ANNAPOLIS ROYAL AND DIGBY
The use of oxen for draught purposes is characteristic of
Nova Scotia. It is practised by French, Germans, and
English, and is so common nowhere in Canada. Along
the country roads one sees the oxen coming along at a
leisurely pace, swishing their tails; their red hides, touched
by the summer sun, blending harmoniously with the landscape;
and casting long shadows on the white road. Yes,
the ox is the beast of burden up and down the Province.
His harness has an unfamiliar look. Of arched yoke and
boles he is often ignorant, and the comfort of collar and
harness would lull him to slumber. Just behind his ears he
carries his yoke, strapped to the base of his horns and
around his forehead. He is shod with iron shoes like a
horse, and is at once the admiration and the derision of
the Yankee, who would not for a moment tolerate such
slow progress. He calls the ox the “Blue-nose automobile.”
I have heard the patient quadruped spoken of
as one of the four characteristics of the Province—apples,
oxen, cold nights, and pessimism. For the latter I should
now substitute optimism. Besides, the Blue-nose never was
pessimistic. At most he was (as you may see by reading
“Sam Slick”) merely apathetic—unresponsive, or as other
observers have declared, serene.
Here is the eastern gateway of one of the most celebrated
apple-growing districts of the world. Long before Tasmania,
South Australia, and California began to grow
apples, it was the orchard of the Empire. Following the
eastern course of the river between North Mountain (which
shelters the valley from the Bay of Fundy) and South
Mountain, there stretch seventy-five miles of fruit lands
and enchanting scenery. Here is grown the luscious apple
which is found in all the world’s great markets. The
apple-tree is the dominant note in the swelling landscape,
and in early June the whole valley is a scene and scent of
sheer beauty, comparable only to the orange-groves of
Seville or Santa Clara. This apple is not, of course,
indigenous; but none can tell who brought the first
pommier from Normandy. Perchance it was Lescarbot
himself. At all events orchards were flourishing here in
abundance long before the expulsion of the Acadians. Ere
the building of the Dominion and Atlantic Railway
(now taken over by the Canadian Pacific), the apple
production of “the Valley” was some twenty thousand
barrels annually. Within a few years the output had
grown to half a million. In 1911 it reached 1,750,000
barrels.
Last year the apple-growers received a serious check.
It was not a good apple year. There was the weather for
one thing, not merely of this but of the season of 1909,
when the embryo bud was formed. A more serious and
more permanent drawback I found to be the want of
capital. They complain here that too much British capital
is going west. Everything conducted on a large scale needs
capital, and the whole situation was clearly explained to
me by a leading orchardist in the Valley, who is a man
of education and substance, and the argument was echoed
by others who follow the industry.
“There is plenty of money in apples,” said he, “and
we should be producing not one but thirty millions of
barrels a year. The trouble is—and there is no need to
disguise it—that while a number of orchards which have
constantly been well cultivated, fertilised, and sprayed,
always yield the usual crops of the finest fruit, the great
bulk of our trees are partially starved and neglected. Far
more trees have been grown than can be brought into
fruit-bearing with the present skill, labour, and capital.”
To plant and grow trees is a simple and not expensive
operation. With such soil as this and proper attention,
little or no fertiliser is needed. But the continued production
and marketing of the fruit involves much more
skill, labour, and capital. Owners of orchards having the
means of fertilising 100 to 150 trees, soon found it a difficult
matter to grapple with an orchard area of 500 to 1000
trees. Such attempt often resulted in less actual returns
than the small orchards had produced. It is simply a
question of want of capital, as it would be in lumbering,
mining, or fishing.
As a result a very considerable proportion of the apples
now produced are discarded as unfit for packing.
“It is out of the question,” continued my informant,
“for us to do business with a mere fraction of the capital
necessary to produce a proper quantity of the wonderful
crops of fruit which twenty or thirty years ago excited the
admiration of European pomologists, and gave a world-wide
fame to this district.”
In other words, the orchards are vastly greater, but
too much of it is with wood, not fruit. However, be it
said, that the number of trees now capable of bearing are
healthy and vigorous. While orchards in other lands bear
earlier, the trees are far less healthy and sooner decay.
The Annapolis Valley trees reach a great size, and I have
been shown many bearing fruit in profusion at the age
of 100 and even 150 years. Labour and capital are the
great need of the district.
Even when the yield of the fine fruit is large, there
appears a disquieting drawback. Many were the complaints
I heard of the greed of the carrier by steamer or railway,
or of the middlemen, as if these were in a conspiracy to
squeeze the last cent out of this industry. For apples for
which the Covent Garden dealer receives 30s. a barrel,
the grower has often to be content with 5s. I was told
of one middleman who often gains 50,000 dollars in a
season; while the last season three middlemen made an
average profit of 40,000 dollars each.
I found here, as elsewhere in Nova Scotia, the existence
of a deep-seated grievance not yet voiced abroad as
it may be. Bitterly does the farmer and the fruit-grower
complain of that tide of population promoted out of the
Canadian public treasury, which has been not only sweeping
in its current tens of thousands from the old country,
but the many stalwart youth from the Maritime Provinces
as well, whose strength is so much needed at home. The
millions spent in Western development are as a thorn in
the side of the Nova Scotian. Hence, therefore, the
warmth of the welcome he extends to the Canadian Pacific
Railway, which this year will formally invade “the Valley.”
Yet the action of this great corporation is rather merely
a symptom than any cause of that awakening prosperity
and general accession of enterprise which I noted throughout
this part of the Province.
With regard to fruit, it cannot be pointed out too often
that Nova Scotia is nearer the British and other European
markets than any other part of the continent. Some of
the best fruit growing sections of Canada and the United
States are near the Pacific Coast, and the eight or ten
days necessary to bring their fruit to Atlantic ports, besides
the extra freight charges, must certainly serve as a serious
drawback to those States and Provinces from which New
Scotland is free.
But not merely British but a great deal of Nova Scotia
capital is invested elsewhere—particularly in the Far West.
The East is always financing the West. They tell a story
of a Kansas man on a visit to the East, who looked with
characteristic scorn on its old-fashioned methods and remarked
to a New England farmer: “You are surely foolish
to stay here where you have to do your spring ploughing
with a pickaxe and your planting with a shotgun. Why
don’t you come out West? Not a stump, not a stone in
sight; soil ten feet deep; crops of one year make you
rich.” The New Englander listened with evident interest
and then said: “I am holding six mortgages on Kansas
farms, and if you fellows will just keep it up, and pay
the interest, I will try and pull along very well where I
am.”
Just how many mortgages on farms, how many title-deeds
to fertile sections of land or valuable city lots in the
rapidly developing West are to-day in Nova Scotian hands,
and are a source of wealth to the ancient Province by
the sea, it would be difficult to compute.
Not so long ago when the citizens of Winnipeg began
to negotiate for land on a bend in the Red River in the
immediate environs of the city for the purpose of a public
park, it was found to be already in the possession of enterprising
Nova Scotian capitalists. There are other instances.
In the Annapolis Valley the advent of the Canadian
Pacific Railway is the great abiding topic of interest.
Reports of its plans and movements are canvassed by all
classes and all interests. It is said that the railway has
decided to build four new steamers for a fast direct steamship
service between Nova Scotia and Boston and New York.
These vessels will be larger and faster than any at present
engaged in the American or Canadian Atlantic Coast
steamship traffic. This is one of the important developments
that will follow the taking over of the Dominion
Atlantic. These steamers, which will be able to make
over 20 knots an hour, are to run between Yarmouth and
Boston, Halifax and New York, and Halifax and Boston.
There will also be a fast steamship service between Digby
and Boston, and across the Bay of Fundy between St. John
and Digby. The fleet of six steamers which the great
corporation will take over with the Dominion Atlantic
road will be placed on the subsidiary services.
[Illustration: ANNAPOLIS—THE OLDEST GRAVEYARD ON THE CONTINENT.]
[Illustration: ANNAPOLIS ROYAL—THE HOME OF THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON
(“SAM SLICK”).]
The great corporation will probably build four big
hotels in Nova Scotia—one at Yarmouth, one at Digby,
one at Halifax, and one at Chester, a branch line from
Windsor to Chester, only thirty miles, being contemplated
to bring Chester into the Canadian Pacific Railway system.
It seems to be taken for granted that the railway
authorities will make an organised effort to increase British
immigration to this Province. They recognise that more
population is needed, and they are going to do their part,
so we are told, to bring in the people, and this with their
publicity system ought not to be difficult.
One should not perhaps complain of the perpetual
insistence upon lands in the making, of the “possibilities”
of the virgin prairie, of the sun-kissed solitudes of the
Golden West. But this is the Golden East, the long-settled,
pleasant East, where the genius of history muses amidst
moss-grown battlements and ancient tombstones. This is
Canada—the first Canada—Acadia. Even Quebec yields
precedence to Annapolis Royal, the “cradle” of the
Canadian Dominion.
Rich indeed in historic and poetic association is Annapolis
Royal. What romantic memories cluster about this
little town, superbly set at the head of Annapolis Basin!
Save Quebec no spot on the entire Continent has a more
abiding interest. Three years before a white man’s hut
had been built on the site of Quebec, a fort and village
were to be found at Port Royal. On the waters of this
basin was launched the first vessel built in North America;
here, too, was the first mill fashioned. Also the problem
of Canadian agriculture was here solved by the successful
production of cereal and root crops.
Nor is this all. At old Port Royal was witnessed the
first conversion to Christianity; here echoed the first notes
of poetic song in Canada—the chanson composed by
Lescarbot in honour of Champlain. And here flourished
the first social club in the western hemisphere.
So we are carried back to the very beginnings of both
French and British rule—to the days of De Monts,
Champlain, and Poutrincourt. Founded in 1605, the
vicissitudes of the fort and town (renamed in Queen
Anne’s honour) have been numerous enough to fill a portly
volume.[9]
[Footnote 9: See Calnek and Savary’s _History of Annapolis_.]
Port Royal once bade fair then to become a great
city and Acadia a populous province. I have already told
about Champlain and the “Order of a Good Time,” about
Membertou and the hopes of the early French settlers.
In 1607 De Monts’ charter was revoked by the King,
and his friends would support his scheme with no more
money. The Indians at Port Royal watched the French
depart with sadness, promising to look after the fort and
its belongings until the white men should return.
Champlain had chosen another field—the lands far
inland on the St. Lawrence; but Poutrincourt resolved,
after first dealing a blow at his enemies in France, to return
to take deep root in the fertile Acadian soil.
In the spring of 1613 the Jesuits who, in the meantime,
had through the influence of Madame De Guercheville got
rights in Acadia, despatched an expedition under a courtier
named La Saussaye, who, landed at Port Royal, took on
board two priests left there, and then sailed on and founded
a new colony at Mount Desert, on the coast of Maine.
All Acadia, as well as Canada, was given back to the
French by the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, and King
Louis and his Court were now inclined to abandon their
policy of indifference and resume the work of colonising.
In the spring of 1632 a nephew of Richelieu’s, Captain
de Razilly, arrived in Acadia with a shipload of colonists,
including artisans, farmers, several Capuchin friars, and
some gentry. Amongst the latter were Nicholas Denys,
and an extraordinary person, Charles de Menou, Chevalier
de Charnisay, whom I commend as a really superb stage
villain.
Young De la Tour, who considered himself the rightful
lord of Acadia under De Monts’ charter,[10] was naturally
jealous of Razilly, thinking the King ought to have appointed
him Governor, instead of giving him the mere lordship over
a limited territory. Even upon Razilly’s death in the
following year, De la Tour’s hopes were frustrated. Razilly
had ceded all his rights to Charnisay, his Deputy-Governor,
whose first act was to remove from La Hêve to Port Royal,
where he built a new fort.
[Footnote 10: _Ante_, p. 18.]
Now began the astonishing drama of Charnisay and
De la Tour. The latter believed it to be Charnisay’s aim
to dispossess him of those rights which he had acquired
in Acadia by so much energy and sacrifice. The King
tried to settle the dispute by fixing the limits of Charnisay’s
government at the New England frontiers on the one hand,
and at a line north from the Bay of Fundy on the other,
westward of this line to be De la Tour’s province. Charnisay’s
friends poisoned the King’s mind by alleging that
De la Tour was a Huguenot in disguise, and orders were sent
to his foe to arrest him and send him a prisoner to France.
The young commander strengthened Fort la Tour and
defied his enemy to do his worst.
Not until the spring of 1643 was the crafty Charnisay
ready to wreak vengeance on the “traitor,” as he called
De la Tour. With the ships and 500 men Richelieu had
sent him, Charnisay led the assault. La Tour proved too
strong, and to starve La Tour into capitulation was begun
a close siege by sea and land. A long-expected ship, with
provisions, merchandise, and gunpowder for Fort la Tour,
was sighted off the coast, and De la Tour and his wife
managed in an open boat to gain the decks.
They sailed for Boston, where, although they dared
not give him direct assistance, the Puritan elders of
that new town had no objection to striking a bargain,
and at a good price permitted their visitor to hire four
stout ships and seventy men. Sailing back with this force,
De la Tour was able to make his enemy flee before him.
The siege of his own fort being raised, he followed the
foiled Charnisay to Port Royal, captured a shipload of
rich furs, and would have taken Charnisay himself and his
settlement, had it not been that the scruples of his Boston
allies led to the making of a false peace. There could be
no real peace between De la Tour and Charnisay. After
many adventures Marie De la Tour was left in charge of
their fort. Charnisay, constantly on the watch, fell upon
her, but her defence was so vigorous that but for the action
of a traitor he would never have taken it and her. He placed
a common halter round this brave woman’s neck and forced
her to witness the cold-blooded murder of her garrison.
She pined away and died three weeks later at Port Royal.
Her husband became for years a wanderer on the face of the
earth, until he learnt of the drowning of Charnisay, when
he returned and married the widow of his life-long foe.
This is only half the drama: but the rest can be read in the
history books.
Recently the good folk of Annapolis were very busy
over preparations for the celebration of the bi-centenary of
the Church of England in Canada. A shoal of bishops was
imminent—amongst them the distinguished prelate who
signs himself “Arthur F. Londin.” One prospective
hostess desired my opinion on the propriety of ensconcing
three bishops in one room—so full to overflowing would the
old town be, and so limited the accommodation. Here was
a problem in episcopal—nay, in doctrinal accommodation,
not without bearing upon High, Low, and Broad bishops
and their respective powers of bodily as well as spiritual
adjustment, a problem I could only hint at and evade.
All this Anglican jubilation was to signalise the fact
that a couple of centuries ago, with the English conquest,
came the chaplain of the garrison to minister
to the English newcomers. Here the worthy cleric, a
certain Rev. John Harrison, of whom little is known, set
up his altar and celebrated Holy Communion in English
for the first time in the Province and in all the land destined
later to become the Canadian Dominion. Not that these
are the first anniversary fêtes the town has witnessed. In
1905 Annapolis Royal recalled its tercentenary, when a
monument to De Monts was erected on a commanding
site within the grounds of the dismantled fortress. Few
vestiges now remain of the old masonry, but the site is in
charge of Government, and is maintained in excellent condition
as a public park.
Digby has grown into a flourishing summer resort from
a fishing town which was famed far and near as the home
of the “Digby chicken,” an article almost as famous as
Yarmouth bloater or Bombay duck. Some seventy years
ago Haliburton wrote in words often quoted:
“Digby is a charming little town. It is the Brighton
of Nova Scotia, the resort of the valetudinarians of New
Brunswick, who take refuge here from the unrelenting
fogs, hopeless sterility, and calcareous waters of St. John.
About as pretty a place this for business, said the Clockmaker,
as I know of in this country. Digby is the only
safe harbour from Blowmidown to Briar Island. Then there
is that everlasting long river runnin away up from the
wharfes here almost across to Minas Basin, bordered with
dikes and interval, and backed up by good upland. A
nice, dry, pleasant place for a town, with good water, good
air, and the best herrin fishery in America, but it wants
one thing to make it go ahead.” “And, pray, what is
that?” said I, “for it appears to me to have every natural
advantage that can be desired.” “It wants to be made a
free port,” said he. “They ought to send a delegate to
England about it; but the fact is they don’t understand
diplomacy here nor the English either. They haven’t got
no talents that way.”
Steamers now run between Boston and Digby, as well as
between Digby and St. John.
[Illustration: OFF THE PIER AT DIGBY.]
[Illustration: LOW TIDE AT YARMOUTH.]
A favourite rendezvous for tourists is the mountain, from
which a good view of Annapolis Basin, extending away up
to Annapolis Royal, and taking in Bear and Goat Islands
and the Granville shore, is to be enjoyed. There are
many interesting drives hereabouts, one passing a camp of
Micmac Indians, who turn an honest penny by fashioning
fancy baskets for the tourists and posing for amateur
photographers.
The Shore Road winds for a couple of miles along the
edge of the Basin and the base of Ben Lomond towards
Digby Strait, otherwise known as “The Gut” or “The
Gap,” the great natural wonder of the vicinity. It is a
break in the North Mountain range less than a mile in
width, and through it the tides of Fundy and the Annapolis
Basin rush with irresistible force.
“The Gut” is the dominating feature of Digby scenery,
and very popular with visitors. On the other and western
side of the town is Digby Neck, a length strip of land which
forms the seaward barrier of St. Mary’s Bay.
Bear River is the scene of an annual cherry carnival.
It may be reached by sail-boat or steamer, the route lying
part of the way across Annapolis Basin. The village lies
four miles up the winding stream from the station, and is
an important lumber centre, but chiefly famous for its
cherries. This luscious fruit grows here in rich profusion,
and long ago suggested the great summer event in Bear
River, the annual cherry carnival, which is held in July.
On carnival day hundreds of tourists and natives visit the
pretty town to feast on the cherries and to witness a procession
and aquatic sports.
The small but enterprising town of Weymouth boasts
some shipyards and shipping. With its high river banks, its
attractive residences, and its surrounding forests, Weymouth
is a pretty place and popular with American tourists.
Sissibo Falls, some distance up the river, is one of the
scenic features of the locality.
People who have read Longfellow’s “Evangeline” often
ask what became of the Acadians—did they virtually
disappear after the expulsion? Those of sympathetic
temperament as well as the historical student would doubtless
be glad to know if it is really the case that—
“Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic
Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile
Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom.”
[Illustration: THE HOME OF “EVANGELINE.”]
[Illustration: AT EVANGELINE’S WELL.]
To such, therefore, I am glad to state that scattered
through the Maritime Provinces, Magdalen Islands, Gaspe,
St. Pierre and Miquelon, and Newfoundland, are close
upon 150,000 descendants of the expelled Acadians. By
far the most interesting Acadian settlement is that of Clare,
in the extreme south-west of Nova Scotia. Here in a
single continuous village, twelve miles long, dwells a primitive
people, some 10,000 all told; wholly out of touch of the
railway, and only to be seen on foot or by motor. Many
travellers pass on the borders of this district without suspecting
its existence, only marvelling perhaps why the
railway line from Digby to Yarmouth describes such a
curve inland at this part. The reason is this: When the
railway was built the French priest in spiritual charge of
the Clare Acadians took alarm for his flock, and by supplications
and threats managed to get the line diverted, so as
to cut off his parish between the railway and the sea. All
the traveller sees, therefore, from the car windows is a
stretch of untilled land and a succession of tree stumps.
Were he to descend and push on a few miles he would
come to the best road in the Province, hundreds of neat
dwellings at Meteghan, Salmon River, and Church Point,
and a cheerful, contented, ignorant people, living now as
they have lived for a century and a half on the south shore
of St. Mary’s Bay. Here,
“In the fisherman’s cot the wheel and the loom are still busy,
Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,
And by the fire repeat Evangeline’s story.”
This latter is no poetical fiction. The story of the
expulsion is really fresh in the hearts of all these peasants.
The Roman Catholic establishment is very strong hereabouts,
one of the largest churches in the Province being
here; and they can also boast of a college and convent
which, I believe, as is the case with other Roman Catholic
institutions in the Province, is in receipt of funds from
France.
Here once dwelt a priest whose deeds and whose example
still live amongst the French Acadians of Clare. I talked
with a man who well remembered the worthy Curé of
Montaignan.
“Born and educated in France,” wrote Captain
Moorsom, “M. Segoigne emigrated from that country
when revolutionary suspicion threatened the lives of all
whose virtues were inimical to the views of the ruling
democrats, and for the last thirty years has devoted his
attention exclusively to the welfare of these children of
Acadia. Buried in this retreat from all the thoughts and
habits of the polished world, he yet retains the urbanity
of the old French school; or rather, I apprehend, possesses
that natural excellence of disposition which gives to urbanity
its intrinsic value. He is at once the priest, the lawyer,
and the judge of his people; he has seen most of them rise
up to manhood around him, or accompany his own decline
in the vale of years; the unvarying steadiness of his conduct
has gained equally their affection and respect; to him,
therefore, it is that they apply in their mutual difficulties,
from him they look for judgment to decide their little
matters of dispute.”
In French-speaking Canada one frequently comes across
the priest in this dignified, affectionate, paternal character.
Denied real fatherhood he consecrates his life to his spiritual
children; and the virtues of such men constitute the real
strength of the Roman Catholic church in Canada, amongst
a simple folk to whose minds, absorbed in labour and
home life, doctrine and dialectics are as the scattering of
chaff on the sands of the sea.