Joan Dawson - Nova Scotias Historic Harbours: The Seaports that Shaped the Province

Im what Maritimers call a CFA, or come from away. I dont find the term offensive, merely a statement of fact. Except for Indigenous Peoples, all of us, or our ancestors sometime in the past, came from away. Over the years, people came to Nova Scotia for different reasonssome as explorers, fishers, or traders, some looking for work, some escaping from intolerable social or political conditions, some seeking adventure, or love, or a means to improve their status in society, some in the course of their military duties, and some quite accidentally. Whatever their motives, until well into the second half of the twentieth century, when air travel became more affordable and more convenient, most visitors and immigrants arrived in Nova Scotia through one of the provinces many harbours.

I arrived in Halifax Harbour from England on a transatlantic steamship that carried passengers between Liverpool, St. Johns, Halifax, and Boston. With a thirty-six-hour stopover in St. Johns, the journey took ten days. This was a comfortable way to travel, and a stark contrast to what early settlers endured as their wooden sailing vessels lurched through the ocean for weeks, and even months, on their way from Europe. Food and water supplies often ran low, and without refrigeration, if the voyage was long, they were foul well before the vessel arrived. Travellers were packed into cramped spaces below decks, and in stormy weather, conditions must have been almost unendurable. Illness was common, some women gave birth in deplorable circumstances, and those people who died during the passage were buried at sea. Other settlers had a shorter voyage, on coastal vessels from elsewhere in the Maritimes or from ports on the Eastern Seaboard.

Whatever their origins, they were looking for new beginnings, and they came into Nova Scotias harbours with hope in their hearts. Once they had disembarked, newcomers might face the daunting tasks of clearing land around the harbour, building homes, and somehow scraping a living from the lakes, the sea, and the forest.

Some of the communities they established were more successful than others, and all endured fluctuations in their economic lives. They witnessed battles, shipwrecks, privateering and piracy, celebrations, and tragedies. But Nova Scotias coastal cities, towns, and villages began with the hard work of settlers who came from away and made this place their home.

I spend time in summer in a cottage overlooking a river where Mikmaw canoes once travelled, where some of the earliest French settlers landed, where ships were built in little coves, and where, in the nineteenth century, hundreds of merchant vessels came and went from the port at the head of tide. A harbour across the river was once home to a large fleet of fishing schooners, and inshore fishers worked from little harbours on the islands. Outfitters, fish packing plants, and ship owners operated in many small settlements. The sight and smell of the days catch drying on fish flakes all along the shore was ever-present until the 1950s. All this has changed, but the rich history of our coastal communities is preserved in museums around the province, and in the work of local historians who ensure, in print or online, that the past is not forgotten. I am grateful to them.

JD