Nova Scotia (36 page)

   
Bell had no real professional training in the area of
electricity. Instead, his prime area of interest was sound and
vocal physiology. He had been brought up in Scotland and first
travelled to Canada in hopes of improving his health. He had an
inquisitive mind and was interested in all manner of scientific
endeavours, especially something that would improve the telegraph
device. In Boston, where he worked at a school for the deaf, he
mÿoonlighted in his research and in 1875 patented something called
the harmonic telegraph, which involved sending messages at varying
harmonic frequencies. 

   
Because of his interest in human speech and hearing, he
conceptualized a device that could transmit and receive human
speech and, along with his assistant Thomas Watson, invented the
telephone, which was patented in 1876. Bell married a woman of
great inspiration to him, and Mabel Hubbard Bell, herself deaf,
would join Alexander in Baddeck to perform her own research in
horticulture.

   
During the years after the invention of the
telephone, Bell worked nonstop on a disparate range of projects
involving photoelectric cells, the iron lung, desalination of sea
water, the phonograph and steam-powered aircr aft. Much of his
research took place in Cape Breton. One of his odder experiments
was an attempt to create a kind of super-sheep. These were
multi-nippled ewes which would give birth to twins or triplets most
of the
tiw.me
.

   
In the U.S. Bell had dabbled with the
possibility of steam-powered aircraft but it was in Baddeck in 1907
that he formed the Aerial Experiment Association with J.A.D.
McCurdy, F.W. Baldwin, Glenn Curtiss and others. They made kites
which lifted men into the air and went on to make gasoline-powered
“aerodromes.” On a cold day in February of 1909, Bell and his
buddies succeeded in putting a man aloft in an aircraft called
the
Silver
Dart
, the first such flight
in Canada. Bell also toyed with creating hydrofoil boats that rose
up and “flew” across the water. The first one appeared in 1908 and
the HD-4, handcrafted in 1917, pushed the world water-speed record
to 114 miles an hour.

   
Bell loved his time at Baddeck and died there on August 2,
1922.

Cape Breton Island also had another
claim to fame when it comes to telecommunication firsts. Guglielmo
Marconi, who had invented the radio, transmitted the first-ever
wireless communication from North America to Europe in 1902 from
his radio station at Glace Bay. The curious message read thus: “The
patient waiter never loses.” It made history. Marconi kept
improving his system and, by 1907, he had a communication service
running from tPort Morien, Cape Breton, to Clifden, Ireland. He had
also set up shop in Glace Bay to manufacture his own equipment. In
1919, Marconi’s Louisbourg station received the first wireless
transatlantic voice message from Ireland.

The Chignecto Ship Railway
Dream

Some blame for the death of sailing
ships can be attributed to the advent of steamships, but the rapid
growth of rail travel also heralded a decline for the schooners.
Nova Scotia’s first railroad was created in Pictou County in 1838.
It was also the first freight railway in Canada and, powered by a
British locomotive, it hauled coal from the Albion mines to ships
in need of fuel docked in Pictou Harbour. Most of Nova Scotia,
however, -was slow to catch on to the great railway boom happening
across North America. The most efficient means of transport was
still by ship.

   
Nonetheless, by 1854 a rail link was created between the
train-happy Pictonians and Halifax. Halifax was also linked to
Windsor by rail. These rail lines would later be absorbed into the
Intercontinental Railway as part of the deal to bring Nova Scotia
into Confederation. Then, as travel and commerce shifted westward,
trains were partly responsible for the great decline of the sailing
ships.

   
One of the most intriguing railroad endeavours in the history
of Nova Scotia, however, involved the hauling of entire ships
across land. For nearly 300 years, ship owners and captains had
daydreamed about a possible shortcut from the Bay of Fundy to the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, across the narrow Chignecto isthmus that
lashes Nova Scotia (a near-island) to the rest of North America.
The shortcut that would lead from East Coast North Americma to the
Gulf and the St. Lawrence River could create a potential fortune
for anyone with the capital and equipment to bring it
about.

   
Between 1875 and 1886 nearly twenty studies were undertaken
for the building of a canal across the leash of land. Cost,
however, would be the critical limiting factor; the price tag was
estimated to be as much as $8 million. And then along came Henry
George Clopper Ketchum, who proposed that it would be much cheaper
to build a railroad. Ships could be hoisted out of the water at one
end, trundled across the marsh and lowered gently back into the
water on the other side.

   
George Ketchum, a civil engineer born in 1839 in Woodstock,
New Brunswick, was a true believer that railroads could be adapted
to carry nearly anything. His project would be a privately funded
railway designed to accommodate all manner of ships, including
paddle-wheel steamers. The rail line would be twenty-seven
kilometres long with a dock on the Fundy side capable of handling
up to six ships of about 1,000 tons each. Ships would be floated
over a cradle with 192 wheels on a rail bed that began underwater.
The vessel would next be lifted by hydraulics and propelled by
steam engine across the isthmus, at a maximum of ten miles an hour,
to be slowly deposited back into the water on the other side. The
rail owners could charge a hauling fee of a meagre fifty cents per
ton and still collect more than $500,000 each year, even if only a
fraction of the sea traffic used the service.

   
Ketchum started out investing his own money but was forced to
find other backers, which included the Government of Canada kicking
in $150,000 per year. Cumberland County magnanimously gave him the
land free of charge and construction began in 1888. Three-quarters
of the work was completed by July of 1891, when tighter economic
times put a pinch on the project. Tracks had been laid and
machinery manufactured, nearly ready to go. Another $1.5 million
would have seen completion of the dream project. Ketchum was sure
it would be the first of many such ship railways for North America
but he would never see the completion of the job. It all went down
the tubes. The Chignecto Ship Railway would fall into ruin and
little would be left to show to the world.

Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Off to the “Boston
States”

From the outset, many Nova Scotians
resented their annexation to Canada. If they had ever had faith in
the faltering democracy of Nova Scotia, it was shattered by
Tupper’s success in dragging the province into Confederation
against the will of the people. Had the terms of Confederation been
more appealing, perhaps the deal would have caused less resentment.
By the end of the 1860s, however, most dissenters realized the
impossibility of bringing about a repeal. The most radical of the
discontented still spoke of joining Nova Scotia to the United
States and shifting alliances south instead of west. But,
fortunately, this movement too faded. By 1869, Joe Howe was a
minister in the federal cabinet and he too had been persuaded that
Confederation was never to be reversed.

   
While well-educated Halifax lawyers and newspapermen may have
still been hammering out the rightness or wrongness of
Confederation, it was probably of little concern at all to a great
number of Nova Scotian subsistence .farmers and families in fishing
villages who scraped by in poverty. Their concern was daily
survival. The great age of sailing ships that was creating
mercantile fortunes had passed these farmers and fisherfolk by. All
tthe new politicking in Halifax and Ottawa would have very little
influence on their lives or provide improvement, not in this
century anyway.

   
In the 1870s, industrial growth in Maritime cities was not
keeping pace with expansion in Ontario and Quebec. More and more
manufactured goods from outside the region, including the U.S.,
were finding their way to Nova Scotia, depressing the local
economy. In the 1880s, there was not even much growth in farming,
forestry, fishing or shipping. Coal production was slightly on the
increase, but otherwise, the economy in Nova Scotia was in a
holding pattern. Wealth once generated by the sailing ships was
falling off, while the government subsidized rail transport, which
was not yet proving to be a great asset to Nova
Scotia.

   
As a result of the slack economy and the promise of jobs
elsewhere, there was a great out-migration of Maritimers during
this decade. Nova Scotians moved west or they shipped off to the
“Boston States”; many would never return home. So, while
populations in Ontario and Massachusetts exploded, the number of
people in Nova Scotia grew by only two percent during the entire
decade.

   
The exodus of Maritimers took young men away from jobs in the
forests and away from the hard toil of life in seaport communities.
The lure of a factory job in Boston seemed more desirable and
credible than a hard but a*dventurous life at sea on an outdated
ship that might not turn enough profit to pay all the crew. Even
fishing proved to be an unreliable occupation due to fluctuating
prices determined by e-conomic factors far outside the region. And
so, for those who would move away, the vital tie to the life of the
sea was cut forever.

   
As workers flowed out of the region, so did money. Economic
downturns in the 1870s and 1880s had prompted local banks to invest
their clients’ savings outside of the region, where growth was
stronger. This obviously dida little to help the Nova Scotian
economy and mea*nt a less certain economic base for future
development. By the middle of the 1880s, Nova Scotians were in the
midst of a depression and had some reasonable grounds for holding
the distant federal government to blame for their dire straits.
W.S. Fielding got himself elected in 1886 by talking again of
seceding from the Dominion of Canada and forming a Maritime Union
of provinces, even thoough the other Maritime premiers were only
lukewarm to the idea. Once settled safely in office, however,
Fielding backed off from his secessionist ideals when a new federal
government was elected in 1887 and the outlook for enhanced
provincial rights looked more promising.

   
Despite economic setbacks, social and cultural progress found
its way to Nova Scotia during this decade, much of it in the form
of public works. Halifax opened a large indoor public skating rink
in the Exhibition Building in 1879, and amateur sports began to
flourish as well. The Halifax Infirmary was opened by the Sisters
of Charity in 1886 and the Victoria General Hospital opened in
1887. Dalhousie University moved away from downtown and
expanded.

“The Mist of Virgin
Ramparts”

Halifax in the nineteenth century
had received its share of literary travellers, many of whom had
strong opinions about the place. Charles Dickens, on his tour of
North America back in 1842, arrived in Halifax Harbour, where his
ship promptly ran aground on a mud bank. His very first impression
of Nova Scotia was that it was, “dark, foggy and damp and there
were bleak hills all around us.” Halifax itself was a “curiosity of
ugly dulne ss,” and his correspondence reveals that he was not
overly impressed with his host, Speaker of the House Joe Howe, the
best conversationalist Halifax had to offer. Nonetheless, Dickens
somehow left with a favourable impression of Halifax and countered
his earlier observation by reporting in the British press that
Halifax was ultimately “cheerful, thriving and
industrious.”

   
In the fall of 1882, Oscar Wilde even lectured here on a tour
that took in Halifax, Amherst and Truro. While in Halifax, he
wrote, “I am having charming audiences . . . but it is a great
fight in this commercial age to plead the cause of Art.” It may
well have been the capital “A” in Wilde’s discussion of “Art” that
was troubling Bluenose audiences.

   
Rudyard Kipling did better public-relations work for Halifax
after his trip here. In his lengthy poem “Song of the Cities,”
published in 1896, he had this to say of the
city:

• Into the mist my guardian prows put
  forth
  

• Behind the mist my virgin ramparts
  lie,
  

• The Warden of the Honour of the
  North,
  

• Sleepless and veiled am
  I.
  

   
Oscar Wilde had not been quite so impressed with the virgin
ramparts but Kipling obviously had a strong feeling about Halifax
fitting into the grand scheme of empire. It was also around this
time that a young woman from P.E.I., Lucy Maud Montgomery, was
attending Dalhousie University and preparing herself to become one
of Canada’s most beloved writers.

Better Pay for Boring
Jobs

For those Haligonians who could
afford it, city water, sewage and electricity made life more
comfortable. In sharp contrast to the new comforts for the middle
and upper class, the urban and rural poor still suffered the
ravages of malnutrition and a host of diseases. Childhood illnesses
like smallpox, diphtheria and whooping cough took a staggering toll
on lives. *