So, we’ll start with what is your full name?

Hmmmm?

What is your full name?

Gerald Keith Handspiker.

And who were your parents?

Hmmmm?

Who were your parents?

Well, Clarence Wallace Handspiker.

And your mom?

Mom was Leta White.

Who were your grandparents?

Hmmmm?

Your grandparents?

My grandparents on my father’s side was David William Handspiker and mother, grandmother was Henrietta Adams.

When were you born?

I was born right across the road here.

And when was that?

Nineteen ‘o seven, the sixteenth day of August, nineteen ‘o seven.

O.k. How large was your family when you were growing up?

Hmmmm?

How large was your family when you were growing up?

Well, I had a sister Louise and a brother Herbert, Herbie and then another sister Muriel and then after that I was more or less out around of course and I remember quite a long ways back. I’ll tell you, the election of nineteen eleven I can remember it quite well. Now, I’d only be, I was born in seven so that’d be eight, nine, ten, eleven, only four years old. What I’d remember about it would be canvassers coming along, come in the house and they had a horse in them days, they had no cars and in nineteen eleven in Digby there wasn’t hardly any cars. There might have been a couple of cars or something like that, they all had horses and election time it was a span or two span of horses on a buckboard. These hills are quite big and therefore that and a considerable amount of rum had to be, was transported. (Laughter). So, anyhow the man that was running the election was, the Premier was Sir Wilfred Laurier, was federal Premier of Ottawa, Sir Wilfred Laurier formerly from Quebec. He was a good Premier to represent the Liberal party and he’d taken over from Sir Charles A. Tupper and Sir Charles Tupper was the means of Joseph Howe being defeated and in Halifax if you go along you’ll see a man on a statue up there with a coat on and his head in the air, that’s Joseph Howe, the greatest premier we ever had in Nova Scotia. He went to see Nova Scotia smile, not for his pocket book and he was a former Loyalist. Loyalist meant, it was you stood by the English and left the states. Digby was settled by the Loyalists, the Canadian Empire Loyalists, Saint John, New Brunswick; Shelburne, Nova Scotia; and Guysbourgh down there and that’s the story. My people was, on one side was Dutch, apparently Conrad Handspiker was born in Holland close to the, what is that place called?, the Bear River there, right on the Eastern Coast anyway, the river there that goes through there, the water goes from Hamburg, Germany through to the sea, you know what I mean?, came out through New Jersey in seventeen seventy-seven. There was others from his area who had been out previous to that. He was a sailor by trade but he wasn’t too young really but his family came out and I can’t tell you the date just at the moment now, I’ll have to check it up again, the date’s on that but anyway, he had family when he came out from Holland, yes he had family and he had to go into training, army, under the English, England, now United States, and he had to go training and give seven days training and all the immigrants had two months training so the War started, I don’t know what, eighteen eighty-three it was through but it started years before that, I have the book here, there’s a book there that tells when it started, The Colonel Fanning’s History.

In this one here?

The lower, lower one I think, or the top one. The red one is it?, Is that Fanning?

David Fanning, yep. That’s it.

Just look in that and you’ll see pretty well when it started. This Fanning, there’s another story too I’ll give you. I’m a descendent of Colonel Fanning’s.

Oh, o.k.

Yep, he was Irish, his wife was married with a Scotch. I think it was, let me see……

It says it ended in seventeen eighty-one.

Seventeen eighty-nine?

Eighty-one.

Seventeen eighty-one.

He surrendered his Army at the York Town in October of seventeen eighty-one and then the whole thing was through.

Eighty-one?

Yep, it doesn’t say…….

Oh, that wasn’t the start of the War, the War wasn’t, didn’t run too long, it was a few years. It speaks about when he was, he was, his father got drowned duck shootin’ and he was born in West Virginia and, Media County, West Virginia and he had eleven hundred acres of, his father had eleven hundred acres and he had eleven hundred at an early age somehow or another, it was left to him, it was up to twenty-two acres all together and he was sixteen years of age when it happened, his mother, he was too young for most anything, so he got in so good, she, the farmer would bring him up and the farmer then was quite a handyman, a carpenter and everything with it and he was quite set in his ways the man was, and you’d give him a good trainin' and he would become very skillful with wood and everything he did. He was a crack rifle shot and he had got out over that and he was tradin’, he was tradin’ with the Indians in Kentucky, supplies and different things and when this started up they had teams that checked overboard in Boston at that date because small enterprise was being hampered with, England was doing the same as they had done in Scotland and Ireland and they were quite impressive. In Scotland, my grandmother was born in Scotland, yeah it was over there when I was in the service but I was in Ireland more than that but I like the Irish people, fine people them, both in the free state and the other too and I know I picked up a book in the library on a ship and the History of Ireland. They said, "Oh, you’re going to read the history of Ireland, are you?", I said, "Oh yes", "Well, tell us how you found it would ya?", I said, "I will." When I read it, why….., "Oh, how did it make out?", I said, "You have to be, if you are a fair minded person, your sympathies have got to go with the South of Ireland", I said, "I’m tellin’ you the truth", because this is one of the best islands over here, the climate, green, great as can be and St. Patrick made a good choice when he called it the Emerald Arch and St. Patrick was born in Brittany, France, Brittany and they are the Celtic race and the Irish, and the Scot’s, and the Welsh and the English are not. They are the Saxon and like, the Danish, that’s like the Dempatory, so I’m self-raised because my mother was White which was the Acadians, I’ve got the set up there for it, she was really a LeBlanc but my grandfather went to sea and that family went to sea quite a bit and some of them were sea captains and they ##### in an English Port, them day s to save white LeBlanc because, you understand the War had just pulled out, ######. I would say ###################. St. Patrick, I read how he converted this man, he spent all night, this man had lived alone and had a few tastes and talked all night and he couldn’t seem to get it through when you said, when you made the sign of the cross, you know what I mean, the father and the son and the holy spirit, he couldn’t get it through, so he picked up this flower and it’s got this, it was a shamrock with three buds and he showed him. He said, "This one, two, three", and he grasped it that night, how it became the flower of Ireland. Well, then they had the Blarney Stone there, they’re quite, good salesman, I ################, well I met a lot of Irish people then, they really got a, they got a really, got, make you feel at home and down to earth but there’s another sad story too. I met the Irish over there, the story is, it’s all in song, when they went to do work like their hay and grain and cutting and doin’ things, the families in the community decided this would get it together and bring the baskets and stuff to eat and whatnot and music with them and a little bit of rye whisky and some of this and that would work and they would mow everything down and then if they would work too hard they would stop and tell a joke once and a while and sing a song and tell you one again and that was the way they lived and then night time come, well then they’d just sit up and have a meal and then the music would start and that would be it. So, this ship appeared on an Oceanside coming across from England and they sized up the situation and went back to report to England and, " funny people over there", he said, " They work and then they dance a while and sing a while, eat a while", and this way and that way, "we’ve got to go over and take them out", so they sailed and the stranger came. We did not speak his language (Laughter) and we would not try, we would not try. (Laughter) No, he came with swords and brass buttons and everything else and all we had was a shillelagh but the song went like this.

You talk about your hybrid men

‘twas here they got their birth

There’s Wellington and Gold McNore

enough in store,

the stranger got his fill

Now next relation has settled throughout the land,

the horse, the cow, the pig, the plow is going through the strangers hand

Well, so it was, now they moved them off the land when they come and I seen the house they lived in, my parents showed me. I always took a shortcut, it was a nice spare place coming up the river. I said, "I’d like to go down there and cruise there, it’s been an hour or two ********, so when I went to come back I decided I’d come up this way and go up across towards the old ***********. They had to work their land on a tithe, if you know what that means.

Q. Tithe?

A. Yeah, or a tithe. Well, it would mean that the earl would drive around or his second man in charge and tracked up what was coming to the earl.

Q. O.k.

A. It could be three bushel for the earl and one for the man that growed them and everything and he couldn’t, he could talk, walk around on his land but once he was, flew off his, doin’ his farm work he’d have to back down where he belonged, and that’s what they were like. So, I said, I was goin’, I met the Earlsman and he was a fine old feller and, a cobblestone house he built then, thatched roof and all this stuff, oh that’s where he lived. So, he’s telling me the story and he said, "Midland there, that’s the kindest land you ever could plow", and we no longer have it. The stranger has it. We ************ to get one for our self, we had to grow free for him. That’s how, they lived in a luxury. They drove all around just collecting in the fall and all this, the same with the cattle and the sheep and everything like that. Well, the sad part of this whole thing is that Reverend Paisley and so on, he’s a really big, he started the Orange order, you know, of course I hope I’m not talking to an Orangemen (Laughter) but anyway, so that’s the rest, but they quit their home, the independence I think in World War 1 and now their shippin’ stuff to America, they're quite well ahead in the game, you know, on their own but there’s four counties in the North that’s not in and they should be in and put an end to this but this *********, England would rather they would be in, anyway and be over with and wouldn’t have so much of this trouble. So, the Blarney Stone, yeah and then St. Patrick, he fired all of snakes over in the Irish channel, he drownded them. There’s no snakes in Ireland.

Q. I’d like it there.

A. Yeah. (Laughter) But it is green and it’s beautiful. I know when we went over on Westerly gale, we was five days goin’ over, it was rough, oh boys it was rough, in submarine areas and our stuff went out, acid gear and all that junk went out and the German subs would go to the bottom and lay right on the bottom, you see, when it’s rough like that. Of course we had to try, we were trying to dodge them I suppose because everything was gone out, we can’t do anything, anyway, in the morning early, the green land of Ireland loomed up and nothing looked so good to me to see that, so green and nice and such a nice welcome we got too and then over in Scotland, the picture was another one again. ************* of the clearance of the highlands, their homes, clearance. See, Scotland fell in a certain War, Mary Queen of Scot’s was heir to the throne and the Stewart’s were the Royal Clan. It all went the clans in Scotland, you know, (Laughter) this is funny, a good deal like the Indians was here, they had the chief and so on, anyway, the clans that my, my grandmother was a Duncan. **********, that’s the seaport of Edinburgh, there’s a castle on the hill there, ********* five days there, it was Glasgow and, this is Edinburgh, Glasgow is a shipbuilding town, Little Tupper, Edinburgh. The Scotsmen are really quite inventors, they invented steam. They’re a similarity to the Irish only they study a little more. They seem to be a little deeper a little bit, they don’t have quite the quick wit, but they give you an answer but it’s got the, it’s very direct like, yeah that’s the story you get. ***** great crops. The best crops in the United States and in New York, the Irishmen have the best crops. Yep, they’re great providers of hotels and salesman and they made some good generals too. Montgomery, Montgomery was ***** general, yeah he was general. Wellington was a big general at Waterloo there, Wellington was, General Wellington, he was from Ireland and, well dressed people, so that’ll tell you something and then the government, **********. The United States has used, there’s been some good men in the USA as presidents and so on, so you can hold your head high on that. (Laughter) Well, now we get back to everything, now. You wanted to know a little about Culloden, you say.

Yep, well I’ll ask you first, what did your father do for a living when you were growing up?

Well, my god he, I’ll tell ya, he was like a lot more the people had come down here, the United Empire Loyalists. ******, they stood by England or had that idea of being ***, but he wasn’t born up there but that’s how it was. His people, Handspiker, yep and ******, they were into the New Jersey artillery, Conrad was and his sons, two sons and they had settled at the foot of the range in the mountains here, you know, and New York state and Pennsylvania, run through and that’s the reason, how they come to Digby here and they got the lots cleared and surveyed in eighteen eighty-five and Pleasant was settled in eighteen eighty-seven by Conrad Handspiker and his son John Handspiker. John had got a grant, he got the boxwood grant, it was a large grant of land and his son, not so large, the hat field grant and then there was a VanTassell settled at the same time, he was from the flatland of New York state. He was more or less a butcher and raised cattle and sheep and that stuff, and that was it. That’s Old Dyke Road, I might as well give you from Digby out, I guess and give you the whole thing.

O.k, yep.

On his monument in Digby, it was served in the, in the artillery and so on and his son Peter had four sons and his four sons, one of them was Simon, John Simon, that would be my great grandfather. The next one was, them two settled, one went the Truro way and, the young man and the other went down to Pictou and the other one was John, it was Ross, Ross, Ross Handspiker, yeah. He sailed away to ********. Umm, and that’s how it was and then his son was Gabriel Handspiker, Gabriel and, boy he was, went to sea quite a bit, built boats quite a bit and he was good that way, good with tools and the way it was, they had great grants of land a lot of them but education slipped back due to the fact that when they left up there, there were schools, they were educated but down here, clear of the city, like Halifax would be alright and even in Digby would be, would be good. Of course, Digby, what happened in Digby was, you had some wealthy English had settled in Digby. They were always on the controlling end where the money was, you know, controlling matters. In Halifax they would control the Navy, and they’d control the Army and all these things like that, you see?

Yep.

Well, there’s a story. Joseph Howe, you see, he started a newspaper and it was a poor product and he had to walk around to collect the pay and wore his shoes out. Then he’d be, he’d be getting’ a look around and after the United States got her independence, after she chucked the tea overboard and got her independence, she had a lot of nerve to do so in Boston but if they hadn’t done that they’d have never got ahead because England thrived off of her colonies, the raw materials from her colonies would take it home to England and manufacture it there, an awful lot of it by child labor, traps and all this stuff, and they could produce good material alright, very sharp and inspected everything and they had a good market in the world and they’d get very wealthy, you see and sizin’ the situation up, I’m quite a thinker anyway, and I look around quite a bit and size things up. The ordinary guys ******** and they go and fight for England and they wouldn’t get very much out of it but they’d be happy and might shine, a bit of cheese and have a bottle of beer too and, if you could afford it, maybe there was something stronger and they’d talk and argue away and, but everybody was free, and freedom of speech and in the British Isles, that’s one place in Europe you have the right to speak your mind, you can do it, you couldn’t in France or Germany or any of them other countries. You could be before a firing squad. Of course when War was to break out they’d forget all of their differences, they did and they just went to help one another, they did and, but the funny people, if you're down in England you don’t want to say, brag about anybody up in Scotland or Ireland and you go down to Scotland and you don’t want to do it either. The girl in Scotland is called the bonnie, bonnie sweet lass.

O.k.

Yeah, and they’re pretty good people though but they had a, quite a hard time and they cut Mary, Queen of Scot’s head off, beheaded her and her own cousin had it done, that’s the English Queen, Queen Elizabeth, she wanted the crown. Bonnie Prince Charles, they had the battle up there on the Culloden in Scotland. This was, this is at least, well now, ******* come and get name on it but, Culloden, but somebody, some Englishmen in Digby must have named it. (Laughter) The others didn’t know the difference, I guess. (Laughter) Yeah, so anyway ***** Prince Charles, they smuggled him out to France, dressed him up like a woman and got him there. This woman, high class woman down there took him as her, somebody that waits on her, lady thing, you know what I mean, take care of things, just to get him out of the country and ***** and they **** house come in then, or from somebody, the King George, and, the fifth and ******* were first cousins. ******. But anyway, getting back to here, I’m all, rambling you all around here but them two families are there and then later over here at that date was a man named George Bain from Scotland. He come out on the Mary Anne sailing ship from Scotland, Captain Turnbull, that’s how the Turnbull’s come to be out on the Lighthouse Road, Turnbull’s, yep, you’ve heard that name before, yep, yep and this George Bain, he lives out here, this property here at that date and he married a Handspiker, some Handspiker, one of the Handspiker’s back then and then Post, Gilbert Post. The Post family came from Holland. He was a good man with wood, build ships, yep, yep, they were like that more or less. Well, then when the ship come out from Scotland, Captain Turnbull, he brought out the Scotch and Irish people from County Cork, Ireland, County Clare, James Daley come out, and, the year he come out and there’s some Daley’s here down the road and there’s some Murphy families down here and they call themselves Liverpool Irish. Well, Liverpool Irish means that they came from Ireland over to Liverpool and would be employed and apparently they got on ships or whatever, that way and got over here, you see. There was quite a lot of Murphy’s in, you went through the way?

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

And the, well the story was that, the United States actually chucked the tea overboard, it was a lot of nerve to do so and I made a good many trips to the United States. I sailed. See, I fished a good many years. I went in a boat when I was fourteen, I was in the boats down shore here at ten or twelve years old and that way and I fished with dad and his boat. We had our own boat, a thirty foot boat, you know and that’s what everybody was doing here and previous to that they had just sailboats and sometimes, some pretty tough times they had and the shore and that way. Well, then in order to make a living, you had to try to do something else. You had to clear up some land so you had to keep a cow and they had groove for taters (potato) and stuff and things to eat and a pretty, pretty handy people would get things that way and plant some shrubs or trees, somethin’ to, rhubarb and things to grow stuff on and help out. Berries, all kinds of berries. Still, you don’t have to grow them, you can pick them up around the shore, cranberries and that way. We make a good drink out of rhubarb here, there’s a recipe ************* and it’s a great drink. We got it from a woman from down Halifax County, I think it was, Musquodoboit. Yep, out at Clam Harbor, sort of a tourist place, yep and she wroted up the directions. She said that on the islands off Nova Scotia the fisherman and the, the land was rocky so there wasn’t too many farmin’ but they generally had a rhubarb patch and rhubarb was the first thing I had in the spring of green vegetable, you know, that was before times was good like they are now. Everybody can have pretty well what they want but we have to go back a few years and think about it. So, this recipe she had was ****, I’ve got it here, we made it and we got some made up in there, maybe you could have a taste and try it out. You put an orange or two into it and the rest is rhubarb but you boil the rhubarb to get the juice and there’s so much sugar into it of course and the orange or two in it or you could put a lemon as well and that’s about it and boy, you’ll get this, you can taste the real vegetable. It’s a very satisfying, cool drink, nice drink, yeah, yeah. So, anyway that’s how things happened and here, when you go back to that, boy that’s how it was , but just as soon as the United States got her free enterprise, New York City, they didn’t have to build, Holland had settled that previously but England sailed in one day and told them that, you know they didn’t have anything and told them they’d give them so many minutes to heist up the flag to surrender or else put up their guns to fight but they didn’t have any anyway and they just said, "Well, I guess we’ll surrender under conditions", nobody surrendered under conditions and when things get straightened around a bit like that and there’s another story, it’s a marvelous story based in, around the seventeenth century about a, it was about a woman and a husband after he’s been dead, a shipyard worker, he wasn’t a, and she checked a little from ******, her son and her, he had, in her house he had a, sort of a bar like, you know, stuff with beer in it and stuff like that, more or less that way and she was a nice woman and these girls that was there was girls that had no home, you know, and stopped and stayed and one thing or another and that’s how they got along and she had another son that went to sea and he was gone three years and they never heard of him and the boy was in bed one night and he heard a noise downstairs so he goes down to look and seen water on the floor and couldn’t think why there was water on the floor, it was raining of course, he looked, looks over and there’s his brother lying on the lawns and he wondered about him, why he didn’t be in bed or whatever, he looked dead anyways, he looked hard, he had some scars on him, he looked terrified. So, he didn’t say no more and there was a big set of luggage there, so he went up to bed but he couldn’t sleep thinking about it so he went down in the morning, why the mother didn’t seem like she heard anything about it but he said he had some presents for them so he opened up one chest and, well there was some fine silks and cloth and he gave his mother some and other things and a gun for his brother and, what was it?, well beautiful scarf’s he gives these woman, girls, clothes to be made up and make nice, so anyway, then he had one heavy chest left, they took a hold of it and he turned as quick as a flash, "Just lay off of that", he said. His brother said, "Sorry", you know, but there was a reason there, it will come out later. He, to tell you the truth he went aboard of a, got shipped aboard of a pirates ship and didn’t know he was on it and the pirate couldn’t sail the ship, no navigation anyway but he killed the former captain there was previously and he’d taken over the ship but he was a regular murderer and they were scared of him and he had a brain on him though, of course, and he was making awful captures and stuff and everything and the English was after him, Ringold his name was, (Laughter) and this boy got aboard and he had a lot of Spanish coin and everything and he had, I guess he had swiped it from the pirate and the pirate put him between decks and feed him on bread and water, when he get in, why he would be, the man would be killed, you see, so they, one of the men aboard the ship offered, they didn’t like this Ringold because they knew what he was and when he got up off of where this boy lived, he said, "You just about off where you live now?", he said, "Yes", "Alright", he said, "If you want to, you can make it tonight. See this boat here, you can go, you can get to shore on that, he said,

"Oh yes", Alright", he said, "About three o’clock this mornin’, in the morning, good time, you’ll get a ride and you’ll make off to land", and that’s when he landed and that’s when he come up and he tugged on that chest and got ‘em up, up, he got somebody to get them up for him with a horse and he was wet and cold and everything so he laid down so finally his mother got suspicious of this and he’d gone away again somewhere and she had got suspicious of this, she was a very honest woman and she wanted to know about it, well, he, he let the cat out of the bag and she worried about it and, well she said, "I want to take that back in that pirates hand and I’m going to give it to him", and a horse, she’d have to drive ten miles, she would so, in the mean time the other brother had opened up one of them chests and it was gold so, what he did was take out a bucket of gold, with a bucket and he hid it amongst some old tools and stuff that way, so that’s how the story went and she drove up to Boston, she drove up to Boston, she did, and when she got up she would be able to stay over night and so on, that way, and the old horse, when she drove down the ships were laying there anchored and there was a British man of War, a plain Englishman there, ****** to England, England now and not the United States yet, see, and then here’s this other vessel down there and we know what one that is, this is a pirate land there and she don’t know it. He brought up a load of molasses, the pirate did, that’s how he did it, and traded, he’d do that, and he’d just go to Boston and they got no idea they’re dealing with the pirate Ringold, no idea. Well, she goes down and a crowded of men is there, some of them knew of her husband, he was a shipyard man back then and she wanted to know what ships were in the harbor, well they pointed them out, she said, "Yes", "Is Captain Ringold out there?", and then they took to laughing, "That’s a pirate", he was there but not under captain Ringold now and they took to laughing and they laughed in her face and she said, "What kind of, what does this mean?", and they didn’t say no more and Ringold was standing there taking it all in, "Well", she said, "I’ll tell ya, I’m an honest woman and my son went to sea and had contact with that pirate and stole everything from him and I’m bringing it back to him", and then they laughed again, "Well jumpin’ Moses", she said, she’d just met this man that done business with Ringold and bought all the molasses, they’d buy all the molasses, these Irish people would and turn it into rum, after a few days it ferment and they’d make good profit, good profit, yep, that was alright, so she said, "I’d like to go out and look at that strange ship there", "Well", he says, "I’ll take you out", this man said, "You can sail on her", but Ringold got out to that ship before they got there so onshore, the ones that were onshore seen this sight, he went up the ladder first and he held the rope ladder and they assisted her down politely and when he went up, somebody grabbed him and they never seen him again, he landed right on the deck and three or four men gave him the, shook him up some and took him below and tied him up in a cabin down there and that was the story. Then they noticed something peculiar too. Once Ringold, didn’t get the anchor, just cut the anchor off and left it. He wanted to get out of there before the battlewagon got on his tail. Don’t you see?, and they noticed that and they spoke about it on the shore. There was something funny and of course they mentioned it to the Royalty and of course they had to go through the proper channels before he could be ordered to sail and all that took time. In the meantime then, they’re out to sea there, this man and woman and he’s laying there on the floor but he had sense enough to lay low and just not say nothing and take it easy and watch the whole thing. Now, just to size Ringold up, Ringold ain’t a very strong man, he’s not a big man and not very, not very able but he’s bad. Well, he went by him this time for him to get something, he just reached out, he was strong this man was, in both hands, one leg and one the other and just squeezed like crazy, and he squeezed like everything and he just took and fired him that way, head first. What he did was, he struck his head when he went in and knocked him out and he said to her, "Put him in the closet and lock the door", and the closet they would keep closed, so they put him in the closet and, she did and put the snap on the lock and he was locked in. (Laughter) In the meantime, the ship was out to sea but there was a fight started among them other ones out there, quite a squabble going on, so in the whole thing, well, he got up around again after he got straightened up and there was a boat there, the boat he come out in was there, that’s the story. She was, hadn’t been taken aboard yet, she was being towed along so he said to this woman, "Would you like to go on this boat and we’ll try to get ashore?", she said, "Yes, I’ll take a chance on it and go", "Well", he said, "We’ll do that, we see an opportunity, before it gets any worse". Now he had gotten quite a ways, finally they did, they got aboard the boat and, my god they put in a hard night, she got wet and she had to take off her clothes and wring ‘em out and he had to too and, my god, ands finally they got picked up and brought in and they, a navy ship went by them, right close, and they put up for help and they couldn’t get any from them. He said, he was an Irishman, he said, "I know what they’re like when they’re on duty, it don’t matter if they were drowned or not, they won’t stop when they’re on duty and he was on duty and that’s how they are and finally he figure it out, he said, "This is a bad mess", a bad mess alright but he had folks. Oh, it was a real good book. I’d like to find it somewhere to lend it to you to read but it ended up, New Hampshire is further up the coast and up the river there’s a lot of fine timber and there’s an Irishman up in there and they built ships, you know and where they got their best workers was Indians, American Indians, the Mohawks and they don’t drink as much as the Indians do here and that’s how it worked and my god they build some pretty good homes up there, anyway they went up there, one Indian chief there, and he was a bad character and there’s more to the story behind that again (Laughter) anyway, I won’t, I’ll have to call it short but this man and his, he was going to marry this woman, yes he decided he would marry and proposed to her, he would become an RC and marry her and so, but he says, "I’ll tell ya, I’m afraid of something, if this leaks out that this is a pirate ship we’re on, we’re going to be fired right out of Boston all together but I’ve got a plan and you’ll accept it. Go up to my ship, what do ya call it?, where they build the ships, the Indians and that, you know what I mean?

I know what you mean, yep.

Well, that’s where they went, up there. They built some fine ships up there, them Indians and these Irishman there, businessmen, good businessmen and that’s a good story and it all ended up pretty well.

So, when you left to go fishing, had you left school to go fishing or did you finish school?

No, I didn’t finish school. I, I’ll tell you, I only went to grade seven but I’ll tell you what I did do. Grade seven I got a grade nine certificate from the teacher that was down here. See, there was two years there we didn’t have no teacher.

Why was that?

Well, one year, half year, she got married, she got married and we couldn’t seem to get one and then the next year we did get a teacher and because she got homesick and only teached, taught two weeks or three weeks and got out and we didn’t have none at all that year so that made it a little bad for education, so anyway, grade seven but what helped me, I read and history and geography were my main items I took interest in, history, and I go back quite a ways and I went on, I traveled quite a bit, see, after I, I fished for many years off the shore with dad and we fished in quite hard weather and it was quite hard work and one time we drove three hundred bushels of potatoes in the lean thirties here, three hundred bushel. Is that that drink?

Other. It’s gingerale.

I was telling this girl about that drink we make, you make, you make it, would you give her some of that?

Other. Yep.

Good. Well here, look at that.

Cheers.

Yep.

So, what things do you remember about your schoolhouse when you went to school?

Oh, it was close. Well, there’s a very old school house, very staunch building, solid, great big stove, wood stove, and hardwood, and wood there put in and so on. The teachers then, some didn’t get quite four hundred dollars a year for teachin' (Laughter) and she taught from primer class to grade nine but grade nines thought thoroughly, more so than today. I know there was questions that grade six, you knew how to measure land and how to, how much was in an acre and how to measure for floor. If you wanted to put a floor in here, you know just how many boards, feet you’d use by multiplying the width by the length and so on and that way and a good many things like that, you learned more of them things, not in those sports much, the sports is what you made yourself, riding downhill sleds and skating and that and you had quite a lot of activities, you got lots of exercise, chores you had to do, you know how it was, and this way, and snowballin’ you could use and then that way, that way. Now it’s become extreme, money will be made by some people out of sport, more or less. There become a time of rackets, you know how it was, to them it wasn’t so many rackets and it was a plan, remember the day of the oil lamp, as far as that goes and candles previous to that. Oh, I’ve got a joke to tell ‘ya. Up that road there through going through to Bayview, there was a man there and his name was Christopher Stark, he come out from Scotland, he was from the highlands somewhere and he never seen very much, too much, good ol’ feller though, farmer, and John Adams, very mischievous and quite a bit of Irish in John Adams, he was quite witty, and Christopher, he was six foot six and he wore a big high beaver hat, one of them, when he went to town, a black hat with a hat that stuck up about like that, it made him way up in the air about six foot nine.

Oh my goodness.

And he’d walk into town and he’s heard about these kerosene lamps and what a wonderful thing it would be. He said to his wife Sally, "I’ve been a hearing and seeing this wonderful piece of luxury and I’m gonna have one to bring home and I’m going tomorrow to Digby to get a lamp", "Well", she said, "It will be alright if you know how to handle it ", "I’ll handle it", he said. So, he went in and he bought this here lamp and kerosene, well they got it lit up after a while and John Adams was very mischievous, he was always lookin’ and peekin’ and he saw it and was quite puzzled by it so he said, "We’ll wait for the next night:" The next night he come over lookin’ in and it wouldn’t go, he sputtered away and went out. The kerosene was gone. Sally, she got the kerosene and she he trying to pour it, she looked around and couldn’t see what to do with it, he didn’t know what to do with, he said, "I’ll just pour it right down through the chimney top", (Laughter) it so she poured it right down through the top and she stopped him and she pointed

at the tap there, well he twisted on it but he was twisting the wrong way, you know, you see, you got to twist the right way, you got to twist against, with the sun and that’ll tighten it up, you gotta come against the sun to get it off, loosen it. Well, he slewed on it, he twisted it he said, he tells it, "I slewed on it", he says,"Sally slewed on it and young Christopher slewed and we all slewed on it together and it wouldn’t come off" but Mr. Gladams, he come in and looked mad and he took it and he got it this time so tight that he had to take his hat, cap off and put it over and he gave it a mighty slew and it come right off, he said, "He’s some strong."

What did you do for a living?

Well, I used to read, I read a book I could tell you every bit of it pretty much, you know what I mean, then I, dad went on to coast guard up there and, so I fished down at Gulliver’s for a couple of years, fishing then and then I, Riley Ross, he had been a former rum runner, I got stories on them rum runners too and, anyway he was going hobble fishing so I went down to Yarmouth and went out halibut fishing down there, Yarmouth, we fished out on the banks. Sometimes it was quite rough and rainy too and then I came home again and I went over to Lockeport the next time I, I went scallop fishing in Digby a couple of years and I was with old peg leg McKenzie, his nick name was peg leg but his name was John McKenzie and he came here from Halifax, he was a former rum runner, Swedish but before that he was from Eastern Shore, Hope’s Harbor down there, yeah, yeah, his sister was, brother, one arm McKenzie, on Upper Water Street they run a fish business, dry fish business, salt fish business, and he went to sea when he was young and became a sea captain and sailed around Cape Horn, he said, to China, yeah, and in them days they went on sail ships, my god, and he got it turned around his leg, or something there off the coast of Newfoundland and it got tight and it took his leg off, he had to have a wooden leg, he still went just the same, anyway, so he sailed on a white star line, second officer, mate in World War One, Saint John New Brunswick, and Liverpool, England, then he went down here to Sweden. All the Swedish and it’s vessels, agents they was for the rum runners in the states, there’s forty rum runners out of Lunnenburg alone, you know.

Wow.

Yes, and I gather it was quite an operation going on there (Laughter) and, anyway, so he come here to Digby to go scalloping and then the man that makes the drags said, "What’ll I put down, what name do I put down", he said, "The world knows me as Captain John McKenzie, my friends call me Jack, but my crews call me a peg leg son of a bitch but you good Digby people can know me as peg leg the pirate. Well, he was quite a joker, well he’d tell some awful stories, oh my god, yep, "Well", he said to me, "I want to get a man to go out and I heard tell of you and you don’t seem to mind the weather, I could stand somebody like you to help me, I have some here that are too chicken hearted, and they’ve got it now so they won’t go out with me", he said, well I said, "Yes, well I don’t think, I guess I can go out", "Well, that’s good. I like to hear that kind of talk, I hope you’re going to live up to it", "Oh", I said, "I think so", "Well", he said, "I have the reputation of the first one out in the dying out of a nor’wester and the last one in with a gale of South East. If you feel you aren’t obligated by that, boy, ********, but I seen him once though, he was, I wanted to see it bad enough that he would get scared, yeah I did. So, we went down there on, we were going to go halibut fishing, went down, out of here, went down on the boats, Yarmouth, rigged up the trawl in Yarmouth and the fellar that went up went up with me was a man from Digby, formerly from Grand Manan and he wanted to go and I said to him, kind of curious, "Did you ever fish before?", Well, with dad", he said, I said, "Yeah, but where did you fish?", "Well", he said, "We fished around the knolls", well I know where that was, it was across the Bay of Fundy but it was hake gear, you know, for hake. There’s quite a difference fishing for halibut and hake and you're both fishing and you're in every night and you're out and, you know what I mean, I didn’t say anymore so we were to get up the trawl and I said, I put the hooks along here, and I said, "Now you hook this up and I’ll put the tie on", and it was on and everything, you just hook it up, he couldn’t hook it up to the dock, what are you going to do out there?. "Well, my god", I said, "You better learn how to hook that up", anyway, that was it and we went out and we put ‘er out and my god he was miserable, he couldn’t haul trawl, he’d lose rubber of the nippers, I had to tie them on him, at last I said, "I’ll put you in the stern and I’ll haul it", I said, "Surely you can hook it up somehow or another and get it out", but you can gurry it, you can gurry your trawl, so I said, I guess the next thing to do with him is get him up there, I said, "Look, here’s something like a grindstone for you now. This goes right over the bow, you just turn this and run your thumb ahead to free the line, the little line here, yep, and he could do that pretty good so I was alright.

Oh, o.k.

Yep, ohhhh. We got out one time in Grand Manan Bank and it come up and blowed like old "H" and we were run for Yarmouth and I noticed him, he kept the speed on her too much and she was firin’ the water pretty bad, oh yes she was firin’ bad and I was in my bunk with another person and he sung out, "I’ve got to slow that boat's engine down", he said, "Slow ‘er down", he said to Gummy, Gummy made a mistake and speeded her up harder, my god, old peg leg came out of my, fell out of the bunk and his wooden leg, (Laughter) and the stone had come down (Laughter), "God", I said, he said, "We’re going to be drowned", he said, he said, "My god, we’re going to be drowneded", well I said to myself, "Now you’re worked up, I’ve been looking a long time to see this", so the guy said, "Your watch Handspiker, your watch, I wasn’t long getting up there. I got up and he said to me, "Get the dipsy lead out as quick as you can, he says, "and sound, I hope it’s not the Lurcher Shoal at the rate we’re going", he said, I said, "Yeah", so I went out and looked and she just looked like a half-nine rock, this boat did, the way she was, gee, I just slammed the dipsy lead in and it went down, down, down, down, it looked so good to see that go down, down, down, we were in deep, deep water. Well, when we got eighty-three fathoms, "Thank god for that", he said, now I had knew that he was worked up and it was good. When we got into Yarmouth, she laid good when he slowed her down, well she reached quite a bit, boys that, well I done quite a little bit of that and, well then I went over to Lockeport after that and when on with fishing there, fishing, and I joined Mason Newfoundland then, good men, they’re good men and we got out one occasion and it was breezed right up hard and he said, "This one today’s the sun", he says, "I’ve seen men drownded", he said, "In this, one of the days, the tides been going against the wind all day". See, the Gulf stream runs to the Eastern, runs across to the ocean and those eastern **********, so when we got aboard again, we were changing lands to go to the other end and the Captain said, "Get the Captain a mug of tea, you fellers as quick as possible today", he said, he said, "I wished they hadn’t fetched it, it breezed up more than I thought it would", we dropped on, "Boys", he said to me, "I’ll haul the traffic here as quick as I can", and he said, "When that’s done you jump up and haul as quick as god will let ya and then we’ll all do the same. We got to watch it, bad night, bad day", it was quite bad, pretty bad alright but he didn’t want to ******** away and I said to myself, "I’m using my own judgement on this", just enough to go *********** properly, and the biggest, the biggest, so I just slat the small ones overboard and, so on the last tub, one of the last tubs, I’m hauling, I noticed him looking wind'ard all of the time, he was looking for that bad sea that breaks sometimes on the ocean, you don’t get it up the bay here but down here you will, it can break on a calm day and crasho, and that’s what he was looking for, he already saw it. "Let go of everything and jump the wind'ard", he said, I let go of the trawls right away and turned and he had gone for the dory and reached for it overboard just as far as his shoulders would let him, hands right to the gunnel like this, head down, so if the sea struck him, the weight of him and me in that position would be about three hundred pounds, it would keep you, keep the dory from going over. When you stood up you’d be knocked down and three hundred pounds going that way would tip her and overboard she’d go, or around, but that day, there was a dory turned upside down and one man was drowned, the dory, the vessel next to it, yep.

Could you describe to me what Culloden would have looked like when you were younger living here?

Hmmmm?

Could you describe to me what Culloden would have looked like when you were younger when you lived here in comparison to now?

Well, she was what they call a full rigged ship, I read the history on her, she was built over here in Saint John, in Saint John. See, when the loyalists, when the War got over in the states here and, the United States there and the loyalists come into this country, a place like Digby had no stores, there was nothing but woods. Port Royal was the only place that was lit up on that side, it was Acadians that was there, on this side there was no light or anything. When they came in and settled there, the four ships come in and brought the loyalists and the last one come in November, that’s the one in our family to come on and quite a number more and it used to be Digby County *********** and, so Admiral Digby come with them but he had to leave, he had more, he’d only stay one night and then he went but there’s another ship come with anchors, it was vittlin', what they call vittlin' food, England would see that they had food enough for a year, to give them a start and it would be canned, it would be, you know, all that stuff, corned beef and stuff, see, refrigerators, there was no such thing as refrigerators then so, (Laughter) there’s no way that, there’s no way that what I wanted before, If someone said to me, "Oh, well I need stuff brung down by truck, where ya’ from?", "Halifax", I’d say, you couldn’t very well go over the top of the trees. (Laughter) Now, Saint John would be the nearest thing and they formed a packet company called the Liverpool to England, Saint John to Liverpool England packet company and the Culloden was sailing under that, Saint John to Liverpool packet company in Saint John, New Brunswick, I had a picture of it here somewhere, it’s under here, pick it up, my cousin there drew it and everything, she’s quite handy, she’s in at the Utinage here in Digby there now, yeah Beatrice Ryder her name is, anyway, this store in England, there’s four companies that built a big store four stories out of wood, right down at the waterfront and it still stands, the hardware branch, Mac-a-bees or whatever and groceries, wholesale and everything, and clothes and everything, how they got to here is they supplied Windsor, Windsor, over on the shore to Parssboro, Port, and also up in Annapolis Valley at the bank of Kentville there and Middleton, and Digby, and up to Bear River there, up the river, the old packets went up as far as Bridgetown, Annapolis, Bear River, and five out of Digby. Every store had a packet, you see, bringing the groceries and supplies in, also shippin’ out their product, there was quite a lot of stuff on the roads to be shipped, potatoes was going to West Indies, and apples was going down here then, there here at that parade now a days, that way, them days they growed anywhere and everywhere, and there was a lot of stuff. Fish was going to Whitman’s dry fish, Whitman’s was big buyers, they shipped South, see *********** and a pretty lot going on that way but we soon had, according to the, the way I read it, a steamboat line run, run in from the United states to here. We was on one occasion sailing from here to, Saint John to Digby and Annapolis, return to Saint John, Boston, New York and then there was two on one time, Americans, they started early in American tourist business coming up here once they, Nova Scotia, you see, now when it was under Joseph Howe, how it was run first, it was run by, an English Governor come over but when his session come on he got his advice from twelve, they were so called family compact, they were thicked named or that sort of thing, the wealthy of Halifax’s sons, tutors, so he went up and got a fairly good education. In their minds there was nothing for the poorer people, it was just what would suit them and that was an English method, it was, then, what would get down through here, you see. Yarmouth was settled in seventeen sixty-five by Boston merchants, they come here for a purpose and that was ship building, well the reasons for ship building were because ships can be built here cheaper than in the states, you had good workman, men would have, great men brought axes for huge timber and the timber would be cheaper, lumber and you’d get a ship built for, well you’d get crews to go on them, good men to go on them, so that was the idea of it. Well, the Culloden was built there and I think she was built in Saint Ann.., not Saint Andrew’s but, oh across the bay there, what do you call it?, well just below Saint john a few miles and she was a full rigged ship.

Now would there have been ice cream parlors or anything like that when you were here when you were younger?

Hmmm?

Any ice cream parlors or anything like that when you were younger here?

In Digby?

Yep.

Oh yes, oh yes, they had, yes, yeah they had, I remember being with dad one time when I was ten years old, he was in Digby and a man named Arnie Moore, I remember him and he had a, he kept a long counter there and he had ice creams and sodas and all this stuff, oh yes, yeas, yeah, yeah and he did that. Digby was the, the reason for Digby would be due to fishing, there was fishing schooners out of Digby and dad went on them when he was fourteen years old, and they was makin’ more money than they would around shore, you see, and, and the Snow’s there went schooner fishing and they built a house down there, like down by the, it used to be below the, the tourist bureau there, yep, an old house, that’s the old Snow house. John Snow, John Snow, oh John Snow, came out to Guysborough, the Snow’s did first and they were from Maine and they were fishermen previously and they went down to Maine and down to, down to Guysborough, there was no fresh fish business there, it was splittin’ salt and take ‘em into

Halifax by vessel and get supplies delivered and they heard about Digby, had started a fresh fish business quite early, previously, quite a long time ahead of that and there was quite a lot of fresh fish business going on, shippin’ to the states. The Americans, the United States has been a great market as far as people, oh yes, with the tourist trade and the money come in, the American market was good, more so than Ontario. Well, I’ll tell you the story on Hantorial. We had eighteen in sixty-five, Joseph Howe was defeated at the polls. I had a little book on it that was wrote, the War-horse of the Cumberland’s, he was of Cumberland County, he was a doctor, he practiced on horseback, of course, he traveled back and forth but he was a very determined young man and of course he didn’t rely too much on the truth and he canvassed this way. The fenian was the Irish and they had come across the border to New Brunswick with a few drinks, a little party they was havin’ on a little, grabbed their rifles and started over on the border and of course he drove back eventually but there was no order in Washington at all so he canvassed, he said, "The fenian’s have sprung up again, mightier that ever, they’re powerful", that’s what they were, "You’re not to defeat them so easily, they’re standing off of Yarmouth now and able to take ‘er any day", that’s what he was sayin’, off of Digby, Annapolis, Parrsboro, and Windsor, he’d deal with Saint John, better to think about it, nothing happened. Election day come, why, they were rolling out the royal flags, "You’ll die in slavery", that’s what happened in the United States, ****** had a War down there, Civil War, anyway, they voted, they voted for to put ‘er in, she come in eighteen sixteen-five. Howe got up and he was quite, well shook up, he was leader but the only way he could stay in the house in Halifax would be someone give him a seat, so this man got up and said, "Mr. Howe, your presence here is more ***** mine", o.k, he did. He got up and he said, "Eighteen sixty-seven I was declared to join the dominion of Canada", Canada, this was called Nova Scotia, Saint Andrews Cross was the Emblem, there’s the, no I haven’t got the Scot’s flag there, and umm, so, that was it, so he served here for one year and went to Ontario, went to Ottawa, there’s where the money was, the racket over the railroad building, he’d get in the ********. I got a story about the way he scandled, he was a, he was in there long enough to go over to England and get knighted sir and the second time he went to England he didn’t do so good. He went for money, then he was appointed Premier of Canada, Sir John A. died, passed on, yeah, Sir John A. was a very smooth character, oh yes. He liked to drink, right tall man, I can see him now, delicate in speech, and he was crafty, he said it’s easier on the constitution for to chew things up with fine words and soft words than a harsh tone, a harsh tone stirs up an attitude that your very hard hearted, treat your man like a kind old man and I guess I’ll take that treatment, which he did, and, but you still can hold to your ideas. So, once in, he always blamed everything on the salt fish down here in the Maritimes for his thirst, thirst, his thirst you see, so this day Blake was speaking and Blake was the opposition and he said, "I gotta go, I’m sick, I’ll just make it to that window", he goes across the floor and that was of Ottawa, opens the window and spewed out of the window, "Oh boy, I apologize for this", he said, "But every time I that man speaks it turns me sick", yeah, yeah, yeah, so then I watched the play another time, man ‘o man, they was all night in Ottawa, all night, now he was crafty, he was waiting ‘till they’d all get to sleep and then he would come up with his resolution, so he said to his ******, "Bring it white tonight", and he’d say, "My, that fish was so good that I got from down from Nova Scotia", but he said, "It makes me very, very thirsty but I can’t resist it", but anyway, here’s the story, I’ll wind ‘er down, so finally he got on his feet and when he got on his feet it looked as though he was gonna fall down, as the man reached out to steady him he got up and got a hold of two chairs ,and he was tall and his long white hair come down, my, my, my, what a speaker, brilliant, he describes this country, "A brilliant country", he says, "From coast to coast the mighty ocean of the Atlantic meeting the Pacific, East to West, North to South, loaded with all resources of every kind", and he said, "Two smart and genius places of people, the French and English have settled it, we were a hundred years defeating them, don’t think that they were stupid, now we are here side by side and we’ll make it prosper", and he spoke for four hours and he filled everybody with a lot of this stuff and they listened to him and then when the right time come, "I have a little presentation to bring forth tonight", and it was the resolution, it was about the railroad, see. You see, the first and foremost I understand is, I read, I watched this here resolution one, I had to get Vanhorne from down in the states to finish it, after you got west of Montreal, they were just spending and wastin’ the money and not getting nothing done and would have never got it across, but Vanhorne, oh my god, he would call up Ottawa and say, "more hay, more mules", yeah, oh yeah, and what did he say one time, some of them out there went on a strike (Laughter) he told them, they were a bunch of friends out there in Manitoba, he said, "Oh, alright, I’ll have to go call a pope, pope in Boston", god knows there’s no pope in Boston, pope in Boston. So he got back and they said, "What’d the pope say", "Go back to work all of ya’", he said. They got it through with mountain goats, well the money got pretty well gone, they were takin’ everything freshened up so, he passed out, well then McKenzie took his place, a man named McKenzie, Alexander McKenzie, and he was a stone mason in Scotland and he was just as hard as the stone he laid, crude, Mr., there wasn’t nobody gonna get ahead of him, he won’t get things done as good as McDonald, he was too hard so he had a peek hole invented so he could peek hole and see who was coming. It looked like he was kind of bumming for money, he’d have a sign put up just like that on the door but up, up, out for the weekend, so anyway he passed on and then they put in this here Sir Charles A. Tupper, after two years, he, the country was getting in pretty bad shape and he decided to go to England for money. He went over to England and went before the House of Lords and presented his case, an English man said, "Well, you are a new country, we have spent a lot of money, a lot of money on you for to protect you and for to put you as far as you are now. You’re loaded with raw resources, plenty of raw resources, go home and live within your means, don’t come to us for money. You’ve got to learn now, you’re growed up, learn now to live within yourself. Seek good neighborship for your neighbors south of the border, by my past experience I’ve seen the mistake I’ve made when I built the railroad in Canada so far up the north, just to keep away from them but they’re smart business people and I would advise you for your own good and the good of all of us, you had better be close neighbors, they need you as a neighbor, they do not hate you, I found this out, we are forgivable about this affair, it happened as a family affair, it happened for our good too", It’s the truth. How many times over and over again have I told some of the tourists here this story? But anyway, Laurier, he got elected, he was termed, I read about him, I read a book on him, a brilliant young man, very well dressed and very well educated and very smart, who had tutored him, what was his, McKenzie, old McKenzie, yeah McKenzie King’s grandfather, McKenzie King’s grandfather, Williams Lyon McKenzie. Williams Lyon McKenzie at one time had to escape the states for safety, and the come back again, yep, oh yeah and his daughter had married a king and the boy was brought up, he was a smart man, McKenzie King was, he was twenty seven years premier and the best premier we ever had. He was very, very ,good, yeah, him and the premier of the United States and Churchill traveled together, that Churchill was quite a bird, a big bluff, boy he was a big bluff. He said, "We’ll fight on the beaches, we’ll flight on the sea, we will not give in, we will fight on and win", he had a great voice. (Laughter) I had done convoy there when I was overseas on that one in nineteen forty-seven out of Londonderry Island, we was on a striking course, so called, there’s our crew up there and there’s the ship. We went up the West coast and right around and we went up, so we went over and we’d be in, out for thirty days and in for seven, boy it was nice to get ashore though, we’d be out there for seven, and you had to go up to the galley’s for dinner, to get a plate of dinner and everything and you were fortunate if you get down to the table with it. Two occasions we didn’t and we had to sit it down on the deck and take for the extra stations because you had to be there quickly and go back in a half hours time and pick up your cold dinner, you’d eat it, yeah and that way. I kind of have to laugh, when V-Day ended we were out to sea, oh yes we had two engagements that had confirmed sinking and, but we had six men killed and eight put in the hospital. I placed a wreath there the other day, I didn’t get down there in time enough to get it placed myself but I had it for them in memory of, I was a councilor for sixteen years, yes, yes, I had some escapades there and I put on, they had put on there that they were taking in the district of Culloden to Sandy Cove which it is now, in memory of Veterans, seaman, soldiers, and airforce and woman, ladies, woman, they had fell and made the sacrifices that we could enjoy the freedoms that we’re enjoying now, also in memory of the brave, six brave fellow seaman that were killed and the Irish attacked on an enemy in the Irish sea and so on, but anyway I’ll get back to some of the other ones we were talking about. Many Liberals, Dominion Day never, never, they hung the black flag in Halifax, they wouldn’t celebrate Dominion Day because as soon as we went up we had a free trade deal with the United States and when they got in it, Ottawa, they stopped it right away. It was good for the interest of Ontario but poison for Nova Scotia, oh yes, and that’s how it went and still yet today, yet today. Right in this election you can read about it, this road here, there’s a road here of course, that’s the neglect of the 101, that’s MLA’s we’ve elected. There’s been three of them that have talked nothing about their own pleasures and when they entered the house up there in Halifax, and the good time they're going to have and the money it takes for it and how much more money is coming for them and you got a big thing for their retirements and everything else, big event and their families are well taken of too, their just products though, (Laughter) then, I don’t know what’s going to change this, it’s quite a bit, of course you’ve got one smart finance minister though, Paul Martin, but ****** in some ways was a better, in a lot of ways a better leader than Trudeau. They give Trudeau quite a big name, some do but very few knew him, his own three boys didn't know him very well, he was a strange man. I’ve got a book on him that I started to read. When he first got elected, before that he went over to the states in Wartime, him and Bouchard they’re quite the, bad eggs around Montreal apparently, you see, and they was upsettin’ the Upper Cardinal on a lot of things because he didn’t want to fight for his home country of France or Britain, or anybody, and he didn’t want to, he wanted to upset the Upper Cardinal, and did and he went to the states and they shooed him back and that made him mad at the states and when he got elected premier it was always a Liberal especially that would go visit the United States, they always did but *****, he was down in, hung up with Castro for a week, so Castro is a communist and communism is not the same for us, I don’t think, really, well then from there he went to China and he took his sons with them and studied their form of government which was communism but Russia appealed to him better and he went to Russia. He got in pretty thick with Russia, really that’s a dangerous country, Russia, it’s bad. It’s a good thing that the United States bought Alaska, you know, Russia did own Alaska and that is good but, there’s quite a lot of things, here in Canada they were pretty well taken up with what he was sayin’, Castro, Buchanan, no Trudeau, he started firing the grants around heavy. Now, McKenzie King had brought this country on her feet, R.B Bennett was a wealthy conservative, I read the history of him there, and in his lean thirties he went in the hole bad, bad, bad, oh boys and three countries, I could remember them one time but the encyclopedia said, "Due to three main countries of the world would not trade with one another, they said they could live within themselves, England, Canada, and the United States", you could not do it. So, it got bad in the thirties, boys real bad, and War broke out in nineteen thirty-eight I think it was, thirty-eight, yeah, yeah, people said, "How can we go to War", no money, there’s no money, it takes money to put men in the uniforms, it takes money to buy guns, it takes money to build ships, we got no Navy, they didn’t have no Navy. There was a liar up at Kentville, Kings County, Middleton, smart man and a pretty straight man too, he said, "We’ll emerge out of this War financially better than we will go onto it", well they couldn’t believe it, the Americans had to, I remember their news in the paper, it’s quite a long time ago, reading but I remember it, "They talk very bold in Nova Scotia, a little liar up there in a certain town in Nova Scotia, I wonder if he can carry it out", and some time later it said, "It looks like they got a finance minister, finance minister up there in Ottawa from the Maritime province, the finance minister, what he quoted was, "World War 1, I’ve studied their mistakes, in World War 1, the Tories was in". If you had of had a hundred dollar bill to put down to get a different one, no such thing as finance minister taking it out of your pay or whatever it may be, you had to have money. Then there was another thing again to protect the working people and everybody, nothing was protected, what they had in stock for ten years they could sell it at the rising price of the Wartime price, you got it?

O.K.

This time, that’s got to be different, and it was. This time appointed is going to be Wartime price and ceiling, price, and an office was put, one in Annapolis County down by Digby County and everybody will pay on an installment plan on your job ******* bond for savings and your children, if you want to give them a present, give them a War saving stamp that will be good for later on, for to help them, and nobody I want to see go on the street broke, if you hire somebody just for a couple of weeks you’re supposed to take out the right amount that is to pay out of his wages and to be placed in this bank in Mount ****** and that’s the only way this country can build, any country can build and that’s the truth. It’s just like Abe Lincoln said, Abraham Lincoln was a, I had a book that my son sent up from Florida, I can’t find it anymore around here, but it was a great book. They had a hard going when they started, when they started. I was in a very interesting place in Philadelphia, see I traveled in a lot of places when I go in historical places, cities, I go to the historical places, I was in Betsy Ross’s house in Philadelphia, where there’s was an old brewery was made, yep, yeah, that’s right and then I went in the, Philadelphia’s got a lot of history, Philadelphia, it was the capital of the United States for a while but they shifted it to what it is, District of Columbia, yep. Lincoln was born and it showed pictures of the presidents, Lincoln was very poor, he made his living by splittin’ rails, rail splitter and he got his education in, mostly for law, with a tallow candle and a book, and he got it that way. Read over that many a night, tallow candle. There was quite a confusion in the United States, it become, none of the United States never liked it, selling, buying, selling, flesh colored people or whatever, some of the wealthy English sent their sons out here and give ‘em a big, huge, tract of land in the South. It would grow cotton very easily and the Welsh and the English, and there was big strips of it, well, they wouldn’t pick it, if they could get four crops of garden out of the year, they were living very easily down in the Southern United States.

Yeah?

Oh, yes. The licensee in the Southern States was very easy to come by because everything growed, fruit, everything, you know what I mean?, peaches and all kinds of fruit. Four crops of garden, think of it a year, you know, and it didn’t take much money and corn to feed the pigs, pigs and the chickens, well yes, chickens didn’t cost too, hardly very much to buy. A lot of these went down here for the winter, they were smart. They didn’t go to hotels and things, they just, they rented a cottage, there’s a whole stream of them for, looking for winter tourists and, up this way, oh yes, and they’d, there’d be a kitchenette, it was small and two rooms, a bedroom and a nice living room and, well they could go out and buy chicken, and fruit, oranges, oh lord yes, and peaches, a peach date, oranges, oh you had it made and any woman that could cook at all, get things together at all, why she was great, just with her little cook book she’s right in demand there, and just a few things, yep, and they could live cheaper than in a good home, yep, yeah the heat, you know and, but of course the big outfits, why they, well even then you could eat a meal, even then, pretty good, shrimp, I like shrimp down there.

Yeah?

Oh, god, them big shrimp, big shrimp. I remember this old feller, he was second engineer on the boat, he was an engineer on the boat, the old feller and he was awful tight. He wanted to go to shore along with me and go around and I said, "Yes", well he said, "Where do you go", "Well", I said, "I go down to look at the sights", I said, "A lot of the, one street here….", I said, "is a beautiful street. Parks, little park seats, and statues, and it’s interesting reading all of the stuff", I said, "Well", he said, "That’s alright", and we went on. "Who’s that there Indian, there", he said, "Well", I said, "that’s the chief of that Mohawk tribe that defeated the English", anyhow he said, "I’m getting tired and sick of looking at dead people, don't you know any alive people to look at?", he said, "Oh yes, they’re here", but I said, "It’s gonna cost you a little money to look at ‘em" (Laughter) "Well, a little grants won’t hurt", and I said, "No, no, no, I guess it won’t", "What’s the matter with you anyway, why don’t you take in some of this?", "Yeah I know, I know, I know", "O.K, there was one up there, I’ve never been in there but I know what it’s like, I’ve heard of it but I’ll tell you Mr. Harris, just take it cool, there’s going to be some nice looking birds come over to talk to you, you want to be unresistable and you want to keep your money", well we go in and sit down and a woman comes over and there was something about her and I said,"Well I just have something on my mind just at the moment and I’ll probably talk to you later, but I should keep thinking about this", and good old Mr. Harris he got talking to her quite a bit and I said to myself, "I think I’m going to go over to the lavoratory now and just, I really don’t have to go but I’m going to go and give this man a break", I go over and when I come back she’s already bought him, got him to serve her, have a drink, well, I had to laugh. She tosses this down pretty fast, "Well grampie", she said, "I guess I got to go on the stage", he said, "Yes", she said, "I guess that was ten fifty then, that drink", he said, "What was it, gold dust?", "No, No", she said, "Well now…", she said, "I’ve got to go on the platform and do my number", she says, "and I’ve got to strip off these pants of mine and put something fluffy on", (Laughter) oh god, yes, so I had a laugh, by god I laughed that day. Well, we come out of there and we went to have supper, well, "What do you see on there", he said, "worthwhile", "Well", I said, "there’s chicken here, you can get Southern fried chicken awful good here", How much is the bill for that?", "Eighty-five cents", I said. That’s what it was.

Eighty-five cents?

Oh, yes they were very reasonable in, down in the states. "You’re too rich for me", he said, "I think I’ll settle for soup" (Laughter)

He wouldn’t get it?

A. "Well", he said, "she is pretty swanky lookin’", the waitress, I said, "Yes", "I wonder how a feller can make a date with one like that?", I said, "Look, I’ll tell you how you're going to do that. Next time you come in here, just come in and seat yourself and order what you want to get to eat and when you leave be sure to give her a nice tip, but don’t ask for anything at all, just, a tip for you little girl, your looks are good, and just go. The next time you come in, why you, she’ll be right over around here." He said, "You seem to know your way around", I said, "Yes, probably, maybe, I may know how to escape danger too" (Laughter) Yeah, yeah, yes, now let me see, oh yes, the Culloden.

O.k, you can tell us…….

Hmmmmm?

You can tell us how the Culloden came ashore? Was it?

What you say?

Is that how you said the Culloden ship came to shore?

Culloden, yep, yep, full rig ship, yep.

Wow.

About twelve hundred and fifty tonnes she was.

Wow

At least twelve hundred and fifty. She was under command of Captain Ferguson, she was built in, she was built in New Brunswick for the Liverpool to Saint John Packet Company, for the Packet family, Liverpool to Saint John. Everything at that date was brought out from England for the stores along the seacoast, Parssboro, and up the Bay of Fundy at, in back of Kentville there, Middleton. Margaretsville, and in the Port of Digby, five ships were, small coastal vessels with twenty tonnes, every store had one of those, Bear River, Annapolis, and up Bridgetown. It’s wonderful how they went up to Bridgetown with no power, no power, but the tide took ‘em up and they used a pole to push them around the bends that way and one thing or another, they were real hard to get off or they just put a rowboat over and took an anchor and took that and out it over there and then over with a hand gerrtie around then out by the bend and so on and they had to have good weather to do it. The Saint John to Digby run was a very bad run this way, you would leave Saint John with the wind to the Northern, North wind, North wind, but it leaves ya’, it would die out, it would leave you in mid bay, well then you were, you can’t get anywhere unless the tide takes you up and down, yep that way, and that’s how it would be. The best passing I’ve seen for Digby to Saint John would be to get the wind on the Easterly border and you coast by the wind across but the Westerly was bad, Sou' West was alright if it wasn’t too heavy but the further over you get, the more, the greater it gets, the sea, you see and I’ve taken two or three boats over, three or four boats over now I’ve taken for people, but not sailing vessels, engines, marine engines they were. I’d rather be, going with the wind on the east, there’s quite a breeze in this side, than go with the wind Sou' West. The further over you get then, you get the more wind, you see, and the tide, the tide runnin’ in the river, very strong, it makes it quite hard to duck around. Oh, you get the knowledge of the seacoast and charts and things are a big help to you and you and I learned quite a lot as I went along and anyway, they loaded and left. I think it was the twenty-second day at, around the twenty-second day of October they left to come to, for Digby, twenty-second day of November they run ashore here, they was all that time crossing the Atlantic, that sea would be quite a while but you see, the Gulf Stream was against them, the torrent, then they met head winds of course and when they met head winds they had to tack before they

could bring up the soundings on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Coming to Nova Scotia from over to England there, the Grand Banks of Newfoundland you would have to bring up the sounding when they laid off a hundred and fifty miles or so, all the way that way and they're in. Once you bring them up, well then you could judge your sound judgement and you couldn’t see the sun, well, if you could see the sun, you had a section and you’d take a noonday sight and that’d give you how far off you’d be, rather than, well of course a kilometer would give you the distance, East to West is what you’d wanted to use it. Well, then you’d run it for Scateries down off of Cape Breton there, you didn’t want to get too far over there, to Sable Island, that’s the graveyard of the Atlantic. It’s a bad place Sable Island, many a ships were lost off of Sable Island, anyway, once you brought up Scaterie light, you sail up the Nova Scotia coast now and she was lights and buoys, pretty good, pretty good, you went from to buoy to buoy, it was the safest thing to do but don’t, you’ve gotta know what you're doing when you go inside the buoy but these buoys were off about four miles so that was pretty good. We got up to Halifax, well, I read an old book about that thick, John, Captain John Snow’s book when I was on the coastguard, he lent it to me, he had give it to his grandson, Harry Adams. From eighteen-ten to nineteen-ten he had quite a theory of it and described the marking for Halifax Harbor without a lighthouse, before they had lighthouses but you sail up the Nova Scotia coast and you’ll see all red land on that side and dull grey, steel grey rock on that side, that’s the mouth to Halifax. See the Eastern Passage side, you know that side?

Yep.

Is reddish, McNab's Island, yep, that’s right, that’s it. Well, I get back to the story of the Culloden, he left. He got in the mouth of the Bay of Fundy and thick fog, thick snow shut in but no wind, just snow, just a light draft to the Easterly and he couldn’t do nothing, he just had to drift. They had no lighthouse up there, they had a lighthouse but no whistle but they did have a cannon, was used first. It was quite simple but give it to a Veteran, a loyalist Veteran, William Bragg, an Englishmen, he had a piece of property, quite a property of woodland and stuff and he built a house and grew some things and got a job there as light keeper. Come thicker snow or thicker fog he put the powder in the cannon and then he touched it off with a long torch he had, light it and touch it, the power of it would go BOOM, you know, so that was it but they never heard that or they never, he could have done it a little different maybe but first thing at two o’clock in the afternoon a man on watch sang out, "Land ahead on Port bow", our Captain looked and it was useless to let her do anything but let her come as she was, leave her be, let her go, she ran her bowsprit right up in the woods, down the road here, you can tell and no sea onshore, that was a lucky thing. We come right on, quite a deep cove like, quite fairly deep, cliff, quite deep. Well, there was no insurance carried in them days, that was in eighteen fifty-eight, I think, fifty-eight, no insurance company then, nothing was insured. The ship was a total loss after, so he sung out, "Abandon ship", the crew was from Saint John, New Brunswick and the Captain was too and he went right over the bowsprit and left her and went to Digby and it was in the afternoon and they had stall all night somewhere’s in Digby, whatever and went. The next day, well then, there was, they abandoned her and that was it, they wrecked her, I guess. They started, she was a Christmas present for Culloden. They come by fishing boats from way down in the bay and up above and that was about the best thing to come with because you come with anything else, there was oxen and horses and things like that, there was one crowd that carried the stuff ashore and hidin’ it and another feller watchin’ where he hid it and lettin’ the other feller know where he is with the team and through his back stern he loaded it up and gone.

O.K.

Oh yeah, and some people down here had quite a few things that was nice stuff, rolls of carpet, they wanted to have their houses carpeted, yeah and dishes and everything. It was quite a thing, that was one wreck and no lives lost, that was a good one. A few years later and that in nineteen ‘o three there was another ship come on the same place about, just to the Western. She was loaded with gypsum, three mast schooner with gypsum from New York, yeah she had gypsum from New York and he stood down here too close in. It was good to stand in close, again to keep favor in the wind but he stayed here too long and when he realized it in the morning, the wind struck onshore, cold and blowin’ hard and they heard a whistle blowin’, a horn sounding around, the people did down the road here and some of them here, the old Tiberts were, had went to sea quite a bit, they knew it was a ship in trouble so, they got together and figured where it was and somebody said, "Down Culloden there", told ‘em, there was a little cove down there, "Well,", he said, "they seem in trouble", "Well,", he said, "we better yoke the oxen up and take that wood shod sled and blankets and canvass there so if anybody aboard, maybe getting wet, we can get them dry, roll ‘em in that and then drive home here where the, up this way where the oxen used to go, it wouldn’t be so far, a quarter of a mile, less than a quarter of a mile, so they went down and there she was. He waited ‘till they showed up before he would, when he seen them, he cut the anchor adrift and let her come and she came on, come in, and they got a line ashore to her, he got a line and fastened to a tree and then to his mast and then he hauled them across. He was hauling then across and, right by the britches, you see, so then they, after they did, well they’d put him on the sled there and it was dry and it wasn’t so bad, some was and some wasn’t. There was two or three of them that got kind of wet, a bit because their britches, the line began to sag, you see and they started up and come up the road and one fellar up the road said he’d take a couple of them and another one, one or so and

two and that way, so they had a cat and they saved the cat and everything, yep, they saved the cat, yep, sure. (Laughter) So, that was that, one of the days here about, well that crowd, they was from up the bay, they was here about four days I guess, yep, four days so they put a night watchman aboard of her, a night watchman to watch her, they had a can of green paint on board (Laughter) and, for painting the ship, you know, so a man in Digby asked the, "How do you like your night watchman", he said to this man, he was a damn smart man for only having one hand, arm, one arm Murphy, he said, "Well, how was that?", "Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t have two", he said, "We wouldn’t have nothing left" (Laughter) He used to paint everything green, he had a lot of green paint he got out of there (Laughter) It’s comical that stuff, so it was funny to, how it was. My grandfather had one hard night though. He used to go on post, jurypost, yep, jurypost, a small vessel for the Turnbull brothers, well Litanny, Litanny brothers, yep, wholesale merchants, and they had a packet. Well, they were quite close and Jimmy had a couple of sixteen year old boys who were crew and grandfather was cook and mate and when he was mates duty, he collected up a lot of the bills and assisted with George Post and a lot of things and everything, you know what I mean, like that, and we seen storage of freight aboard and that sort of thing and these young fellers, they wasn't very capable but they were cheap, that’s the reason they hired them ‘cause they were cheap, very uptight to sail and one thing or another but there was lots of help in Digby. If you were going to Saint John and they know it, anybody, people wanted to go, well they’d come help with bigger men or whatever, a lot of men it would be, if they had a chance to go over, "Well you're welcome, just give us a little hand, sure", and they’d go over. Now, when they went over they’d would have a place to stay all night where they wouldn’t go hungry, my grandfather was quite a cook, (Laughter) and that’s how it was and this time it was Christmas, It was just before Christmas and they had quite a lot of stuff going aboard and the wind to the nor West had died down and it looked like a pretty good run if you could get away in time, days are short now and at about eleven o’clock they was ready to go and George Post fell and broke his leg. Well, my grandfather had to get him in the hospital, look after him and get him up in the hospital, he said to my grandfather, now it’s around two o’clock now, he said, "You take ‘er over, you take ‘er over to Digby", so he got back in time, he got her, the sail on her, he was a sixteen year old boy, he got her out, their wind was pretty well spent and he was driftin’ with the tide now, up and down and they hadn’t gotten too far, forty miles across, they hadn’t got too far, so then it slightly started to air up again to the easterly again and come on to snow, well they stood by the wind and come, kept coming and it got pretty thick, thick, thick, thick, thick, he didn’t have very much calmness, this boy, this sixteen year older, he had him on watch up there in the bow. Well, he decided, he couldn’t hear the whistle at all and ******CD SKIPS****** if it ever breezes up heavy we’re going to lose this vessel and her sails with it on the rocks, dangerous. I think myself they was up above too far, I think so ‘cause the wind was blowin’ down, anyways, he decided he’d swing her for shore, lay all night, lay it out, it had breezed up. He got off there a couple hours more or so, it had breezed up quite a bit and he noticed the young feller was, seemed to be getting scared and he said, "I want you to stand by me, I don’t know what I’m going to do", he said, that’s what he said, well, he says, "Well, we got to try to get this sail off her", he said, "and the reefs and the foresail here", he said, "get the jibs off her, help me do that, whatever you do", they did, they did that, he got a reef foresail on her. "Oh", he said, "I’m going to turn and go for it and turn in", he said, "I’m sick. If I’m going to drown, I wanna drown in my bunk" He left his poor old grandfather there all night, he couldn’t get relieve to get, a cup of tea or coffee or anything else, you know what I mean, he must have been a tough man, he was not very along in years, anyway, he laid the night out and that’s more than the weather had abbated, the sea had gone down quite a bit but still it was cold, it was the old North West, so he just shifted her around and headed her for land wherever she’d bring and when he did he looked up, it was Petit down here, thirty miles down, yep Petit Passage. Well, the story went, there was, his brother-in-law was from England, was an Englishman and was a shoe maker and he was living in Tiverton and the fishermen in them days, it was windy like that, they’d gather around the store or something another, it’d be the young fellers and everybody. They heard this man hollering, they could hear him, "Hold", he said, "a minute, where’s that sound coming from?", they said, "Out there in the harbor, there’s a vessel heading up this way", he said, "that voice is Dave Will and he’s in trouble, we’ll have to go help him", "Alright", they said, "we’ll help" They saw a vessel iced up and pretty bad, a man to the wheel, lashed to the wheel there, he needed help to get her tied up and it wasn’t long, boys they grabbed the row boat, no gasoline boats in them days and went in and got aboard of her, got right aboard of her, two or three of them, three or four of them, got him cleared, the lines off of him, he was lashed at the wheel. "You’re going to go ashore", he said, "and they’re going to have help for you, we’re going to look after you don’t worry about anything, we’ll tie her up" They went ashore and tied her up and by that they come down from this house and there was a man that said, "There’s a woman got a bed all ready for ‘ya", this man, they had warm drinks and stuff like this and they grabbed him and boys they walked him up there in that house. He was cold, it was freezing cold out. He stayed two days there and then they come down and brought the vessel home. There was a lot of exposure in them times, I’ll tell you that, quite a lot of change than what it is today.