Leo J Deveau

This month in Nova Scotia history (January)

Columnist Leo J. Deveau goes over some key moments that unfolded in December in Nova Scotia history.

Nov. 5, 1942: The first draft of 350 women serving in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWAC) arrived in Britain on this day.  A year earlier, on Aug. 13, ...

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS 2 June 1603 - Nicholas Denys (1598-1688) one of the leading figures in the French territory known as Acadia for over half of the 17th century, that comprised the traditional ancestral territory of the…

4 May 1839 - Samuel Cunard of Halifax established the British and North American Royal Mail Packet Company, which later became known as the Cunard Line. He subsequently won a British government bid to carry mail to and from Liverpool, Halifax and…

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS 20 April 1874 - Residents of the Town of New Glasgow awoke to the realization that half of their downtown had been burned to the ground the day before. Though there were two companies of firemen in the…

6 April 1881 - The Halifax Sugar Refinery began operations on this date. It was later named the Acadia Sugar Refining Company in 1894. It went on to become Atlantic Sugar Refineries in 1912, with a refinery also in Saint John, N.B. It would later…

9 March after 1908 - During the winter months, when many ponds and inlets were frozen over in the province, the game of hockey was known to be a favourite winter pastime since the early nineteenth century. But rarely did artists visually record the…

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS 28 February 1745 – A circular was issued on this date by the British government, authored by the Duke of Newcastle to the governments of the New England colonies, including Connecticut, New Jersey, New…

30 December 1916 - By the end of 1916, the No. 2 Construction Battalion - an authorized segregated Black support unit in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) - had enlisted 575 soldiers. Though the enlisted numbers were promising, it was not enough…

16 December 1757 - John Connor died at age twenty-nine (b.1728), and was buried in the Old Burial Ground in Halifax. Connor had arrived earlier in Nova Scotia in 1749 as a young unaccompanied volunteer settler with Governor Colonel Edward Cornwallis’…

2 December 1947 - With Christmas not far off, many households in the postwar years had either a copy of the Sears or Eaton’s Christmas catalogues on a living-room coffee table where many young children would sit and browse for hours through only one…

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS 18 November 1898 - The first edition of The Canadian Men and Women of the Time, A Handbook of Canadian Biography was published, featuring prominent men and women residing in the Canadian provinces at that…

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS 4 November 1899 - Newfoundland merchant sailor, Jack Randall (b. 1880) arrived in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and enlisted to fight in the Boer War. Though he lied about his age, he was soon sent to Quebec for…

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS 21 October 1895 - The Coloured Hockey League (CHL) of the Maritimes was formed in Halifax. The league featured teams from across the Maritimes, with more than 400 African Canadian players participating,…

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS 9 September 1919 - Alexander Graham Bell’s hydrofoil HD-4 “flying boat” set a world record water speed of 114.04 km/h crossing the Bras d’Or Lake, faster than any person had ever travelled on water. At the…

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS 12 August 1992 - The Nova Scotia Power Corporation - a wholly owned crown corporation by the Government of Nova Scotia that had been established in 1972 when it acquired the investor-owned utility, the Nova…

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS 29 July 1920 – The bronze statue of Evangeline was unveiled by Lady Burnham at Grand Pré, Nova Scotia. The statue had been commissioned by the Dominion Atlantic Railway (DAR) and designed by Québécois…

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS 15 July 1856 - American travel writer, Frederick S. Cozzens (1818-1869), wrote on this day, which was later recorded in his book Acadia; or, A Month With The Blue Noses, (1859), a story that he heard one…

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS 1 July 1867 - As proclaimed by Queen Victoria, "One dominion under the name of Canada...with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom…,” the Confederation of Canada West (formerly…