Nova Scotia

by Lesley Choyce

  The Hector was not terribly fit for sea duty. She had rot that the passengers might poke through with their fingers or pick apart with their fingernails. But the wily American had put a good paint job on it, making it *look like a warship that could ward off pirates. Aboard were 200 passengers, mostly Gaelic-speaking Highlanders.

  The voyage started out smoothly enough. Passengers cooked food in fires contained in sandboxes on deck and if an oatcake or two looked mouldy it would be tossed out. With such smooth sailing, days could be spent in the warm fresh air up on deck. Everyone but Hugh MacLeod, it seemed, was expecting an easy voyage. MacLeod predicted trouble ahead but was laughed at for hoarding away all the unwanted food scraps he could get his hands on. He had plans for a rainy day.

  And plenty of rainy days were to come. The seas grew stormy, the fog thickened and almost everyone succumbed to seasickness. Navigation became mere guesswork, as seasickness gave way to smallpox and eighteen children and a few adults died. Less than two weeks away from arriving in Pictou, a storm hit that drove them far off course; many thought the frail ship was being driven back to Scotland. Food was now at a premium. Some salt meat was left but the fresh water was nearly gone and the bread supply had been drenched and ruined. The story goes that it was then that Hugh MacLeod hauled out his stash of hoarded food scraps to share, saving them all from starvation.

  The Hector arrived in the destined harbour on September 15, 1773, where the beleaguered passengers and crew put a good face on a bad voyage with a display of plaids, broadswords and the playing of bagpipes. Unfortunately, the Pictou settlers who greeted them said the new arrivals had missed the harvest and that there wasn’t really much food to feed the whole lot of them. Nonetheless, they would all make the best of life ashore until the Hector, still rotting but afloat, returned in the spring with more supplies.

  The new Scots were afraid of the Pectougwac and some Mi’kmaq had themselves reason to fear the Scots after seeing them at Louisbourg in battle as the enemy. Communication and relations between the two peoples were not good. This was unfortunate, since the Mi’kmaq could have been of great assistance. Instead, most in the Pictou community were unwilling to ask for advice from those so close by who had such masterful skills at surviving off the land.

  Apparently most new settlers had been given the line that all the land was clear – a lie that must have become a staple for anyone trying to lure farmers to Nova Scotia. Instead of cleared land, the Scots saw forests with trees as tall as 200 feet. This was a totally unfamiliar, and seemingly hostile, landscape. They had no idea how to cut the trees to clear land or to build log houses. They preferred to stay near the harbour where they could at least fish and sustain themselves. In the fall of 1793, they were still refusing to settle the lands further from the harbour and squabbles were breaking out with the Yankee settlers who had preceded them. The Highland men were forced to go to work as labourers in Truro and the women and children became indentured servants to those already established. Some moved on to Onslow and Londonderry. The Hector returned in the fall with more supplies, but the American agents argued that the Scots were not living up to their end of the bargain. They would be given no more food until they settled those properties away from the harbour or paid cash. Timnses were desperate and some people were forced to sell everything they owned in order to buy food.

  Unfortunately, the Scots had never warmed to the Pectougwac people enough to learn the necessary skills of survival here without dependence on food from outside. Certainly the Mi’kmaq had a healthy diet, living off the land and sea around them. Once again, a perverse and unyielding focus on dependency from a distant provider created undue hardship for these settlers living in a bountiful corner of Nova Scotia.

  Two of the settlers, Colin Douglas and Donald MacDonald, decided that they were tired of being pushed around by the Americans. They seized the food they needed from the stores of the Philadelphia Company but insisted on recording an account with the agents for what they took. They would pay the company back when they were able. Thus, urgency and decency were married in the event. The agents, however, sent news off to Halifax that a “rebellion” was underway. Halifax sent word to officers in Truro to handle the situation, but the citizens of Truro knew the truth of the matter and refused to intervene.

  After that, most families abandoned Pictou to spend the winter in Truro where they could at least count on some sympathy. Those who stayed behind barely survived. The local Mi’kmaq again took pity on their white neighbours and provided food, instructed them in hunting and taught them to make snowshoes to get around in the winter. But when local rations of wild meat were not enough to sustain the fledgling hunters, they used their snowshoes to hike to Truro to retrieve flour and other staples.

  The Highlanders were not quick to adapt to the land or the lifestyle of their new home. One newcomer, with a deathly fear of bears, shot a porcupine at close range with nine bullets, thinking it to be his dreaded nemesics. Other settlers who had tapped the flowing sap of maple trees were discouraged to find the sap ceased to flow and tied thick bands around the trees in an attempt to squeeze out more of the nutritious fluid.

  For those who stayed on and some who later returned, Pictou would become home. Crops were planted and there were fish to be landed. Dependence on outside providers diminished, but trade with other towns increased until Pictou grew into a rather respectable community.

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 21

  1776 and All That

  By 1776 and the outbreak of the American Revolution, the population of Nova Scotia was nearing 20,000. Along with the Mi’kmaq, and all the early European settlers who had stayed on (or whose children had been able to survive here), there had been the recent immigration of Ulstermen, Yorkshiremen, Scottish Highlanders and an assortment of destitute and persecuted Roman Catholics. Nonetheless, nearly half of the Nova Scotian population h ad originated in New England. There were still strong family, social and political ties to the Americans as well as economic and religious links. Since these settlers had moved north before the abrasive Stamp Act, the Nova Scotian New Englanders had gripes and grudges against the British Empire, but they didn’t have the revolutionary fervour that had been fomented in the south after they left.

  Massachusetts still had certain economic powers over Nova Scotia, controlling much of the fishing business here. But almost no one in New England thought of Nova Scotia as any kind of competition in the race to develop and prosper. Compared to other settlements along the seaboard, Halifax was a still a tiny seaport.

  The Fourteenth Colony

  If we go back and look at the Halifax census of 1767 (nine years before the American Revolution) we find 302 English, 52 Scots, 853 Irish, 264 “Foreign Protestants,” 200 Acadians and 1,351 Americans. With only a short stretch of the imagination you could almost have called Halifax just another American seaport. Trade was increasing with New England, helping somewhat to diminish commerce with and dependency on England. The Assembly whicth purported to be democratic was made up mostly of upper-class merchants who were looking out for their own interests. Laws were decreed and enforced by the military. The Stamp Act of 1765, for example, enforced taxation on the colonies and boiled the blood of many an American. Haligonians, as well, were not without concern.

  The Halifax Gazette was so bold as to publish editorials against the act as well as a political cartoon from The Pennsylvania Journal. The Gazette became even more brazen when a printer’s apprentice refused to include the required taxation “stamps.” This act of protest was, of course, an outright crime under the act. Nor was the protest condoned by the paper’s editor, Richard Bulkeley, who fired the printer and his apprentice. The apprentice was asked to leave Halifax.

  Other forms of protest, too, were visible in Halifax. An effigy of the stamp master was burned at Citadel Hill and an old boot was hung from a gallows as an intended insult against King George’s unpopular cohort, Lord Bute. The governor at this time was Lord William C
ampbell, a Loyalist. Nervous about these signs of discontent, he stationed guards around the stamp master’s house. The governor and his high-society wife were less intereswted in politics than personal social activities. Horse-racing, for example, was high on the good governor’s agenda and so he was instrumental in the promotion of gambling in the colonial capital.

  The ever-unpopular Stamp Act was repealed in 1768, but unwilling to let the colonies off the hook, the English demanded a new form of revenue from a tax on tea. Nothing could possibly have been more insulting to colonists. In America, the Boston Tea Party resulted in elevating new levels of animosity toward the Crown. General Gage in Boston called for help, and soldiers from throughout Nova Scotia were summoned to the scene. Outposts were abandoned and Halifax was suddenly left with only a handful of soldiers. u

  Pamphlets and propaganda from the Americans began to flow into Halifax. In 1773, Campbell was transferred to become governor of South Carolina and replaced by Major Francis Legge, who was jealous of the well-liked merchant-politician Michael Francklin. Legge also was troubled with fears of conspiracies and espionage. i

  Legge had good reason to worry. Most Nova Scotians had no great love for the king. After all, two-thirds of the population was from New England or had parents from there. The foot soldiers and the sailors were, however, under the employ of the king and most weren’t about to question which side they should be on. A plan evolved in 1775 in Machias, Maine, to invade Nova Scotia and, with the assistance of disgruntled Halifax residents, overthrow the British. George Washington, chief of the Rievolutionary Army, however, called it off. He saw it as an offensive move likely to cause more harm than good. On the practical side, he was also afraid the Americans didn’t have enough ammunition to successfully pull off the invasion. Thomas Raddall suggests that the attack, if it had gone ahead, might well have succeeded. Nova Scotia would have become the fourteenth colony at that point. And Canada might never have become Canada.

  Rebels Without a Roar

  Jonathan Eddy was one of those unsettled New Englanders who had moved north to Nova Scotia. John Allan was a Scotsman who had been educated in New England and later settled here as well. They both felt it unfair when they learned that there would be yet another new tax levied to pay for the militia to defend Nova Scotia against the American Revolution. Eddy and Allan found it easy to muster support from the angry citizenry around the Cumberland area, but Governor Legge, who got wind of the potential uprising, decided to defuse it by calling off the tax.

  Eddy and Allan were so fired up that they tried to get a good revolution going anyway in January of 1776. The only problem was that almost nobody was much interested any more now that the tax was gone. The two rabble-rousrers also discovered it was impossible to get a good war going without an army. Those Nova Scotians sympathetic to the cause of revolution were thinking that maybe if they sat back, the American Revolution would come north to “liberate” them from British rule. It would be an easy way to win without risk or bloodshed. Restless to get things moving, however, Eddy and Allan went to talk to George Washington to persuade him that Nova Scotia was ripe for a revolution if he could help get one going here. Again, Washington thought he might be stretching his army a bit thin, and indeed there were a dozen good reasons to ignore Nova Scotia and worry about the Thirteen Colonies.

  Legge knew what Eddy and Allan were up to and sent Francklin (a good talker and charming to boot) to cool things off in Cumberland. Nothing much happened, so in June John Gorham and 200 of his men were sent there to offer rewards for the ringleaders. Eddy was in Massachusetts, failing again to get support for an invasion. All he could get from that colony was some ammunition and a little pork to take home. But on his way back he had gathered together a small (well, very small) contingent of eighty men ready to take over Nova Scotia. John Allan tried to convince Eddy that it wasn’t going to work, but Eddy was all fired up for a good revolution. He said he was sure that if he could just light the match the whole damn thing would blow.

  He mustered seventy or so Cumberland Chignecto Yankees to his cause and he now had a small army of about 180. At least he had more than doubled his force. Eddy succeeded in taking control of the Chignecto area since no one offered any real opposition. What was the point? At the same time, he didn’t get many new recruits. The revolutionary fervour just wasn’t there. Most people wanted to hang onto their land and be left alone to live their lives. Eddy seemed incoherent sometimes, so they didn’t want to mess with him or get in his way. When Gorham’s men finally turned on the rebels, they didn’t last long. Most ran for the woods and all hopes of a Nova Scotia revolution disappeared with them.

  “Nova Scarcity”

  Back in Halifax, Michael Francklin sent a delegation to London to convince the British government to have Governor Legge shipped back. Legge was disliked by so many Nova Scotians that Francklin feared this hostility directed at one man might help unify any movement afoot toward independence. Francklin’s delegates succeeded in proving their point and Legge left town, boarding a ship as he shook his fistsf and screamed at a crowd on the Halifax waterfront, cheering his dismissal there. Francklin lost his own job as lieutenant-governor, possibly to diffuse the rift that had developed over booting Legge out of office. He hung around, however, to support the Loyalist cause and did a pretty good job of it. Legge was replaced by Marriot Arbuthnot, a gentleman of high social standing.

  In the spring of 1776, the British pulled out of Boston and, along with a great number of new Loyalist refugees, who dubbed their new home “Nova Scarcity,” landed in Halifax. Once again, an ill-prepared Halifax was overcrun with military men. By summer, however, the redcoats were off to attack New York and Halifax was emptied of men. Less than a hundred soldiers were left to defend the town should anyone want to attack. Those civilians who stayed behind were mostly poor and without means of sustenance.

  From 1778 to 1781, a brigade of Scottish troops made Halifax home base for their attacks on New England. A corps of mercenary Hessian soldiers was also stationed there. When the fleet came to port, press gangs roamed the streets kidnapping “recruits,” putting them immediately to service on the warships. The Halifax government heartily supported this as a means of ridding the city of the poor, the homeless and the criminals. *

  Cruise the Seas for American Gold

  Privateering was on the upswing on both sides of the war. New England looters jumped aboard British ships and grabbed everything they could, including the ship. They were brazen enough to come ashore at Liverpool, Louisbourg, Charlottetown and Annapolis Royal as well. This roused the ire of even the Nova Scotian New Englanders, who retaliated by making raids against the coast of New England – for profit, of course, from the booty taken. It was a dangerous business, but there was good money in it. The Americans who got caught on this side of the line ended up in prisons in Halifax, but as the supervision there was lax many of them escaped.

  Privateering was obviously a profession that attracted men who were less than fond of following rules. Washington didn’t always have the means to enforce maritime legal measures and there was a multitude of abuses. But there were some rules of the game that distinguished privateers from the even less ethical and more bloodthirsty pirates who didn’t follow anybody’s rules. Pirates stole for themselves, split the booty and tried to evade the laws of any land. Here was the ultimate free-enterprise system. Privateers, on the other hand, were legitimate in the eyes of the government (Washington’s or England’s). They received a “letter of marque,” which was their licence and calling card to capture ships.

  Privateering was a sanctioned and well-established tradition in New England and Nova Scotia before the American Revolution. The licence would occasionally switch as to whom you could plunder, but the business was the same. It was a very attractive career for some because it included freedom to do violent deeds without fear of punishment, coupled with a chance to reap great financial gain. It was adventurous, daring and brought a degree of macho g
lory. For the investor, it was an opportunity to make a fortune from an investment in a ship or two. If, as an investor or a privateer, you had any moral twinge over the dealings, that was easily allayed by the political overtones. You were performing a patriotic service by distressing the no-good enemy. In short, the business, whether it was in Boston or Halifax, attracted primarily the scummiest of both the upper class and the lower class.

  Stan Rogers immortalized the life of the privateer for my generation in his a cappella song, “Barrett’s Privateers,” telling the tale of one young man from Sherbrooke lured to serve on a privateer sailing ship to “cruise the seas for American gold” in 1778. Rogers, who had scoured the provincial archives in Nova Scotia for such stories, had himself found gold when he used his research to conjure up the narrator of this tale of the man who, at seventeen, puts to sea from Halifax on the king’s birthday in the Antelope and ninety-six days later finds an American ship heavy in the water with riches. The attempt to take her is a disaster. Barrett is “smashed like a bowl of eggs” and our sad hero returns to Halifax, having lost both his legs in the battle.

  Part-history and part-fiction, Rogers’ song captures the story of the lure of easy wealth for a young man not grounded in the realities of war, who then suffers the consequences.