Quotations
about Nova Scotia,
or by or about Nova Scotians

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.

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

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.

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...

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.

At this period, Frederick the Great was making himself famous, by his ambitions and his aggressive campaigns, and Britain with her trammeling connections with Hanover, was often drawn most unwillingly into the Continental imbroglios. For fifty years, our country poured out its blood, and treasures, to preserve the balance of power in Europe, among nations, with whom she had but little in common. To-day we appreciate these sacrifices of our forefathers at their true value. The Marlborough campaigns and victories were to them of dazzling splendour, and even the reverses under Cumberland were condoned, by the gallantry of her troops; but time the great arbitrator now proclaims unmistakably, that as far as Britain was concerned, they were a succession of useless slaughters and barren in results.

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, an 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...

...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...

Ed Coleman, in his regular weekly column in the Kentville Advertiser, 12 May 2000.

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. 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".

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.

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, former Premier of Ontario, in the National Post, 10 July 1999.

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

Gerald A. Regan, in the National Post, 15 July 1999. Gerald Augustine Regan was Premier of Nova Scotia from 28 October 1970 to 5 October 1978. Mr. Regan also wrote:

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 ...

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 Massachusetts Governor Paul Cellucci, 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..."

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.

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 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.

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 Halifax, 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, 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. It was released for the first time as Wired's HotBot search site.

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?"

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 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."

(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.

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.

Going online is like travel by magic carpet.

Arnie Patterson, in The Sunday Daily News, 1 June 1997. "I would suspect that within 20 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 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 ..."

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.

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 is Lieutenant Governor J.J. Kinley, whose signature is required before cabinet 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...")

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

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 Chronicle-Herald 26 September 1999.

The weapon of choice in today's society is no longer the armed standoff. It is solidarity and unity through communications. The weapons of faxes, modems, computers, and other communication devices are the most effective...

Sulian Stone Eagle Herney, of Eskasoni, Cape Breton, in the Micmac Maliseet Nations News, volume 7 number 3, March 1996.

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.

I say bravo, Evan Brown.

Wendy Elliott, in her regular weekly column in the Kentville Advertiser, 22 August 2000, commenting on the incident in Cahrlottetown, 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...

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.

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.

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."

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 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://web.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 P.M. Milner, Scientific American, 268, 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.

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.

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 of representative government in Nova Scotia and what was later to be the Dominion of Canada in 1758. 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 Chronicle-Herald 6 July 1996.

In 1758, the first elected assembly in British North America met in Halifax. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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...

Nicholas Denys, Governor of Cape Breton and Eastern Acadia, 1654.

Devco makes money mining coal. Quite a lot of money. The company expects to make $20 million after operating expenses and capital investment in the current fiscal year... It expects to make $31 million next year, $49 million the year after, then $58 million and $70 million in 2000 and 2001...

Parker Barss-Donham in his newspaper column, 12 May 1996.

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

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 Disaster Public Inquiry Commission, 21 May 1996, at Stellarton. Mr. Rogers' testimony is available online at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/3116/960521am.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. Mr. Frame was the chairman and largest shareholder of Curragh Inc., owner and operator of the Westray coal mine. Mr. Rogers' testimony is available online at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/3116/960521am.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 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, 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://www.geocities.com/Athens/3116/960528am.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.

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.]

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

It was one of the most ludicrous things that I ever saw. Joe Clark playing gunslinger on the streets of Calgary. It was like Elmer Fudd playing Gary Cooper.

Harry Flemming, on The Political Panel, a regular weekly segment of First Edition, CBC Television's 6:00-7:00pm evening news broadcast from CBHT in Halifax, 13 July 2000. Harry was commenting on the challenge issued a few days before by Joe Clark, the national leader of the Progressive-Conservative Party, to Stockwell Day, the newly-elected national leader of the Canadian Alliance Party, to have a direct confrontation between Clark and Day in the next federal election, or by-election, in Calgary Centre. Mr. Flemming repeated his comment in his regular weekly column in the Halifax Daily News, 27 July 2000, after Mr. Clark announced he would run for election as a Member of Parliament in the Nova Scotia constituency of Kings-Hants.

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.

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 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 Chronicle-Herald 2 December 1996. McKenna, a Liberal, was referring to the government of (now Senator) John Buchanan, a Conservative, who was Premier of Nova Scotia 1978-1990. The 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".

Receiving comments on Nova Scotia's finances from John Buchanan is like taking lessons in proper dining etiquette from Jeffrey Dahmer.

Mou's editorial cartoon in The Sunday Daily News 9 March 1997.

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.

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] at 9:50am AST, 2 November 1997.

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. The Montbeliard monument is certainly important to their descendants (including my wife), but by focusing on only one group it serves more as a memorial to their national origin than to the overall importance of the Lunenburg founders to Nova Scotia history.

I have no personal axe to grind here, since my own ancestors of the time probably never even heard of Nova Scotia. But I still don't understand why more of a fuss isn't made over this aspect by the Lunenburg descendants. Most of the discussions, even on this mail-list, seem to treat these folk as nothing special, just some random individuals in their family tree who happened to found a quaint place called Lunenburg. Perhaps you don't want to be as obnoxiously snobby as the USA Mayflower descendants. But, why no Lunenburg Founders Society (or the like)? Why no formal effort to collect an official list of the founders and to coordinate identification of their descendants? Winthrop Bell, who certainly realized the significance of the Foreign Protestants, has already done much of the hard work. Why isn't Lunenburg (or even more appropriately: the Province of Nova Scotia) interested in celebrating the 250th anniversary of this important event? Maybe the explanation for all this is subtle and lies in some more basic differences between Canadian and US cultures that I had originally thought existed...

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.

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

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.

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

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.]

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.

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 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. De Cosmos grew up in Windsor, Nova Scotia. Colombo's Concise Canadian Quotations, edited by John Robert Colombo,Hurtig Publishers, 1976.
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 and De Cosmos later wrote the following explanation: he had learned accidentally of the proclamation on April 1 and noting that a £50 fine per issue was the penalty for non-compliance, hastened to find a government official with whom he could file the necessary declarations, and so publish the following day. But the proper officials were inexplicably not to be found, and so the April 2 issues languished in the Colonist office. Nowhere in print does De Cosmos hint that he could not afford the bonds; indeed, the opposite is implied. The issue that was withheld contained on the front page a particularly venomous attack, even for the Colonist, on Douglas and his government...

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 Chronicle-Herald, 1 September 1999.

The quotation above is slightly different from Howe's actual words on that occasion. Ms. Inness quoted Howe correctly, as follows:

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...

The difficulty with the correct quote is that it contains one word, "muniments" which is unknown in the 1990s. This creates a puzzle for modern readers. What did Howe mean by "gathers up its muniments"? The easy way to avoid this puzzle is to replace that word with its current equivalent. Modern renditions of Howe's words often do just that, but slip up by not bothering to look up the meaning of "muniments", but wing it and use "monuments". That is truly quick and easy, and even appears to be a reasonable modification (only two letters changed) of the word, but the phrase then becomes "gathers up its monuments", which sounds strange. What did Howe mean by "A wise nation ... gathers up its monuments"? One can look at a monument. One can restore a monument. One can embellish a monument. One can do various things with monuments, but what is meant by "gathering up" its monuments?

This rendering gets rid of an unknown word but replaces it with an incomprehensible phrase. Not much improvement. The solution is to look up the real meaning of "muniments". Instantly, Howe's advice becomes clear. "Muniments" has nothing to do with monuments. In Howe's context, "muniments" means historic documents.

Howe meant "A wise nation ... gathers up its historic documents", which makes excellent sense, and perfectly fits the context.

That is the background supporting the rendition above.

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 Daily News 30 September 1990.

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).

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.

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.

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 1999 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, 1975

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 http://www.legis.gov.bc.ca/hansard/finals/h0730pm.htm

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]

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.

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 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.

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!"

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 Chronicle-Herald, 10 November 1997.

On the 20th inst., 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 Pty. Ltd. (Australia) 1994. 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.

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/

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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]

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.

I believe The Citizen should acknowledge that plagiarism occurred and use the word in the text.

David Blaikie, author of the book Boston: The Canadian Story in a message to Scott Anderson, Managing Editor of the Ottawa Citizen.

I guess our definition of plagiarism is somewhat different...

Randall Denley responding for the Ottawa Citizen on 1 October 1999.

      The apology wording proposed by Mr. Blaikie:
A Citizen article published Sept. 22 on Tom Longboat, a famous Canadian runner, failed to acknowledge clearly that writer Charles Enman relied heavily on material from a book by David Blaikie. The book, Boston: The Canadian Story, contains a 20-page chapter on Mr. Longboat's achievements. The Citizen accepts the author's view that plagiarism resulted, and apologizes. The original Tom Longboat text is available at this internet address:
http://fox.nstn.ca/~dblaikie/boston/baa-covr.html

http://fox.nstn.ca/~dblaikie/ott-apol.html
    The wording printed in the Ottawa Citizen, 7 October 1999:

A Citizen article published Sept. 22 on Tom Longboat, a famous Canadian runner, failed to acknowledge clearly that writer Charles Enman relied heavily on material from a book by David Blaikie. The book, Boston: The Canadian Story, contains a 20-page chapter on Mr. Longboat's achievements. The Citizen accepts the author's view that this lack of clear acknowledgement was unacceptable, and apologizes. The original Tom Longboat text is available at this internet address: http://fox.nstn.ca/~dblaikie/boston/baa-covr.html.

Sources:
    http://www.bourque.org/
    http://www.ecom.unimelb.edu.au/bdchwww/01copy.html
    http://fox.nstn.ca/~dblaikie/c02oc99a.html
    http://fox.nstn.ca/~dblaikie/ott-apol.html
    http://fox.nstn.ca/~dblaikie/ott-chro.html
    http://fox.nstn.ca/~dblaikie/ott-over.html
    http://fox.nstn.ca/~dblaikie/ott-cit1.html
    http://fox.nstn.ca/~dblaikie/ott-word.html
    http://fox.nstn.ca/~dblaikie/ott-logo.html
and the Ottawa Citizen, 7 October 1999

David Blaikie was born and grew up in the small village of Upper Stewiacke in central Nova Scotia. He was a journalist for 25 years with the Truro, N.S., Daily News, The Canadian Press, Reuters and the Toronto Star, and spent 18 years in the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa.

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.)

Public notice was given on April 29, 1826, that Horton Corner would hereafter be called Kentville, in honour of the Duke of Kent.

Marguerite Woodworth, in her book History of the Dominion Atlantic Railway, October 1936.

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 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 #34;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>

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'm really looking forward to it – nice break, I get to learn something, get to lie around and read, get to be snotty and arrogant when I get back.

Jim Meek commenting about being awarded the 13th Martin Wise Goodman Canadian Nieman Fellowship to study for one year at Harvard University in Massachusetts, quoted in The Chronicle-Herald, 20 May 1997.

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.

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.