived, for in June 1776, a message came through that the British had plans to go back to the American colonies, this time to New York City, where they would regain control of the city, and set up a centre of British government there.  The Loyalists in Halifax were given a choice – to return to their homes in England, stay in Halifax, or go to the transport ships once again and sail on to New York.  Most of them went to New York City where they made up the basis of British settlement for the next seven years, when once again, they were forced to flee back to Nova Scotia in the fear of an attack from General George Washington and his troops, the same as had happened in Boston...

The final Loyalist left New York in December of 1783... It is estimated that 60,000 went to the colony of Nova Scotia, and 10,000 went to the colony of Quebec.

Canadians who can prove, through their ancestry, that they are directly descendant from an original Loyalist are entitled, under law in Canada, to place the letters U.E. after their name.  It is the only hereditary title in Canada...

Elizabeth Barclay-Lapointe U.E., B.A. in Nova Scotia Loyalists

The disruption of colonial society resulting from the expulsion of the Loyalists was far graver than we commonly assume. Shiploads of excellent gentlemen, and among them the most cultivated minds in America, were driven from their firesides and sent forth to seek new homes, whether in "Hell, Hull or Halifax" mattered little to the victors. Upward of forty thousand sought refuge in Canada; thousands more went to the Bahamas; and still other thousands returned to the old home (in Europe).

Main Currents in American Thought, 1620-1800
Book 1: American Mind 1763-1783
Chapter I: Imperial Sovereignty and Home Rule
by Vernon L. Parrington, published 1927

Source: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/Parrington/vol1/bk02_02_ch01.html

The United Empire Loyalists have suffered a strange fate at the hands of historians.  It is not too much to say that for nearly a century their history was written by their enemies.  English writers, for obvious reasons, took little pleasure in dwelling on the American Revolution, and most of the early accounts were therefore American in their origin.  Any one who takes the trouble to read these early accounts will be struck by the amazing manner in which the Loyalists are treated.  They are either ignored entirely or else they are painted in the blackest colours...

Within recent years, however, there has been a change...  In the United States and in England, the pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other.  In Canada it has remained stationary.  There, in the country where they settled, the United Empire Loyalists are still regarded with an uncritical veneration which has in it something of the spirit of primitive ancestor-worship.

The interest which Canadians have taken in the Loyalists has been either patriotic or genealogical; and few attempts have been made to tell their story in the cold light of impartial history, or to estimate the results which have flowed from their migration.  Yet such an attempt is worth while making – an attempt to do the United Empire Loyalists the honour of painting them as they were, and of describing the profound and far-reaching influences which they exerted on the history of both Canada and the United States.  In the history of the United States the exodus of the Loyalists is an event comparable only to the expulsion of the Huguenots from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes...

The effect of this immigration was to create two new English-speaking provinces, New Brunswick and Upper Canada (Ontario), and to strengthen the English element in two other provinces, Lower Canada (Quebec) and Nova Scotia, so that ultimately the French population in Canada was outnumbered by the English population surrounding it.  Nor should the character of this English immigration escape notice.  It was not only English; but it was also filled with a passionate loyalty to the British crown.  This fact serves to explain a great deal in later Canadian history.

Before 1783 the continuance of Canada in the British Empire was by no means assured: after 1783 the Imperial tie was well-knit...

The United Empire Loyalists: A Chronicle of the Great Migration
by W. Stewart Wallace, Toronto, 1914

Source:   http://www.grandriveruel.ca/UEL_Wallace1a.htm

The American Revolution precipitated one of the great migrations in human history, as literally tens of thousands of United Empire Loyalists fled from the United States of America into what is now Canada.  Approximately 35,000 Loyalists went to Nova Scotia, including entire Ferris families, and some 9,000 entered Quebec.  The impact was immense.  The population of peninsular (mainland) Nova Scotia was doubled; north of the Bay of Fundy, where there had been fewer than 1,750 people of European descent in 1780, 14,000 to 15,000 Loyalists dominated the new colony of New Brunswick.  Perhaps 1,000 more settled on the still sparsely peopled islands of Saint John, which became Prince Edward Island after 1798, and Cape Breton, which became a separate colony in 1784 and remained so until 1820 when it rejoined Nova Scotia.  In Upper Canada, approximately 7,000 Loyalists occupied hitherto almost empty territory at the head of Lake Erie, in the Niagara peninsula, around the Bay of Quinte and along the north shore of the St. Lawrence.

Dennis Bell in his genealogical essay The Ferris/Ferrers/Ferrieres Family
Source: The Ferris/Ferrers/Ferrieres Family
    http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~wanda/ferris.html

A new mutiny is brewing...

Kevin Cox, in "Mutiny over the Bounty", The Globe and Mail, 18 January 2000.

The ship lists clumsily at the dock. She has been stripped of her majestic sails. The steel-cable rigging is rusting. Her hull shows signs of rot. Several spans are missing. This, former crew members say, is the sorry state of the HMS Bounty II, one of North America's best-known tall ships. Forty years ago, the majestic square-rigged ship was the pride of shipbuilders in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and the floating stage for the movie Mutiny on the Bounty. Now, they say, she sits awkwardly in the water, with a list of between five and ten degrees, at Fall River, Massachusetts, awaiting work valued at more than $1-million (U.S.) to repair her rotting hull and bottom, replace aging sails and masts and install new engines and electrical systems. And a new mutiny is brewing, pitting the former crew members against the Tall Ship Bounty Foundation, which has put the ship up for sale. There is a big difference of opinion over the ship's state of seaworthiness...

In all proceedings in any court, Sable Island shall be held to be within the County of Halifax and St. Paul Island to be within the County of Victoria, in the Province of Nova Scotia, and any person charged with committing any offence on those Islands, or on the shores, banks or bars thereof, may be proceeded against and tried as if those Islands were actually within those counties respectively.

Section 525 of the Canada Shipping Act
Source:   http://www.tc.gc.ca/Actsregs/csa-lmmc/part-vii.html

To go — or not to go — is that the question? / Whether 'tis best to trust the inclemency / That scowls indignant o'er the dreary Bay / Of Fundy and Cape Sable's rock and shoals, / And seek our new domains in Scotia's wilds / Barren and bare; or stay among the rebels...

From the New York Morning Post, 7 November 1783, as quoted by Carl Carmer in chapter 12 of The Hudson, Farrar and Rinehart, New York, 1939, (one of a series of books on the rivers of the United States). Chapter 12 deals with the "Removal of the Hudson River Toryes to Nova Scotia". In the early 1780s, when it had become clear to everyone that the Thirteen Colonies had succeeded in breaking away from Great Britain, the choices facing Loyalists living along the Hudson River valley were fully as bleak as described in this adaptation of Hamlet's soliloquy.

Source:
    http://ulster.net/~hrmm/diglib/carmer/chapter12.html

It sounds like the plot for a mystery novel.  A medal goes missing in 1910.  As wars, revolution and repression sweep Russia in its turbulent twentieth century, the medal is forgotten.  Then, ninety years later, the medal and its original mould are found in the basement of the State Mint in Moscow.  Attached is a piece of paper, stating the medal is the property of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists.  But the society, founded in 1868 and still in existence, disavows any knowledge of the Alexander Kowalevsky Medal — except to say it is named after Russia's leading nineteenth-century experimental biologist, a founder of modern comparative and evolutionary embryology.  The society's officers investigate, realize the medal was never awarded and decide to make up for lost time.  They seek nominations from the world's most distinguished scientists in comparative zoology and evolutionary embryology.  And, 100 years after Kowalevsky's death, the society awards the medal to eight scientists around the world.  In that small group is one Canadian – Brian Hall, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  The award recipients receive a diploma and a bronze medal cast from the original mould.  The award bears the profile of Alexander Kowalevsky on one side.  The other side depicts images of animals he worked on.

"Russian Medal an Honour and a Mystery," by Mary Somers, in Dalhousie University's The Alumni Magazine, volume 19 number 1, Spring 2002.

Kowalevsky was extremely prominent.  His discovery, soon after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, of the notochord in animals that had been regarded as invertebrates laid the foundation for an entirely new theory of the origin of the vertebrates.

Brian Hall, the George S. Campbell Professor of Biology at Dalhousie University, Halifax, in The Alumni Magazine, volume 19 number 1, Spring 2002.
Biologist wins the Kowalevsky Medal
    http://www.dal.ca/~dalnews/dalnews/2002-02/kowalevsky.shtml

Kowalevsky Medal, front	Kowalevsky Medal, back

Alexander Kowalevsky medal
Source: St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists
http://www.spns.narod.ru/Eng/kov_aw_pic.htm

The Kowalevsky Medal will be awarded for extraordinary achievements in comparative zoology and embryology to the scientists who have contributed greatly to the modern understanding of evolutionary relations between major groups of animal kingdom, the evolutionary biology of development, and modern approaches in comparative zoology. This project of a new international award will be implemented by the Society in two stages.

First, by the end of the year 2001 the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists intends to award several medals to honor the most distinguished scientists of the twentieth century in the field of evolutionary embryology and comparative zoology research whose life and work spanned over many years of the century. The Society will select these most distinguished individuals based on the international nominations – over twenty nominators from different countries and diverse set of institutions will ensure a broad range of names of nominated scientists. The final selection for the award will be based on a full list of names ranked according the number of nominations.

Second, from the year 2002 the Society intends to make this award an annual one, giving every year one medal to a scientist who has made outstanding contributions to the modern understanding of evolutionary relations between major groups of animal kingdom, evolutionary developmental biology and/or modern approaches in comparative zoology. Again, selection will be based on the international nominations.

St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists
    http://www.spns.narod.ru/Eng/kov_med.htm

It's lots of fun to blow bubbles but it's wiser to prick them yourself before someone else tries to.

Oswald Theodore Avery (1877-1955), physician, medical researcher and early molecular biologist. He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but the major part of his career was spent in the United States at the Rockefeller Institute Hospital, New York City. Avery was one of the first molecular biologists and was a pioneer in immunochemistry, but he is best known for his discovery in 1944 with his co-worker Maclyn McCarty that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the material of which genes and chromosomes are made. Previously, heredity information (genes) was thought to be stored in cells in protein molecules. Avery's work paved the way for Watson and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA, and thus the birth of modern genetics and molecular biology. Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg stated that Avery and his laboratory provided "the historical platform of modern DNA research".

Sources:
Oswald Theodore Avery Wikipedia
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Theodore_Avery

Dr. Oswald Theodore Avery Canadian Medical Hall of Fame
    http://www.cdnmedhall.org/laureates/?laur_id=64

The Oswald T. Avery Collection U.S. National Library of Medicine
    http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/CC/

Oswald T. Avery DNA from the Beginning (DNAFTB), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
    http://www.dnaftb.org/dnaftb/concept_17/con17bio.html

This was a key development.  Until then, DNA had been thought to be a relatively unimportant adjunct of the proteins that served as the basis of genetics.  Now it seemed that it was DNA that was the real thing.  This led directly to a new assault on DNA and the discovery of its structure and its mode of replication by Crick and Watson.

Isaac Asimov in Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology: The Lives and Achievements of 1510 Great Scientists from Ancient Times to the Present, second revised edition, 1982, Doubleday and Company. Dr. Asimov was describing the significance of the experiment done in New York in 1944 by Oswald Avery and his associates, that showed "that the factor was pure deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and that no protein was present."

The medical research work by Avery, McCarty and MacLeod conducted at Rockefeller University during World War Two changed the course of the world, reduced suffering and contributed immeasurably to the quality of life as we know it.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, United States Senator, in the Congressional Record, 2 February 1994

Even if nothing else had been done at this great university, this extraordinary discovery has, in my judgment, more than justified – all by itself – the great hope and aspiration of my grandfather and father when they established this institution in 1901. It has given to the world what they hoped for: the beginning of the understanding of the inner mysteries of life and disease.

David Rockefeller, Honorary Chairman of the Board of Trustees, The Rockefeller University, speaking in 1994 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Avery's 1944 experiment.
(David Rockefeller's grandfather was John Davison Rockefeller, of Standard Oil fame.)
This quote appeared in the Halifax Daily News, 28 December 2004.

Source: When Was DNA Proved to be the Chemical Basis of Heredity? Rockefeller University
    http://www.rockefeller.edu/discovery/dna/index.php

Rockefeller Institute in New York showed that hereditary traits could be transmitted from one bacterial cell to another by purified DNA molecules. Given the fact that DNA was known to occur in the chromosomes of all cells, Avery's experiments strongly suggested that future experiments would show that all genes were composed of DNA.

James Dewey Watson, in The Double Helix. The 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded (one-third each) to Francis Harry Compton Crick, James Dewey Watson, and Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins.

Dr. Watson Kirkconnell's analysis showed that of those listed in American Men of Science, twice as many took their first degrees under Professor Horace G. Perry as under any other professor in North America.

Wolfville Civic Memorial Book, page 22.  Dr. Horace Greeley Perry (1872-1953) taught at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

It bothers me when members of the media carelessly use the term "49th parallel" when referring to the dividing line between Canada and the United States.  In fact, the 49th parallel forms the border only between the U.S. and Canada's four western provinces... More Canadians live below the 49th parallel than above it.

Tom Estabrooks, Dartmouth, letter in the Halifax Daily News, 28 December 2004

If the most useless article, by the most useless member, of the most useless Department in the Faculty of Arts – can be justified; then it follows that ALL research done elsewhere in the Faculty is worthwhile...

Ralph Stewart in Marginal Scholarship: Lesser-known aspects of Presbyterian and Episcopalian relations in Scotland in the early 1690s, voice 4 Vol. 13.1 - Fall 2005, published by the Department of English, Acadia University.
— Source: http://ace.acadiau.ca/ENGLISH/voice4/Voice%204%202005%20Fall.pdf

I met with Michael Donovan in a cafe in Manhattan, and before I finished telling him about the film I wanted to make, he said, "I want to do it.  I'll raise the money and fund it."

Flint, Michigan, film-maker Michael Moore, as quoted in the Halifax Daily News, 17 September 2002.  Moore was telling how Halifax producer Michael Donovan and Salter Street Films had provided crucial support for Bowling for Columbine, Moore's first feature film in five years.  This 122-minute documentary had its world premiere at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, winning the 55th Anniversary Prize, and was the only film the jury agreed on unanimously.  This was the only documentary in 45 years to be accepted by the Cannes Film Festival.  After the screening at Cannes, France, the audience gave Moore a record-breaking 13-minute standing ovation.  Donovan has deep roots in Nova Scotia, his grandfather having been the publisher of the Antigonish Casket, the local weekly newspaper, between 1890 and 1919.
Bowling for Columbine
Alliance Atlantis, A Salter Street Films and Dog Eat Dog Films production
Credits:
Writer-director: Michael Moore
Producers: Michael Moore, Kathleen Glynn, Michael Donovan, Charles Bishop, Jim Czarnecki
Executive producer: Wolfram Ticky
Director of photography: Brian Danitz
Music: Jeff Gibbs
Animation: Harold Moss
Editor/co-producer: Kurt Engfehr
Running time: 122 minutes

No.  You have to understand.  It's not a "contribution" that we're talking about.  If it hadn't been for Michael Donovan, this film would not have gotten made.

Flint, Michigan, film-maker Michael Moore, as quoted in the Halifax Daily News, 10 December 2004.  Moore was telling how Halifax producer Michael Donovan and Salter Street Films had provided crucial support for Bowling for Columbine, Moore's first feature film in five years.

Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine has been named the best documentary of all time.  The International Documentary Association (IDA) judged Moore's controversial film about American gun culture to be the best documentary ... The IDA is a forum for documentary filmmakers and has 2,700 members in 50 countries.

RTE Guide 13 December 2002

Source: RTE Guide     http://www.rte.ie/arts/2002/1213/bowling.html
(".ie" is the Internet TLD Country Code for Ireland.)
Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE) is the Irish Public Service Broadcasting Organisation

To get a standing ovation, and then hear the booing.  I just knew the box office was going to go through the roof.  It sounds philistine, but I could hear the cash register ringing in my head.

Michael Donovan of Halifax, as quoted in The Globe & Mail, 31 January 2004, describing his feelings as he stood on the stage at the Oscar Awards ceremony in Los Angeles on 23 March 2003 as a standing ovation and a handful of jeers from Hollywood's elite greeted filmmaker Michael Moore when he criticized President Bush and the U.S.-led war in Iraq during his acceptance speech after winning the documentary feature Oscar for Bowling for Columbine.

Halfway through my remarks, some in the audience started to cheer.  That immediately set off a group of people in the balcony who started to boo.  Then those supporting my remarks started to shout down the booers.  The L.A. Times reported that the director of the show started screaming at the orchestra "Music! Music!" in order to cut me off, so the band dutifully struck up a tune and my time was up.

Michael Moore's description of the circumstances during the delivery of his speech accepting the Documentary Film Oscar at the Oscar Awards ceremony in Los Angeles on 23 March 2003.  Michael Donovan was standing with Moore during the speech.

Source: Article by Michael Moore, published in April 2003
    http://nuclearfree.lynx.co.nz/oscar.htm

The year is 1458.  Christopher Columbus has yet to discover the New World.  The Holy Wars are looming.  In Rome, 27-year-old Spanish-born Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia is launching his political career and his long campaign for the throne of St. Peter.

A Touch of the Vatican on Halifax waterfront by Richard Foote in the National Post, 26 January 2005.

An impressive piece of 15th century Rome has taken shape on the gritty south side of the Halifax waterfront, one of the most audacious acts of set-building ever attempted in Canada's film business.  Inside a former electric generating plant — converted years ago into a cavernous film studio and renamed Electropolis — producer Paul Donovan has conjured up some of the finest rooms of the Vatican, complete with sculpted pillars, faux-marble floors and an extraordinary collection of newly painted frescoes.  Mr. Donovan, better known as co-founder of Salter Street Films — This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Bowling for Columbine — is shooting The Conclave, a made-for-TV movie about the rise to power of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI.  Mr. Donovan has written a thousand-page script titled Alexander Sextus, a series of seven films on the life and times of the Borgia family ... Part I, The Conclave, will be broadcast as a pilot on German public television and CHUM-owned television stations at an unspecified date...

We are the last generation in the history of mankind to not have grown up with a computer since birth.

Jim Carroll, as quoted in the Halifax Daily News, 31 May 2002.  Mr. Carroll, born in Halifax in 1959, was a chartered accountant in Halifax in 1982, when he plugged in a Radio Shack TRS 80 computer and connected with a computer bulletin board for the first time.  He laughs now when he thinks about how primitive the TRS 80 technology was with its archaic 300 baud modem (300 bits per second).  For more than a decade, Mr. Carroll, who now lives in Toronto, has been acknowledged as Canada's foremost Internet guru.
Jim Carroll, international futurist, trends, and innovation expert, said the rapid rate of change in cable telecommunications is going from fast to furious in a stirring keynote address today (11 January 2006) to a sold-out Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Conference on Emerging Technologies 2006 in Tampa...

The transformation of education is occurring through the use of computer technology.  I think we all know this in the House, even those of us like myself who sometimes see themselves as Luddites.

Ms. Jane Purves, Minister of Education, speaking on the floor of the Nova Scotia Legislature, as recorded in Hansard, 15 May 2001, page 3477.  The complete text of Ms. Purves' speech is available in Hansard.
Source:
    http://www.gov.ns.ca/legislature/hansard/han58-2/h01may15.htm#[Page%203477]

An information revolution is sweeping across educational institutions around the world, threatening a powerful old guard of established school systems and universities.  All of the world's information is potentially available to anyone, anywhere, at any time, thanks to the Internet.  This remarkable fact threatens the traditional power base of school systems and universities, bringing fierce competition as the old order disintegrates and a new, fast-paced order takes shape.  Fear of this change has led to an outcry from educators trying to convince the public that technology will ruin education.  The reality is exactly the opposite — the information technology revolution will liberate us in terms of knowledge, information, and education and training opportunities...

Kelvin Ogilvie, President and Vice-chancellor of Acadia University, Wolfville, in The Globe and Mail, 31 October 2000.

One of Canada's best examples of a fully wired campus is Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S., a relatively small institution with about 3,600 full-time students.  Back in 1996, notebook computers were introduced to 375 students under a program known as "Acadia Advantage"...

The Globe and Mail, 19 June 2000

When I went to school, it was, 'Open up your head and I'll pour this in and test you on it'.

Jennifer Bolt, director of the Acadia Institute for Teaching and Technology, in The Globe and Mail, 3 February 2000.  Now with instant Net access and software tools that enhance learning and collaboration, things are very different.  The Acadia Advantage program, now in its fourth year, has resulted in a campus wired with fibre-optic cable, 5,000 jacks and laptops in the hands of almost every teacher and student.  You can't plug in from the bathroom, but nearly anywhere else at Acadia University, you can go on-line on your laptop.

Acadia University, in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, has recently become the benchmark; the model for other universities to follow.  Acadia has dared to change and will come out well ahead in that constant thrust for continuous improvement.

G. Yves Landry, President, CEO, and Chairman of Chrysler Canada, commenting on The Acadia Advantage, a recent innovation undertaken by Acadia University, quoted in a full-page advertisement inserted by Acadia U. in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 10 November 1997.

It's hard to believe, but fourteen years ago we didn't have any computers in libraries.  It's really astounding to think of the way computer technology has completely changed the way libraries operate — from the way things are processed, the way people find information, the whole impact of e-mail.

Darlene Beck, manager of the Spring Garden Road Branch of the Halifax Public Library system, on the occasion of the Spring Garden Road Branch celebrating its 50th anniversary, November 20-24, 2001, as reported in Space, computer access biggest challenges for library at 50 by Rhia Perkins in NovaNewsNet, 14 November 2001.  NovaNewsNet is a regular electronic publication of the School of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax.
    http://novanewsnet.ukings.ns.ca/stories/01-02/011114/library.htm

It's hard to believe that much has changed in just fourteen years.  It makes you wonder what the next fourteen years will be like.

The reality is it is a wired world today.  That is what it is.  The reality is ... that we can do pretty much anything.

From my home on Saturday I called up Debates from the previous Parliament on the Internet.  I was amazed that I could actually do it.  It also means that my constituents can do it.  I can buy car insurance.  I can find out where I want to shop.  I can book a holiday anywhere in the world.  I can find out what temperature it is on a beach down on the west coast of Florida.

The world is wired.  It is the new wave.  Anybody who thinks they are able to keep off the Internet the provision of leisure gaming services is crazy.  It is already there.

Today in my office — I did not know you could do this — I sat down, worked around for bit and hooked up with the Liechtenstein Gaming Corporation in Liechtenstein.  It is a city, a mountain, a river, and that is it.  That is what the place is.  I was in the Liechtenstein Gaming Corporation casino ... If I won, it automatically went into my bank account in Canada just like that, an instantaneous transaction.

Ron MacDonald, Member of Parliament for Dartmouth, speaking in the House of Commons on 13 February 1997, during the debate on Private Member's Bill C-353.  The purpose of this bill is to put the Internet Lottery industry "under some kind of regulatory authority".  The complete text of Mr. MacDonald's speech is available in Hansard.
Source:
    http://www.parl.gc.ca/english/hansard//129_97-02-13/129PB1E.html#8116

It is quite amazing because I am not one of those people who are not terribly technologically proficient.  I fumble around on my little computer at home.  Most times my five-year old son Stephen or Matthew is able to browse me through where I want to go a little easier than I can do it. 

It is important that we all learn about the Internet, and get the most benefits from it ... The Internet is rapidly becoming a part of everyday life, and, used properly, it opens the door to a huge range of knowledge which has no national boundaries.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, speaking at the official ceremony launching The British Monarchy web site on 6 March 1997.  Her Majesty's official representative in Nova Scotia, in 1997, was Lieutenant Governor J.J. Kinley. The Lieutenant Governor's signature is required before Nova Scotia government decisions, officially known as Orders In Council, become legally effective.

Political establishments in advanced democracies are cowering like cobras before mongooses as this spectre speeds toward them like some ancient asteroid...

Brian Flemming in Beware, Politicians in the Halifax Daily News 22 September 1999.

The Internet is the "apple of knowledge" that will drive political establishments from their comfy Gardens of Eden where deference to authority was routinely demanded, and given ... As information technologies truncate time, most citizens instinctively know it's absurd to leave a handful of randomly-chosen citizens, a.k.a. parliamentarians, completely in charge of the political system for years ... The idea of handing total power for five years at a time to a less-than-respected political class is already perceived by voters to be as nonsensical as shopping for one's groceries only two days every decade ... The greatest coming challenge for political institutions — in Canada and elsewhere — will be to transform the very nature of democracy itself.  Creating a new means for citizens to be involved in decision-making may be the only way to stem voter cynicism...

The way democratic institutions were run in 2000 will amuse our descendants.  Democracy's development was unfortunately retarded by communism and fascism.  The Internet will free it.  Conventional politicians will be disintermediated as effectively as any other cyber-society middlemen.  Voting, now a quaint quadrennial event, will be a regular fixture of future life.

Brian Flemming in his regular weekly column in the Halifax Daily News 8 March 2000.

The way we get information now will make future citizens chortle.  ("Tell me again, grandpa, about how your computer connected to the Net over copper phone wires...")

I found myself standing, a few days ago, at the front of a room in the Museum of Industry in Stellarton, Nova Scotia.  Yes, it was a financial seminar and I was busy telling a few hundred people about my vision of the future — one in which technology plays such a big part and will help support at least a decade of sharply rising financial markets.  A few feet away were the carefully preserved artifacts of another technological revolution — giant steam-powered shovels and engines used to mine the coal that made this part of the country so important a century ago.

Today the mines are shut.  The old technology of steel, gears and belts has been replaced by the microprocessor, the modem and the Web.

And I think this new digital age being ushered in will create more wealth than any before it.  As I wrote here last week, we are in the early years of an up-wave that will give us a burgeoning economy and sharply rising stock and mutual fund values for ten, twelve or fifteen years to come.

The Internet will go from being a curious way of sending messages to the very platform on which services like banking, mass media and personal shopping are built.  E-commerce is the single most important concept since the credit and debit card.

This will change the face of life as we live it — for the better...

Garth Turner, nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist and broadcaster, and former Minister of National Revenue, in his regular weekly column, September 20th 1999.
Source: http://www.myna.com/~garthtmr/current-col.htm
Printed in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald 26 September 1999.

Going online is like travel by magic carpet.

Arnie Patterson, in the Halifax Sunday Daily News, 1 June 1997.  "I would suspect that within twenty years, the users of the Internet will be as common as indoor plumbing today ... I am both fascinated and overwhelmed by all this new magic world offers.  And while I'm among the slim five per cent of seniors who travel on the Internet, I highly recommend it.  It's not too late to learn.  Ever."

I am on the verge of being a computer junkie.

Senior citizen Arnie Patterson, in the Halifax Sunday Daily News, 2 November 1997.

What would be more fun than being a kid locked in a candy store overnight? Or how about being an adolescent hiding behind a sand dune on a nude beach? I would be stretching it if I said a whirl on the WWW, or World Wide Web.  But it does offer thrills of a different kind ... I am spending half of my off-golf hours on the Internet...

(In the United States) the rapid extension of the telegraph system has no parallel in history. Since 1844, we have erected and put in operation about 35,000 miles of line. The wires are to be found on almost every traveled road, giving telegraphic communication to some 800 towns and cities. In fact, every town and city in the United States has telegraphic connection with New York. Citizens, as a general thing, have no conception of the amount of business daily transacted over the wires. Contracts to buy and sell, pledges of indebtedness, balancing of accounts, all involving millions of dollars, are entered into freely and without fear. From morning till night, day in and day out, are the trembling wires busy with the concerns of an entire nation. How great must be that influence, so quietly, so unobtrusively at work, annihilating time and space, and bringing our distant cities in close relationship for the transaction of business and interchange of the social attentions and courtesies of civil life! Our longest line is from Halifax to New Orleans, a distance following the wires of about 2,400 miles about 3800 km; and it is over this line the steamship's news is sent to all the principal cities.

Marshall Lefferts in his paper The Electric Telegraph; its Influence and Geographical Distribution, read at the meeting of the American Geographical and Statistical Society in New York City on 24 April 1856.  In 1849 Lefferts became president of the New York & New England Telegraph Company, and he remained one of the leading figures in the American telegraph industry until his death in 1876.

Source:
    http://www.atlantic-cable.com/Article/1856Lefferts/index.htm

I hold in my hand a letter from the War Office in London, stating that a message sent from there on the 31st of August, 1858, was delivered the same day at Halifax, which message prevented the embarkation of troops for India; and I have been informed that it saved the English Government over $200,000.  The benefits of an Atlantic cable to England, by enabling the Government to be in daily communication with its Ambassador at Washington, and all the British Consuls in this country (United States), and the Governors of the five North American Provinces, and its naval and military forces in America, can hardly be estimated.

Cyrus Field in his speech on Prospects of the Atlantic Telegraph given at the meeting of the American Geographical and Statistical Society in New York City on 1 May 1862.

Source:
    http://www.atlantic-cable.com/Article/1862FieldNY/index.htm

Field's reference to "the Governors of the five North American Provinces" meant the Governors of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Canada (Quebec and Ontario).

In the mid-1980s, Ireland was an economic wasteland, with a per-capita GDP forty percent that of Canada's.  Then, Ireland dramatically cut taxes, particularly corporate taxes.  Its economy has surpassed Canada's and is now ten percent wealthier on a per capita basis.  It is notable that, even after eliminating federal corporate taxes in Atlantic Canada, the region's provincial corporate taxes would, by themselves, approximate the effective rates of Ireland.

Ireland is a nation of about 2.5 million people hanging off the second most prosperous market in the world, Europe.  Atlantic Canada is a region of almost 2.5 million people hanging off the most prosperous market in the world, the United States.  The same tax-cut magic (that has worked so well in Ireland) can work in Atlantic Canada...

There is a role for federal transfers, but the Irish example suggests that how these transfers are used is important...

"An Irish Model for Growth in Atlantic Canada," by Scott Brison, Member of Parliament for Kings-Hants, Nova Scotia, in the National Post, 17 August 2002, page A17; the same article appeared under the head "New East Needs New Approach to Prosperity" in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 17 August 2002, page C4.

I started my first business when I was 19, renting fridges to students ... They were bar fridges.  I had two different sets of pamphlets printed up.  The one for parents had pictures of the fridges filled with milk, orange juice and yogurt.  The one for students had the fridges filled with Keith's Moosehead and Labatt.

Scott Brison, Member of Parliament for Kings-Hants, Nova Scotia, as quoted by Paul Wells in his regular column in the National Post, 13 February 2003, page A14.

I have no interest in being part of a right-wing debating club where we get together at conventions and debate how to privatize sidewalks.

Scott Brison, Member of Parliament for Kings-Hants, Nova Scotia, during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Paul Martin on 10 December 2003 in Ottawa, explaining why he decided to join the federal Liberal Party (after having been elected to parliament in November 2000 as a member of the Progressive Conservative Party).

This comment was reported in various newspapers on 11 December 2003, the following day, including:
— The National Post
— The Halifax Daily News
— The London Free Press

Mr. Brison's phrase "right-wing debating club" referred to the new Conservative Party of Canada, formed on 7 December 2003 by a merger between the Canadian Alliance Party (which then had 66 MPs, mostly elected in districts in Alberta and British Columbia) and the Progressive Conservative Party (which then had 12 MPs – including Mr. Brison – mostly elected in districts in the Atlantic Provinces)

The PC Party, the party I grew up in, no longer exists.

My father thinks you're an idiot.

An anonymous "young boy at a Kingsport, Nova Scotia, parade," conversing with candidate Scott Brison during the June 2004 general election campaign, as reported by Jane Taber in her "Ottawa Notebook" column in The Globe and Mail, 24 July 2004, page A5.  Brison told this story on Thursday, July 22, two days after being sworn in as a federal cabinet member, to about 1,200 public servants at a meeting held to acquaint employees of his Public Works Department with the new Minister.  "Mr. Brison told his staff that over the next few months they will be able to form their own opinion."

This bit of Canada is a national treasure ... The Digby Neck, the thin split of land on the Bay of Fundy that has splintered away from Nova Scotia's southwestern shore, is a place of remarkable contentment, with somewhere around 1,000 year-round residents ... At four summers, my own bunch are still very much newcomers here, but we are no less welcome for it.  Maritime hospitality is legendary.  We stay in a charming, working fishing village halfway down the Digby Neck, in this part of Nova Scotia that has been generally overlooked.  It's hard to get to, for a start, and the swells stay down in Chester, Lunenburg and the other pretty villages on the south shore, where New Yorker writers and U.S.-based Canadian broadcasters go.  No such action here.  The Neck is known, by and large, for Fundy's dramatic tides, the whale-watching tours that locals run, and the scallops and lobster you'll find in the bone-chilling waters here, the best in the world and the backbone of the local economy...

Noah Richler in his regular column in the National Post, 1 August 2002.  This also appeared in the Halifax Sunday Herald, 11 August 2002.

Map of Digby Neck Nova Scotia government
    http://www.gov.ns.ca/snsmr/muns/info/mapping/DIGBJ.stm

Map of Digby Neck Digby Neck Community Development Association
    http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/6253/NECK.html

Map of Digby Neck Industry Canada
    http://collections.ic.gc.ca/digby_neck/

When Patrick Watson was making Heritage Minutes, he concluded Vince Coleman was the great Canadian.  No, I'd never heard of Coleman, either.  He was a railroad telegrapher in Halifax.  Amid Halifax's explosion in December, 1917, he got out a warning that saved scores of lives.  He died at his post.  Mr. Watson thought that Coleman was the kind of hero we most identify with: Just an ordinary Canadian getting the job done in an extreme circumstance.

"Nation Builders: Part Six," by Christopher Moore, a writer on historical subjects, in The Globe and Mail, 22 June 2002, page A17.  Born in Britain in 1950, Christopher Moore was raised in Nelson and Vancouver, British Columbia, and studied at UBC and the University of Ottawa.  He is a historian who specializes in presenting historical topics to non-specialist audiences, and has been self-employed in that field since 1978.  He won the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction, for Louisbourg Portraits, 1982.

Coleman was thinking about the passenger trains speeding towards the threatened harbour.  He had to stop them.  In that moment of pure and selfless action, Coleman telegraphed his urgent warning.  At precisely 9:06 on December 6, 1917, the worst man-made explosion ever [before the atomic bomb on Hiroshima] tore through Halifax, claiming 2,000 lives, including the life of Vince Coleman ... Coleman knew what was at stake when he ran back to tap out his crucial message.  In the worst catastrophe in Canadian history, one man sacrificed his life to save 700 others.

From the script for Heritage Minute Halifax Explosion.  The Heritage Project has produced dozens of one-minute micro-movies – Heritage Minutes, by scriptwriter Patrick Watson – depicting Canada's heritage and heroes.  Canada's three television networks, most independent broadcasters, and specialty cable networks run the Heritage Minutes between commercials and regular programming.  The vignettes can also be seen in Cineplex-Odeon and Empire chain theatres across Canada.  Halifax Explosion, one of the Heritage Minutes, dramatizes one man's heroism during this 1917 disaster in Halifax Harbour, which killed or injured thousands of people.
The script for Heritage Minute Halifax Explosion
    http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?ID=10203

On a chilly, late-winter afternoon, the third floor of a simple brick building at the foot of storied Citadel Hill resembles a house of horrors.  A glance in any direction delivers an eyeful of bloodied stumps that were at one time arms and legs, as well as singed hair and flesh, and grisly, wounded heads.  Hospital beds have been rolled out, awaiting the injured.  Some already sport white sheets stained crimson.  Crutches and stretchers, pillows and bedpans litter the room.  A man strolls by carrying a mangled woman's calf and severed foot.

Thankfully, it is all latex and makeup and gooey red paint — art meets war, 2003 meets 1917... For the next six weeks or so, Halifax will be home to the filming of Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion, a two-part miniseries scheduled to air on CBC later this year, and produced by Salter Street Films and Tapestry Pictures...

"Reliving Halifax's Horror" by Shawna Richer in The Globe and Mail, 8 April 2003, page R1.

Shattered City is an enormous project, featuring a cast of 135, plus 1,500 extras — all of them locals and all skinny enough to pass for inhabitants of a pre-fast-food world during the First World War.

Shattered City is a drama but it is based on a real historical event involving real people and it takes extreme license with historical fact.  The film does convey with some visual power the effect of the blast and the destruction and suffering of the people of Halifax.  The production values are quite high in terms of historically appropriate costumes and settings.  However the film is full of falsehoods, distortions and errors from start to finish.  While the drama has unquestionably raised awareness, one must question its validity and not rely on it as an educational resource.  It is unfortunate that CBC Television has in this case shown such low standards when it comes to historical fiction...

Well-known Nova Scotia historian Dan Conlin.

Source: Historical Distortions and Errors in the Film Shattered City
    http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~jacktar/halifaxexplosion.html

Sadly, I am embarrassed to say that I was not aware of this tragedy.  I have been in the library business for 29 years, 26 in academia, and never has anyone requested information about this occurance, nor do I recall ever seeing it in a history book; nor in all the history classes of which I was in attendance, was it ever taught.  When I performed a "search" I was mortified with regard to the entire situation...

Barbara Elsie Feist Stienstra, Librarian, Certified Archivist Records Manager, writing about the Halifax Explosion of 6 December 1917, in a comment posted on 10 December 2003 to the Halifax Explosion Memorial section of http://www.findagrave.com/.

We think we're living in a civilized world.  But I couldn't agree more with Jane Jacobs' view that we're living in the new dark ages.

Alex Colville as quoted in The Toronto Star, 13 June 2004

An Alex Colville painting is creepy.  Not overtly creepy, in the gruesome manner that makes the skin crawl, but in the eerie and ominous way that makes the mind crawl...

Shawna Richer in The Globe and Mail, 4 November 2003, page R1
Alex Colville lives in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

Allan J. MacEachen — a good man fallen among Liberals.

When I first saw Allan J. MacEachen in action, he was the Minister of Labour.  I was a student watching the debate from the gallery.  I was philosophically and politically inclined to support another political party at that time, as I still am today.  But, I must say, watching Allan J. give a political speech in the House of Commons was something that I will never forget.

Some years ago somebody was asking me who I thought were the greatest speakers in the House of Commons that I had listened to?  Was it Mr. Trudeau, was it Mr. Diefenbaker, was it others that I had listened to, and I said, no, certainly not.

The best speaker I ever heard in the House of Commons, the best analyst, the best person who could give a range of speeches, was Allan MacEachen, without hesitation and without qualification.

In Defence of Politics by The Honourable Bob Rae, Premier of Ontario 1990-1995, speaking at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, 17 April 1997.
Complete text of Bob Rae's speech
    http://www.stfx.ca/academic/political-science/
        Allan%20J.%20MacEachen%20Lecture%20Series/Rae.html

Allan MacEachen and Bob Rae, the two politicians who conspired to topple Canada's last Tory minority government, are together again.  The 84-year-old MacEachen, a legendary Liberal fixer, Machiavellian tactician and minister in both the Pearson and Trudeau eras, signed on Friday (May 12th) as the honorary chairman of Rae's Liberal leadership campaign... The Cape Bretoner, first elected in 1953, became known as the godfather of Nova Scotia and was the country's first deputy prime minister.  Over the years, he was elected to the Commons ten times, held all the major cabinet posts and went on to become Liberal leader in the Senate...

MacEachen backs Rae, Canadian Press item, 12 May 2006, about the current contest to choose a new leader for the Liberal Party of Canada.

Allan MacEachen by Wikipedia

It is too late in the day to stop men thinking.  If allowed to think they will speak.  If they speak they will write, and what they write will be printed and published.  A newspaper is only a thought-throwing machine, a reflex of the popular mind.  If it is not, it cannot live.  We are not disposed to send out proof-sheets to anyone to correct.

Amor de Cosmos, journalist, in an editorial in the Victoria British Colonist in 1859, when the governor of British Columbia, Sir James Douglas, failed in his attempt to suppress the newspaper.  Quoted by Roland Wilde in Amor de Cosmos 1958, and in Colombo's Concise Canadian Quotations, edited by John Robert Colombo, Hurtig Publishers, 1976.

William Alexander Smith (1825-1897), a.k.a. Amor De Cosmos, grew up in Windsor, Nova Scotia.

The British Colonist, Victoria, British Columbia, 1858 to 1980
The impression has been given in historical accounts that the missing April 2, 1859, issue of the Colonist was never made up because De Cosmos could not afford the bonds.  In fact, copies of the Colonist for that day were printed as usual, but apparently never distributed...

With a bow to the spirit that inspired British Columbia's second premier to change his name from William Alexander Smith to Amor de Cosmos (lover of the universe), let us suggest it may be time for Glen Clark to rechristen himself.  Our suggestion: Amor de Chaos.

Unsigned editorial in The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, 24 August 1999, referring to Glen Clark, premier of British Columbia until last Saturday, when he resigned under heavy pressure.

Amor de Cosmos was premier of British Columbia 23 December 1872 to 9 February 1874.  Born William Alexander Smith in 1825 in Windsor, Nova Scotia, he went to the California gold fields in 1853.  While in California he somehow persuaded the California Legislature to pass a special act changing his name to Amor de Cosmos.  He went to British Columbia in June 1858, and figured prominently in the early politics of the province.  He began with a newspaper, The British Colonist, in Victoria, the capital of B.C., which was very critical of the current political leaders.  He went on to become the second premier of British Columbia, and served as a Member of Parliament for British Columbia for eleven years.  In 2002 de Cosmos' newspaper continues publication as the Victoria Times-Colonist.

Sources:
http://www.parl-bldgs.gov.bc.ca/galleries/tguides/cosmos.htm
http://www.tbc.gov.bc.ca/culture/schoolnet/fortvic/people/amor.html
http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/tour/m_adcosm.html
http://freemasonry.bc.ca/biography/cosmo_amor_de/cosmo.html
http://www.mala.bc.ca/www/history/homeroom/amord.htm
http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/exhibits/premiers/premiers.htm

Drunk, rowdy and eccentric de Cosmos may have been, but he was also the man who, more than any other, brought British Columbia into Confederation.

George Woodcock, in his biography Amor de Cosmos: Journalist and Reformer, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1975

Amor de Cosmos has often been ridiculed as a mad figure.  In fact, he was a brilliant leader.  It was only towards the end, long after he left power, that he had a mental breakdown.  I've always felt that he was unfairly ridiculed by those belonging to a political and historical tradition which in the East we would call the anti-democratic Family Compact.  In British Columbia, this was called the Family Company Compact, the word company referring to the Hudson's Bay Company.  Amor de Cosmos was a disciple of Joseph Howe and was the leader of the Howites in British Columbia.  He always referred to "the great principle of public education".  He and his friends understood that in a country as poor and under-populated as Canada, so dependent on immigration, universal public education equalled democracy...

John Ralston Saul in his Inaugural Joseph Howe Lecture, University of King's College School of Journalism, Halifax, 20 March 2004

Source:– http://www.gg.ca/media/doc.asp?lang=e&DocID=4280

Hon. members, in the gallery today are six very distinguished visitors helping us celebrate the 100-year anniversary of our building.  We have a young Queen Victoria; Governor James Douglas; Francis Rattenbury; Hamish, the Scottish stonemason; Nellie Cashman; and I believe Amor de Cosmos is also there.  Would the House make them welcome.

The Speaker of the Legislature of British Columbia, 30 July 1998, as recorded in Hansard, July 30, 1998, Afternoon, Volume 12, Number 13

Source:– http://www.leg.bc.ca/hansard/36th3rd/h0730PM.HTM

New England's ties to Nova Scotia and Canada's other Atlantic provinces have run very deep for a very long time.  It is therefore reassuring to discover that Halifax, Nova Scotia's largest city, has launched a major effort to expand economic links with Boston and the rest of the region...

Editorial Our Canadian Cousins in The Boston Globe, 21 July 1996

When the bank was founded here in 1832, the first thing the merchants did was to set up an agent in New York.  Not in Toronto, not in Montreal — New York.  They went down the coast.  We were in Boston before the turn of the century.  We were in Jamaica, we were in Cuba, only then did we start to make the move into Upper Canada ... We've been making money abroad for over a hundred years ... We took the railroads across the United States, so we opened up in Minneapolis and Chicago, and then we went up to Winnipeg ... There were truly remarkable people who sat in Halifax and created this organization.

Peter Godsoe, Chairman of the Board and CEO of the Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada's fourth-largest financial institution, which made a profit of $1,069,000,000 in 1996.  Mr. Godsoe, whose salary in 1996 was $900,000 with a bonus of $1,200,000, was in Halifax for the company's annual meeting.  His remarks were reported in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald of 11 February 1997.  ScotiaBank's operations outside of Canada are larger than is commonly realized; Mr. Godsoe said that by the year 2000 ScotiaBank will have about 17,000 employees whose first language is Spanish.

If Ottawa does approve bank mergers, one thing is certain: There will be no marriage between the two banks from Halifax that have succeeded by trying to undercut each other for 141 years.

John Turley-Ewart in "Scotiabank's Royal Triumph,", page FP11, in the Financial Post, (published daily as a special section of the National Post) 7 January 2005; he included a brief history of "two banks from Halifax," now known as the Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank) and the Royal Bank of Canada.

A battle that began more than a century ago on the streets of Halifax continued on Bay Street, Toronto, on January 4th, 2005, when the 173-year-old Bank of Nova Scotia emerged as Canada's biggest bank by market value, its capitalization reaching $41.6-billion, $400-million more than its opponent, Royal Bank of Canada.

Scotia's executives have snatched banking's brass ring from the upstart Royal, a bank that opened its doors 32 years after The Bank of Nova Scotia in a dreary three-storey Halifax office building... Their business rivalry has shaped and continues to shape the financial history of this country.  Nova Scotia quickly became too small for Royal and Scotiabank, pushing them to the frontiers of a new Canada, building branches in Ontario and Quebec and the burgeoning West, and bringing stability to regions where bank failures were scaring people away from banks.  Both helped make banking safer and more competitive in 19th-century Canada...

In the early 20th century ... the Bank of Nova Scotia bought the influential Bank of New Brunswick, the Toronto-based Metropolitan Bank, and the Bank of Ottawa, all within a 13-year period ... (Earlier, Henry McLeod, the bank's CEO, saw and seized upon) the opportunities to be had in Minneapolis and Chicago in the 1880s: His vision subsequently helped make possible the Bank of Nova Scotia's expansion west to Toronto, the Prairies and British Columbia...

An editorial, page FP15, by John Turley-Ewart, in the Financial Post, (published daily as a special section of the National Post) 8 April 2003

I think that Halifax is one of the most astonishing cities in the country.  In the last quarter century, after many difficulties, this city has reactivated itself and its role regionally and nationally.  It has now become, once again, a real, national centre in a great variety of ways.  It is a real centre for all of Canada in the arts, in thought, in teaching and in urban planning... Halifax has been for a very long time and in a very intense way one of the key building sites for Canadian democracy, for the building of freedom of speech and for the enunciation of the idea of freedom of the press...

The first time I came to Halifax, my primary destination was the library inside the Nova Scotia Legislature.  In 1835, as Haligonians know, that library in that small beautiful building, was the site of the high court.  It was there that Joseph Howe gave his six and one quarter hour defence against charges of criminal libel.  Please note that he defended himself without a lawyer.  These charges, as you know, were designed to ruin him personally, to destroy him financially and to force the collapse of his newspaper, The Nova Scotian.  This situation resembled strangely the more current phenomenon of libel chill which, beginning some fifteen years ago, was used against writers in Canada for precisely the same reasons.  Many believe, including myself, that in the process of winning his acquittal, Howe established the fundamental ideas, principles and shapes of freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Canada...

One thing which is little understood in the rest of Canada – to some extent it is not understood in Nova Scotia either – is Joseph Howe's influence on the country as a whole.  I think you could argue that his influence on the creation of Canada and the idea of Canada goes far beyond the question of freedom of speech in Nova Scotia and the work that he did in Nova Scotia...

The historic link between Joseph Howe's defence and the ninth and tenth lines of our Charter of Rights is about as straight and as clear as an historic link can possibly be.  It's worth emphasizing this detail – freedom of speech is to be found on the ninth and tenth lines of the Charter of Rights.  In other words, the guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of the press is not something added on or rated low in the body of the Charter of Rights.  This is the second of the four fundamental guarantees in the Charter and it comes right at the beginning of the text...

Joseph Howe's influence was essential to the way in which Canada conceived of itself.  There is, for example, his role in establishing not simply public education, but public education as the keystone of an egalitarian approach towards democracy in Canada.  Howe said: "If you were my brother I would not permit your interests to weigh a feather against a trust so sacred as I believe our public school system to be..."

The incapacity of our country to stick with the moderate position put forward by Nova Scotians (Joseph Howe and Charles Tupper) and our weakness at giving into the immoderate position of the Protestant extremists in Ontario, led to a first great division which almost destroyed Canada...

John Ralston Saul in his Inaugural Joseph Howe Lecture, University of King's College School of Journalism, Halifax, 20 March 2004
Source:– http://www.gg.ca/media/doc.asp?lang=e&DocID=4280

A wise nation preserves its records, gathers up its historic documents, decorates the tombs of its illustrious dead, repairs its great public structures, and fosters national pride and love of country by perpetual reference to the sacrifices and glories of the past...

Joseph Howe, speaking to a gathering of the Howe family at Framingham, Massachusetts, on 1 September 1871.  Adapted from Joe's Advice Timely for 21st Century, by Lorna Inness, in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 1 September 1999.

A wise nation preserves its records, gathers up its muniments, decorates the tombs of its illustrious dead, repairs its great public structures, and fosters national pride and love of country by perpetual reference to the sacrifices and glories of the past...

Given Canada's record on climate change, I thought that Dr. Doolittle was already in charge of our climate-change negotiations. It's time to call upon Dr. Dosomething.

Larry Hughes, in The Globe and Mail, 17 May 2002, commenting on a letter to the editor that appeared in the Globe May 16th suggesting Dr. Doolittle should be called on "to solicit the opinion of Canada's polar bears in light of climate change in the Arctic." The letter was a response to "Climate Puts Polar Bears at Risk – Polar bears are fast losing habitat as temperatures climb and Arctic sea ice disappears, a sign of the dramatic impacts global warming is having around the world", May 15th.  The article was reporting on "Polar Bears at Risk," a World Wildlife Fund study released May 14th.  Dr. Hughes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has a cross appointment with the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University and is an Honourary Research Associate in the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick. His PhD in Computing Science is from the Computing Laboratory of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in northern England.

Too often the world leaders are just a bunch of adults talking, listening to big businesses who don't care about the environment.  They tell lies like: the environment is getting better, that they're not polluting, or that there is no such thing as climate change — when we know this isn't true...

Justin Friesen, age eleven, in Take it from The Eco-Kid: You Can Save Earth in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 31 August 2002.
Go To:   Justin's website
    http://www.justinvision.com/main/

They were the world's first two radio stations.

Dr. Francesco Paresce, speaking in conversation during the "sumptuous dinner party" held early in December 2001 "in the ornate library of Columbia University" in New York City to commemorate "the 100th anniversary of the first wireless transmission to Newfoundland from Britain by Guglielmo Marconi," as reported in the National Post, 13 December 2001.  The celebration was given by the Marconi Foundation, administered by Columbia's Engineering School, to present the 2001 Marconi Award in Telecommunications, given annually for work that has revolutionized modern telecommunications.  Dr. Paresce, grandson of Guglielmo Marconi, was referring to Marconi's two radio stations put into operation in 1902: one at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, and the other in the United Kingdom.  Dr. Paresce said:

Grandfather owed a great deal to Canada, particularly Nova Scotia, where he had his first and most important financial backing.  That's where he established the first radio station in the western hemisphere — in Glace Bay near Sydney, Nova Scotia.  He also established another in the U.K. at the same time.  They were the world's first two radio stations.

Grandfather was always fond of Canada for helping him get his start in Glace Bay.  The first transmission was placed to Signal Hill in Newfoundland, but it was through the efforts of the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia that he got financing to start his venture... He was very grateful to Canada for his start.

On the 20th inst. [December 1901], I received from Ottawa, the following telegram from Mr. W.S. Fielding, Minister of Finance, Canadian Government.

"Much pleased to learn that you contemplated coming to Nova Scotia to continue your experiments in wireless telegraphy.  I assure you of a cordial welcome, and the co-operation of any of the Government officials whose knowledge would be useful to you.  There are no difficulties whatever in the way of your carrying out your operations there."

I replied to this:

"Best thanks to Canadian Government and you for very kind message, and offer of assistance.  Hope to be able to go to Nova Scotia or Ottawa next week.  Shall cable again today."

Gugleilmo Marconi in a letter written about 20 December 1901, in Saint John's, Newfoundland, quoted in In Marconi's Footsteps, 1894 to 1920: Early Radio (book) by Peter R. Jensen, Kangaroo Press Proprietary Ltd. (Australia) 1994 ISBN 0864176074.  Fielding's telegram led directly to the establishment of Marconi's very large radio transmitter at Table Head in Glace Bay, which sent the first trans-Atlantic wireless message in December 1902.

January 1903 — On a barren headland on the eastern shores of Cape Breton, Canada, a few days before Christmas, Guglielmo Marconi exchanged messages of congratulation by wireless telegraph with some of the crowned heads of Europe.  That the brilliant young Anglo-Italian should stand today prepared to transmit commercial messages across the Atlantic, must be regarded as certainly the most remarkable scientific achievement of the year.

"100 Years Ago" in Scientific American, January 2003, page 16

Toward the end of December 1916, I embarked with my family at Barcelona for New York and arrived there early in January 1917.  There I was active in the Socialist Party, mainly in its Russian and German sections, campaigning against the intervention of the United States in the war (World War One) and contributing to the American press.  These activities were brought to a sudden end by the news of the revolution of March 1917, terminating the despotic monarchy of Russia and the career of the Czar.  I left for Europe with my family, on the first Norwegian liner.

At Halifax the British military authorities seized me, together with five comrades, and put me in a Canadian camp for war prisoners as an agitator dangerous to the Allied cause.  After a month of confinement in the company of German workmen and sailors I was released on the demand of the Petrograd Soviet, conveyed through the Provisional Government and its foreign minister, Milyukov.

Lev Davidovich Bronstein, a.k.a. Leon Trotsky, as quoted in the Bridgewater Bulletin, 3 April 1923.  The Bulletin, a weekly newspaper published in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, was quoting from one of his published works, not named. Trotsky (1879-1940) was leader, with V.I. Lenin, of the Russian Revolution, and architect of the Red Army. He was Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs 1917-1918 and Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs 1918-1924. The Provisional Government, which Trotsky referred to, was the short-lived Russian government led by A.F. Kerensky.  P.N. Milyukov was foreign minister in the Provisional Government, March-May 1917.

The police left my wife and children in Halifax; the rest of us were taken by train to Amherst, Nova Scotia, a camp for German prisoners. And there, in the office, we were put through an examination the like of which I had never before experienced, even in the Peter-Paul fortress. For in the Czar's fortress the police stripped me and searched me in privacy, whereas here our democratic allies subjected us to this shameful humiliation before a dozen men. I can remember Sergeant Olsen, a Swedish-Canadian with a red head of the criminal-police type, who was the leader of the search. The riffraff who had arranged all this from a distance knew well enough that we were irreproachable Russian revolutionaries returning to our country, liberated by the revolution. Not until the next morning did the camp commander, Colonel Morris, in answer to our repeated demands and protests, tell us the official reason for the arrest. "You are dangerous to the present Russian government," he said briefly... The Amherst concentration camp was located in an old and very dilapidated iron foundry that had been confiscated from its German owner. The sleeping bunks were arranged in three tiers, two deep, on each side of the hall. About eight hundred of us lived in these conditions. The air in this improvised dormitory at night can be imagined. Men hopelessly dogged the passages, elbowed their way through, lay down or got up, played cards or chess. Many of them practised crafts, some with extraordinary skill. I still have, stored in Moscow, some things made by Amherst prisoners. And yet, in spite of the heroic efforts of the prisoners to keep themselves physically and morally fit, five of them had gone insane. We had to eat and sleep in the same room with these madmen...

Excerpted from Chapter 23, "In a Concentration Camp"
My Life by Leon Trotsky, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1930
Complete text of Chapter 23, "In a Concentration Camp"
    http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/300/nova_scotias_electronic_attic/07-04-09/www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/trotsky1917.html

She doesn't look a day over eighty...
There is something special going on there...
A huge statistical anomaly...

From "Nova Scotia's Centenarian Rate Amazes Experts on Ageing" in the National Post, 1 March 2002. At the top of the article was a group photo of four people taken that week in Yarmouth: Neva Foot, 100; Harry Doane, 100; Ella MacDonald, 102 (she doesn't look a day over eighty); and Delima D'Entremont, 102. The National Post:

There are eight centenarians among 8,000 souls in the fishing town of Yarmouth on Nova Scotia's southwest coast. That's one person aged 100 or older for every 1,000 residents — a huge statistical anomaly that is making Yarmouth, and Nova Scotia in general, the focus of North American medical researchers intent on cracking the elusive secrets of a long life ... Dr. Thomas Perls, a geriatrician at the Boston Medical Center and one of the world's senior experts on ageing, says Nova Scotia has a higher proportion of centenarians than anywhere else in North America, possibly the world ... There is truly a doubling of the prevalence of centenarians [in Nova Scotia] and Dr. Perls says that is probably due to the gene pool. He says research has discounted the theory that a high proportion of very old people is simply the result of young people moving away. "You've got this mixture of Acadians, and people with British roots, and Scots, basically northern European-type stock. Something in that gene pool has produced this — there is something special going on there." He says people need two traits to live to 100: a 'longevity-enabling gene' that delays the process of ageing, and a scarcity of genes that cause diseases such as Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, heart disease and cancer. These traits, he says, are mysteriously common among Nova Scotians, and also among people in the New England states, which are filled with Nova Scotian immigrants. He says most of the centenarians he encounters in New England tell him they were actually born in Halifax ...

As fer as I'm concerned, thems that builds the ship should gets to sails 'er.

Preston Manning, former leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, Ottawa, quoted in the National Post, 10 & 14 June 2000. Mr. Manning made this remark while in Halifax for the second debate, 6 June 2000, among the candidates for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance, a political party. Some Maritimers, including the Halifax Chronicle-Herald editorial writers, were not amused by what they termed Mr. Manning's patronizing attitude.

The countries of the world have never been more accessible, physically and politically. Greater prosperity has brought shorter working hours and more time for leisure. This has been matched by the increasingly sophisticated capability of travel operators to find ways of disposing of our disposable incomes. If you want to go on an ironing holiday in Tierra Del Fuego, a toad-sexing weekend in Nova Scotia, or hop naked across the Matto Grosso whilst being flicked with wet lettuce, there will be a company somewhere that will oblige...

Michael Palin, commenting on "the almost indecent popularity of travel writing," page D15, The Globe and Mail, 4 March 2000. Michael Palin's comic reputation was firmly established by Monty Python's Flying Circus, a BBC television series. Mr. Palin has indulged his wanderlust in three huge adventures: Around the World in Eighty Days, Pole to Pole, and Full Circle, which were enormously successful television series and books.

Welcome to the double-oughts.

Brian Flemming, in his regular weekly column in the Halifax Daily News, 3 November 1999. This is the first use (that I know of) in print in Nova Scotia, of a term to identify the decade 2000-2009. We are familiar with such terms as "the twenties" to identify the decade 1920-1929, or "the sixties" for 1960-1969, but recently there has been an occasional debate about what term might be suitable for the coming decade 2000-2009. Mr. Flemming's column on this day became the first I've seen to use an identifying term for this decade as part of an ordinary sentence (other than a discussion of what term might be suitable). Other suggestions have been "the double naughts", "the double zeroes", "the double ohs", "the oh-ohs", "the naught-naughts", and even "the naughties".

ought and naught both mean zero.
For example, the year 1907 is sometimes read aloud as "nineteen ought seven".

Canada now stands to the United States the way Nova Scotia and New Brunswick stood to the Province of Canada in 1860.  If it made sense to submerge provincial loyalties into a greater vision in the 1860s, it may be that either as a result of a crisis or just as the result of evolution, people will, in the next 20 to 25 years say, "Well, why not have a confederation of all of North America?"

There would be a lot of Canadians for whom this idea ia anathema, and certainly right now, it would be political suicide and it's an idea judged to be on the margins of Canadian political discourse.  But what strikes me is that we are becoming more similar to the Americans in our culture and in our values.  If there are reasons for maintaining a separate country these will need to be better articulated than anybody has been able to do in the last twenty years or so.

I'm not advocating that Canada be swallowed up into the United States.  I'm not advocating that Canada join the United States.  What I am saying is that the way Canadian history has evolved, and is evolving, this is eventually going to become an issue.

Michael Bliss, professor of history at the University of Toronto, in "The Case for a United North America," the National Post, 18 January 2003, page B1.

Number of Commonwealth countries whose citizens can vote in a Nova Scotia election without possessing Canadian citizenship: 53.

By The Numbers: The Nova Scotia Election by Christopher Michael and James Cudmore, in the National Post, 28 July 1999.

I like Canada because it keeps its civil war civil.  French and English, east and west, Canadians seethe and posture and express outrage, stomp on each other's flags, draw a thousand lines in the sand and pass or fail to pass referendums.  The Canadian Civil War has lasted a century and then some, but nobody torpedoes boats, moves troops across borders or gets shot.  Surely, this is the right way to conduct a civil war.

Phil Milner in the Halifax Sunday Herald 29 June 2003, making a comparison with the American Civil War 1861-1865.  Mr. Milner grew up in the United States but now lives in Antigonish County, Nova Scotia.

...As for becoming a "true Antigonisher," I can forget about that.  Everyone knows it takes three generations minimum.

The decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on Quebec's right to secede seems to have been applauded on all sides, without much appreciation for its legal significance.  So perhaps a primer is in order ... The judgment contains a brief political history of the country.  The one fact that stands out is that secessionists won 18 of Nova Scotia's 19 seats in the first federal election after Confederation and 36 of 38 seats in a concurrent provincial election.  There may be an important lesson in the fact that this was not enough.  Nova Scotia was not permitted to leave on the basis it had already assumed obligations to people in other provinces...

Paul Groarke, a lawyer, in the Fredericton Daily Gleaner, 28 August 1998

References:
    http://www.stthomasu.ca/Faculty/groarke/
    http://www.stthomasu.ca/Faculty/groarke/back.htm

The people of Nova Scotia were tricked into this scheme.

Joseph Howe, MP (Member of Parliament) representing Hants constituency in Nova Scotia, speaking on the floor of the House of Commons in Ottawa on the evening of 8 November 1867, during the First Session of the First Parliament, as recorded in Hansard.  Provincial elections held in Nova Scotia in 1867 had swept the government of pro-confederate Premier Charles Tupper out of office.  Anti-confederates not only won 35 of 38 seats in the provincial legislative assembly, but also 18 of 19 Nova Scotia ridings in the federal election of 1867.  Howe was one of those elected as MP at this time, and this statement was part of his speech vehemently explaining his objections to Confederation ("this scheme") made in response to the Speech from the Throne.
    http://www.wwlia.org/cahi1867.htm

A motion passed by the Nova Scotia House of Assembly in 1868 refusing to recognize the legitimacy of Confederation has never been rescinded.  Repeal, as anti-confederation became known, would rear its head again in the 1880s, and transform into the Maritime Rights Movement in the 1920s.  Some Nova Scotia flags flew at half mast on Canada Day as late as that time.

Source: Nova Scotia by Wikipedia

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the gratification expressed by His Excellency, it will not be shared by the people of my province.  They feel they have been legislated out of the Empire by being legislated into this Dominion.  They will read His Excellency's speech with sorrow and humiliation, and not gratification.  The bill was passed in the face of a petition of 31,000 of the people of Nova Scotia.  They did not ask to throw out the bill, merely to delay it until the Nova Scotians had time to pronounce upon it at the hustings.  There is, therefore, on the part of Nova Scotia certainly no room for congratulation for the manner in which it has been treated by the Mother country...

Joseph Howe, MP for Hants, speaking on the floor of the House of Commons in Ottawa, at 7:30pm, Friday, 8 November 1867
See: Nova Scotia Separatists (1867)

In stark contrast to the glowing accounts of the process leading to Confederation found in most school textbooks, the simple truth is that the vast majority of Nova Scotians were violently opposed to the concept.  Citizens of a strong, proud and debt free province, they astutely saw it for what it was: an attempt by the British government to free itself from the onerous cost of maintaining the bankrupt colonies of Upper and Lower Canada by mating them to the vibrant maritime economy.  And mate them they would, regardless of public outcry and oblivious to democratic process.  If this meant that no election or other popular vote would be held on the issue, so be it.

Public displeasure at this treatment was both widespread and imaginative.  July 1, 1867, saw hundreds of homes and public buildings draped in funereal black, while several newspapers in the province published the obituary of "Her Majesty's loyal province of Nova Scotia" and announced the birth of "the infant monster, Confederation".

While the average Nova Scotian may have felt helpless to prevent the proclamation of the British North America Act and the creation of the Dominion of Canada, many of them remained confident that the fight was not yet lost.  Surely, once the democratic will of the people had been demonstrated, the British government would see the error of its ways and rescind the act.  When the results of the first federal election for seats in the new Canadian House of Commons were tabulated, the sentiments of Nova Scotian voters could not have been more clear.  Eighteen of the 19 ridings returned anti-confederate members.  Only Charles Tupper defied the trend, and even then by the slimmest of margins.  The 1867 provincial election showed an identical result, with 36 of the 38 seats in the House of Assembly being captured by anti-confederates.  In both cases, more than sixty per cent of the popular vote was cast in support of candidates opposing the union...

From "Nova Scotia, Cradle of Separatism" by Brian Rafuse, in The Regional Magazine, 25 February 2003.  The weekly Regional Magazine is published by Kentville Publishing – a division of Optipress Publishing Limited, Dartmouth – and distributed as a supplement in the Windsor Hants Journal, the Kentville Advertiser, the Berwick Register, the Middleton Mirror-Examiner, the Bridgetown Monitor, the Annapolis Spectator, and the Digby Courier.

Canada's first separatist was not from Quebec, but from Nova Scotia.  Joseph Howe's pulverizing election victory over Charles Tupper in 1868 was a referendum on a single issue, Confederation.  Howe spent the first year of his administration petitioning the British Colonial Secretary in London to let Nova Scotia out of the 1867 deal.

Bob Rae in the National Post, 10 July 1999.
Complete text of Bob Rae's essay
    http://www.greatquestions.com/e/q1_rae_2.html

I trust Bob will brush up on Nova Scotia history before writing further on such matters.

Like a vast number of Canadians, I like and respect Bob Rae, so I am commenting with sorrow rather than malice when I express astonishment at his lack of knowledge of Nova Scotia history ... It is indicative that even eminent Upper Canadians do not know the history of the Maritimes or understand what we are about ... The only administration that Joseph Howe headed as premier was from 1860 to 1863 ...

Gerald A. Regan in the National Post, 15 July 1999.

More

In other British North American colonies, self-government arrived far more quietly than in an ethnically divided Province of Canada. Nova Scotia, as Joseph Howe himself declared, "achieved a Revolution without bloodshed." There Howe out-talked and out-manoeuvred both Tory opponents and governors alike, as he shaped the solidly popular Reform party; even bringing over John Boyle Uniacke, a formidable Tory leader who became a powerful friend and party colleague instead. Reformers swept the Nova Scotian elections of late 1847. Consequently, in January, 1848, a Liberal party cabinet was called into office: actually, the first responsible colonial government in the British Empire (or any other, for that matter). Uniacke officially became premier, Howe Provincial Secretary, though the key inspiration and achievement remained Howe's throughout.

James Maurice Stockford Careless "Chapter 7: Self-Government and Federal Union: 1841-1867", in Canada: A Celebration of Our Heritage, Heritage Publishing House, Mississauga, Ontario, 1997

The Natural World, Greatest Tides: The greatest tides in the world occur in the Bay of Fundy, which separates Nova Scotia, Canada, from the United States' north-easternmost state of Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Burncoat Head in the Minas Basin, Nova Scotia, has the greatest mean spring range with 14.5 metres 47.5 feet and an extreme range of 16.3 metres 53.5 feet.

Guinness Book of Records, 1975, ISBN 0900424265. Burncoat Head is roughly halfway between Truro and Windsor.  It lies across Cobequid Bay from Economy Point.  By automobile, it is reached along a loop of road which connects with highway 215 at Noel, Hants County.  The official Nova Scotia provincial map book (1979) shows the spelling to be "Burncoat Head" (one "t") located near the hamlet of "Burntcoat" (two "t"s).

Boys, brag about your country.  When I am abroad, I brag of everything that Nova Scotia is, has, or can produce; and when they beat me at everything else, I turn round on them and I say "How high does your tide rise?"

Joseph Howe, speaking to a Halifax audience.  Quoted by Harry Flemming in the Halifax Daily News 30 September 1990.

This is a land where 100 billion tonnes of sea water roll in every 12 hours and 25 minutes, at times the height of a four-storey building.

Jeremy Ferguson, writing about the Bay of Fundy in The Globe and Mail 30 March 1996.

Twelve human generations ago, within sight of this campus, the hands of sturdy French colonists built dykes to reclaim from the muddy tides of Minas the fertile reaches of the "Big Meadow" — Grand Pre.  Twice a day for three centuries the shouldering sea has measured its strength against these humble barricades of sod and earth, and twice a day it has fallen back in baffled retreat.  Cattle still graze peacefully in the fields ... But the sea is not weary.  Its vast impersonal force moves tirelessly to destroy the work of men's hands; and if the dykes are neglected, chaos will come again.

The first five sentences of the address delivered by Dr. Watson Kirkconnell on the occasion of his installation as President of Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, 22 October 1948, as recorded in the Acadia Bulletin, volume XXXIV number 7, November 1948.

..I now beg leave to the state, with regard to 1869, that at seven a.m., on October 5, the moon will be at that part of her orbit which is nearest to the earth.  Her attraction will, therefore, be at its maximum force.  At noon of the same day the moon will be on the earth's equator, a circumstance which never occurs without mark atmospheric disturbance, and at two p.m. of the same day lines drawn from the earth center would cut the sun and moon in the same arc of right ascension (the moon's attraction and the sun's attraction will therefore be acting in the same direction); in other words, the new moon will be on the earth's equator when in perigee, and nothing more threatening can, I say, occur without miracle...

From a letter written by Lieutenant Stephen Martin Saxby and published in Issue No. 13,851 of The Standard, London England, on 25 December 1868, nine months before.  A great storm, now known as the Saxby Gale, swept up the Bay of Fundy on the night of 4-5 October 1869.

Online source:
Weather Prediction in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries: A Canadian Perspective by John D. Reid
    http://www.magma.ca/~jdreid/saxby25dec.htm

My attention has been drawn to a letter of Capt. Saxby, R.N. (Royal Navy), to the Standard of London in which a remarkable atmospheric disturbance is predicted for the coming 5th of October, as the result of the relative positions of the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon, on that day.  It may be remembered that a similar prediction of weather likely to occur about the same period, based on similar reasoning, was given to the world some months ago, by an observer in one of the West Indian Islands.  Other calculations from district sources point to like conclusions... I believe that a heavy gale will be encountered here on Tuesday next, the 5th Oct...

From a letter written by Frederick Allison and published in The Evening Express, Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 1 October 1869, four days before.

Online source:
Weather Prediction in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries: A Canadian Perspective by John D. Reid
    http://www.magma.ca/~jdreid/Express.htm

Not to be greedy, but we will take all of it.

David Tibbets, Economic Development Director for Massachusetts, after Nova Scotia Premier Russell MacLellan made his presentation on Sable Island natural gas at the annual conference of New England governors and Eastern Canadian premiers in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on 8 June 1998, reported by Dale Madill in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, the next day.  Madill's report continued: Premiers and governors are all but climbing over each other to get on the Sable natural gas bandwagon.  "We will take all you can send us," said Mr. Tibbets, who was representing Paul Cellucci, Governor of Massachusetts (and later the United States ambassador to Canada), who did not attend because he was electioneering.  "The more the merrier," Mr. MacLellan said after his presentation. "The more who jump on the bandwagon the better."

New England's energy future leads to this down-at-the-heels village, a place so rural that people stop what they're doing to watch a passing car and whose only store closed years ago. Cable TV and the Internet haven't reached here...

Scott Allen, writing about Goldboro, Guysborough County, Nova Scotia, in The Boston Globe, 21 April 1997.  Allen's article continues:

One of the largest untapped natural gas deposits in North America sits beneath the Atlantic 100 miles offshore and, by 1999, much of it could start flowing to New England... The strategic value of the Sable project is huge.  It would provide a third gas pipeline into New England, as well as a supply much closer than the current sources in Western Canada and the Gulf of Mexico.  In addition, the pipeline would deliver natural gas for the first time to most of Maine...

On the isolated, far eastern shore of mainland Nova Scotia, a gas flare burns brightly atop a tower rising from a sprawling new petroleum plant.  Here in the sleepy village of Goldboro, a community founded on a long-forgotten gold rush, Canada's only offshore natural gas harvest arrives onshore for processing before entering a 1,000-kilometre pipeline to New England.

Less than five years ago, the people of Goldboro and residents in the wider Municipal District of Guysborough, population: 5,000, lived in a blank spot on the map — a place bypassed by highways and by industry, known as the forgotten corner of Nova Scotia.  Today, they are considered the "Sheiks of Nova Scotia," the lucky subjects of a Beverly-Hillbillies-like transformation based on a 1998 decision to bring natural gas from the subsea fields near Sable Island on to Guysborough's turf.  Since 2000, the municipality of Guysborough has been collecting millions of dollars in annual property taxes from the gas plant at Goldboro and the pipeline that threads through the district...

Ricard Foote in the National Post, 5 March 2003

I'm very enthusiastic about Atlantic Canada.  I think its time has come.

Harvey Smith, president of Hibernia Management and Development Company, quoted in the National Post, 4 September 1999.  Mr. Smith was commenting about the economic effects of petroleum developments along the Atlantic coast.  The Hibernia oilfield is jointly owned by Mobil Canada, 33%; Chevron Canada Resources Ltd., 27%; Petro-Canada, 20%; Canada Hibernia Holding Corp., 8.5%; Murphy Oil Ltd., 6.5%; and Norsk Hydro Canada Oil and Gas Ltd., 5%.

This is a project that comes along once in a career ... Here you have the birth of an industry.

Ralph Mayer, manager of construction for the Canadian section of the natural gas pipeline built in 1999 from Goldboro, Nova Scotia, through New Brunswick and Maine to Dracut, Massachusetts.  Mr. Mayer was quoted in the National Post, 4 September 1999.

In ten years we'll produce more conventional oil than western Canada.

Gary Bruce, vice-president of offshore development and operations for Petro-Canada, which has a stake in most of the major discoveries on the East Coast.  Mr. Bruce was quoted in the National Post, 4 September 1999.

It's a world-class petroleum sedimentary basin being administered by hillbilly governments.

A Canadian regulatory official "who did not want to be indentified" commenting on "an intractable boundary dispute" between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland on the location of the boundary between the two provincial jurisdictions in the proposed issuance of drilling permits in the Laurentian sub-basin off Cape Breton Island, quoted in the Halifax Daily News, the National Post, and the Globe and Mail, 6 December 1999.

There is a tremendous demand for natural gas in the Northeastern United States and the closest potential new source now known is the Laurentian sub-basin, located about 150km from the nearest landfall near Louisbourg, Cape Breton Island.  This basin is the focus of the boundary dispute between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.  Nova Scotia Premier John Hamm has said his government is not going to budge on the imaginary boundary line that divides offshore resources between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.  Newfoundland is contesting the location of the existing boundary line, drawn in 1986, which gives the greater share of the ocean floor to Nova Scotia.
[Cape Breton Post, 30 Nov. & 7 Dec. 1999]

The amount of gas off Nova Scotia is simply immense — perhaps the equivalent of the energy needs for all of Canada for six years.

Editorial in the Halifax Daily News, 29 October 1997.

One is left with the impression we'll be not just hewers of wood and drawers of water but passers of gas.

John Reynolds said to laughter from a large crowd at a public meeting in Halifax on 3 December 1996, as reported in the Halifax Daily News the next day.  Reynolds explained that proponents of a Nova Scotia-New England natural gas pipeline have given local markets little attention, and Eastern Canada's natural gas markets may be forgotten in a rush to service the U.S.  The $1,000,000,000 proposal would move as much as 16 million cubic metres a day of natural gas from six fields near Sable Island and ship it to New England markets by December 1999.  Reynolds told a joint federal-provincial panel, chaired by Bob Fournier, the main Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline proposal includes no lines to large Maritimes users.

In Nova Scotia's long, sorry history as a Third World supplicant, the Offshore Gas Review Panel's report stands as a further milestone in the abasement of local interests to the demands of foreign capital.

Parker Barss Donham, in Victory for Mobil, Epochal Defeat for Nova Scotians, the Halifax Daily News, 29 October 1997.  Donham continued:

Nova Scotia is sitting on the largest untapped reserve of natural gas in North America.  This resource gives us a once-in-a-lifetime chance to lever desperately needed industrial benefits for our province.  Doing so will require time, planning, and a supportive regulatory regime.  The federal-provincial Panel ruled out all three this week.

I like the name Kempt Head. Grammatically, it's a lost positive, like gruntled or ept.

Parker Barss Donham, in his regular twice-a-week column in the Halifax Daily News, 30 August 2000.  Mr. Donham was describing the effects of Canada Post's recent decision to change the postal address of his house, from Bras d'Or, Nova Scotia, to Kempt Head, Nova Scotia.  The house was not moved — just the postal address was changed.

I'm one of the lucky ones. Not only will my street address become my official mail address, the "town" in my address will become Kempt Head, where I actually live, in lieu of distant Bras d'Or.

A ship from the 21st Century...

This sounds like a phrase from some science-fiction story about time-travelling tourists from the future coming to 1998 to see what things looked like in the old days.  Instead, it is a direct quote from an official document signed by Angus S. King, Governor of Maine, in Augusta, the state capital, on 21 May 1998, declaring 1998 to be "The Year of The Cat" in Maine.  The Cat is a ferry owned and operated by Bay Ferries Limited, a Canadian company.

Information about The Cat was available
in 1998 at http://www.peisland.com/ferries/me-ns1.htm
and in 1999-2000 at http://www.nfl-bay.com/me-ns.htm

Information about Bay Ferries Limited was available
in 1998 at http://www.peisland.com/ferries/index.html
and in 1999-2000 at http://www.nfl-bay.com/

Just a question, Your Worship: Where has everybody been for the last 86 years?

Bob Harvey, Lower Sackville councillor, speaking to Mayor Walter Fitzgerald during a meeting of the Halifax Regional Municipal Council, as reported in the Halifax Daily News, 20 April 1998.  Now that the movie has made the Titanic fashionable, three levels of government are investing $600,000 in restoring the victims' Halifax graves and maintaining related exhibits, after 86 years of official neglect.

I was churning out the photocopies.  Two historians came over and they started to cry.

Marine historian David Flemming, former director of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, quoted in the Halifax Daily News 24 December 1997, talking about the log handwritten by Marconi operator Robert Hunston in an isolated radio shack in southeastern Newfoundland in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, as radio messages arrived from the sinking Titanic and other ships in the vicinity.  The original log, previously known only to members of the Hunston family, was recently donated to the museum by Molly Russell of Halifax, Hunston's daughter.

How this glorious steamer wallops, and gallops, and flounders along!

Thomas Chandler Haliburton's description, written on board on 3rd April 1839, of the motion of the steamship Great Western at sea, published in Letter-Bag of The Great Western, or Life in a Steamer, William H. Colyer, New York, 1840. In the Preface, Haliburton mentions "personally suggesting the propriety and discussing the feasibility of establishing a steam connection" between England and Nova Scotia.
Haliburton's full text is available online at http://www.canadiana.org/

A few weeks ago I was living with two roommates in a flat, sharing a living room couch.  I'm still busy being a little overwhelmed.

Paul Gauthier, quoted in Fortune magazine, 27 September 1999.  Gauthier, who grew up in Cole Harbour, a suburb of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, at 26 was the youngest of Fortune's list of America's Forty Richest Under Forty, "the first ever ranking of the wired generation's wealthiest." There were two requirements: They had to be under 40 years old as of 1 September 1999, and they had to have earned their wealth, not got it through inheritance.  The wealth of these men (they turned out to be all men) often consisted mainly of shares in high-technology companies, a category characterized by volatility of stock market prices.  As Fortune noted, this "volatility shifted our list daily." Fortune chose Friday, 13 August 1999 as the day for which the wealth assessments would be made.  Gauthier, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Inktomi, came in at number 21 on the list, with a personal fortune of $418,000,000.  (Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Computer, was number one with $21,490,000,000.  Bill Gates had more money than Dell, but at age 43 was too old for this list.) In 1995, Gauthier, then 23 years old, was a grad student in computer science at the University of California at Berkeley.  His graduate advisor was Eric Brewer, an assistant professor.  Gauthier's master's thesis explored the idea of stringing together regular PCs (personal computers) and workstations to make them function like high-powered supercomputers.  To test the new computer architecture in action, they built an Internet search engine — a laboratory exercise that, except for the gathering Internet mania, might have produced no more than a few white papers.  Brewer and Gauthier were aware that the world didn't exactly need another search engine — there were already six up and running — but they felt that their technology was better.  Since it was based on clustered computers, it was faster, more reliable, and more scalable than the competition's.  Their search engine became the foundation of Inktomi, a $6 billion company, named for a Lakota Indian legend about a spider who subdues larger enemies with its superior cunning.  It was released for the first time as Wired's HotBot search site.  Gauthier's passion for computing began with the Commodore 64 his family bought when he was eleven. In the 1990 Cole Harbour high school yearbook, a classmate wrote, "We think Paul will be a computer genius." No kidding. Rumor is Gauthier made several school chums rich by giving them Inktomi shares, but they won't say how much they got.
[The Globe and Mail, 15 September 1999]
[Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 5 November 1999]

No Nova Scotian fell harder and farther than former high-tech wunderkind Paul Gauthier of Cole Harbour.  Gauthier was co-founder of Inktomi, a California company that supplied search engines to some of the World Wide Web's major players, including Yahoo, a contract the company has since lost.  Because Gauthier's wealth, estimated in 2000 to exceed $1.25 billion, was tied up in company stock, as the stock fell so did his worth.  Most recent estimates put him at between ten and twenty million dollars.

A story in the Money section in the Halifax Daily News, 10 December 2002, about the four Nova Scotian names on the 2002 list of Canada's 100 richest persons or families.  Mr. Gauthier, who ranked 27th on the 1999 list of Canada's 100 richest, came nowhere close to making the cutoff for the 2002 list. The list includes all Canadian citizens, regardless of where they live.

He (Gauthier) dropped completely off the radar.  That was the most skocking of the drops that I saw.

Jason Kirby as quoted in the Halifax Daily News, 10 December 2002.  Mr. Kirby is the investment editor of Canadian Business magazine, which compiled the 2002 listing of Canada's 100 richest persons or families that formed the basis of the Daily News story on Nova Scotia's richest people.  There were four Nova Scotian family names on the list: Sobey (62nd), Risley (74th), Bragg (87th), and Jodrey (95th).

What's an inch?

M. Allan Gibson in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 24 December 1998, quoting some teenagers. In an article The Christmas Tree, Rev. Mr. Gibson, recalled some Christmas customs:

Not long ago, our youth group decided to have an old-fashioned Christmas.  The tree was to be decorated in the manner of their grandparents.  It turned out that what they had in mind coincided with my own experience when I was their age.  In those days, when we provided our own entertainment, we made paper chains.  In preparation, I told the young folk to cut the red and green tissue paper into pieces measuring one by six inches and from those strips we would make the links of a chain.  The young people simply stared at one another.  "Come on," I urged, "Let's get busy." Then came the question, "What's an inch?"

(Lunenburg sausage from Nova Scotia) is strong on the herb summer savory and can be grilled like a hot dog or eaten with Lunenburg County sauerkraut or crumbled in a pasta dish that has always been called at our house spagatini Lunenburgesa.

Calvin Trillin in his book Feeding a Yen: Local Specialties from Kansas City to Cuzco, as quoted in a review by Stevie Cameron in The Globe & Mail, 24 May 2003, page D4

Since I live in Nova Scotia in July and August — one-sixth of the year — I have long maintained that (one-sixth of my books should be counted as Canadian content)...

Calvin Trillin in The New York Times Magazine, 12 July 1998.  Trillin made his reputation as a staff writer for The New Yorker. He has a summer home at Port Medway, Queens County.  He continued:

In making this claim, I've taken the low-key approach that might be expected from a literary figure in Canada.  I've simply laid out the math at the heart of it and said, in effect, 'How about it, guys?'

Canada over the last thirty years has been the best place to live since the dawn of humankind.  The best, of all time, anywhere...

Peter and Terry March, in their weekly Ask a Philosopher column in the Halifax Daily News, 7 June 1999. They continued:

These things are hard to judge, and it all depends upon what you value.  We value a society that provides for the physical and emotional welfare of its citizens.  On that scale Canada is not just the best place in the world right now, it's probably the best place ever ... We'll go further: Halifax is among the best cities in Canada in which to live...

Peter March teaches philosophy at Saint Mary's University in Halifax; Terry March is a philosophical counsellor.  Their column this week is titled: "Society Is Not Collapsing, The Evidence Suggests We're Not Going Anywhere in a Handbasket."

It's an awful lot of fun. It's a way of legitimizing thinking like a seven or eight year old.

Andrew Cochran, 45, in The Peter Pan of Theodore Tugboat, the Halifax Daily News, 27 October 1997.  Cochran, the owner of Cochran Communications Inc. and several subsidiary companies, has made a career out of combining youth and television.  His latest coup is having his children's show, Theodore Tugboat, picked up by the PBS network for daily distribution across North America.  He has also produced a 26-episode documentary series, Life on the Internet. Big Harbour, the set used for Theodore Tugboat, is based closely on Halifax Harbour and includes a mockup of Purdy's Wharf, a large building located on the shore of Halifax Harbour in downtown Halifax, where Cochran has ground floor offices overlooking the water.

Halifax harbour is probably one of the most explosives-littered harbours in all of North America.

Lieutenant Commander Jim Hewitt, commander of the Atlantic Fleet Diving Unit, commenting on the two old bombs accidentally scooped up by a dredging company from the bottom of Bedford Basin, quoted in the National Post, 26 April 1999.  The consensus among experts seemed to be they were left over from the First World War.  The discovery of the bombs in the dredged material led to the evacuation of homes and businesses within a one-kilometre radius of the site, and the closure of the busy Bedford Highway for several hours.

Postscript:
One of these old bombs has been identified as an 1860 British artillery shell.  Lieutenant Commander Jim Hewitt said: "It took us a month to track it down." Citadel Hill historian Ron McDonald said the shell could have been meant for use in large muzzle-loading cannons developed to sink iron-clad ships from forts at McNab's Island, York Redoubt, or George's Island.
The Halifax Daily News, 10 June 1999

To decide to remain ignorant and then parade that ignorance is a racist xenophobic slimy ferret-faced weasel kind of a thing to do.

A columnist in the Halifax Sunday Daily News, 12 September 1999, commenting on a paragraph in a column that appeared in the Halifax Sunday Herald, 5 September 1999.  Some people interpret these words as an indication that the Sunday Daily News columnist disagreed with the Sunday Herald columnist.

The 1760 treaty does affirm the right of the Mi'kmaq people to continue to provide for their own sustenance by taking the products of their hunting, fishing and other gathering activities, and trading for what in 1760 was termed "necessaries" ...

Nothing less would uphold the honour and integrity of the Crown in its dealings with the Mi'kmaq people to secure their peace and friendship — as best the content of those treaty promises can now be ascertained...

Justice Ian Binnie writing for the 5-2 majority of the Supreme Court of Canada, 17 September 1999, in acquitting Nova Scotian Donald Marshall Jr. on three counts of illegally catching eels.  Mr. Marshall, 45, a Mi'kmaq Indian, was charged in 1993 with three offences set out in the federal fishery regulations: the selling of eels without a licence, fishing without a licence and fishing during the closed season with illegal nets. He admitted that he had caught and sold 463 pounds of eels without a licence and with a prohibited net within close times. The only issue at trial was whether he possessed a treaty right to catch and sell fish under the treaties of 1760-61 that exempted him from compliance with the regulations.  His acquittal by the Supreme Court has the important legal effect of affirming the continuing validity of the terms of the treaty between the Mi'kmaq and King George II, signed in 1760.
The Globe and Mail, 18 September 1999,
the National Post, 18 September 1999, and http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/1999/vol3/html/1999scr3_0456.html

The starting point for the analysis of the alleged treaty right must be an examination of the specific words used in any written memorandum of its terms. In this case, the task is complicated by the fact the British signed a series of agreements with individual Mi'kmaq communities in 1760 and 1761 intending to have them consolidated into a comprehensive Mi'kmaq treaty that was never in fact brought into existence. The trial judge, Provincial Court Justice Embree, found that by the end of 1761 all of the Mi'kmaq villages in Nova Scotia had entered into separate but similar treaties. Some of these documents are missing. Despite some variations among some of the documents, Provincial Court Justice Embree was satisfied that the written terms applicable to this dispute were contained in a Treaty of Peace and Friendship entered into by Governor Charles Lawrence on March 10, 1760...

Complete text of the Supreme Court decision

They were not people to be trifled with.

Justice Ian Binnie writing for the 5-2 majority of the Supreme Court of Canada, 17 September 1999, in acquitting Nova Scotian Donald Marshall Jr. on three counts of illegally catching eels.  The complete paragraph reads as follows:

The Mi'kmaq, according to the evidence, had seized in the order of 100 European sailing vessels in the years prior to 1760. There are recorded Mi'kmaq sailings in the 18th century between Nova Scotia, St. Pierre and Miquelon and Newfoundland. They were not people to be trifled with. However, by 1760, the British and Mi'kmaq had a mutual self-interest in terminating hostilities and establishing the basis for a stable peace.

Complete text of the Supreme Court decision

I think (the Supreme Court judges) feel that they've stepped in a bit of a cow patty here and are trying as delicately as they can to get their foot out of it.

Someone, identified only as a "court observer who asked to remain anonymous," commenting on the publication by the Supreme Court of Canada of a lengthy clarification to the recent Marshall decision, described by some legal experts as "an unprecedented response to the havoc created in the East Coast fishery by the original ruling," quoted in the National Post, 18 November 1999, in a story datelined at Halifax.

Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden, a great internationalist, was the chief architect of Canada's independence.

Heath Macquarrie, emeritus senator, in a letter to the editor printed in The Globe and Mail on 4 January 2000.

Robert Laird Borden, Prime Minister of Canada 1911-1920, was born at Grand Pre, Kings County, Nova Scotia, on 26 June 1854; he died at Ottawa on 10 June 1937.  He was a leading figure in the achievement of Dominion Status, and in the transition from the British Empire to the British Commonwealth of Nations.  His leadership during World War One was remarkable...
[The Canadian Encyclopedia, Year 2000 Edition, McClelland & Stewart Inc., Toronto, 1999]

We make $200, on j-u-n-k.

Fran Merryweather, "in her barn in Middle Musquodoboit," commenting on the annual Musquodoboit Fifty-Mile Yard Sale, held 11-12 September 1999.

This past weekend was the ninth year for an event that draws thousands of people into the heart of Nova Scotia.  The sale begins — or ends, depending on your point of view — up beyond Upper Musquodoboit, and runs through Middle Musquodoboit, eventually petering out in Musquodoboit Harbour.

Reported in Hagglers and Hoarders Feast on Junk in 50-Mile Yard Sale, in The Globe and Mail, 13 September 1999.

Open bars, illegal as they were, were a facet of life in New Glasgow until 1910.  For another twenty years the were "semi-open".  Thereafter the liquor sellers were classified by the unlovely term of "bootlegger" and sold their wares in assorted dives, blind pigs, joints, and from under the counter in places of business masquerading as legitimate enterprises.  The Scott Act (Canada Temperance Act that became law in 1878) had made the sale of liquor illegal in the period 1878-1910.  The Nova Scotia Temperance Act, 1910-1930, put the liquor traffic underground.  Neither Act stopped the illegal sale of liquor, or more properly expressed, the scope of enforcement of both acts failed to keep liquor from being sold. The rum was distilled in the West Indies, came aboard ship to Nova Scotia ports in five and ten gallon kegs, and, when rum was classified in the public mind as a staple, from the wharves it was hauled openly to the general stores and hotels and taverns.  It was sold openly to consumers, who bought it by the keg-full, or in jugs, in jars, in bottles, in buckets, and dippers.

James M. Cameron in his book About New Glasgow, 1962, Hector Publishing Company, New Glasgow

At Halifax, Dartmouth and on Cape Breton Island, thirsty Nova Scotians queued up on the sidewalk while shutters came down, doors were opened and government liquor stores began to operate for the first time since Nova Scotia formally abandoned Prohibition (in November 1929). Nova Scotia's drought did not pass bloodlessly. At Truro...

"Wet Acadia" in Time magazine, 1 September 1930

In 1915 a schooner, the Gypsum Queen, sank off the Irish Coast during a storm.  The crew took to boats, were picked up by a freighter without loss of life.  Fifteen years later the owner and captain, Freeman Hatfield of Nova Scotia, bobbed up with the story that the Gypsum Queen had been torpedoed by a German submarine.  He claimed indemnity and in 1931 finally got from the Canadian Government $71,276,72.  A year later Captain Hatfield abandoned the sea, went to the U.S., opened a small chicken farm in Candia, N.H... In December 1934 police officers marched up to the door of Captain Hatfield's chicken farm, and arrested him.  The Canadian Government had at long last discovered that the Gypsum Queen was not torpedoed but had foundered in heavy seas.  It charged Captain Hatfield with larceny and obtaining money under false pretenses, and asked for his extradition.  For more than two years Hatfield was held in jail at Manchester while he fought extradition...

Time magazine, 31 May 1937

Source:– http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,847865,00.html

Captain Freeman Hatfield, former skipper of the Nova Scotia schooner Gypsum Queen, is charged with having obtained from the Reparations Commission...

Winnipeg Free Press 17 September 1937

Capt. Hatfield of Parrsboro, N.S., skipper of the vessel Gypsum Queen, found guilty of defrauding the Reparations Commission, and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment.

St. John's, Newfoundland,Daily News 22 September 1937

In Canada, where villages like Swastika, Ontario have been taking patriotic names like Winston (for Churchill), the citizens of New Germany, Nova Scotia, declined to change....

Time magazine, 3 February 1941

The sad-faced, spindly little Negro boy was broke, cold and hungry that winter day in Boston in 1902. He did not even know how old he was (he guessed maybe 16), but he knew well enough why he and his dog had run away from their Weymouth, Nova Scotia home...

"The Tar Baby" in Time magazine, 23 January 1956

I say bravo, Evan Brown.

Wendy Elliott, in her regular weekly column in the Kentville Advertiser, 22 August 2000, commenting on the incident in Charlottetown, P.E.I., on August 16th, when Evan Brown pushed a cream pie into Prime Minister Jean Chretien's face.  Brown was a graduate, about 1997, of Horton District High School in New Minas, Kings County, Nova Scotia.

...Here in the Annapolis Valley those of us who know Evan Wade Brown were not surprised at all (by his action in Charlottetown) ... I first met Evan at the high school drama festival.  He wrote a brilliant play about the tragedy of drugs with strong Shakesperian overtones.  His maturity and intelligence were evident in his script and his behaviour.  Later I discovered that Evan was one of five students in Wolfville living precariously on their own with some financial support from municipal authorities.  I interviewed two of them for a column about living on $250 a month for ten months of the year... Who better to humble the Prime Minister than someone with Evan Brown's background? He is no milk-fed middle class kid.  The boy has learned the hard way how much government bureaucracy cares about ordinary Canadians.  Why should he be respectful and who better to belt than an arrogant head of government? ...

Canada's best-known political protester ... Those who know him paint a portrait of a responsible, knowledgeable and possibly talented young man, with a keen interest in politics and protest.

Jack MacAndrew, about Evan Brown, in The Globe and Mail 18 August 2000. Mr. Brown is originally from Sackville, Nova Scotia, and spent about five years in Wolfville. He attended Horton Academy and Acadia University where he studied English, but left without graduating.

Mr. Aaron Koleszar, an experienced political activist, is Mr. Brown's closest friend on Prince Edward Island.  Mr. Koleszar is a veteran of the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization and ended up on the cover of Time magazine with the foot of a Seattle policeman planted firmly on his neck. He was thrown in jail and charged in that incident, but the charges against him were later dropped.  Mr. Brown had planned to accompany him to a later protest in Washington, but was unable to make the trip.  Mr. Koleszar was conspicuously present when the pie was launched at Mr. Chretien and Mr. Brown was dragged away by the RCMP...

Postscript: The man convicted of assault for shoving a pie in the face of Prime Minister Chretien, has won his appeal against a 30-day jail sentence.  Evan Wade Brown, 24, of Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia, who served eight days in custody before being released pending appeal, was sentenced to time he had already served.
[National Post, 15 December 2001]

It was great. I managed to find tarabish, forty-fives, intervale, and dairy — meaning a convenience store — in one reading of your newspaper.

Katherine Barber, editor-in-chief of the new Canadian Oxford Dictionary, said she took a look at the Cape Breton Post on her plane trip to Sydney Thursday and quickly spotted four Cape Bretonisms.  The Cape Breton Post, Friday, 6 November 1998, reported that Barber was in Cape Breton to deliver the keynote address that evening at the opening session of the annual conference of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistics Association.  She spoke at the Royal Bank Lecture Theatre at University College of Cape Breton. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary is the country's only dictionary of Canadian English, a 1,728 page volume containing 130,000 words, including 2,000 Canadian words and senses.

...That's what it was like here in the last century (late 1800s).  Not only would newspapers conduct trials in their pages but people were freely defamed, libeled, slandered, labeled as scoundrels, swindlers, drunkards, and so on ... No details were spared...

1886 Killing - Trial by Newspaper by Ed Coleman, 12 May 2000, one of his regular weekly columns in the Kentville Advertiser.

When I buy Frank magazine and pass it around, I am doing evil for I am sharing in the sin of detraction and/or calumny [slander]...

Colin Campbell, Roman Catholic Bishop of Antigonish, in his regular column in the Antigonish Casket, 26 December 2001, as quoted in the National Post, 18 January 2002.  The Casket is a weekly newspaper which has been published in Antigonish since 1852.  (The name means "jewel box" or "treasure chest".)

The Atlantic version of Frank – as described in its masthead – "is a magazine of news, satire, opinion, comment and humour published every two weeks" by Coltsfoot Publishing Company in Halifax.
The Ontario edition of Frank is published in Ottawa
    http://www.frankmag.net/

The National Post explained that Bishop Campbell's anti-Frank column began as a discussion of John Walker Lindh, the United States man found fighting with Taliban forces in Afghanistan in December 2001.  Bishop Campbell asked whether Mr. Walker's parents are morally responsible for their son's choices.  After reviewing the Church's teaching on "co-operation" – how people can sin by participating, even vaguely, in the wrongful acts of others – Bishop Campbell turned his attention to Frank magazine: "When I gossip about what's (in) there, the degree of participation can vary greatly," he wrote.  "So what's the degree of participation of John's parents in his journey?"

What Frank magazine has got to do with a nut-bar who hung out in some cave in Afghanistan is beyond me.

The response in Atlantic Frank, 9-22 January 2002 (#368), as quoted in the National Post, 18 January 2002.

So what could be behind Bishop Campbell's edict that reading Frank magazine – let alone buying it and passing it around – makes one participate in the "sin of detraction and/or calumny"? That's libel and slander in the real world, and in Frank's fifteen years there has been but one lawsuit...

Atlantic Frank, 23 January - 5 February 2002 (#369)

Nothing better expresses resistance to arbitrary authority than the persistence of what grammarians have denounced for centuries as "errors". In the common speech of English-speaking peoples — Americans, Englishmen, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and others — these usages persist, despite rising literacy and wider education.  We hear them every day:

Double negative : "I don't want none of that."

Double comparative: "Don't make that any more heavier!"

Wrong verb: "Will you learn me to read?"

These "errors" have been with us for at least four hundred years, because you can find each of them in Shakespeare...

I find it very interesting that these forms will not go away and lie down.  They were vigorous and acceptable in Shakespeare's time; they are far more vigorous today, although not acceptable as standard English.  Regarded as error by grammarians, they are nevertheless in daily use all over the world...

Robert MacNeil in Wordstruck, Penguin Books, 1989.

A charming memoir...In its best pages one can almost whiff the salty tang of fog descending on proud, poky Halifax as winter comes.

Time, 1989, reviewing Wordstruck, by Robert MacNeil.

Responsible for conducting consolidated pretrial proceedings in the Multidistrict Litigation arising from the crash of Swissair Flight No. 111 near Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, on September 2, 1998, the court now considers the motion of defendants The Boeing Company and McDonnell Douglas Corporation, joined by all other defendants, to dismiss all claims for punitive damages as precluded by the Death on the High Seas by Wrongful Act, as amended, 46 U.S.C. app. §§ 761-767 ("DOHSA").  They argue that DOHSA is the exclusive avenue open to plaintiffs for any monetary recovery.  For the reasons that follow, defendants' motion is granted and judgment is entered in favor of the defendants as to all claims for punitive damages.

Decision, dated 27 February 2002, by Federal Judge James T. Giles, of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in Re Air Crash Disaster, Multidistrict Litigation MDL No. 1269, near Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, on September 2, 1998
Source:
    http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions/02D0159P.HTM

A federal judge has dismissed claims for punitive damages for families of victims of the 1998 crash of Swissair Flight 111 off Nova Scotia.  The two rulings by U.S. District Judge James T. Giles, who was assigned to preside over all the lawsuits filed on behalf of some 220 crash victims in federal courts across the U.S., mark a legal setback for the remaining plaintiffs in the case...

News item in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 6 March 2002.  The two rulings are available on the Internet at
    http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions/02D0158P.HTM
    http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions/02D0159P.HTM

I was in Halifax in 1939 for two weeks before our unit sailed for England and my stay was not a pleasant experience.  I have carried an image for the last fifty years of a dirty, down-at-the-heels town I had no interest in ever seeing again.

Jim Coleman, "one of Canada's most gifted writers, who continues to file a weekly column for the Vancouver Province at age 87" quoted by Pat Connolly in the Halifax Daily News, 22 July 2000.  Connolly described how a strongly negative image of Halifax acquired during the years 1939-45 by many servicemen "lingered well beyond the end of the war — memories of an ugly, overcrowded, inhospitable burg passed on from soldier-fathers to sons and succeeding generations." The above comment by Mr. Coleman was an example of this persistent negative image.  Connolly continued:

Sir James did return (in 1989) to find something he didn't expect.  "It's astonishing," he said, "I've been getting up early and walking around what has become one of the most beautiful cities in Canada — the waterfront development, the historic sites, the college campuses, blending of old and new and everything wrapped into an intelligent pace of living.

"I was so wrong for so long about Halifax."

I shipped overseas from this town and vowed never to return to the ugliest, most inhospitable place I had ever seen.  Now, after over fifty years, I'm back to marvel at the beauty, character and friendly faces I've seen walking around for the last couple of days.

The late Jim Coleman, quoted by Pat Connolly in the Halifax Daily News, 20 May 2005.  Connolly described how Coleman, "arguably the most humourous sports columnist of the 1900s (twentieth century)... spent some time in Halifax awaiting an overseas posting in 1943, and thought it a dreadful place he would never visit voluntarily."  Coleman returned decades later to find a place that was far more hospitable than he recalled from wartime days.

If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well.

Donald O. Hebb

A large brain, like large government, may not be able to do simple things in a simple way.

Donald O. Hebb
Donald Olding Hebb (1904-1985) was, during his lifetime, an extraordinarily influential figure for the discipline of psychology. His principled opposition to radical behaviorism and emphasis on understanding what goes on between stimulus and response (perception, learning, thinking) helped clear the way for the cognitive revolution. His view of psychology as a biological science and his neuropsychological cell-assembly proposal rejuvenated interest in physiological psychology. Since his death, Hebb's seminal ideas exert an ever-growing influence on those interested in mind (cognitive science), brain (neuroscience), and how brains implement mind (cognitive neuroscience).  Raised in Marriott's Cove, near Chester, Nova Scotia, Hebb graduated from Dalhousie University in 1925, and in 1936 completed his PhD at Harvard.  Some believe that the stature of Hebb's ideas within psychology and behavioral neuroscience will grow to match the stature of Darwin's ideas within biology.  During his lifetime, Hebb won many honours and awards and held many positions of leadership.  Among these, he was named Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and of the Royal Society (London), he won the APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution (1961), and he served as President of the Canadian and American Psychological Associations. Hebb, a Canadian, was the only APA President (1960) who was not a citizen of the United States. Hebb's book The Organization of Behavior constructed a system of behavior that was based on the physiology of the organism but extended to learning, motivation, perception, affect, and cognition.  Hebb's specific contributions as well as his direct and indirect influences have been frequently recognized in many review articles, symposia and books, and in professorships and prizes which bear his name. In Canada, for example, both the Canadian Psychological Association and the Canadian Society for Brain, Behavior and Cognitive Science award prizes for outstanding contributions to psychological science that are named in Hebb's honour.
Sources:
http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~bbcs99/hebb%20legacy.html
http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~bbcs99/hebb.html
http://www.cwu.edu/~warren/calendar/cal0722.html
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~rsauzier/Hebb.html
http://white.stanford.edu/~brian/readinglist.html
Also see: The Mind and Donald O. Hebb by Peter M. Milner,
      Scientific American, January 1993, pages 124-129

So I reached down, lifted the oars from where they lay in the icy water on the boat's bottom, and squeezed my fingers with all the remaining strength left in them, into a curved position around the oar handles.  My object was to let my hands freeze in that way, so that, after they became rigid, it would still be possible for me to manage the oars.

Captain Howard Blackburn, born on February 17, 1858, in Port Medway, Queens County, Nova Scotia, describing how he narrowly survived the storm of January 25, 1883, on Burgeo Bank; reprinted in shunpiking volume 1 number 9 November 1996.

Percy Langille on Tancook still makes the world's best sauerkraut.

Marq de Villiers, former editor of Toronto Life, in The Financial Post Magazine, July/August 1996, page 44.  Greater Tancook Island lies in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Lunenburg County.  Villiers adds:

The ferry to Tancook Island and back is the best $1 bargain in the Western Hemisphere...

On 15 July 1996, the ferry fare was increased to $5 per person, round trip, still a bargain.

Sure, Peggy's Cove is cute, and Brier Island off the Fundy Shore is wild and wonderful, and Bear River an "alpine village" in miniature (self-described, but not so inaccurately), and Wolfville prosperous and picturesque, and Annapolis Royal saturated with history, and St. Catherine's Beach of Kejimkujik Park as pristine as prehistory.  And sure, the drive around Cape Breton will break your heart with its vistas, and the ferry to Tancook Island and back is the best $1 bargain in the Western Hemisphere and Chester's OK, I guess (at least it has the best bread this side of Paris), but for me, the most stirring sight in all Nova Scotia is coming up over Puffycup Hill past Corkum's Island and seeing Lunenburg across the harbour, spilling down its hillside into the waters of the Atlantic, whence it came.

Marq de Villiers, former editor of Toronto Life, in The Financial Post Magazine, July/August 1996, page 40.

There are more islands in Lunenburg County than there are on the entire west coast of the United States.

Bob Douglas, of the Mahone Bay real estate firm of R.W.B. Douglas & Associates, which has specialized in selling islands since 1969, on CBC Radio's Information Morning, 24 July 1996.

Perhaps the most significant memorial in Canada is the Sir Sandford Fleming Memorial Tower in Fleming Park, across the North West Arm from peninsular Halifax.  This striking monument was unveiled in 1912.  It commemorates the establishment in 1758 of representative government in Nova Scotia and what was later to be the Dominion of Canada.  It reminds us of the part Nova Scotia played in the constitutional and political history of Canada.  The constitutional act which conferred representative institutions upon what were to become Ontario and Quebec dates only from 1791...

Duncan Fraser, in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald 6 July 1996.

Nova Scotia (which, till 1784, included what is now New Brunswick) was the first part of Canada to secure representative government. In 1758, it was given an assembly, elected by the people. Prince Edward Island followed in 1773; New Brunswick at its creation in 1784; Upper and Lower Canada (the predecessors of the present Ontario and Quebec) in 1791; and Newfoundland in 1832.

Nova Scotia was also the first part of Canada to win responsible government: government by a Cabinet answerable to, and removable by, a majority of the assembly. New Brunswick followed a month later, in February 1848; the Province of Canada (a merger of Upper and Lower Canada formed in 1840) in March 1848; Prince Edward Island in 1851; and Newfoundland in 1855.

Eugene A. Forsey in How Canadians Govern Themselves, published by the Government of Canada, Ottawa, 1980, ISBN 0662518322
    http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/idb/forsey/parlgov-e.htm

In 1758, the first elected assembly in British North America met in Halifax.  In 1774, Nova Scotia sent four delegates to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, but the huge British military presence in Halifax kept them neutral (during the American Revolution)...

Robert MacNeil in Wordstruck, Penguin Books, 1989.  In 1758, "British North America" included Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, St. John Island (now named Prince Edward Island), New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.  However, it appears that Mr. MacNeil meant that the first elected assembly in what is now Canada met in Halifax in 1758, because there were earlier elected assemblies in Virginia and perhaps some other British colonies which are now part of the United States.

Nova Scotia ... had not, except for an ineffectual rising or two, joined the revolting colonies (in 1775-1782).  Overawed by British sea power and by the fortress of Halifax, Nova Scotians at first kept quiet, and later many of them even made fortunes privateering against American commerce (during the American Revolution)...

William Lewis Morton, in his article Canada, History of in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, 1975.

The committee, to whom was referred the memorial of Alexander McNutt and others, agents for several townships in Nova Scotia, brought in a report; Whereupon,

The Committee to whom was referred the memorial of Alexander McNutt and others, Agents for several Townships in Nova Scotia, beg leave to report,

That in their opinion it is greatly interesting to the United States of America that Nova Scotia should not remain subjected to the Government of Great Britain, to be used as an instrument to check their growth or molest their tranquillity. That the people in general of that Province have been thoroughly well disposed towards the United States from the beginning of the present war. That they made early application to Congress for direction how they might be serviceable to the Continental cause, offering to raise 3000 men in 10 days. That they have since repeatedly applied for countenance and aid to enable them to assert their Independence. That they have as often received friendly assurances from Congress, tho' circumstances prevented any vigorous efforts in their favor. That they begin now to apprehend the United States will rest satisfied with their own Independence and leave Nova Scotia under British Despotism.

That the Memorialists were sent forward by the people to obtain if possible from Congress some assurance to the contrary, hoping they may not be reduced to seek for ammunition and a guarantee of their freedom in France or Holland. That it wound tend greatly to animate the well disposed in Nova Scotia and to secure the Indians to the United States, as well as to promote desertion from the enemy and facilitate supplies of live stock to the Eastern parts of the Union, if a road was opened through the Country from Penobscot to St. Johns River. That for such a work a body of faithful men strongly interested to accomplish it might be found among those who have been driven by the hand of oppression from Nova Scotia. Your Committee therefore propose the following Resolutions:

Resolved, That Lieutenant Colonel Phineas Nevers and Captain Samuel Rogers be employed to lay out, mark and clear a road from Penobscot river to St. John's river in the most commodious line and in the most prudent manner.

That they be empowered to enlist for such service a body of men, not to exceed 1500.

That fifteen thousand dollars be advanced to them for carrying on the work, for the faithful expenditure of which they shall become bound to the United States in a bond to be given to the continental treasurer.

Journals of the Continental Congress, pages 428-429, April 7, 1779
Source:
    http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwjc.html

Note: In 1779, Nova Scotia covered a much larger geographic area than it now does.  At that time, Nova Scotia included all of what is now New Brunswick and some of what is now eastern Maine. The proposed road "from Penobscot river to St. John's river" would reach deep into Nova Scotia's territory.

When the victorious Ulysses S. Grant, leader of the world's largest standing army in 1864, hinted it might be time to march north (to conquer Canada), the Fathers of Confederation scooted to Charlottetown ... to decide how the British North America colonies could come together to prevent that imminent invasion...

Brian Flemming, in his regular weekly column in the Halifax Daily News, 12 July 2000

Ulysses Grant took over as commander of the Army of the Potomac in March of 1864.

Here lies the body of Bathiah Douglass, wife to Samuel Douglass, who departed this life Octo the 1st 1720 in the 37 year of her age.

Inscription on the oldest English gravestone in Canada, in the Garrison Graveyard at Annapolis Royal.

Here lies Ezekiel Aikle / Age 102 / The Good Die Young

Said to be the inscription on a tombstone in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Kings County, Nova Scotia.

In January 2004, Google reported that this item appears in more than 200 Internet sites.

August ye 16, 1755 — I went with a Small party of men over a Large River Tatmagoush where I Burnt 12 Buildings one of which was a Storehouse with Rum and molasas and Iron ware and another of Rum sugar & molasas & wine and a masshouse I ordered the men to Draw as much Rum as they had Bottles to Cary which they Did and sot fire to the Rest burnt all their vessels and Cannoos Except a Sloop of 70 tuns and a schoner of aboute 30 Loaded for Louisburge with cattle and sheep & Hoggs which was sent to the Bay of verts.

An excerpt from the journal of Abijah Willard ( -1807) an officer in the expedition which captured Fort Beausejour in 1755. In 1930, this journal was transcribed and published in the Collections of the New Brunswick Historical Society from a photographic copy of the originals held in the Nery E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. The diary covers the period from April 9, 1755 to January 5, 1756. The spelling is phonetic...
Source: "A discussion of diaries and journals, Part II" by Sandra Devlin
The Global Gazette, 1 February 1999
    http://globalgazette.net/gazsd/gazsd22.htm

MacLeod piensa pasar más tiempo en Cape Breton
MacLeod thinks to spend more time in Castrates Breton

Alistair MacLeod ... had exceeded the forty years when she was solved to publish his first book ... In spite of its shortage, its work was of so exceptional quality, that it did not happen inadvertent in literary circles ... In all the culture, the oral narrative precedes to the use of the written word.  Before there was Literature, people outside had necessity that they told stories him, in Africa, in America, or Eastern Europe.  The literate can be allowed to tricks and luxuries that are not allowed to the oral narrator.  If you are seated at the top of a rock, in front of people who have let fish or cut firewood to hear what you must say to them, more is worth to you to have something truely interesting that to count, otherwise the public will leave you with two handspans of noses ... For being good, a history does not have why to be true.  The truth can be mortally boring.  The important thing is that when arrives at the reader, history is credible ... Now which is has reached the celebrity and it is on the verge of retiring of his university race, MacLeod thinks to spend more time in Castrates Breton, with the people who live in the places of her childhood.  'I will continue writing, I do not know well what.  Probably another book of stories.' It says it as if it spoke of a very vague and distant project.  It is evident that it is not in any hurry.

Born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, in 1936, Alistair MacLeod moved as a child with his family to Inverness, on Cape Breton Island.  In his best-selling, award-winning novel No Great Mischief, MacLeod focuses his narrative on the rather ordinary family history of one branch of the Scottish clann Chalum Ruaidh who settled in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in 1779.  On 28 April 2001, the National Post reported that No Great Mischief had just been published in Spain, and had been reviewed by El Pais, their newspaper of record.  According to the National Post item, a copy of the Spanish review was sent to McClelland & Stewart, MacLeod's Canadian publisher.  It was translated into English by a machine, rendering interesting results.  The above is excerpted verbatim from this machine translation.

... Sangre de mi sangre es una novela extraordinaria, que ha constituido un éxito internacional, de crítica y de público. En España acaba de aparecer, editada por la editorial RBA. Alistair MacLeod es un hombre de familia, padre de seis hijos, que desde hace 30 años pasa los inviernos dedicado a la docencia, y durante los veranos o cuando goza de un año sabático, se recluye en Cape Breton, la isla donde transcurrió su infancia, y en la que, hace doscientos años, se instalaron sus ancestros. Canadiense de sexta generación, en sus libros evoca el presente y el pasado de los clanes que constituyen su comunidad, un grupo humano que durante siglos mantuvo vivas en el Nuevo Mundo las tradiciones de las Tierras Altas de Escocia, cuando la oligarquía terrateniente puso en marcha una operación de limpieza que obligó a miles de campesinos a abandonar su país de origen. "No eran limpiezas étnicas, sino que obedecían a factores de orden económico. Había un exceso de población, y sobraban trabajadores en el campo. Los terratenientes necesitaban librarse de ellos para dedicarse a otras actividades, como la ganadería lanar y otras industrias agrícolas. En muchos casos, los propietarios ofrecieron costear los gastos de desplazamiento a quienes vivían en sus tierras. Muchos emigraron a lugares como Australia, Nueva Zelanda o Canadá. Las limpiezas alcanzaron el clímax en torno a 1820. Mi familia llegó a Nueva Escocia en 1791. Lo interesante es que cuando las primeras oleadas de gente llegaron a la isla, se encontraron con que la tierra estaba muy escasamente poblada, de modo que en un cierto sentido, en medio de aquellos parajes tan recónditos y solitarios, les resultó posible reproducir un modo de vida prácticamente idéntico al que llevaban en Escocia. Una de las señas de identidad principales se constituyó en torno a la fuerza viva del habla gaélica. En realidad, los habitantes de Cape Breton lograron mantenerse al margen de lo que ocurría en el mundo hasta que estalló la Segunda Guerra Mundial"...

Ahora que ha alcanzado la celebridad y está a punto de retirarse de su carrera universitaria, MacLeod piensa pasar más tiempo en Cape Breton, con la gente que vive en los parajes de su infancia. "Seguiré escribiendo, no sé bien qué. Probablemente otro libro de relatos". Lo dice como si hablara de un proyecto vago y muy lejano. Es evidente que no tiene ninguna prisa. Jamás la había tenido en 65 años, y nada indica que eso vaya a cambiar precisamente ahora.

[Boldface emphasis added]

The story of how I encouraged Alistair MacLeod to finish the novel that became No Great Mischief has taken many turns.  In Nova Scotia, local legend has me flying to Halifax then driving to Cape Breton (soon, presumably, it will be in a storm, with the closed Canso causeway under water proving no obstacle to a wild-eyed publisher) and then rushing on foot to Alistair's writing cabin to wrest the manuscript from his grasp.

Douglas Gibson, McClelland & Stewart's publisher, in the National Post, 16 June 2001, the same day Alistair MacLeod received the International IM-PAC Dublin Literary Award in Ireland.  The $172,000 prize is the world's largest literary award given for a single book.  MacLeod won for his novel No Great Mischief. Mr. Gibson's article was mostly a description of his decade-long struggle to try to persuade Mr. MacLeod to finish his novel.

I try to counter a couple of misconceptions.  One is that people who work with their hands are not as clever as people who work in cubicles.  The other is that people who do not speak a lot are not as clever as people who do.

Alistair MacLeod, as quoted in the Halifax Daily News, 27 September 2002

Celtic music entered the mainstream of popular entertainment when the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem came to prominence some forty years ago.  But we still pronounced it "Seltic" and nobody had ever heard of Cape Breton.  Then John Allen Cameron from Glencoe Station decided to leap over the seminary wall and try for a career in showbiz.  I don't know if this was much of a loss for the priesthood but it certainly was a great gain for the performerhood.  The acknowledged godfather of Cape Breton Celtic music, John Allen inspired legions of successors, many of them Gaelic speakers, to achieve nationwide prominence.  For years we've been hearing Gaelic songs on CBC Radio several times per week sung by the likes of the Rankin Family, the Barra MacNeils and the superb Cape Breton adoptee, Mary Jane Lamond...

"Do you say Seltic or Keltic?" by Robert Nicholson in The Globe & Mail, 21 May 2003, page A18

It's not the Alps, it's not the Rockies, it's not even the Cabot Trail, but the North Mountain of the Annapolis Valley is very accessible but often missed by the many bicycle tourists from the "Boston States" who come this way via the Yarmouth ferries.  No bike trip to the Annapolis Valley is complete without at least one crossing of the North Mountain to a fishing village on the Bay of Fundy...

Is there an easy way over the mountain?  No.  There is always a climb, some harder than others.  The Middleton to Margaretville road is the least difficult.  In general the harder the climb the better the scenery...

The biggest: Central Clarence to Port Lorne (Mount Rose).
Paved for 8km.  Highest point 250 metres.
This is the tallest climb of any paved road on mainland Nova Scotia.  On Cape Breton only two climbs are bigger.  It also has the killer kilometre.  The first km climbs 130 m (i.e. averages 13%) so I think this is the steepest kilometre in Nova Scotia.  There are two switchbacks.  Going south down this is scary.  There is no runout leading to the stop sign at a T junction!  At the fields on the top there is a great view of the Bay of Fundy.

Excerpted from David Dermott's notes for people planning a bicycle trip around Nova Scotia.  These routes were originally described in news-group rec.bicycles.rides in early 1994. (Some details may now be out of date.)
    http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/dermott/nstour/northmtn.html

I must ask how these two departments (of Transportation and Public Works, and Environment) ensure that they are "fully accountable to the public" if the public has no access to the information?

Darce Fardy, Review officer under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, in his Report FI-96-84 dated February 18, 1997, In the Matter of a Request for Review, by Mr. David Farrar of a Decision of the Department of Transportation and Public Works to Disclose Certain Documents. Mr. David Farrar, representing Atlantic Highways Corporation, was opposing the earlier decision of the Department of Transportation and Public Works to disclose to the public the construction specifications for the Highway 104 Western Alignment, which will bypass the existing Highway 104 section commonly known as Death Valley.

Five zero five seven five nine point three eight.

The opening bid, by Halifax real-estate developer George Armoyan in the Bridgewater Court House on 20 February 1997, at the auction of the bankrupt SeaSpa Nova Scotia, which had spent more than $20,000,000 on the construction of a partially-completed luxurious spa on 90 hectares of Atlantic Ocean waterfront property at Aspotogan Peninsula in Chester Municipality, Lunenburg County.  The auction, reported in The Chronicle-Herald the next day, was conducted by Sheriff Bob Brogan.  The bid is remarkable for its precision; it is unusual for a half-million-dollar auction bid to be stated to the precise cent.  This opening bid turned out to be the only bid, and the property was sold for $505,759.38, the amount owing in back property taxes and court fees.

I collapsed in helpless silent laughter one night as I listened to Robert Stanfield on the radio from Nova Scotia.  There had been an election in that province that day, and when the results of the poll were known, Stanfield expressed his satisfaction over the result: the Tories had scored a big advance — they were now the Opposition to the Liberal Government! (The CCF, with a handful of members, had been the Opposition) ... Years afterward, I told him how unutterably funny I had thought his modest boast was that night.

Joseph R. Smallwood in his book I Chose Canada Macmillan, 1973, commenting on his reaction to the Nova Scotia general election of June 9, 1949, when the Conservatives under Stanfield elected 8 MLAs, the Liberals 27, and the CCF 2 (37 seats total).  In the previous election, on October 23, 1945, the Conservatives elected no MLAs, the Liberals 28, and the CCF 2, with the CCF (Cooperative Commonwealth Federation) being the official Opposition (30 seats total).  A bill passed in 1948 had increased the number of MLAs from 30 to 37.

There are mines of coal through the whole extent of my concession near the seacoast, of a quality equal to the Scotch, which I have proved at various times on the spot, and also in France, where I brought them for trial.

This, the first printed report of the existence of coal in North America, appears in the book Description Geographique et Historique des Côtés de l'Amérique Septentrionale, (Description and Natural History of the Coasts of North America) by Nicholas Denys, published in Paris in 1672, as quoted (in English translation) on page 162 of Cape Breton, Canada, at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, by C.W. Vernon, Nation Publishing Company, Toronto, 1903.  Vernon's source was The Coal Fields and Coal Trade of the Island of Cape Breton, by Richard Brown, published in London, 1871, by Sampson, Low, Marston, Low & Searle.  Brown was the general manager from 1828 to 1864 of the General Mining Association, the dominant force in Nova Scotia coal from 1828 to 1900.

Denys (1598-1688), who for several years was Governor of the eastern part of the territory then known as Acadie (Acadia), obtained in 1654 a concession of the whole island now known as Cape Breton from King Louis XIV, with full power to search for and work all minerals, paying one-tenth of the profit to the King.  Denys made no attempt to work the coal seams beyond the taking of small samples, probably for want of a market.

Cape Breton is the first place in North America to be mentioned in the historical record as having deposits of coal, a valuable mineral.  The first report of coal on the North American mainland appears in Description de la Louisiane, nouvellement découverte au sud'ouest de la Nouvelle France, (Description of Louisiana, Newly Discovered to the Southeast of New France) by Father Louis Hennepin, Paris, 1683. Hennepin mentioned a coal mine at Fort Crevecoeur, near what is now Peoria, Illinois.

If you look at the map of Canada and study the mineral portion, you will see that between Winnipeg and Nova Scotia there is apparently very little, if any, coal.

Sir Henry Thornton, President of Canadian National Railways, in a speech before the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, 11 December 1922.

Source:
Sir Henry Thornton: speech at Toronto, 11 December 1922
    http://www.empireclubfoundation.com/details.asp?SpeechID=2069&FT=yes

Reference: Sir Henry Thornton plaque Halifax
    http://ns1763.ca/hfxrm/thorntonh.html

In the following... statement the relative position which the mines of Nova Scotia bear to those of England and Pennsylvania is shown. Comparatively it is unsatisfactory... It shows the indubitable necessity for greater attention being paid to the subject...

Henry S. Poole, Inspector of Mines, in the Nova Scotia Department of Mines Annual Report, 1873:
Tons of coal raised from mines per life lost:
England, 1872:   116,409
Pennsylvania, 1872:   80,762
Nova Scotia, 1873:   14,403

Glace Bay is the end of the road. The main street leads to the Atlantic Ocean and the next stop is Ireland.

Pat MacAdam, in his weekly column in The Ottawa Sun, 23 May 2004.  Mr. MacAdam grew up in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, when it was an active coal mining community.

A story making the rounds was of an "Upper Canadian" couple on their first automobile trip down East. They were intrigued by all the place names that had native Indian roots – Antigonish, Tatamagouche, Shinimicas and Whycocomagh.

Passing through Whycocomagh, they had a mild argument about how to pronounce it. The husband said: "Let's stop this silly bickering. We'll stop for lunch and ask our waitress how to pronounce it."

"Miss, please tell us where we are, how to pronounce it and please say it slowly."

The waitress replied: "Brrrr Grrrr King."

Pat MacAdam, in his weekly column in The Ottawa Sun, 23 May 2004.

It was 1988. There I was, in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street... I was tongue-tied, face to face with one of my heroes and one of the world's dominant politicians. The prime minister was in rare form. She had kicked off her high-heeled shoes. She was prancing around like one of Glace Bay's pit ponies brought out of the darkness and up to the surface when the miners took their annual August vacation...

Pat MacAdam, describing his 1988 meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in his weekly column in The Ottawa Sun, 11 January 2004.  Mr. MacAdam grew up in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, when it was an active coal mining community.

Hold it, Mr. President! Hold it! Isn't it interesting we are together today – you, the son of a peasant shoemaker; Mr. Mulroney, the son of a unionized electrician in a paper mill; Mr. MacAdam, the son of a unionized Cape Breton coal miner, and me, the son of a butcher from small town Nova Scotia?

Robert Coates, MP and President of the Progressive-Conservative Party of Canada, interrupting a speech by Nicolae Ceausescu, tyrannical ruler of Romania, at a meeting in Bucharest in 1980, as described by Pat MacAdam in his weekly column in The Ottawa Sun, 1 February 2004. Also present at that meeting were Brian Mulroney, president of Iron Ore Company of Canada, and Mr. MacAdam. "Ceausescu positively beamed and Marx and Engels were forgotten... The twenty minutes we expected with him stretched into a full hour..."

For the boy fresh to the mine, a coal mine would be a very dark and black place. The lighting would have been minimal. You would have carried your own lantern in desperate hope that the light in your lantern would not go out. Mines would have had their own peculiar set of noises — the noise of the steam pumps, the noise of the hoist, the noise of the intermittent explosions as miners set an explosive charge to break some coal off at the coal face. Rats were commonly found in mines, so the boy would hear the scurrying of these rats.

I think especially with trapper boys, they would spend time very much alone and that is what they found most difficult — those first weeks in the mine, they were very much alone. They were put alongside this door in the mine and they might have somebody come along and have to open the door only once every 15 or 20 minutes. It would have been frightening for them. That is what most boys remember — how intimidating they found the mine in the first weeks. What you have to bear in mind, too, is that they are taken into the mine, they are put on this elevator hoist and then they are dropped onto the earth. In large mines it might take five or ten minutes or more for people to actually get to the bottom of the hoist, you know, at which point they get off into the dark and are brought to some point along the underground road and left all by themselves...

When Boys Mined Coal, interview with Robert McIntosh, Ph.D.,
    http://www.pitpony.com/movie/whenboysminedcoal/mcintosh.html
Reference:
Cochran Entertainment Incorporated website   http://www.pitpony.com/
Robert McIntosh, an historian with The National Archives of Canada, has written and been published extensively on labour history, including such topics as the work of seamstress in the textile trade. With Del Muise, he was co-author of Coal Mining in Canada published by the National Museum of Science and Technology. His research on boy miners formed his doctoral dissertation at Carleton University.

Between 1922 and 1932, Dosco (the Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation, then the largest coal-mining company in Cape Breton) imposed wage cuts totalling 45%, while evicting families of miners who protested. On several occasions, Ottawa dispatched machine-gun-equipped troops (to Cape Breton) to put down the resulting strikes. Generations of miners had their working lives cut short by accidents and disease. More than 2,600 men and boys died in Nova Scotia coal mines between Confederation and the 1992 Westray explosion.

Parker Barss Donham, in a November, 2000, National Post review of the book Boys in the Pits: Child Labour in the Coal Mines, by Robert McIntosh, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000.
Source:
    http://mix.twistedpair.ca/pipermail/parker-l/2000-November/000254.html

After four months of listening to Mr. Shannon's numbers, which have changed several times, it would take a giant leap of faith to blindly give credibility to any of Devco's present numbers without detailed financial data to back up the speculative projections they have made.

Senator Bill Rompkey, Chair of the Special Senate Committee on the Cape Breton Development Corporation, speaking in Ottawa, Tuesday, May 28, 1996, during a meeting of the Committee, which was studying the annual report and corporate plan of the Cape Breton Development Corporation (DEVCO) and related matters. Mr. Joe Shannon was President of DEVCO, and Chairman of the DEVCO Board of Directors.
Source: http://www.parl.gc.ca/english/senate/com-e/devc-e/02evb-e.htm

(Q.) Tell me about your mine inspectors in England, what kind of people are they?

(A.) Well, pardon my expression, usually bastards.  And I mean that in the nicest possible sense; it's a professional requirement to be an inspector.

(Q.) Yeah.

(A.) We have a — we call the place they have to go for their training "Awkward School" because they come back the most ornery, awkward sort of people you could ever wish to meet which makes them very persistent, very nosy, and very sort of, you know — I forget — I can't think of a phrase for it, but getting to the bottom of everything.  You know, investigative sort of attitude.  Believe nothing, question everything, check everything.  Not all inspectors, some inspectors are better than others, but that is the general type of inspector we get ... I went to awkward school, but I never became an inspector ... People often say I would have made a great one, you know, because I'm such a nosy bugger...

Andrew Liney testifying under oath, answering questions put by John Merrick on Day 19 of the Westray Mine Public Inquiry, Stellarton, Nova Scotia, 16 January 1996, as recorded in the official transcript.  Mr. Merrick was the Solicitor for the Inquiry Commission, and Mr. Liney was testifying as an expert in coal mine ventilation.
Mr. Liney's testimony is available online at http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/300/nova_scotias_electronic_attic/07-04-09/www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/960116pm.html

(Q.) The flink, is it?

(A.) The flink.

A witness, testifying under oath, answering a question put by Commissioner Peter Richard on Day 21 of the Westray Mine Public Inquiry, Stellarton, Nova Scotia, 18 January 1996, as recorded in the official transcript.  "Flink" was the vernacular used by construction workmen to identify the Confederation Bridge; in the early stages of planning it was not known whether a bridge or a tunnel would be the best option for this transportation infrastructure linking Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, and the Federal Government called tenders under the generic term "Fixed Link" to keep the options open until detailed engineering and financial studies could be completed by the companies interested in bidding for the work.  This generic term stuck to the project long after it was decided that a bridge would be built, not a tunnel.  This point came up in the Westray Inquiry only because one of the Westray miners had previously worked on the flink construction job.

That crowd over there agreed to give Clifford Frame the following arrangement. They would buy 150,000 tons of coal if it stayed in the ground. Now let's work our way through that now at $51 a ton. We were assured in the House over and over again (Interruptions) The member for Hants West is awake and I am thankful for that. Let's consider 150,000 tons at $51 a ton every year. Now the interesting part, let's consider Mr. Frame, a shrewd operator it turns out. If he didn't dig the coal he would get $51 a ton. If he dug the coal, now take the labour costs, the risks and all of the other things, and he would get less than $51 a ton. Now Clifford Frame could figure this out, he would say, let's see, if I leave it in the ground I get $51 a ton, if I mine it, I get less than that and it costs me money to do it...

If they stopped not digging it, how would they know they were taking the day off? We had a discussion in this House one day in which the government was charged with, maybe next year they wouldn't dig the same ton of coal and get paid twice for not digging it. They told us no, that there is a map and they are able to indicate that as they move from a block of coal they don't dig this year and a block of coal they don't dig this year, then they know which block of coal they didn't dig...

John MacEachern, MLA for Cape Breton East, speaking on the floor of the Nova Scotia Legislature on 9 December 1997, during a discussion of the controversial "take or pay" clause in the contract between the provincial government and Westray Coal Inc.  The complete text of Mr. MacEachern's remarks is recorded in Hansard at page 1024.
    http://www.gov.ns.ca/legi/hansard/han56-6/h97dec09.htm#[Page 1024]

In all the governments I have dealt with, and I've worked for five Prime Ministers, the activities or the manner in which the Prime Minister's Office represents itself is uniformly the same.  It is — never say no.  I mean you do not want to author an opinion that the Prime Minister said no, when he has had no involvement, where there has been no basis for suggesting that that was his position.  You can say "maybe", you can say "tomorrow", you can say "not as much", "over a longer period of time", "let's review it further", but you simply don't declare yourself as saying that, somehow, an opinion was associated with anybody at the bureaucratic level that the Prime Minister has said no, because he is hectored by everybody, all the time — his ministers, and special interests who are pleading for support — and if he begins to be portrayed as favouring some ministers or some interests over others, you can imagine what rabbits you would send running on all sorts of issues, and what issues there would be in terms of cabinet solidarity and cabinet confidences.  So Prime Ministers remain studiously above the fray... I sat there, at the top, and was aware of this very very careful position that the Prime Minister's staff and the Prime Minister himself took, and he's no different than other Prime Ministers.

Harry Rogers, former Deputy Minister of the Department of Regional Economic Expansion, Ottawa, in testimony during Day 61 of the Westray Mine Public Inquiry Commission, 21 May 1996, at Stellarton, as recorded in the official transcript.
This part of Mr. Rogers' testimony is available online at http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/300/nova_scotias_electronic_attic/07-04-09/www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/960521am.html

Clifford Frame ... was personally abrasive and abusive, and a very difficult and unattractive person to do business with — probably the most offensive person I have met in business or in government.

Harry Rogers, former Deputy Minister of the Department of Regional Economic Expansion, Ottawa, in testimony during Day 61 of the Westray Mine Disaster Public Inquiry Commission, 21 May 1996, at Stellarton, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, as recorded in the official transcript.  Mr. Frame was the chairman and largest shareholder of Curragh Inc., owner and operator of the Westray coal mine.  Here, Mr. Rogers was responding to questions by Mr. John Merrick, solicitor for the Westray Mine Public Inquiry Commission.
This part of Mr. Rogers' testimony is available online at http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/300/nova_scotias_electronic_attic/07-04-09/www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/960521am.html

(Q.) Mr. Rogers ... You used a number of adjectives yesterday when you were asked to describe your impression of Mr. Frame and I caught "abusive, abrasive, unpleasant" and "offensive," among others.  What was the context in which you derived that opinion of Mr. Frame?

(A.) Well, in direct consultations with him.

(Q.) What was going on? I mean, how – what was the behaviour that brought about your assessment?

(A.) Just what I said, abusive, and offensive, and rude, and denigrating.  I can't elaborate further, except that that was my experience.

(Q.) These were in the negotiations you were having...

(A.) On the occasions that we met...

(Q.) Was he trying to bully you?...

(A.) Yes.

Harry Rogers, former Deputy Minister of the Department of Regional Economic Expansion, Ottawa, in testimony during Day 62 of the Westray Mine Disaster Public Inquiry Commission, 22 May 1996, at Stellarton, as recorded in the official transcript.  Here, Mr. Rogers was responding to questions by Mr. David Roberts, solicitor for the United Steelworkers of America and the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour.
This part of Mr. Rogers' testimony is available online at http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/300/nova_scotias_electronic_attic/07-04-09/www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/960522am.html

These are the people the government picked to watch over us.  God help us all.

Colleen Bell, commenting on the testimony, given to the Westray Mine Public Inquiry Commission, by Nova Scotia government mine inspectors Albert McLean and John Smith.  Reported in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald 16 May 1996.  Ms. Bell is the sister-in-law of coal miner Larry Bell, who was killed in the explosion in the Westray Mine, 9 May 1992.

Mr. Cameron's testimony was an embarrassment and a disgrace.

The lead editorial in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald 29 May 1996, commenting on the appearance of Donald Cameron before the Westray Mine Public Inquiry Commission in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, on 28 May 1996.  Cameron was the Premier of Nova Scotia on the day the Westray Mine exploded, and, as a member of the provincial cabinet, had been deeply involved in the negotiations which led to the establishment of the Westray Coal Mine.
Mr. Cameron's testimony is available online at http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/300/nova_scotias_electronic_attic/07-04-09/www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/960528am.html

The politics of coal is the politics of regional disparity.  It is the politics of subsidy, subvention, soot, grime, black dust and danger.  And somewhere, under all this, there is profit for some and a livelihood for many...

Dalton Camp, commenting in the Halifax Daily News, 6 June 1996, on the Westray Mine Public Inquiry Commission's investigation of the events leading to the Westray Mine Disaster.

...a masterpiece of clarity, forthrightness, wisdom and compassion...

Appraisal of the Executive Summary of Justice K. Peter Richard's Report on the Westray mine disaster, in Review of 1997 Events in Corporate Ethics by David Selley, in Management Ethics, Jan-Feb 1998.  Mr. Selley is past-chair and a director of the Canadian Centre for Ethics and Corporate Policy and a consultant in auditing standards, methodologies and techniques.
Source: Management Ethics, Jan-Feb 1998
    http://www.ethicscentre.com/janfeb98.html

They promoted it [the Westray coal mine] as the alternative energy source for the Province of Nova Scotia, low sulphur coal to replace high sulphur coal. In fact, the day of Trenton 6 opening, Premier Cameron cut the ribbon and stated, "Look, no smoke coming, clean Pictou County coal," being well aware that it was Cape Breton coal they were burning because they had not delivered any coal from Westray to the site as of that time.

Robert Burchell, testifying under oath during Day 44 of the Westray Mine Disaster Public Inquiry Commission, 3 April 1996, at Stellarton, Nova Scotia, as recorded in the official transcript.  Trenton 6 was the Number Six generating unit at the Nova Scotia Power Corporation's Trenton Generating Station in Pictou County.
Mr. Burchell's testimony is available online at http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/300/nova_scotias_electronic_attic/07-04-09/www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/960403pm.html

Nova Scotians do not live in a resource-based economy — far from it.  Only a shrinking six per cent of Nova Scotia's economy is based on fishing, farming, mining and forestry.  Most Nova Scotians think our economy is the way it was when Angus L. was premier.  Don't be fooled.  It isn't.

Brian Flemming in the Halifax Daily News 28 July 1999.

Angus Lewis Macdonald was Premier of Nova Scotia
5 September 1933 to 10 July 1940,
and again 8 September 1945 to 13 April 1954.

In Nova Scotia, natural resources, including the highly profitable fishery, represent considerably less than ten per cent of economic activity, while such sectors as manufacturing, information technology, the Port of Halifax, and knowledge-based industries, are more important.

Brian Lee Crowley, president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, an economic and social-policy think-tank based in Halifax, in his regular twice-a-month column on the Commentary Page of The Globe and Mail, 20 August 1999.

Mr. Crowley's article was cached in the Google search engine at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.aims.ca/cayonews/aug2099.html

The nicest man who ever axed an entire workforce.

The Times of London, referring to Sir Graham Day, as reported by MacLean's, 1 July 2001.  Graham Day grew up in Halifax and now (2001) lives in Hantsport, Nova Scotia.  In 1983, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher "lured him back to London to privatize ailing British Shipbuilders.  After massive layoffs, he turned the company around, a feat he repeated three years later at auto manufacturer British Leyland", according to MacLean's.

Born in Halifax, Sir Graham graduated from Dalhousie University Law School in 1956. He is the former chairman of Cadbury Schweppes, PowerGen, British Aerospace, British Shipbuilders and British Leyland.  In 1993, he retired as chairman of Cadbury Schweppes and PowerGen, both Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 companies. As chairman of PowerGen, he led the company's privatization. From 1983 to 1986, he was chairman and chief executive officer of British Shipbuilders and from 1986 until 1991, he was chairman of the Rover Group. He led restructuring and privatization moves for both these companies.  He has served the United Kingdom government on the policy board of the National Health Service set up to help introduce reforms and as the first chairman of the School Teachers' Review Body which recommends pay and conditions for 450,000 teachers in England and Wales. He was knighted in 1989 by Queen Elizabeth II.

Given the turn of events and lack of confidence of the government, we feel we have no option but to resign.

Sir Graham Day, of Hantsport, speaking on behalf of the board of directors of Hydro One, as reported on 5 June 2002 in the National Post and the Halifax Daily News. Until June 4th, Sir Graham was the Chairman of Hydro One Incorporated, a large electric utility company owned by the Ontario Government.  The National Post article: "What was supposed to be the largest privatization and initial public offering (of company shares) in Canadian corporate history has turned into corporate soap opera..."

Hydro One Inc. is one of the ten largest electric utilities in North America.  With 28,500 kilometres of transmission lines and 113,000 kilometres of distribution lines, Hydro One Networks, a subsidiary of Hydro One Inc., delivers electricity to almost one million retail customers, over 100 direct industrial customers and over 200 municipal utilities throughout the province of Ontario.
Source:   http://www.hydroone.com/pdf/Connecting_Brochure.pdf

The Ontario Government forced the resignation of Hydro One's Board of Directors yesterday [June 4th] in a bitter showdown over executive salaries.  The move effectively killed the largest share offering in Canadian history.  The twelve directors quit during a conference call less than an hour after Ontario Energy minister Chris Stockwell introduced legislation to fire the Board and renegotiate executive compensation...

The Hydro One directors ... quit before they were fired.

The Globe and Mail, 5 June 2002

Members of the board of Hydro One, a distinguished group of business executives and conscientious professionals headed by international business heavyweight Sir Graham Day, took the only noble action they could under the circumstances.  They quit before the bill firing them could pass ... Sir Graham Day, paid $250,000 a year, will move on to his duties at other boards, no doubt contemplating the difference of dealing with a politician of principle – he headed privatized companies in England under Margaret Thatcher – and the sorry collection of wimps he was dealt in Ontario ... There is no scandal, no malfeasance, no crime, no wrongdoing, no evidence of misconduct, no signs of incompetence, no deception, no breach of any rule, no contravention of any law or regulation.  Nothing.  But the government (of Ontario) is treating it like an Enron...

The lead editorial, page FP15, by Terence Corcoran, in the Financial Post, (published daily as a special section of the National Post) 6 June 2002

Sir Graham Day lives in Hantsport, Nova Scotia.

Hon. Mr. McKinnon asked to be excused from voting; he had voted last year without understanding the question and if he voted this year he would be compelled to contradict himself. The hon. gentleman was excused. The bill then passed.

Mr. McKinnon made this request on 16 April 1885, while speaking on the floor of Nova Scotia's Legislative Council, commonly known as the provincial senate.  It is recorded on page 80 of the 1885 section, in Debates and Proceedings of the Legislative Council of Nova Scotia, 1883-90, the printed official transcript (Hansard) of debates there.  (I have no information on Senator McKinnon, and do not know what district he represented.) In the 1880s, the official transcript of debates in this chamber were written in the third person, in contrast to the modern practice of writing Hansard in the first person.  On May 31st, 1928, Nova Scotia's Legislative Council was abolished.

Mr. Speaker, I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas "Bu, shi shi" means, "No, thank you" in Mandarin Chinese and "La, shukren" means, "No, thank you" in Arabic; and

Whereas "No, thank you" is "Nie, Dzienkuje" in Polish, "Nee, dyaku yu" in Ukrainian and "Nyet, spasibo" in Russian; and

Whereas "Chan eil tapadh, leat" means "No, thank you" in Gaelic, according to the honourable member for Victoria;

Therefore be it resolved that this resolution establishes in six well-known languages other than English the appropriate response to Tory meowings for votes that may be expected in the near future, shortly after the mail brings the $155 cheque.

Paul MacEwan, MLA representing Cape Breton Nova, presenting Resolution #460 in the Nova Scotia Legislature on 8 April 2003, as reported in Hansard at page 626.  In effect, Mr. MacEwan was commenting on the recent proposal by the government to mail a rebate cheque for $155 to each person who had paid Nova Scotia Income Tax for the year 2002.

Source: Hansard for 8 April 2003
    http://www.gov.ns.ca/legislature/hansard/han58-3/house_03apr08.htm

Hansard did not attempt to reproduce the Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Polish, Ukranian, and Russian characters that Mr. MacEwan thoughtfully included in his resolution as presented in the Legislature (see below).

Resolution 460 complete (including the non-English characters)

To try and understand the formula of equalization, the previous minister (of Finance, Bernard Boudreau) spent a lot of time on this and after three years he confessed to me that he still didn't understand the equalization formula and I would defy anybody over there to do the same. It is an intensely complicated one that depends upon the prosperity of the three main provinces and the incomes that happen in this province... How it will drop and when it will drop will be based upon the formula that I believe only one person in Ottawa, who is an Executive Director of some department that nobody even knows, is able to produce...

John Savage, Premier of Nova Scotia, explaining the Equalization Formula to the Legislature on 27 November 1996, in response to an oral question asked during Question Period by Robert Chisholm, leader of the NDP.  The complete text appears in Hansard at http://www.gov.ns.ca/legi/hansard/han56-4/h96nov27.htm#[Page 2484]

Throughout our long history, Nova Scotia premiers have been the good, the bad, and the utterly forgettable.

Harry Flemming in the Halifax Daily News, 30 September 1990.
On that day, the premier's office was occupied by Roger Bacon.

Politics is the art of doing the impossible, with the unwilling, for the ungrateful.

Mark Parent, Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) of Nova Scotia, representing the district of Kings North, quoted in the Halifax Daily News, 2 October 1999.

In Dr. Hamm, the Tories presented someone who looked and sounded like a mixture of television's Marcus Welby and Robert Stanfield, the former Nova Scotia premier and national Tory leader who elevated laconic speaking to an art form. Dr. Hamm could deflate immediately the most uplifting political text, but therein, perhaps, lay part of the secret of his political success...

Jeffrey Simpson in The Globe and Mail, 29 July 1999, commenting on the result of the provincial general election of June 1999 that put the Nova Scotia Conservative Party in control of the government, with Dr. John Hamm as the new Premier.

More than any other province, Nova Scotia is governed by an establishment, an old-money, old boys' network, comprised mostly of lawyers ... On the whole, Nova Scotia is governed with little flair or imagination, and quite possibly is governed more ineptly, although in a sedate way, than any other province but British Columbia...

Syndicated columnist Richard Gwyn in the Halifax Sunday Herald 1 August 1999.

If the public wants to get the information — it may be cumbersome, or it may be hard for them to get — but it's not that it's not accessible.

An elected member of the Halifax Regional School Board, quoted in the Halifax Daily News, 31 October 2001, explaining why she voted against a proposal to make School Board members' expense accounts available to the public.

Expensive, distasteful, and occasionally criminal...

Description of Nova Scotia's system of political patronage, by Stephen Kimber, in his regular column in the Halifax Daily News, 11 July 1997.

The outstanding instance of family connection was the Gerrish - Brenton - Halliburton - Stewart - Cochran - Hill - George - Collins group which contributed eleven (or about one-fifth) of the Councillors appointed prior to 1830, and was the closest Nova Scotia came to having a family compact. Its most distinguished member, Brenton Halliburton, belonged to a Council in which his father, two uncles, two brothers-in-law, his father-in-law, son-in-law, aunt's brother-in-law, brother-in-law's father-in-law, and the latter's brother-in-law, all held seats at one time or another, and five of whom were members at the same time.

J. Murray Beck's description, in his book The Government of Nova Scotia, University of Toronto Press, 1957, of the membership of the Council, an influential part of the government of Nova Scotia for many years beginning in the 1750s.  The Governor, in many matters, was legally required to act by and with the advice of the Council (which meant that the Council made many of the decisions and the Governor was bound to do what the Council wanted — the Council was, in effect, the Government much of the time).  In addition to its capacity as advisor to the Governor, the Council acted as the Upper House of the Legislature.

A genealogist could, with two or three exceptions, link together (by family relationships) all the Councillors between 1760 and 1830.

We're importing a lot of brains and some goes and lives in the United States and other come to Canada, but there's less now than there was years ago.

Prime Minister Jean Chretien speaking in Halifax on Monday, 16 August 1999, quoted in The Globe and Mail on Saturday, 21 August.  The Prime Minister was in Halifax that week for the Liberal Party's annual summer caucus retreat, and was responding to a reporter's question about the "brain drain," or flow of skilled workers out of the country, particularly to the United States.  Paul Adams, the Globe's reporter at the scene, wrote: "Mr. Chretien has — how can I say it — his own special way with words ... his grammar and syntax are often so fractured that he is difficult to understand, even unintelligible, at times." Mr. Chretien's statement was quoted "as nearly as I can render it in print."

The same quote — word for word — appeared in Peter C. Newman's New Year column 2000: The Year the Music Died in the National Post, 30 December 2000.

He didn't know how to work a mouse.

Peter C. Newman in the National Post on 20 November 1999, describing Prime Minister Jean Chretien's behaviour in Halifax on 27 May 1997.  Mr. Newman's paragraph read as follows:

...Seldom was Mr. Chretien's own alienation from modern paradigms and their technologies more evident than on the morning of May 27, 1997, just ten days before the last general election, when he was in Halifax, at a recently-completed virtual-reality laboratory.  The idea was that the PM would sit behind a computer, move his pointer to a pre-programmed icon, click, and that would officially inaugurate the high-tech installation.  Small problem.  The Prime Minister didn't know how to work a mouse.

The politically most important byelection in Canadian modern times is about to take place in the Nova Scotia constituency of Kings-Hants on September 11, 2000.  It will determine the immediate fate of the Progressive-Conservative Party and perhaps that of the country itself...

Harry Flemming, in the Halifax Daily News, 10 August 2000.  Mr. Flemming — long recognized as a knowledgeable political commentator — argued that this byelection is the most important in Canada since that of February 9th, 1942, in the Toronto riding of York South.

That's an interesting date, September 11, 2000.  One year later, to the day...

There is an outside chance Joe Clark could lose the byelection in the Nova Scotia riding of Kings-Hants, a riding chosen in part because of its deep Tory roots.  Strange things sometimes happen in byelections, especially those involving party leaders. One of Mr. Clark's predecessors as Conservative leader, Arthur Meighen, ran in a "safe" Tory riding in Toronto in 1942 with no Liberal opponent but was defeated by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation...

Hugh Winsor, in The Globe and Mail 18 August 2000.

Hemp.

Alex Neron, candidate for election as a Member of Parliament in the Nova Scotia constituency of Kings-Hants, quoted in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 9 September 2000, two days before the election.  This was Mr. Neron's entire reply to the question "How can you protect the future of the riding's agriculture sector?" This question was number six in a list of ten questions the newspaper sent to each of the five candidates in this byelection; their responses were published in this issue.  The other replies to this question were less succinct.

First indication I've seen that Mad Cow disease has had an effect in Nova Scotia.

Al Hollingsworth on MITV's Critics Corner 25 March 1996, commenting on Premier John Savage's decision to appoint Gerry O'Malley as Minister of Science and Technology in the Nova Scotia government.  At the time, the office of the Minister of Science and Technology had a webpage, installed and maintained by civil servants (there being some doubt that Mr. O'Malley knew what a website was) at http://www.gov.ns.ca/tss/minister.htm

Very simply, you in Nova Scotia had the worst government I have ever witnessed in this country.

Frank McKenna, Premier of New Brunswick, speaking at a Nova Scotia Liberal Party fund-raising event, as reported in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 2 December 1996.  The same quote appeared again on page A1, the front page, of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 17 April 2006.  McKenna, a Liberal, was referring to the government of (later Senator 1990-2006) John Buchanan, a Conservative, who was Premier of Nova Scotia 1978-1990.  The 1996 article continued:

He said the Buchanan years — marked by high unemployment, a single-year defecit of $617,000,000, and piling up of an $8,000,000,000 debt — were an example of "an abject abdication of responsibility".

Our electoral history is packed with all kinds of weirdness.  Cape Bretoners, for example, were once denied the vote — for 67 years.  This may seem funny now, but it wasn't at the time.  It's one of many examples where Canadians were forbidden to vote because of race, religion, mother tongue or gender.  Women were granted the vote in Canada only in 1921.  Race remained a restriction for Japanese until 1948, and for natives until 1960 (until then, natives were allowed to vote only if they gave up their treaty rights and Indian status).  The last people to be denied because of religion were Doukhobors, in 1955.

At the time of the founding of Halifax, in 1749, the only people who could vote were white Protestant men who owned land.  An oath denouncing Catholicism disenfranchised Catholics.  Jews were excluded by an oath including the phrase "upon the true faith of a Christian." When Cape Breton became part of Nova Scotia in 1763, the vast majority of its population was Catholic, Gaelic-speaking Scottish settlers, and Catholic, French-speaking Acadians.  White, Protestant Halifax was in no rush to give them the vote.  Cape Breton was ignored until 1820.  Catholics did not receive the vote until 1829, and Jews waited longer...

At the time of Confederation in 1867, voting was not by ballot at all — you named your choice aloud (in public).  This prompted all kinds of abuse, and the secret ballot was introduced in 1874.  It was vastly improved in 1900, by the perforated stub and serial number.  For the last 100 years, poll captains in federal elections have verified that the ballot they gave you was to one you gave back.  Before that — and long afterwards in some provincial campaigns — votes were commonly sold.  Here's how it worked: A party hack outside a polling place would make contact with a voter.  The hack would hand the voter a ballot already marked for a candidate.  The voter would then go inside, be handed a blank ballot, enter the voting booth, do nothing, and emerge to hand the poll captain the marked ballot.  Back outside, the blank ballot would be handed to the party hack, in exchange for promised goods.  The hack would then mark the ballot, and find another sucker...

David Swick, in the Halifax Daily News, 17 November 2000

Shortly after winning responsible government, the Nova Scotia Assembly (Legislature) passed franchise acts that excluded from voting aboriginal peoples, males without property, and women.  Other British North American colonies did likewise.  It would take more than a century for these exclusionary franchise policies to be abolished in Canada, and, at the rate we are going, it will be at least another century before these groups are fully represented in our formal political structures...

Margaret Conrad, Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies at the University of New Brunswick, in The Globe and Mail, 10 March 2003

Poor Herb continues to flounder on the issue...

Pierre Bourque, commenting on federal Fisheries Minister Herb Daliwhal's continuing problems in dealing with the ramifications of the Supreme Court's Marshall Decision on the fisheries in the Maritime Provinces.  Mr. Bourque's commentary was emailed to the subscribers of his daily NewsWatch service:
    Date: 22 Sep. 2000 00:15:20 -0000
    Message-ID: <969581720.23450.qmail@ech>
    Mailing-List: ListBot mailing list contact Newswatch-help@listbot.com
    From: "Bourque HotNews" <pierre@achilles.net>
    Delivered-To: mailing list Newswatch@listbot.com
    Subject: Bourque Evening News 9.21.2000

Legend has it the name Bluenose was given to Nova Scotians because local fishermen would rub their noses on their blue-dyed sweaters.

Part of the commentary during Sunday Morning's six-minute segment on the last trip of the ferry Bluenose between Bar Harbour, Maine, and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, broadcast on CNN [Cable News Network, based in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.] at 9:50am AST, 2 November 1997.

That theory is wiped out.  Traditionally, fishermen's mittens and sweaters were knitted with plain, greyish-white wool.  Blue was considered an unlucky colour at sea.

Ralph Getson, curator at the Fisheries Museum in Lunenburg, as reported in Bruce Nunn's weekly column on Nova Scotia history, Mr. Nova Scotia Know-it-all, in the Halifax Daily News, 20 May 2002.  Mr. Nunn continued:

Most Bluenose researchers agree, it is most likely that the word "Bluenose" came from our Blue potatoes, a spud species dating back to the 1700s, sometimes called the MacIntyre potato, known for its bluish hue.  These Irish spuds, many shaped more or less like noses, were apparently dubbed "blue nose" by folks in New England and the Carolinas who bought them from Nova Scotia ships; the name transferred to the crewmen.

The name Bluenose is believed by many to emanate from the MacIntyre Blue potatoes, the shipments of which, to places like the New England States, were invoiced as "blue noses."

Hon. B. Alasdair Graham, the Government Deputy Leader in the Senate, Ottawa, speaking in the Senate on 2 October 1996, on the occasion of the introduction of a new Senator, Hon. Wilfred P. Moore, of Chester, Nova Scotia, as recorded in Hansard.  The complete text of Senator Graham's speech is available in Hansard.
Source:
    http://www.parl.gc.ca/english/senate/deb-e/39db-e.html

I am the one who posted a message a few days ago, idly wondering why the Lunenburg founders don't seem to get the recognition I thought they deserved and asking if anything was being planned for the 250th anniversary.  From the discussions that have ensued, I suspect that I didn't convey very well what I thought was 'unique' about the Lunenburg founders and why they deserve special recognition.

In pursuing my wife's ancestry, we have collected information on over 140 of her direct ancestors — from Quebec, Nova Scotia, Germany, Scotland, France, Switzerland, etc.  None of them are particularly distinguished as individuals.  There's no one who is particularly famous or infamous in the entire crowd.  We cherish them all.  Although they cover a wide variety of origins and backgrounds, there is one group of them that does stand out, the Lunenburg Founders, and that is because of their close association with a major turning point in Nova Scotia history.

Although the British had held Nova Scotia (less Cape Breton) since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, they had at first treated it as 'occupied territory' and made no attempt to settle it beyond what was needed to support a few military garrisons there.  Even Halifax, when it was first founded in 1749, was primarily to be a military base to counter-balance the French fortress at Louisbourg in Cape Breton.  Aside from an earlier half-hearted, ill-thought-out, and largely unsuccessful attempt to attract a few English settlers to Halifax, the 'Foreign Protestant' Program was the very first organized British attempt to settle Nova Scotia permanently and change its status from an 'occupied' territory. The decision to recruit the Foreign Protestants was not a casual one.  It was proposed as an essential strategic measure, discussed at great length, and finally pursued with great vigour because of its importance to the long term British hold on Nova Scotia.  The success of this effort marked a significant turning point in Nova Scotia history and really is the start of Nova Scotia as a "British" entity.

To a large extent, the significance of Lunenburg and the Foreign Protestants has been submerged by the flood of other immigrants that followed them: the Planters, the Scots, the Loyalists, the Irish, etc.  But the Lunenburg founders were there at the beginning — in fact, in a real sense they were the beginning.

I would think that this would single them out for some special form of recognition... 

Thomas Giammo, <giammot@access.digex.net> in a message titled The Uniqueness of the Lunenburg Founders posted to the Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia genealogy discussion list <LUNEN-LINKS@rmgate.pop.indiana.edu> on 29 Nov 1996.

I was surprised when I first came to Ottawa to find a general lack of understanding of the fishing and fish processing industries and their problems.

Many Canadians do not realize that Nova Scotia is the leading fishing province in Canada. We lead all other provinces in terms of landed weight and value. Moreover, fish and fish products are the number one export commodity of the province of Nova Scotia.

My riding of South Shore is the most active fishing riding in Canada. I have a strong inshore fishery and a vibrant lobster, scallop and tuna fishery, among others. In fact, the Minister (of Fisheries) recently announced an increase in the groundfish quota for cod and haddock in areas adjacent to my riding, the only such increase recommended in Atlantic Canada.  There are more than 100 fish processing plants located in communities spanning the entire length of my South Shore riding. I have the largest plant in Canada, National Sea Products, which employs approximately 615 people...

Derek Wells, Member of Parliament for the South Shore riding, speaking in the House of Commons on 9 October 1996.  The complete text of his statement is recorded in Hansard.
    http://www.parl.gc.ca/english/hansard//084_96-10-09/084AP1E.html#5328

The Associated Press article in Sunday's (May 23, 1999) Standard-Times about Massachusetts Governor Paul Cellucci supporting oil drilling on Georges Bank is no surprise to me. It was his Republican Party that gave Georges Bank up to Canada by simply agreeing to allow the question of who owned Georges Bank to go to arbitration before the International Court of Justice at The Hague.  To cinch the deal, the Reagan/Bush team sent a Washington super-lawyer, who, according to one observer, "Couldn't, on a clear day, tell a capelin from a cape scallop" as chief U.S. negotiator.  The decision in favor of Canada was made by the World Court in 1984. Canada pushed for equidistance between Cape Sable and Cape Cod as the true dividing line between the United States and Canada, thus leaving the State of Maine without any say in the matter.  The World Court moved the line a little bit closer to Canada to make it look good. Canada got the northern edge of Georges Bank, which under the present Law of the Sea Convention is part of the U.S. continental shelf. The LOS was signed by the United States on July 28, 1994, and now supersedes the Hague Line...

Frank Cyganowski, of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, in the New Bedford Standard-Times, 2 June 1999
    http://www.s-t.com/daily/06-99/06-02-99/c04op097.htm

Canada is an island.  Or maybe it's that Nova Scotia is an island.  It could be Halifax.  Anyway, there's a lot of water.  There's a very pretty lighthouse too.

This muddle of half-assed information was gleaned from watching CNN yesterday morning, in the on-air chatter after live coverage of George W. Bush's speech in Halifax.  And CNN calls itself the most trusted name in news...

John Doyle, in The Globe & Mail, 2 December 2004, commenting on the geographic knowledge displayed by CNN (Cable News Network, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A) at the time of the speech delivered in Halifax on 1 December by George W. Bush, President of the United States.

In this case, I was advocating on behalf of a bunch of unmoneyed, uncultured, unsuccessful, unlucky, unhappy, unappealing, unestablished social cast-offs in a fight against the moneyed, successful, lucky, established pillars of social order.

Parker Barss-Donham, in a message posted to the Internet mailing list "parker@lists.vntg-mustang.com" on 3 May 1998, responding to a posted message objecting to the public acclaim directed toward Parker and David Rodenhiser when they and the Halifax Daily News were selected to receive the 1998 Michener Award for their work on the RG-72 story about the lengthy record of child abuse in provincial institutions.

I have stood in a crowded hall in Yarmouth and denounced the violence and greed and racism of that area's fishermen.  I have stood in a crowded hall in Whitney Pier and demanded the closure of Sysco.  I may be guilty of many sins, but lacking the courage to speak my mind isn't one of them.

Parker Barss-Donham, in a message posted to the Internet mailing list "parker-l@nstn.ca" on 27 February 1997.

I don't think there's as much bullshit in the Maritimes as there is in other places.

Peter Gzowski, quoted in The Chronicle-Herald, 17 May 1997.

bullshit noun: nonsense; foolish insolent talk.  Usually considered vulgar.

vulgar adjective: common; lacking in cultivation, perception, or taste; of or relating to common speech; crude or offensive language; widely known; generally comprehensible.

Nova Scotia is the world's largest exporter of lobster, Christmas trees, and wild blueberries.

The Globe & Mail, 30 August 1995

(Q.) What was Canada's first feature film, and when did it premier?

(A.) Evangeline premiered in Halifax in 1913.

Canada Day quiz in The Toronto Star, 1 July 2002

For generations people thought they knew everything Mozart had written and now a few things have come to light.

Stanley Sadie, British musicologist and Mozart specialist who edits the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, commenting on the discovery by Dorothea Link of a previously-unknown recitative by Mozart, which precedes the aria Vado, ma dove? K583 in the obscure opera Il Burbero di buon cuore The Surly Benefactor, by Vincente Martin y Soler.  Mr. Sadie was quoted in the story Canadian Musicologist Discovers Long-Lost Work by Mozart, carried with a four-column colour photograph above the fold on the front page of the National Post, 30 August 1999, and in The New York Times, 29 August 1999.  Ms. Link has spent the last year teaching at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Oh, Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parlez-vous,
Oh, Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parlez-vous,
She hasn't been kissed in forty years,
Hinky-dinky, par-lee-voo.

Gitz Rice, Nova Scotian sergeant in the Canadian army, sat down at a little cafe in Armentières, a small French town near Lille, in 1915, and watched a chic barmaid serve drinks.  He composed the words then and there of the world-famous "Mademoiselle from Armentières"; he performed his composition a few days later before the Fifth Battery, Montreal, stationed in France. Colombo's Concise Canadian Quotations, edited by John Robert Colombo, Hurtig Publishers, 1976.

Where is the son of the Minister of Militia?

Sir Frederick Borden, Canada's Liberal Minister of Militia, pleaded with his son not to enter the Boer War, and pro-war newspapers protested his absence from the first shipload of soldiers bound for South Africa.  "Where is the son of the Minister of Militia?" asked the Halifax Herald. Harold Borden, 23, volunteered with the second contingent, commanding a mounted troop of Royal Canadian Dragoons.  At the battle of Coetzee's Drift he swam a river under fire to attack the enemy on the far side.  In July 1900, at Witpoor Pass, Harold Borden was shot at close range.  Sir Frederick learned of his son's death in the House of Commons.
[National Post, 9 October 1999]

Harold Borden monument Canning
    http://ns1763.ca/kingsco/borden_h.html

It is necessary that our institutions should be placed on a stable basis, if we are to have that security for life and property, and personal liberty, which is so desirable in every country.

Charles Tupper, speaking in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly on 10 April 1865, quoted in the National Post, 14 July 2000.  At the time, Tupper was an MPP (Member of the Provincial Parliament); he went on to become an MP (Member of Parliament) in Ottawa after Confederation in 1867, and later Prime Minister of Canada.

It is required reading for anyone seeking clues to why Nova Scotia moved from its 19th-century culture of risk-taking entrepreneurship to a 20th-century culture of "have not" dependency.

Brian Flemming in his column "Nova Scotia Needs Confidence Boost" in the Halifax Daily News, 6 May 1998, discussing the recent book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some Are So Poor, by Harvard economist David Landes.  Flemming wrote:

Nova Scotia today has far more surplus capital than it ever had in the days of wooden ships and iron men.  It is being harvested regularly in the form of pension money, bank savings, RRSPs, insurance premiums, and other hidden out-transfers of wealth ... Finding the cultural key to economic growth is too important to be left to government ... Flemming's Axiom provides the slogan for this campaign: It's the culture, stupid!

For a long time nothing but Gaelic was spoken in Cape Breton Island until they gradually learned English from the handful of New England Loyalists who came to Nova Scotia after the American Revolution.

Hugh MacLennan, in the Author's Note of Each Man's Son, 1951, Little, Brown and Company, Boston

The first time I saw her from my Dartmouth home, I was bug-eyed.  At about three o'clock in the morning, I awoke to the roar of loud, throaty engines, a guttural cacophony from somewhere outside.  It sounded like a half-dozen fire trucks out there on our street fully revved up.

Jack Wilcox, in The Chronicle-Herald, 7 May 1997, describing the airship Hindenburg passing over Nova Scotia, during one of the 11 trips it made in 1936 between Berlin and New York.  Hindenburg's usual cruising altitude was 200 metres 650 feet, and the usual route followed the Atlantic coastline of Nova Scotia.  These trips ceased abruptly on May 6, 1937, when Hindenburg burned at Lakehurst, New Jersey.  Wilcox continued:

Hindenburg seemed to be hanging there above Lake Banook, but she was, in fact, at full throttle, moving slowly in the Moon's light...

Hindenburg's cruising speed was 135 km/h 84 mph.

Robert Jamison Leslie was a Member of the Quebec Legislature at the time (1906), representing Gaspe and the Magdalens, although he lived in Halifax.  I guess he was probably the only Nova Scotian ever to live in Halifax and also be a Quebec MLA. Apparently he was elected while he was over in Europe opening up markets for Magdalen Island fish — in those days Canada didn't have any Department of Trade and Commerce to do these things for us...

Rosaleen Dickson, <c174@freenet.carleton.ca>, granddaughter of R.J. Leslie, in a message posted to the Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia genealogy discussion list <LUNEN-LINKS@rmgate.pop.indiana.edu> on 7 Dec. 1996.

We received yesterday a file of Newfoundland newspapers, the latest five weeks old and some of them dated last October.

A note in the Halifax weekly Novascotian of 30 January 1840, describing the latest news then available in Halifax, from Newfoundland.  This speed of transmission of news was typical of that time, but it seems unbelievably slow to us who live in an age when news goes around the world in less than one second.

The automobile fever is catching ... One prominent horseman is so attacked with the disease that he is said to be quietly disposing of his stable outfit and spends his spare moments studying auto catalogues. The horsemen need not get alarmed that the motor car will injure their business in our country.

The New Glasgow Eastern Chronicle, 19 April 1907

Far too many cars are driven at an excessive speed about our streets.  They whiz by with little regard for the pedestrian...

The New Glasgow Eastern Chronicle, 19 June 1923

Road Vehicles, Longest Tow: The longest tow on record was one of 7658 km 4759 miles from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Canada's Pacific coast, when Frank J. Elliott and George A. Scott of Amherst persuaded 168 passing motorists in 89 days to tow their Model T Ford (in fact engineless) to win a $1,000 bet on 15 October 1927.

Guinness Book of Records, 1975, ISBN 0900424265.

To handle the large volumes of fruit produced on Annapolis Valley farms by the late 1800s, farmers began turning some of them into cider and dried apples.  Lakeville (Kings County) is known to have had two evaporators, or three, if you count twice the one that burned down and was rebuilt.  Evaporators were major employers during the late fall and winter.  Their basic function was to dry apples, preserving the fruit for later use... Dried apples required no refrigeration or special care, were comparatively lightweight, and found a ready market in remote logging camps, outports, and in the armed forces... (George Chase's evaporator, in Lakeville), ran five kilns, and a packing crew of six men getting apples ready for the overseas market.  We handled over forty thousand barrels of apples there that...season (1916)... In 1929 the evaporator burned down, as most of them did periodically...

Sheltered by the North Mountain: A History of Lakeville, Kings County, Nova Scotia, 230 pages, by Anne van Arragon Hutten. Published by Anne van Arragon Hutten, Kentville, 1995.

One in every 150 Americans is behind bars, as is one in every 900 Canadians. In Nova Scotia, one in every 1,600 people is in prison.

Coastal Communities Network "Did you know?" 2004
http://www.coastalcommunities.ns.ca/

One bad sign of domestic matters in old Halifax in 1785 may be noted.  In the course of twelve months, no fewer than twenty criminals were hanged, mostly for minor offences and petty robberies; three were negro slaves, who had only lately arrived from New York with Loyalist families.  One suffered death for theft of a bag of potatoes.  The cruelty of the age and indifference to the taking of a human life for so slight an offence, as it was proved the poor wretch was starving, was a stain on the humanity of our so called Christian people.  The process of justification in the light of mercy or compassion must have been a curious one with judge and jury.  They were no doubt honest men, acting up to their lights.  In looking back to-day, we can only regret that the men were dull, and the lights dim.

Memoir of Governor John Parr by James S. MacDonald, a book published in 1909 by the Nova Scotia Historical Society.  John Parr was Governor of Nova Scotia 1782-1791.

John Parr, the future Governor of Nova Scotia, was born at Dublin, 20th December, 1725, and, after a moderate course of study at Trinity High School, he was on the 26th May, 1744, gazetted Ensign of the 20th Regiment of Foot (Kingsley's and Wolfe's Regiment).  Parr was then in his nineteenth year, early in life, to enter upon a career of military activity, when the great powers of Europe were at war, and when a soldier's life was one of arduous and uninterrupted service...

John Parr's experience as a young subaltern in the 20th Regiment was arduous.  It was a regiment continually in revolt and trouble.  When it had the chance, it fought brilliantly, but at times had the misfortune of bad handling by incompetent officers.  It was a mutiny in this particular regiment, which brought the hero Wolfe to the front.  While encamped at Fort Augustus in the Scotch Highlands in 1747, a mutiny broke out, in which the majority of the rank and file took part.  Wolfe was selected to bring the regiment to reason.  Our founder Cornwallis had to abandon his position in the regiment, to make way for Wolfe, who by judicious handling, the exercise of diplomacy, and common sense, as well as the summary execution of over twenty of the ringleaders speedily suppressed the revolt, and brought the regiment to reason.  Wolfe's success won the admiration of Pitt, and resulted in his appointment to the command of the forces then mustering or the operations America.

In 1745, Parr was present with his regiment at Fontenoy, and in that obstinate and terribly contested conflict, received his baptism of fire.  In 1746, he was at Culloden with the British forces, under the "Butcher" Cumberland, and was there severely wounded.  For several years in the north of Scotland, he served in what was then called, the pacification of the Highlands, in which there was no glory, and much needless cruelty.  For a time, he was adjutant to Wolfe then in command of the 20th Foot, and from letters still preserved by the Parr family, appears to have been on intimate terms with him.  In those days when the professional attainments of most of the officers of the Army, were exceedingly meagre, and the standard of morals and manners in the service very low, it must indeed have been a very great advantage to a young subaltern, to be brought into close contact, with so cultivated and zealous a soldier, and so broad-minded and honourable a gentleman as Wolfe.  With the 20th Regiment, Parr served for eleven years, in various garrisons abroad and, on the 4th of January 1756, he was promoted to the rank of Captain, and with his corps was ordered to the relief of Minorca...

It was a common thing to buy and sell slaves in Halifax in the early days.  The following advertisement in the Halifax Gazette of November 1, 1760, is a sample:

To be sold at public auction, on Monday, the 3rd of November at the house of John Rider, two slaves, viz: a boy and girl, about eleven years of age; likewise a puncheon of choice old cherry brandy with sundry other articles.

William Coates Borrett in East Coast Port and Other Tales Told Under the Old Town Clock, The Imperial Publishing Company, Halifax, 1946.  (On Aug. 23, 1797, at an auction in Montreal, Emanuel Allen became the last slave to be sold in Canada.)

William Borrett has done much to keep alive the storied romance of Nova Scotia.  Since none of us know as much as we might of the intimate history of this province we call home, the author (Borrett) performs a useful public service by reminding us in simple, sometimes whimsical prose, of those who came before us.  As a Nova Scotian, proud of my citizenship, I commend this and similar efforts, for we do well to remind ourselves of the history of Nova Scotia and her people.

Harold Connolly, Minister of Industry and Publicity in the Government of Nova Scotia (and later, Premier), in a dustcover blurb for Down East, the fourth volume in the series of "Tales Told Under the Old Town Clock", a companion book to East Coast Port.

On March 29, 1841, an act was passed by the Nova Scotia Legislature making it unlawful to punish people by setting them in the pillory, by publicly whipping them, by nailing their ears to the pillory, or by cutting off their ears.  Such punishment thereafter was to be changed to imprisonment, solitary imprisonment if necessary, with hard labour if the Court should so decree.  It is not known that the pillory was ever used in King's County, or that people there were publicly whipped, but in Halifax, in April 1821, a man convicted of forgery was sentenced to have one ear cut off, to stand in the pillory an hour, and to be imprisoned for a year.

The History of Kings County, Nova Scotia, 1604 - 1910 by Dr. A.W.H. Eaton, The Salem Press Company, Salem, Massachusetts, 1910.

Be it enacted by the Lieutenant-Governor, Council and Assembly, that, from and after the passing of this Act, judgement or sentence shall not be given and awarded against any person or persons convicted of any offence whatsoever, that such person or persons do suffer the punishment of being set in the Pillory, or of having his or their ears nailed thereto, or cut off, or do suffer the punishment of being whipped — any Law, Statute or usage to the contrary notwithstanding.

And be it enacted that in all cases where the punishment of being set in the Pillory, or of having the offender's ears nailed to the Pillory, or cut off, or of being publicly or privately whipped, has hitherto formed the whole or part of the judgement or sentence to be pronounced, or has in any other case been inflicted, it shall and may be lawful for the Court, before whom any such offender shall be tried or convicted, to pass sentence of imprisonment, or imprisonment with hard labor, in the Common Gaol, Bridewell or House of Correction, in the County where such conviction shall take place, or in any Public Penitentiary, Bridewell or House of Correction, which may be hereafter established in any part of this Province; and also, to direct that the offender shall be kept in solitary confinement for any portion or portions of such imprisonment, or of such imprisonment with hard labor — such solitary confinement not exceeding one month at any one time, and not exceeding three months in any one year, as to the Court, in its discretion, shall seem meet.

The above is the full, complete text of 4 Victoria, chapter 8 — An Act to abolish the punishment of Pillory, Cutting the Ears of Offenders, and Whipping, and to substitute Imprisonment in lieu thereof, passed the 29th day of March, A.D. 1841, Nova Scotia Provincial Parliament, Halifax.

The best thing to do is to take the bastards to court and sue.

Halifax lawyer William Leahey commenting on the legal options now open to victims of abuse within institutions operated by the Government of Nova Scotia, quoted in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 8 November 1997.  Ten of Mr. Leahey's clients are already suing the government, and he has a list of fifty others wanting to do the same.  The way to get both compensation and accountability, Leahey says, is a class-action lawsuit.

The provincial Justice Department has blown it.

The lead editorial, titled "Justice for None," in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 8 November 1997 continues:

A process that was intended to rightly compensate individuals who were abused while they lived in provincial youth centres has become so distorted it is difficult to see how it can reasonably continue...

...At this time, Mr. Speaker, formally and publicly, I want to apologize to the victims.  They were in no way responsible for what happened to them.  On a personal level, and on behalf of the Government of Nova Scotia, I want to say sincerely, I am sorry.  Also, I will be conveying my apologies to the victims in writing...

Hon. William Gillis, Minister of Justice, speaking in the Nova Scotia Legislature on 3 May 1996.

Mr. Speaker, the statement by the Minister of Justice is a most welcome one... we join with the Minister of Justice in extending a sincere and deep apology to those who were victimized during that time, if any of those events, and I know that some of them did, took place during the years when some of us here today on Opposition benches were on the government benches.  Circumstances occurred which just simply should never have occurred, should never have been allowed to occur, and the tragedy that has befallen so many — and it is astounding to hear the Minister of Justice today talk in terms of as many as 350 people — has tremendous impact to say the least.  I join him in expressing deep regret and accepting what responsibility those of us should during our time on the watch...

Mr. Terence Donahoe, who spoke immediately following Mr. Gillis' statement.

Mr. Speaker... I am very pleased to see the apology that was provided by the minister on behalf of the government because it is important that it be recognized that those who were the victims were not the perpetrators or the cause of what happened to them.  Very often victims are made to feel responsible for what has happened to them, so I am very pleased to see the minister announce quite clearly and unequivocally that the government apologizes to those individuals and acknowledges that they were not in any way responsible for the actions that happened to them...

Mr. John Holm, who spoke immediately following Mr. Donahoe's statement.

The complete text of all three speeches appears in Hansard. http://www.gov.ns.ca/legi/hansard/han56-4/h96may03.htm#[Page 1335]

There was no jury in this case to muddle the matter with an improper verdict.

Justice Russell in a Nova Scotia court decision dated 18 June 1913, on the appeal of Pickels versus Lane, as reported on page 277 of the Eastern Law Reporter, volume XIII number 4, 10 November 1913, published by the Carswell Company, Toronto.

As the autumn darkness descends on the Annapolis Valley town of Kentville, so do thousands of black forms with beating wings.  Like a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds, crows swoop down on the large groves of trees that line the downtown and surrounding residential areas...

Kevin Cox, in The Globe and Mail, 4 November 2000, writing about the annual appearance of thousnads of crows in Kentville, Nova Scotia.

Clive Brook, as the Marquis of Gleneyre:
I'm sorry about your father.  I liked Louis.

Kirk Douglas, as George Brougham:
Well, if you want me to fill you in on him, he — well he lost the fifty thousand you gave him in a three-day poker session on the train between Halifax and Moose Jaw.

Walter Anthony Huston, as Derek Bruttenholm:
Moose Jaw?

From the 1963 movie The List of Adrian Messenger, directed by John Huston, with Kirk Douglas, George C. Scott, Dana Wynter, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster (in drag), Clive Brook, Herbert Marshall, and Walter Anthony Huston.

The Fences Arbitration Committee is the most difficult committee in government to fill.  It is not one that anybody covets or lobbies to get.

George Archibald, Member of the Legislative Assembly for Kings North, acting as Chairman of the Nova Scotia Legislature's Standing Committee on Human Resources at the Committee meeting in Halifax on 24 November 1998, as recorded in Hansard, page 3477.  The complete text of Mr. Archibald's comment is available in Hansard.
    http://www.gov.ns.ca/legislature/hansard/comm/hr/hr981124.htm

A is for Agencies.  B is for Boards.  C is for Commissions.  And the government of Nova Scotia is bloated with them.  So bloated that they've lost track of how many there actually are.  Seriously, ask anyone in government who should know, and they won't be able to tell you.  The latest rough guess puts the number of ABCs anywhere between 125-175 of them — or more ... Some of the ABCs may be largely volunteer in nature, but nothing is costless.  If the public actually knew there were so many ABCs out there, it could reasonably question the taxpayer benefit of any number of them.  A small scratch at a huge surface finds that there is a Fences Arbitration Board for every single county in Nova Scotia...

Nancy Faraday-Smith, in The ABCs of Nova Scotia Government, (no date).  Ms. Faraday-Smith is a Policy Analyst at the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, a public policy think tank based in Halifax.
Source: Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS)
    http://www.aims.ca/Archive/Review/abcnsgov.htm

It occurred to Larson that lying involves an effort that telling the truth does not, and that the fear of being caught lying ought to elicit an involuntary flow of adrenaline that could be detectable by the changes in body properties it brought about.  He therefore devised a machine, the "polygraph", which could simultaneously and continuously record the pulse rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, and perspiration secretion.  Such changes would, or should, be greater when a lie was told than when the truth was told.  The instrument was promptly named a "lie detector".  It is not infallible, but it has proved useful.

Isaac Asimov in Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science & Technology Second Revised Edition, Doubleday & Company, 1982, about John A. Larson, born 11 December 1892 in Shelburne, Nova Scotia.

If Sir Charles Tupper was noted for anything in electioneering, it was for vitriolic, rancorous attacks on opponents.

Murray J. MacLeod, of Sydney, retired journalist and local historian.

It is the deadening, geographical equivalent of the tag tied to the toe of a corpse; all that's missing is the smell of formaldehyde...

Paul Patterson, Professor of Management of Technological Change, University College of Cape Breton, in the Cape Breton Post, 29 July 2000, commenting adversely on the name selected by the provincial government for the Cape Breton Regional Municipality when it was formed in the mid-1990s.

The ultimate indignity for any people is the denial of a name in which they can take pride.  Cape Breton Regional Municipality is no more a proper name for our community than its acronym, CBRM, is a ballistic missile.  It is a soulless label imposed by a bureaucracy, conveying none of the spirit, brilliance, vigour, or cultural vitality of the people who live and work here...

John Ralston Saul points to Thomas Jefferson's analysis that men are divided into two groups: on the one hand there are those who fear and distrust the people; on the other hand there are those who identify with the people and have confidence in them.  Our civilization has increasingly put those who fear and distrust, in power over the people.  We must stop this, we must listen to the people and we must stop seeking simplistic answers to complex problems...

Donald Chard, MLA representing Dartmouth South, speaking in the Nova Scotia Legislature on 29 May 1998.  The complete record of his speech is available in Hansard, page 501.  The quotation appears at Hansard, page 507.

On April 10, 1827, George Canning was commissioned by King George IV to form a Government; on August 8, 1827, he died.  He held the office of Prime Minister for less than four months...  Canning's (earlier) tenure of the Foreign Office was marked by events of exceptional importance... Spencer Walpole described him as the "most brilliant Foreign Minister of the 19th century".  Lord Acton wrote: "No Foreign Secretary has equalled Canning"...  That Canning was ever "popular" in the ordinary sense is not true, but the public were deeply moved by the news of his tragic and premature death, and his funeral in Westminster Abbey was witnessed by a vast and deeply sympathetic gathering...

Sir John Marriott MP in The Quarterly Review, #493, July 1927, on the occasion of the centenary of the death of George Canning, Prime Minister of Great Britain.  In his memory, the prosperous community of Apple Tree Landing, in Kings County, Nova Scotia, was renamed Canning.

The pantheon of great diplomats includes Talleyrand, Cavour, Metternich, Canning and Benjamin Franklin, masters, giants, of their craft.

Adapted from a comment by Harry Flemming in the Halifax Daily News, 9 November 2000.  (This quote helps us to understand George Canning's place in history.)

The ship Murdoch sailed into Halifax on September 19, 1751, with 298 passengers on board.  Twenty-nine people died during the 58-day journey from Rotterdam.

David Rodenhiser, commenting on the difficult conditions that faced transatlantic travellers in the 1700s, in the Halifax Daily News, 30 December 2001.  Mr. Rodenhiser is the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Johann Philipp Frederick Rothenhauser, who crossed on that voyage of the Murdoch.

On the voyage to America 12 children were born, of which all but one died.  Of the above 262 souls embarked, 53 died on the ocean and the remaining 221 landed safely at Halifax.  There were 183 freights and 53 bedplaces.  From the 8th of July 1752 to the 28th of February 1753, 83 persons from the above-mentioned ship died in Halifax.  We were 14 days travelling down the Rhine and 14 weeks on the ocean, not counting the time we were on board the ship in Rotterdam and again in Halifax before we were put to ashore, all of which amounted to 22 weeks.

Excerpt from Johann Michael Schmitt's Bible, as translated by Winthrop Pickard Bell. A "freight" was a full-fare passenger — everyone over a certain stipulated age, which varied from time to time or ship to ship, but was frequently 14 years.  Infants (usually under the age of 4) were carried free and no space allocation was made for them.  Children between those ages were accounted "half-freights." Thus: Mr Schmitt meant by the numbers of adults and of children (on the GALE from Rotterdam leaving Leymen for America on 9 May 1752 and docking in Halifax on 8 June 1752) were such that the 262 "souls" amounted to 183 "freights".  The still extant ship's manifest shows that there were actually 249 "souls" and 183 "freights".  The "bedplaces" were subdivisions of the 'tween decks space in the ship, to which the emigrants were assigned.  There were certain regulations with respect to these.  The minimum "bedplace" size was supposed to be 6 feet 183 cm square, and no more than 4 "freights" were to be assigned to any one "bedplace." On John Dick's ships the "bedplace" sizes were somewhat larger than the legal minimum.  Mr. Schmitt's statement means that the GALE's emigrants had somewhat more room than they would have had the ship been filled.

From a posting by Cathy Di Pietro, <vdpcom@warwick.net> Sussex, NJ, 25 Aug 1996, to Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia genealogy discussion list <LUNEN-LINKS@rmgate.pop.indiana.edu>

Winthrop Bell received his PhD from the university at Gottingen, Germany in 1914.  Because he had traveled extensively there while taking lots of photographs and was still in the country at the outbreak of World War One, he was interned for the duration as a British spy.  Bell's Ph.D. dissertation was Eine kritische Untersuchung der Erkenntnistheorie Josiah Royce's, 1922, Gottingen University, Germany.  In the 1940s, Bell lived in Chester, Nova Scotia.

For most of the past 200 years, the relationship between Cape Breton and mainland Nova Scotia has been characterized by a culture of colonization ... The conjoining of Cape Breton and the mainland into one province was not amicably received on both sides.  But the mainland needed resources, the king's brother needed royalties to cover his gambling debts, and Cape Breton had coal, fish, and timber.  From its founding days, it was clear the "royal reserve" ... stamped the relationship between the two into a colonial pattern.  From the 1820s to well after the Second World War, most of Nova Scotia's provincial tax revenues derived from Cape Breton mineral royalties...

University College of Cape Breton President Dr. Jacquelyn Thayer Scott in testimony before the Legislature's standing Committee on Economic Development on 20 April 1999; quoted in the Halifax Daily News, 25 April 1999.
The complete official transcript of President Scott's testimony
    http://www.gov.ns.ca/legi/hansard/comm/ed/ed990420.htm

...When I first moved to Cape Breton, I vowed I wouldn't fall into the trap of blaming so much of the status quo on Halifax.  That is a vow I haven't been able to keep because the evidence of the historical conflict continues to infect almost every current transaction...

We expect to be expanding into Russia...

Kenneth C. Rowe Chairman and CEO of I.M.P. Group International Inc., of Halifax, quoted in The Financial Post Magazine, November 1996, page 56.  Rowe began his business career in 1956 working for the improbably-named Great Grimsby Coal, Salt & Tanning Company Limited in the United Kingdom, and was sent to Halifax in 1964 as general manager of Grimsby's North American operations.  Rowe built I.M.P., which now manages a four-star hotel in Moscow, from the 1967 remnants of a bankrupt foundry in Amherst, Nova Scotia.
[I.M.P. is derived from Industrial and Marine Products.]

I said at that time, I'm just from Meteghan, I don't understand what this is all about.

Louis Comeau commenting about the time, in August 1992, when he signed a cheque for $5,000,000,000 as part of the payment when Nova Scotia Power Inc. bought the provincial government-owned electric utility Nova Scotia Power Corporation.  Quoted in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald 20 April 1996.

April 30, 1994 — The Nova Scotia Legislature is closed to the public on the day the budget is to be read, following a clash with demonstrators the previous day.  The chamber is sealed from the public, press, television technicians and pages, and there is no Hansard taken.  The House reopens forty minutes after the budget speech has been read.

Source: A Chronicle of Freedom of Expression in Canada, 1914-1994
    http://www.efc.ca/pages/chronicle/chronicle.html

Within a few years (from 1996), a decade at most, the V-chip will self-destruct in the face of merging communications technologies.  As the Homolka fiasco demonstrated, the Internet is quickly outstripping the capacity of government busybodies to impose their will on citizens.

Parker Barss Donham in his regular column in the Halifax Daily News, 17 March 1996.
Source: Newsgroup item V-chip: Keith Spicer's deceptive weasel words 20 March 1996

In his most recent (17 March 1996) article, columnist Parker Donham delivered a stinging criticism of Keith Spicer's V-chip plans.  Quoting George Orwell, he says Keith Spicer's "spin" on the V-chip has "words used in a consciously dishonest way...with intent to deceive." Ouch.

V-chip: Keith Spicer's deceptive weasel words by David Jones, 20 March 1996, (commenting on Parker Barss Donham's column in the Halifax Daily News, 17 March 1996).

It shall be the duty of every (school) teacher...

(5) To inculcate by precept and example a respect for religion and the principles of christian morality, and the highest regard to truth, justice, love of country, loyalty, humanity, benevolence, sobriety, industry, frugality, chastity, temperance, and all other virtues...

(8) To reimburse the trustees for any destruction of school property by the pupils which is clearly chargeable to gross neglect or failure to enforce proper discipline on the part of the teacher...

Chapter 29, Section 74, The Revised Statutes of Nova Scotia, 1884.

The duties of the (school) trustees shall be as follows...

(3) To lease or rent lands or buildings if necessary for school purposes for a period of not less than five months, or if the section be poor not less than three months...

(5) To provide school privileges free of charge for all persons in the section five years of age and upwards who may wish to attend school, and, when authorized by the school meeting (of local ratepayers), improved school accomodations; such accomodations to be provided as far as possible in accordance with the following arrangements:
(a) For any section having fifty pupils or under, a (school)house with comfortable sittings for the same, with one teacher,
(b) For any section having from fifty to eighty pupils, a (school)house with comfortable sittings for the same, with one teacher and an assistant,
(c) For any section having from eighty to one hundred pupils, a (school)house with comfortable sittings for the same and two good class-rooms, with one teacher and two assistants...
(f) And generally, for any section having two hundred pupils and upwards, a (school)house or houses, with sufficient accomodations for different grades of elementary and preparatory schools, so that in sections having six hundred pupils and upwards the ratios of pupils in elementary, preparatory, and high school departments shall be respectively about eight, three, and one.

Chapter 29, Section 27, The Revised Statutes of Nova Scotia, 1884.

(It shall be the duty of the school trustees) to ascertain as soon as possible after the close of the school year how many of the children (between the ages of seven and twelve years) of the section have not been at school during the school year for the period of eighty full days, and to impose upon the parents or guardians of such children a fine of two dollars for each child who has attended school no portion of the year, and pro rata in the case of each child who has attended school but has not reached the period of eighty full days.

Chapter 29, Section 78, The Revised Statutes of Nova Scotia, 1884.

In imposing fines for failure to attend the required minimum period of eighty full days, trustees shall exempt such parents or guardians as can show that their children are being properly educated otherwise than in the public schools, or whose children are by reason of delicate health, or being distant over two miles from a school, or other sufficient causes, prevented from attendance.

Chapter 29, Section 81, The Revised Statutes of Nova Scotia, 1884.

No minor under the age of sixteen years shall be admitted at any time to, or permitted to remain in, any saloon or place of entertainment where any spirituous liquors or wines or intoxicating or malt liquors are sold, exchanged, or given away, or in any of the places of amusement known as dance houses, billiard rooms, cippi rooms, dancing classes, clubs, or concert saloons, unless accompanied by his or her parent or guardian, nor into any bawdy house or house of ill fame under any circumstances whatever...

Chapter 95, Section 1, The Revised Statutes of Nova Scotia, 1884.

The business of one half of the town is to sell rum, and the other half to drink it.

Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles (1727-1795), President of Yale College 1778-1795, referring to Halifax, as quoted in History of Nova Scotia by Thomas Chandler Haliburton, published in Halifax in 1829.

On 2 July 1866, a bill was introduced in the United States Congress, calling for the admission or annexation of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Lower and Upper Canada.

Halifax Daily News, 2 July 2001

To aid the construction of a railway from Truro, in Nova Scotia, to Riviere du Loup, in Canada East... the United States will grant lands along the lines of said roads to the amount of twenty sections, or twelve thousand eight hundred acres, per mile, to be selected and sold in the manner prescribed in the act to aid the construction of the Northern Pacific railroad, approved July two, eighteen hundred and sixty-two, and acts amendatory thereof; and in addition to said grants of lands, the United States will further guarantee dividends of five per centum upon the stock of the company or companies which may be authorized by Congress to undertake the construction of said railways: Provided, That such guarantee of stock shall not exceed the sum of thirty thousand dollars per mile, and Congress shall regulate the securities for advances on account thereof.

Article IX of A Bill for the admission of the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East, and Canada West, and for the organization of the Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan, and Columbia (Annexation Bill) introduced by General Nathaniel Prentiss Banks and passed in the United States House of Representatives in July 1866.  The intent was that the United States would acquire all of what is now Canada.

Mr. Banks, on leave, introduced the following bill: A Bill For the admission of the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East, and Canada West, and for the organization of the Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan, and Columbia.

Source: United States Library of Congress
Historical Collections for the U.S. National Digital Library
    http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llhb/039/4300/43090000.gif

Nathaniel Prentiss Banks (1816-1894), Representative from Massachusetts

For the purpose of representation in the U.S. Congress
Prince Edward Island shall be part of Nova Scotia

Newfoundland will be part of Canada East (Quebec)

United States Congress, July 2nd, 1866
Source: Bill HR 754, page 1
Historical Collections for the U.S. National Digital Library
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United States Congress, July 2nd, 1866
Source: Bill HR 754, page 2
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United States Congress, July 2nd, 1866
Source: Bill HR 754, page 3
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United States Congress, July 2nd, 1866
Source: Bill HR 754, page 4
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United States Congress, July 2nd, 1866
Source: Bill HR 754, page 5
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United States Congress, July 2nd, 1866
Source: Bill HR 754, page 6
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United States Congress, July 2nd, 1866
Source: Bill HR 754, page 7
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United States Congress, July 2nd, 1866
Source: Bill HR 754, page 8
Historical Collections for the U.S. National Digital Library
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United States Congress, July 2nd, 1866
Source: Congressional Globe, page 3548
Historical Collections for the U.S. National Digital Library
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Annexation of British America

Mr. Banks, by unanimous consent, submitted a bill (H. R. 754) establishing conditions for the admission of the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East and Canada West, and for the organization of territorial governments; which was read a first and second time, ordered to be printed, and referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Page 3548 of The Congressional Globe, Monday, 2 July 1866
Historical Collections for the U.S. National Digital Library
    http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llcg/073/0600/06703548.tif

More than 12 tons of gold, 935 tons of silver buried beneath WTC rubble.  Bank of Nova Scotia had it stored in vaults under 4 World Trade Center.

This was one of the items in the continuous crawl of brief news items across the bottom of the screen, broadcast by CNN, the Cable News Network, from Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A., in the evening of Saturday, 22 September 2001, eleven days after the terrorist attack which brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.  The crawl, broadcast 24 hours a day along with the regular news videos, usually contained fifty to seventy items running in a continuous loop.  This item appeared several times at intervals of about twenty minutes.

On 23 September, the Halifax Sunday Daily News reported that, according to the New York Mercantile Exchange, Scotia Mocatta — the bullion and metals division of the Bank of Nova Scotia — was storing 379,036 ounces of gold and 29,942,619 ounces of silver there.
            379,036 Troy ounces   =   11,791 kg
            29,942,619 Troy ounces   =   931,455 kg

      When the vaults were locked at the close of business on Monday, September 10th (the day before the attack) the gold was worth U$272.30 (C$427.81) per ounce, or U$103,211,503 (C$162,155,590).
      By September 21st, its value — wherever it is — had soared 7.6 percent to U$292.90 (C$460.18) per ounce, or U$111,019,644 (C$174,422,962).
      And the silver rose 10.3 percent in value from U$4.19 (C$6.58) per ounce, or U$129,063,811 (C$202,772,154), to U$4.62 (C$7.26) per ounce, or U$142,114,861 (C$223,276,663).

Precious metals buried under debris, CNN.com, 22 September 2001
    http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/22/rec.buried.treasure/index.html
with C$ (Canadian currency) values calculated at U$1.00 = C$1.5711, the exchange rate at the close of business on Friday, 21 September.

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