The Search Begins
By way of owning property in Guysborough County from 1972 – 1998 and then in Antigonish County from 2000 – present, I have had a direct connection to both of the eastern most counties of mainland Nova Scotia. I have visited those properties many times over the years. During a trip in 2006 I found an old map of Nova Scotia at a gallery on Main Street, Antigonish. It was from that map that I became aware that those two counties were once combined as a single political administrative entity known as Sydney County. And so, although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was over 50 years ago that I began my search for Sydney County.
Normally a good place to start such a search would be with a map, which is how, even if inadvertently, my search began. But boundary lines demarking Sydney County will not show up on any current map. Actually, you won’t find Sydney County on any accurate map of Nova Scotia compiled after 1863. Sydney County is but a vestige of the past. It is administered differently now but it is still very much there in terms of its historical context. Sydney County will also occasionally reveal itself whenever Antigonish and Guysborough counties are lumped together by some tourism bureau, nonprofit organization or some province wide statistical study. Sydney County was, and in some ways still is, the eastern most part of mainland Nova Scotia and to truly find Sydney County you can’t just go look at a map - you need to go there. So that is what I have done, many times. And with each trip I have found many new places to explore and I always leave wanting more.
I was initially was initially drawn to Nova Scotia, and the Canadian Maritimes as a whole, in 1971 by looking through a H.M, Dignam real estate pamphlet. I was introduced to H.M. Dignam by the parents of a close friend from high school whose brother emigrated from the US to Sydney (the city on Cape Breton Island), Nova Scotia. The driving force for his move to Canada was to avoid being drafted into the military to fight a jungle war on the other side of the planet. The Dignam parcel descriptions struck an immutable chord with me. I was drawn in to the “back to the land” movement of the ‘60’s and 70’s and could not resist the captivatingly seductive descriptions of their parcels such as this one from 1972…
PROPERTY 166-NS
G.E. Deon Property, Pomquet Station, Antigonish County, Nova Scotia, 6 acres. This is a practical size property, very well located for either a permanent homesite of a summer cottage. It is located in a desirable area on a paved road a mile off the Trans-Canada Highway, and runs from the paved road back to the waters of Pomquet Harbour, a large salt water inlet on the north shore of Nova Scotia about 12 miles east of the town of Antigonish. There are pleasant homes along the road with electric power and phone service available. Pleasant, scenic countryside, this area could scarcely be bettered for a summer holiday by the sea and, since it is easily accessible by a paved road, it may suit the less adventurous family man. The property is crossed by a railway right-of-way but this should not be much of a disadvantage and helps account for the very reasonable price. There is no building on this property, but adjoining properties are occupied and developed. Supplies and services would be obtained at the town of Antigonish, the County Town and also a famous university town, the home of St Francis Xavier University. Price $595.00, payable $55.00 cash with order and twenty monthly payments of $27.00 each, and interest; or $535.50 (being 10% off) if paid $55.00 cash with order and $480.50 in thirty days.
From this introduction Nova Scotia became an obsession of mine. Typically, I am not the obsessive type. But, to me, Nova Scotia and the Canadian Maritime Provinces are a logical reason for such illogical behavior. And so with that my topophilia for the Maritimes began the day I first perused an H.M. Dignam listing. I was hooked before I ever encountered the beneficent assault to the senses that the Maritimes provide. Before I took a single breath of the clean maritime ocean air, before I heard the breakers at Tor Bay or set my eyes on the abundant coastal and inland natural beauty, before I encountered firsthand the cordial Bluenose hospitality so common among the people from all across the Maritimes - before I had any first hand encounters with Nova Scotia I had already adopted Nova Scotia as my home away from home.
Looking back at the Dignam description of Property 166- NS, I wish I had bought it. But, at the time I wanted something a bit more remote sounding. I was looking more for a place to camp and to eventually build a secluded cabin than a place with neighbors in an established neighborhood. I found what I was looking for in the classified section of Field and Stream magazine - five acres (200’ x 1100’) being offered for $485. The property had 200’ frontage on the unpaved Little Harbor Road, just west of Tor Bay in Guysborough County. The parcel was carved out of the property once owned by the Direct United States Cable Company. The property was offered with a payment schedule of $95US down and $50 a month until the balanced was paid off. No interest was applied. I was 22 years old and a bit dumber than a brick but I knew a good deal when I saw one. I contacted the seller, an American by the name of Norman Hale, and we agreed on a day for me to come up to view the property. I flew from JFK into Halifax and then hitchhiked from the airport to Tor Bay on the eastern shore in Guysborough County. Towards the end of my trek from the airport I vividly recall standing on the shoulder of Rte 316 and realizing how remote this area is. As this realization hit me I also became aware that there wasn’t much daylight left. So there I was, in what seemed to me to be the middle of nowhere, still about an hour from my destination (if I got a ride) and with no camping gear in case I came across a campground or some suitable roadside place to make camp. That day left me with an indelible impression of what the eastern most part of mainland Nova Scotia was like. I learned that going to Guysborough County required some level of preparation that I had not counted on. I learned that most of the villages shown on my road map along Route 316 and elsewhere throughout Guysborough and Antigonish counties are – maybe 90% of the time – just small clusters of homes without any stores or services. And I learned that, despite the vast differences between what I was familiar with on Long Island, New York and what I was encountering in this remote part of Nova Scotia, I loved what I was seeing and it seemed like a good fit for me.
When I finally walked across the causeway to Berry Head, which juts out into Tor Bay, and found Mr. Hale’s home, it was well past sunset. I asked Mr. Hale for a ride into Larry’s River where I assumed I could get a room. He found that amusing. At that time the closest hotel was in Canso or Guysborough – but not in nearby Larry’s River as I naively thought. Luckily, Mr. Hale was a hospitable man and he put me up for the night. The next day he showed me the property and then he gave me a tour starting along the beach at, what is now, the Tor Bay Provincial Park. We then hiked along the coast to Little Harbor which still had an active fishing wharf at the time. It was a warm and sunny day - a day where the colors of the sky, clouds, water and land stood in deep contrast with each other. It was a day very much unlike the cloudy and foggy days which are common along the Atlantic coastline of Nova Scotia when the colors of the landscape are muted into a seemingly endless canvas of grey. I was instantly, and overwhelmingly, in favor of including this bit of planet earth in my life. I committed to the deal 15 minutes into our 3 hour walk.
That was my introduction to Guysborough County and the event that solidified my connection to Nova Scotia. For the few years (1998-2000) when I made the mistake of not having a direct physical connection I was more of a ‘come from away’ - the local term for an outsider - than I had been since 1972. I felt compelled to correct the situation and the only way I knew how was to buy a new piece of Nova Scotia real estate. And so the search began. I reintroduced myself to H.M. Dignam and flew up to Nova Scotia to check out some parcels on Cape Breton Island. But none of those panned out. In 2000 I found a website called ‘Cottages by the Sea’ which offered parcels of land mostly along the shore of the Northumberland Strait in Antigonish County. This venture, owned and operated by Leonard Pluta, an economics professor at St Francis Xavier University, claimed to be an altruistic enterprise aimed at helping people to ‘fulfill their dream of owning a cottage or retirement home by the sea’. It sounded like bullshit but, by my experience, I found this to be a totally true claim. Mr. Pluta was most accommodating. I was unable to make a trip Nova Scotia due to budget and work schedule constraints so I asked Mr. Pluta to send me a video of one of his Georgeville area properties. He reluctantly agreed fearing that I would make a decision without being fully informed and then regret it later. I viewed the video and found the property and the Georgeville area much to my liking. I bought the property without seeing it in person. This could have easily been a huge mistake but it all turned out well. Mr. Pluta provided an easy payment schedule and, just as Mr. Hale had done for my Tor Bay property, no interest was charged. Besides Mr. Pluta’s generous no interest payment plan I was further aided by a favorable exchange rate between the American and Canadian dollars that ran the full course of the payment schedule. I now had roots, active and vestigial, in both Antigonish and Guysborough Counties. The two eastern most counties on mainland Nova Scotia that were, up until 1836, a single county known as Sydney. I had been vacationing in eastern Nova Scotia for decades and with each trip I was unwittingly collecting information for this project. Getting to know these two counties became a wonderfully pleasant pursuit for me. With each trip my knowledge of the area grew by visiting museums and historical sites. Plus, with each trip my book collection of local history usually grew by at least a volume or two. When I am not physically in Sydney County my online research and my books provide me with vicarious virtual visits at anytime. While doing research I have continually found new sites to explore and new questions to seek answers for. Then in 2010 I was unexpectedly ‘retired’. Now, with a bunch of free time available to me my casual search for Sydney County became more formal. And so, with a healthy dose of inspiration by the likes of Joseph Howe and W.R. Bird, it became my goal to explore this area in detail and in 2012 I went on an extensive 9 day ramble in search of Sydney County.
As an American writing about my home away from home, a province in Canada, I have been faced with making decisions on the spelling and unit of measure conventions to be used. Should I use American or Canadian English spelling? Should I use metric or imperial units of measurement? Since road signs in Canada use the metric system I have conceded to using metric units for linear distance. But imperial distance statements will appear when I have quoted sources from pre-metric days (Canada went metric in the 1970’s). Regarding elevation, I have followed the standard used by the Surveys and Mapping Branch, Department Of Energy And Mines which uses feet to define their contour intervals. Regarding things like temperature and volume I have used the standards employed by the local media.
But spelling is, to use a distinctly maritime phrase, a different kettle of fish. I read and understand Canadian but I do not write Canadian. I once accused a fellow worker from the United Kingdom of being a filthy vowel wasting limey bastard for what I consider to be their overly lavish use of vowels. How many vowels are really needed to spell color or honor? It seems like two ought to be enough. Looking back I am surprised that during the early days of computing, when mainframe computers only supported up to 8mb of memory and as little as 40mb of hard disk storage capacity, that there was not a movement to conserve storage space by adopting American English among all English speaking nations. Conserving storage space was something on the minds of every programmer at that time. It was the storage saving measure of using of only 2 digits for recording a year that lead to the need for widespread updates to archaic programs to avoid Y2K bugs. But, regardless, the Standard English speaking world, which includes Canadians, has carried on this tradition of being vowel spendthrifts. Users of Standard English also spell some words differently than Americans but without the guilt of using extra letters. The alternate spellings of various words such as defence and tyres cause my spell checker to issue a lot of red squiggly underlines. The use of colloquialisms is easy enough to understand. Localized expressions used by populations separated by some geographic barrier, such as distance, oceans or a mountain range, can cause an occasional hindrance to communications but they are justifiable in terms of why they exist. The different use of vowels is another thing and far more mysterious. It turns out that many of the now characteristic American English spellings were introduced, although often not created, by Noah Webster in his ‘An American Dictionary of the English Language’ of 1828. Webster was a strong proponent of spelling reform for both philological and nationalistic reasons. He wanted to create further separation from the mother land and saw the elimination of unnecessary vowels as a practical means to achieve this.
The time honored tradition of Standard English to waste vowels has been a pet peeve of mine for years. But, this irritation never extended to other languages that are also overly generous in their use of vowels. On the 1757 map of Acadia by French cartographer Nicolas Bellin, Canso is spelled as Canceaux. The orthography of Canso has varied much over the years. It has been spelled as; Campseau, Canceaux, Canco, Cancoe, Canseau, and now the thankfully brief and vowel conserving Canso. I think the other languages don’t offend me in this regard, even when three freaking vowels are strung together consecutively, because I have no idea how the coupling of letters works for any language other than English. To paraphrase Bob Dylan – you can’t criticize what you don’t understand.
The spelling of Guysborough is an obvious affront to my sense of vowel frugality. I am especially exacerbated by the current spelling for the shire town since in the past Guysboro was an accepted spelling. From what I can tell the spelling went through a period of transition sometime around the end of the 19th century when both spellings were used. Harriet C. Hart, in her 1877 book ‘The History of Guysborough County’ uses both spellings, using Guysborough as the spelling for the county and Guysboro as the spelling for the town. Likewise, the Star newspaper was a local Guysborough publication and in an edition from 1892 the masthead looked something like this..
Going in the complete opposite direction from vowel wasting to text message brevity, on one trip to Guysborough I bought a tee shirt from the Skipping Stone Café and Store (a fine eclectic retail establishment that is now sadly closed) that says ‘GBro Since 1634’. Going from ‘Guysborough’ to the sobriquet ‘GBro’ saves a lot of letters. In the spring of 2014 there was a story covered by national news organizations about a middle school student who determined that the US Government could save millions of dollars in ink by simply going to a thinner font. In addition to going to a thinner font, the Canadian Government could add to those ink saving measures by eliminating unneeded vowels (and consonants). There would also be some measurable amount of savings in labor by reducing the number of keystrokes during input. Perhaps a social media induced reductive patois could provide a beneficial cost savings change to the written form of Standard English.
And before you start thinking that all this talk about wasted vowels is the ranting of a singular crazy old man you might consider that back in the early 1900’s the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie introduced a simplified spelling movement. It was his belief that shortening words would help in simplifying communications and that could lead to a better understanding between nations and be an agent for peace. Carnegie had the support of President Theodore Roosevelt and many other notable figures including Mark Twain.
But, brevity does have its disadvantages. By the time I finally got a cell phone and started to communicate via text messaging my wife was already quite savvy with abbreviated messaging. One day I texted a question to her and her answer was ‘Idk’. I didn’t know what that meant so I asked her what does ‘Idk’ mean and her reply was ‘I don’t know’. It was then that I had a Gracie Allen moment and asked her why she was texting me something of unknown meaning to her. Sometime later we were having an in person conversation and I asked her a question to which she verbally replied ‘Idk’. I couldn’t suppress my inner Gracie and replied that we all decay sooner or later.