Kennetcook - Past and Present

Kennetcook, Nova Scotia, Canada

Note: The material on Kennetcook's history has been taken from a number of different sources. We cannot guarantee the authenticity of the information presented.

Rising near the mouth of the Shubenacadie River, the Kennetcook River flows southwestward parallel to the central highland ridge of Nova Scotia until it empties into the Avon River near Windsor. With the Musquidoboit, Stewiake, and Shubenacadie Rivers, it formed part of a canoe trail between Canso fishing villages and the French settlements at Port Royal. The four rivers still bear their Indian names. It is said that "Kennetcook" is derived from an Indian name, KUNNEYKOOK, meaning "The Place Ahead" or "The Place Close at Hand".

Kennetcook lies halfway between the source of the river and the tidal water. This village is situated on the road, which was the trail from the Acadian village in Noel to Halifax.

The first settlers were members of the disbanded 84th regiment, but few of them remained here for long. The difficulty of the isolated location made settlement almost impossible for some years. The problem of the ex-soldiers was that the storehouse containing their supplies was in Stanley, many miles down the river. Without a boat, the settler had to carry his food and implements on his back through woods where there was no road. Discouraged, many of these men left for more populated areas.

The Ettinger family, of German descent, settled in the west part of the village. At that early date, the old road from Noel passed behind the old school and crossed the river at a natural fording place below the location of the present day bridge.

The central part of the village was granted to the Barron family. Descendants still live on the south side of the river though they had, at one time, owned land on the north side of the river as well.

A line running roughly north and south through the centre of the present United Church building divided the original Barron grant from the Anthony grant. The Anthony family came to the area from Rhode Island around 1830.

On the north side of the village, the McCulloch family had a grant. This family is originally Scottish and came here in the late 1700's.

The early industries of the village were farming and lumbering. The heavily wooded slopes of the river valley provided timber for the shipbuilding business in Noel. At one time, there was a brickyard in operation near the covered bridge. Also, dairy farming was an important business especially after the opening of the railroad giving easy access to the city market.

Kennetcook was once considered the capital of East Hants because the Municipal Council used to hold its annual sessions here during the third week of January in Anthony's Hall. Furthermore, Kennetcook was connected to the larger centre by train service to Windsor and Truro and by bus service via the shore to Truro.

An Anglican church, St. Peter's, was built in Douglas before 1797. Another, St. Peter's, was built in Upper Kennetcook in 1862. The Presbyterian church in the village of Kennetcook, built in 1871, stood near the present one. The old church became too small to accomodate the large numbers attending and it was decided to build a new church. The new building, begun in 1887, was officially opened in 1890 and was originally Presbyterian. Since the church union in 1925, the church has been part of the United Church of Canada.

In the spring of 1919, a branch office of the Bank of Nova Scotia was opened. The bank originally used rooms in the Kennetcook Hotel and there was a manager and one teller.

The village was supplied with electricity in 1938 by the Nova Scotia Light and Power Company.

A school had been built at Kennetcook in 1867 and one at Kennetcook "Dyke" was built in 1906. By 1901, the first school in Kennetcook had become inadequate for the growing number of children and a new school building was started. It was, at first, a one-room school and a second room was added later. In 1954, the provincial government erected a fourteen room Rural High School making it the centre for education in the area. An expansion added 18 more rooms and provided for elementary facilities as well as more space for the high school.

In the Chronicle Herald, November 28, 1960, the headline read "Flames Destroy Rural High School". The school in Kennetcook, which had been built for $400,000, had burned that Saturday. The new elementary section, built the previous summer for $250,000, had been saved, but 436 students were without the facilities for education. One firefighter was injured in the blaze; he was overcome by smoke and fell from the first storey onto a classroom in the half-basement. Fire equipment and men were provided by Windsor, Shubenacadie, the forest ranger service and the R.C.A.F. unit at Beaverbank, plus 100 volunteers. Water had to be pumped from the Kennetcook River 1/2 mile away. The fire had been discovered by a plumbing contractor. The flames began between the ceiling of a washroom and the f loor above. The school was replaced with a brick building the following year.

In 1944, an oil company established drilling operations at a site about 1/2 mile northwest of the village. The operations ceased at the end of the war, but were resumed for a short time in 1950. No drilling has been done since the fall of 1951.

The covered bridge in Kennetcook was famous because it was the last in the province. It was built in 1873 after many petitions to the government asking for a bridge to be built. The bridge was needed to provide easier access to get products, such as gypsum, cordwood and timber, to Selma for shipping. The timber for the bridge was cut from the surrounding land and "whipped-sawed" into planks. The iron for the ironwork arrived in one-inch bars. It was cut with a coal cutter by the blacksmith and forged into the needed shapes and sizes. Wages for the labour was 45 cents a day and some work was statute labour. The stones for the approaches came from a Gore quarry.

There are two reasons for covering a bridge; one is that stubborn livestock would more readily cross a covered bridge because it looked like a barn; the other reason was because the roof helped to preserve the materials.

The bridge was lit with a lantern at each end at night. The lantern was filled with oil and burned until about midnight. After midnight, the lanterns were either refilled or taken home. There was an accident on the bridge one night when two buggies collided. one horse was killed and the other injured, though both drivers escaped injury. The covered bridge was removed and replaced in 1967.

The Chronicle Herald of October 22, 1958 had an article on the first "Folk School" in the province. This school, an experiment in residential adult education, took place in Kennetcook in 1948. Its success led to other folk schools in the rest of Canada. The purpose of the school was to bring groups of men and women together to gain a better view of the possibilities of life in rural Nova Scotia.

Not only was the folk school idea applied to rural people, but Micmacs of the Maritime provinces had a folk school held in Kennetcook in 1958. This native folk school was the first of its kind in Canada. Its purpose was to help the Micmacs to find their own social leaders. The school, a six day session held in the community hall, grew out of courses designed to help develop social leaders among the Indian population. The intention was to develop leadership qualities and to make the students aware of the needs existing in their community. There were more than 36 students elected from 21 Micmac communities throughout the Maritimes.

In 1973, two important businesses were destroyed by fire. The Lucky Dollar grocery store and the four bay garage, located in the centre of the village, burned in an early Sunday morning fire and put 10 people out of work. The alarm was sounded at 6:30 a.m. by two women on their way to work who saw the flames as they burst through the wall of the grocery store. The call was made from the home of Dr. Tim Snow. Mr. Marsden Anthony, owner of both buildings, said that the first pump the firemen put in the river broke down. When another pump arrived, it was too late to save the service station run by his son, Maurice.

The value of the garage was estimated at $150,000 to $200,000, and the store from $25,000 to $50,000. The store had been operated by Ray MacPhee for three years and was the largest in the area.

Both the structures were two-storey and had been built in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The garage had no insurance and only $1,500 of insurance was on the grocery store.

A total of 12 fire departments from Brookfield to Windsor and Sackville were called to battle the blaze. The high pressure, pumps of Windsor and Beaverbank were credited with bringing the blaze under control shortly after 8:00 a.m., although the last flames were not extinguished until 11:00 a.m.

Had the fire equipment not arrived when it did, the fire would also have wiped out the bank, post office and old hotel, where the paint blistered from the heat, all of which had to be watered down at the height of the blaze. No cause for the blaze, which originated at the store, was ever determined.

The question of rebuilding went to the sons of Marsden Anthony. Both sons went to work to rebuild within the year and had returned two important businesses to the little village of Kennetcook. The grocery store is now a Foodmaster and the service station is a Petro-Canada, both still owned by the Anthonys.

The fire, which followed the burning of the high school in 1959, brought about the formation of a volunteer fire department in the village. Dr. Snow and Maurice Anthony were credited with organizing the new fire department. Mr. Anthony was made the first fire chief. Land for the hall was donated by Mr. Anthony and lumber was offered by Russell White, owner of a lumbermill in the area.

Despite devastation to the town, the people of Kennetcook rebuilt and expanded. The creation of the volunteer fire department in Kennetcook led to similar formations in other communities of the area. 

Mills were an important feature of rural life. There were sawmills, grist mills, carding mills and crushing mills of various purposes. Among the papers of Ralph Whittier, located at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, there is a description of the way of life surrounding the old mills, which operated "in the time before the village blacksmith was replaced by service stations and life floated along at a more leisurely pace".

Logs were cut in the winter, because it made easier hauling for horses or oxen and because the country people had more time on their hands in the winter than in the summer. There was no electrical power and most of the bubbling brooks and smaller streams were harnessed somewhere along their length to provide motive power for lumber mills.

Every community had a mill, sometimes two or three, where the logs were piled and waiting for the spring thaw. At the first sign of warm weather and when the water started to run, the dam was opened. Water was precious, so the mill men worked long hours, while the brooks and streams were full.

When the hot weather came and dried up the streams, the mills were sometimes idle until the next spring. If a heavy enough rain would give the streams another lease on life, the mill would start turning again as long as there was water.

Life revolved around nature, not the clock. Life was not easy, but it was full. People were in tune with the seasons and the natural environment in which they found themselves.

To this day, lumbering is an important industry in East Hants. It developed because of the shipbuilding industry on the Noel shore as well as sales to Britain, Germany and the United States. After the demise of the great wooden ship industry, the lumber business carried on and allowed people who had lived here for generations to continue to support themselves during some difficult economic times, especially the Great Depression of the 1930s. Often farmers supplemented their income with seasonal work in the woods.

Since the very early years of English settlement in East Hants, sawmills and shipping of lumber were vital to the economy. The lumber and shipbuilding industries are almost a "chicken and the egg" riddle. Ships were built to carry timber and timber was needed to build ships.

Every community had a sawmill for the production of lumber for building. The entrepreneurs of the day came up with some interesting means to power the mills by making use of natural resources. Walton had a tidal powered sawmill and in 1837, there was 2,000 tons of timber ready for use in the building of the dam for the purpose of harnessing the power of the tides in that area. John Fletcher of Maitland powered his block-making machinery with horses. In 1859, the foundry in Pictou provided an iron saw-gate for the steam-powered mill belonging to James A. Pearson of Shubenacadie. Proof of the connection between the lumber and shipbuilding industries could be seen in Noel at the shipyards of Osmond O'Brien. In 1868, he was listed as a trader, and by 1871, he operated a shipyard, employing 20 men and a general merchant business, which also sold lumber and building supplies. In 1871, the steam-powered sawmill of Thomas Mitchell was adjacent to the shipyard of A. McLaughlin in Shubenacadie. Collaboration between these two separate industrial units would seem likely.

Despite the close connection between the two industries, the demise of shipbuilding did not result in a decline in the lumber industry. Thomas Gotobed McMullen, known as the "Lumber King" of Nova Scotia, began in business making carriages in Truro before 1870. With his profits, he bought woodland and a sawmill. He eventually owned 300,000 acres, including much in Hants County and a mill in South Maitland. His market was England, and he owned three vessels for the purpose of shipping across the Atlantic. He was a man with foresight and realized that railroads were necessary for the progress of the industry. In 1899, he and three other men f ormed a company to build a railroad through Hants County. They built 50 miles of rail between Windsor and Truro, crossing the Shubenacadie at South Maitland, called the Midland. He later sold his interest to the Dominion Atlantic, but the railroad proved vital for the transport of lumber.

Many innovations were brought about by the "Mother of Necessity". Marsden Anthony had a large lumber business for many years. Once, while working in a swampy area between Riverside and Clarksville, it was necessary to build a "modified railroad". The modifications included wooden rails and running trucks, which had been especially rigged for the job at the Oxford Foundry. A special railway siding had to be built because of the large amounts of timber and the size of the logs, which were being shipped from that area. The system was only needed during the summer. In the winter, the ground was frozen hard enough for the trucks to haul the logs.

Carl Anthony a resident of Kennetcook worked in the woods for a good part of his life. He started at about age I5 and continued to work in the lumber industry for about 25 years to supplement the income from his farm. He recalled one winter when Marsden Anthony of Kennetcook employed about 300 men in seven mills in the area and had 18 pairs of horses, plus yard horses. This was during the Depression years,a time when, Carl says, that Marsden gave a job to just about anyone who needed it. If no job could be found, Marsden would at least provide a meal and a place to stay the night. It was at this time when Carl could see the smoke from nine mills from his back door in Kennetcook. The mill whistles could be heard for miles. 

In the early days, Carl made 1 and 1/2 cents per log. If the log was 10 feet or under, he made 3/4 of a cent. For this, he walked four miles each way to and from work every day. The salary at the mill was 58 cents and 77 cents per day, depending on the skill of the worker. For cutting pulp, a woodsman was paid 90 cents a cord, with a 10-cent bonus for cutting 100 cords. Much of this wood was hauled to Noel, where it was picked up by German ships. Often timber was transported by train to Halifax, where it then went by ship to England. Most of the lumber went on the train at Kennetcook and Carl remembers one day when 12 teams, each with about 100 cords of wood came down over the hill from the Gore to load at the station. The lumber went into boxcars and Carl could make $2.50 a cord, if he cut and piled it on the car at the station. For piling the wood on the car, you could make $2.00. A single car held 15 or 16 cords.

Some wood was transported by water. Harry Hunt had a mill that produced lathes, shingles, barrels and lumber. His timber came by a brook with two dams that worked much like a canal.

Often it was necessary to live in the woods at a camp. The camp consisted of a mill, cookhouse, bunkhouse and stables for the horses. Sometimes as many as 100 men lived together in the bunkhouse. The bunks lined the walls on both sides in two levels and there would be a barrel stove in the middle of the building, which was just rough boards with a tarpaper covering. In Carls words, the stove would "fry you for the first half of the night and freeze you the second half of the night". The men lived in the camp all winter and they had only black tea; there was no milk or butter to be had in those early years. Carl recalled a cook who would chew tobacco and spit into the bread dough and whose soup was more water than broth.

The day in the camp began before seven in the morning and ran until five in the evening. Mill work went from seven until six. The only day off was Sunday. The evenings in the camp were short and entertainment included "yarn telling" and card playing. There was not enough light to read. A good salary was $18.00 to $19.00 and the Christmas bonus for a married man was $5.00 and five pounds of molasses.

Injuries in the woods usually were cut feet and sometimes were very serious; one man known to Carl lost part of his foot to an ax. Work did not stop for storms, snow or rain, and Carl remembered one day that was -47 degrees Fahrenheit. He and another spent the day in the woods and brought a load out by team. Another man came along and remarked to Carls partner that his ears must be f rozen; he had worn no hat. Carl said his partner gave his ears a rub and pieces of them broke off in his hand.

Though life is easier today and work in the woods is well.paid, Carl believes that those days were better than the present. "Life was simple and everyone was in the same boat, all poor as church mice; money just brings trouble and worry".