Историк Эд Коулман рассказывает о прошлом пути из Хейлифакса в Виндзор

HISTORICALLY SPEAKING WITH ED COLEMAN: Glimpses of the old Halifax to Windsor road Well before the first passenger railway ran from Halifax to Windsor in 1857, the town was the grazing ground of the city’s mucky-mucks, the politicians, lawyers, magistrates, doctors, and merchants that made everything work. While this rail line made Windsor more accessible to the summering upper class, it really had started a generation or two before, when the likes of Nova Scotia’s governor John Parr (1725-1791) sought out Windsor’s hospitable climate to escape the strains of office. Windsor was also a favoured place as the jumping-off point to reach the agricultural resources of the Annapolis Valley. If you delve deeply enough into the history of the railway, you’ll find that accessing the Valley’s farm riches was a key factor in its construction. A major port, Windsor with its two rivers, the Avon and St. Croix, was always a favoured location – for ages by the Mi’kmaq who summered there, and by the Acadians with a village they called Pisiquid. From the port, various ships and ferries plied the Minas Basin and the Bay of Fundy, reaching as far as the markets in New Brunswick and Maine. But before the railway connecting Windsor to Halifax was built, and before the Windsor and Annapolis railway line was extended to the Annapolis Valley, there was a rough trail that usually was closed in the winter. Foot travel and horseback was the rule until the track was improved enough to allow stagecoaches. A stagecoach line was opened in 1826. This operated until the railway made it obsolete. In 1934, a Halifax writer decided to drive the remnants of the old trail, first from Halifax to Windsor, then on to Kentville. Along the way, Sarah Dennis interviewed residents on the old trail. She discovered a farmer who described early travel on the trail where he had lived for about 75 years. “The road today is dull,” the farmer said to Dennis. “Then, this road was a lively place, coming and going all the time. Everybody had to use this road, for there was no other way through this part of the province. They came by foot, horseback and carriage. There was any amount of foot passengers. “The soldiers used to march through here then, on their way from Halifax to Annapolis and back. I’d see them coming in their red coats when I’d be going for the cows. Sometimes the band would be playing. “This was a lively road. I’ve seen as many as 20 loads of hay, following each other going to Halifax. There were droves of cattle and sheep passing. There would be four horse teams strung out, with people in the wagons, and they’d sing out as they passed by, or stop to have a chat. “There were public houses then. Six public houses here in five miles, and all down Halifax way. Most all the big houses were public houses. There was the Thirty Mile House, the Halfway House … and goodness knows how many more.” My favourite comment in this section of the Dennis book (Down in Nova Scotia) is about the railway. “I had heard talk about surveying for the railroad (from Halifax?) When they began to build it there was a bet on that there wouldn’t be a train run into Windsor before the new year. But they laid a temporary track along the part that wasn’t finished and ran an engine and one car into Windsor and won the bet.” Ed Coleman, who resides in Kentville, is a bi-weekly columnist who has a keen interest in history, particularly that of Kings and Hants counties.