Nova Scotia (25 page)

   
On June 21, 1779, Bailey sails into the harbour after a truly
rotten twelve-day trip at sea. Halifax is a bit of a
disappointment. Bailey was expecting to see “lofty buildings rising
in conspicuous glory” and a “respectable part of the Royal Navy” at
anchor in the harbour. Instead he sees only the blunt rocky
fortress of the Citadel, a few scattered, primitive-looking homes
and a handful of battered ships in the harbour. Not a shred of
conspicuous glory to be found anywhere.

   
Bailey’s ship is greeted by a large congregation of Mi’kmaq
in their canoes, cruising along the harbour. This image, for
Bailey, is actually a bit more positive as he refers to them as
“copper-faced sons of liberty.” Once anchored at George’s Island,
Bailey is pleased to see more ships and more buildings of the town
that ascends from the harbour up the hill toward the Citadel. There
is no commodore to greet the passengers as expected, so they go
directly to the Halifax wharf, where crowds gather around them and
throw them into “some confusion.” Bailey records himself as having
shouted out, “Gentlemen, we are a company of fugitives from
Kennebeck, in New England, driven by famine and persecution to take
refuge among you, and therefore I must entreat your candour and
compassion to excuse the meanness and singularity of our dress.”
a

   
I doubt if such an oration would have gone over all that well
with the rabble on the wharf, but fortunately an old neighbour of
Bailey’s is on hand to recognize the preacher’s oratorical tone and
to provide a safe haven for him as he becomes acquainted with life
in Nova Scotia.

   
Despite Bailey’s misgivings about his new home, he went on to
become a prominent citizen of Annapolis Royal, where he served as a
diligent minister for the town and surrounding rural community. In
his journals he wrote accounts of undertaking long, difficult
journeys through rain and snow to perform a wedding or a funeral.
He viewed himself as a kind of frontier missionary and even turned
some of his experiences into satirical verse.

Overcrowded and
Unsanitary

The influx of the more well-to-do
New England Loyalists into Nova Scotia also meant the arrival of a
number of slaves. Slaves were advertised for sale in the papers and
notices were posted offering rewards for escaped slaves and
indentured servants.

   
As the American war progressed, it brought new
money into Halifax and the town grew. In 1781, Joseph Howe printed
the first edition of his
Halifax Journal
which
stayed in business until 1870. Also in 1781, Cornwallis surrendered
at Yorktown and it became obvious that the Americans would have
their way. Those citizens left in the colonies who wanted to remain
under British rule would have to move north to do
so.

   
Until 1783, New Brunswick remained, for all intents and
purposes, under the control of First Nations people. Both American
and British agents tried to get the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet people to
become allies without great success. Michael Francklin, however,
had made significant inroads with his language abilities and
efforts at goodwill. He died in 1782, but the following year the
New Brunswick Native people turned down George Washington*’s
proposals for alliance by returning his gifts. Instead, they
accepted the so-called “peace agreement” with England. That same
year, Loyalist refugees flooded into the Saint John River
Valley.

   
Twenty-five thousand more Loyalists arrived in Nova Scotia,
at least half of them in Halifax. The remains of the British army
and fleet also packed into the city, jamming it again with military
men, this time defeated military men. While the wealthier Loyalists
tore down old houses and built themselves new mansions, the poor
built shacks with leftover lumber. The soldiers, however, were back
to living in tents. Halifax was overcrowded,h unsanitary and
disease was rampant.

   
Runaway Black slaves from New England also arrived, as well
as those set free because their American masters were too poor to
keep them. Black communities grew in Halifax and in outlying areas.
There was also such an influx of Roman Catholics among Loyalists
and discharged soldiers that the government finally decided they
could now own their own land and build churches.

The Price of Allegiance

The Loyalists who had not abandoned
America were in bad shape after the British gave up the fight. They
felt forsaken by the king and hoped they could yet live in peace
with their revolutionary neighbours, but this was not to be the
case. The new American Congress was looking for some form of
restitution from the Loyalists. Despite the ill feelings, many
Loyalists who had left during the war wanted to return to their
homes in America. Many American revolutionaries were violently
opposed to allowing them. Those who had left during the war should
stay out, they argued, and those who remained should get out as
well.

   
Nova Scotia was the obvious place to emigrate to but it had a
reputation as being a snow-ravaged land of hard times and it was
decidedly less than civilized. Nonetheless, it was reasonably close
and land would be granted to them when they arrived. Charles Morris
was the man who would survey the province and decide where the most
suitable settlement sites would be.

   
In America, a mass exodus took place, led by Sir Guy
Carleton. He received little financial support from the British
government, which was more concerned with protecting the defeated
army than the civilian Loyalist population. There simply wasn’t
enough transportation to go around. Evacuating families were forced
to leave behind mountains of personal possessions. Carleton also
worried that if the troops moved out too quickly, the refugees
would have little protection.

   
George Washington was getting pushy and urged Carleton to
hurry up and get his people out of New York in particular.
Washington was anxious to see them leave behind as much of their
possessions, including Black slaves, as possible. Carleton was
doing the best he could in a tough situation and at least he knew
the Loyalists were, in fact, wanted in Nova Scotia. If not the
promised land, at least it was a new home where land could be had
and these people could live in peace. Nova Scotia, recently with a
population of only 17,000, was about to see the head count double
in a very short time.

   
Loyalists kept coming into Nova Scotia and New Brunswick
through late 1783, sometimes under very difficult conditions.
Despite the difficulties of travel, the refugees struggled to bring
as much of their household possessions as possible. Also arriving
were 200 Blacks who had run away from their American masters to the
promised freedom and protection of the British government.
Washington had opposed this exodus but Carleton had succeedded in
allowing the Blacks to join the other Loyalists. Ironically, if you
were a Loyalist and owned Black slaves, the slaves would still
remain as “property” after they arrived in Nova
Scotia.

Cold Comfort for
Refugees

Food was in very short supply in
Nova Scotia now that everyone had arrived. There just wasn’t enough
to go around and Britain was unable to ship enough bare essentials
into the province to feed all the hungry mouths. Some families had
to keep moving from one community to another in hopes of finding
enough sustenance to keep them alive. At least 2,000 left Nova
Scotia altogether in search of a better life anywhere but here. The
Nova Scotia government also decided to help alleviate some of the
problems by shipping the sick and the poorest of the refugees back
to America.

   
The majority of the Loyalists stayed, however, adapting to
the tough times and learning the ropes of survival in Nova Scotia.
Many became cod and whale fishermen. Some built and worked in
sawmills where timber was cut into lumber for the West Indies. Most
immigrants, however, were more comfortable with a life of farming.
Unfortunately for them, most of the really good land had already
been taken, so the agrarian life was a struggle. It was not an easy
adjustment for these people who once had comfortable houses,
plentiful food, access to shops, education and all the amenities of
town and city life.

   
Food shortages remained at the heart of the immigrant crises.
There was a virtual famine in British North America by 1789 and
this forced Nova Scotians to work at improving their
agriculture.

The Colony of Cape
Breton

Oddly enough, British colonial
policy stood in the way of immigrants settling on Cape Breton
Island. At first there was little interest in developing the coal
fields there. Inn 1766, however, a group of Halifax businessmen
were granted a lease to Spanish Bay (Sydney) to mine coal and sell
it for no more than three dollars per ton to customers in
Halifax.

   
People already living in Cape Breton didn’t like this
manipulation by distant Halifax. They wanted the right to own and
control their own land. They wanted to mine it or farm it as they
saw fit. In 1784 Cape Breton was  granted its own government,
independent from Halifax. Major Joseph Frederick Des Barres was the
first governor. He was assisted by a chief justice and a
nine-member council. Spanish Bay was the capital and the whole
colony had no more than 2,000 people. Land was granted to Loyalist
refugees but it was not an extremely popular place to settle. As on
the mainland, many who arrived were anxious to move on to greener
pastures. B

   
Various factors led to a short-lived history of an autonomous
Cape Breton, but paramount was the intrusion of land speculators
and battles over land ownership. The government was eventually
dissolved in 1820. Expectations of a Loyalist influx leading to the
island’s prosperity were never realized. Even though Cape Breton
was again absorbed into Nova Scotia, there has remained a strong
sentiment of independence and a distinct identity that is still
rooted in the people of the island.

Black Loyalists in Search of
Freedom

Unlike Cape Breton, Shelburne had
grown quickly with the tide of refugees. There was a large Black
population and many Blacks had been forced to become indentured
servants or waged labourers in order to survive. Conflicts arose
between the white and Black settlers. While white Loyalists were
taking advantage of the Black settlers with very low wages and
various sorts of abuse, they shamelessly accused Blacks of lowering
the “morality” of the community and taking work from the white
population. What was the grievance? Black people, the sober white
Loyalists said, danced and sang and were having too much fun. And
that just wasn’t appropriate for a community that was trying to
model itself after a respectable New England town.

   
Inevitably, tension increased between Blacks and whites,
erupting in a riot in 1784 when the homes of twenty Black settlers
were destroyed by retired soldiers. Black families were forced to
leave Shelburne and move into the segregated community of
Birchtown, where other Black families had already settled. The soil
there was rocky and the land barren or heavily wooded. Many of the
Blacks were from the South and unprepared for the harsh winters.
They lived in crude huts or semi-subterranean hovels and some fell
dead on the streets from starvation. Others, out of desperation,
were forced to kill their dogs or cats for food.

   
Blacks were a very low priority for the Nova Scotia
government and even when they were finally given official title to
lands for living and agriculture, these lands were poor for farming
– grim fields of boulders and glacial deposits of
stones.

   
In contrast to Birchtown, Shelburne prospered as an economic
centre with inns, schools and stores. Fancy New England-style
houses were built and it began to look like a proper New England
village. While it would have been wise for the people of Shelburne
to build a sustainable cod fishery, the men instead opted to go
into whaling, a more lucrative business at first, but like the
town, an industry doomed to failure.

   
Shelburne was too isolated to sustain a healthy trade with
the larger population in Halifax. Commerce was exclusively by sea
and there were no decent roads. Hopes had flourished at one time
that Shelburne would become l arger and wealthier than Halifax and
even become a centre of government and culture. But Shelburne was
headed for economic collapse. There were too many merchants and too
few buyers. Bad weather, fires and smallpox alsoo crippled the
town’s development.

   
By 1788, the town, with a population diminished to merely 300
people, was in a severe economic decline. People were moving away
to Halifax or elsewhere for better opportunities. Already there
were 360 empty houses and the schoolteacher, with only eighteen
students, gave up and left for Halifax herself.

   
The decline of the Shelburne white community might have given
some satisfaction to those Blacks who had been so poorly treated
there but it was small comfort. Nova Scotia surely was not the
promised land for most Black Loyalists. Many had sought their
freedom by following the British Army and some had fought side by
side with them against the Americans. (George Washington himself
was an owner of slaves.) Three thousand of these Black Loyalists
had come here with promises of freedom but found they were more
often than not denied land and the supplies they needed to live.
Instead of freedom and a plot of land, they became sharecroppers or
indentured servants. Like other Loyalists, they started looking for
a better place to live.