This Week in Nova Scotia History: June 3-9

3 June 1926 - Flora Macdonald, PC, CC, O.ont, ONS, was born in North Sydney. She became a distinguished Canadian politician, first elected federally to the House of Commons for the riding of Kingston and the Islands in 1972-to-1988.

Her introduction to world affairs and politics actually began with her father, who ran North Sydney’s Western Union trans-atlantic telegraph terminus. He would talk to his young daughter daily about foreign news. Reflecting on those childhood times, Macdonald commented, “It was a much better education than I ever got in school.”

Her first introduction to working in politics was on Robert Stanfield’s Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative Party’s campaign, which won an upset victory in the 1956 provincial election. The following year, she worked federally on John Diefenbaker’s election campaigns in 1957 and 1958.

She later shifted allegiances and worked on Robert Stanfield’s successful leadership campaign for the Progressive Conservative leadership in 1967 and his 1968 federal election campaign when he lost to Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

On Stanfield’s federal leadership, Macdonald would later reflect that “He was never a great orator, but he was a tremendous thinker.” It had been under Stanfield’s leadership that Macdonald was also first elected MP for the riding of Kingston and the Islands - which had also once been the riding held by Sir John A. Macdonald.

In 1976, when Robert Stanfield stepped down from the leadership of the federal Progressive Conservative Party, Flora Macdonald mounted a serious campaign for the leadership. When she lost the campaign, she went on to support the new leader, Joe Clark.

When Clark became Prime Minister in 1979, he chose Macdonald as Canada’s first female Secretary of State for External Affairs. She was one of the first female foreign ministers in the world. Clark’s short term as Prime Minister also led to another leadership convention in 1983 which saw him lose to Brian Mulroney.

When Mulroney won the 1984 federal election, he appointed Flora Macdonald first as Minister of Employment and Immigration (1984-1986), and then as Minister of Communications (1986-to-1988). When Macdonald lost her seat in the 1988 federal election she committed her time to humanitarian work as Chair of Canada’s International Development Research Centre from 1992 to 1997, as well as president of the World Federalist Movement - Canada.

Flora Macdonald died in Ottawa on 26 July 2015 at the age of 89. She was the recipient of many honorary degrees and was hailed as a “trailblazer for women in politics.”

(Reference: Geddes, John. “Flora Macdonald: Winter of Maclean’s 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award.” 26 July, 2015, Maclean’s Magazine. URL: bit.ly/3inemv0.)

4 June 1814 - Captured American privateer and prisoner at Melville Island, Benjamin Franklin Palmer, wrote in his diary, “Four prisoners carried to Target Hill this morning, a place where they bury the dead. I’m fearful a number of us will visit that place this summer if not shortly released.”

It is estimated that between 1812 and 1815 as many as 8,148 captured American soldiers, sailors and privateers were held at the Melville Island Prison, located on what is now known as Deadman’s Island, the current location of the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron. It is estimated that 188 men died and are buried on Target Hill.

On 30 May 2005, Memorial Day in the United States, a Commemorative Ceremony was first held on Deadman’s Island for the unveiling of the Memorial inscribed with the names of 195 Americans who died while prisoners of war in Halifax, 188 of them buried, and now remembered, on Deadman’s Island.

Target Hill later became known as Deadman’s Island in the 19th century.

5 June 1886 - Miss Emma M. Stirling (age 48) arrived in Halifax from Edinburgh, Scotland, aboard the Caspian. In her care were 23 children, two teens and two other women. Thirty-six more children would arrive from Scotland on the 31st of August.

By 12 July, Stirling had purchased 219 acres of land at Demsey Corner, about two miles north of Aylesford in the Annapolis Valley, where over several years she and those in her employ, created the Hillfoot farm with orchards and a saw-mill, employing many people to manage the farm and supervise the children. A number of children were also placed in adoptive homes in the local area. An 1891 Census for Demsey Corner, Kings County, lists the names of children brought from Scotland to the Hillfoot farm.

In April 1895, a suspicious fire destroyed the main residence at Hillfoot Farm that had been occupied by 26 people, including Miss Stirling. They all barely escaped with their lives. By July, Stirling and her party of children and support workers left Nova Scotia for Pennsylvania, never to return.

The following year (1896), Stirling sold the Hillfoot farm and its lands. Born in 1838, she died on 2 September 1907 at Coatesville, Chester County, Pennsylvania. An earlier 1900 U.S. Census had indicated that there were only three children in her care at that time.

(Reference: Rippey, Mary Louise. Harvie, Leland. “Emma M. Stirling and Hillfoot Farm.” NSG Vol. XVII/1, 2000. Genealogy Association of Nova Scotia, pp.1-7.

The 1891 Census of Canada, Nova Scotia, Kings County, div. L1 (Demsey Corner), Farn. #74, provides the names of the children and adults at the Hillfoot Farm. URL: http://www.novascotiaancestors.ca/upload/files/stirling. pdf).

6 June 1800 - William Cobbett (1763 - 1835) and his family arrived in Halifax from the United States en route to England. He had served earlier with the 54th Regiment of Foot in Windsor, Nova Scotia, and in 1785 had moved with the Regiment to Saint John, N.B. “His army experience launched Cobbett on his lifelong career as critic of the establishment, the class system, and corruption.”

Cobbett later became a popular writer (author of The Soldier’s Friend, an exposé printed in London in 1792)

and was an early witness to the French Revolution. In the United States, he had become a controversial political and pro-british pamphleteer commentator, and had a reputation as an outspoken “antijacobin and anti-jefferson journalist.” At this time of his arrival in Halifax, he had been charged with defamation by Dr. Benjamin Rush, an eminent physician, whom Cobbett thought was a quack and decided to flee the United States for England via a stopover in Halifax.

After arriving back in Britain, he became a publisher of Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register and a strong voice for parliamentary reform. He returned briefly to the United States from 1817 to 1819 but would return to Britain where he became a Member of Parliament for Oldham.

(Reference: Brown, Wallace. “Cobbett, William.” Canadian Dictionary of Biography. URL: bit.ly/42a08jv ).

7 June 1852 - A geological party from Acadia College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, was lost on the Minas Basin. A witness reported; “From the point between the Habitant and Canard rivers, my father and I watched the little boat in which Professor (Isaac) Chipman, Rev. E.D. Very of Saint John, and four of the college students were returning from Blomidon with the two men who had charge of the craft. It was afternoon of Monday, June 7, 1852. The southwest wind blew a gale. The little sail became unsteady. There was confusion as of men quickly moving from place to place in the boat. A few moments more of anxious suspense and the boat disappeared. All perished except one of the boatmen who gained the shore with difficulty.”

(References: The Acadian Recorder, 12 June, 1852, Vol. 39, No. 24. Also Isaac Chipman (1817-52) - First Geology Professor at Acadia, from Geology at Acadia - The Early Years. Dr. R. Moore. Acadia University Earth and Environmental Science. URL: https://ees.acadiau.ca/chipman.html).

8 June 1752 - As a “public charity,” the Orphans House was opened on this date in the new British settlement of Halifax with Mrs. Ann Wenman (formerly Pyke, née Scroope) as matron. Her husband, Richard Wenman was the keeper, and the Reverend John Breynton was the guardian. Wenman and Ann Pyke had arrived with the first settlers in Halifax in June 1749, both become widowed, then met and were later married in July 1751.

By October, 1752, there were 55 orphans housed at the Orphans House. Mrs. Wenman would manage the Orphans House till her death on 14 May 1792, outliving her husband who had died in 1781. But not before he had also been appointed a justice of the peace in 1762, as well as represented the Halifax Township in the House of Assembly from 1765 to 1770. He also had managed the workhouse for the poor (established in 1754), started a brewery, ran the town’s jail and had a number of real estate dealings in the town and country, becoming one of the wealthiest property owners in Halifax by 1776.

(Reference: Fingard, Judith. “Wenman (Winman), Richard.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. URL: bit. ly/42d3l1r ).

9 June 1892 - Halifax born William Grant Stairs, died of malaria on a steamer as it made its way down the lower Zambezi River. Born in Halifax in 1863, Stairs attended Fort Massey Academy in Halifax and later the Royal Military College of Canada, graduating in engineering and accepting a commission in the British Royal Engineers.

From 1887-’89, Stairs was part of Henry Morton Stanley’s 5,000-kilometre expedition across Africa to the Congo and Tanzania. Later in 1891, he would command a military mission to take the Katanga region (now in DR Congo, Central Africa) for King Leopold II of Belgium’s Congo Free State. At the time, Katanga was controlled by the prosperous African ruler Mwenda Msiri, who was involved in copper mining, the ivory trade and the East African slave trade with the Sultan of Zanzibar.

Though Msiri was courted by Stairs to sign a treaty that recognized the Congo Free State’s sovereignty of the Katanga region, he refused and later died at the hands of Stairs’ second-in-command, Belgian Lieutenant Omer Bodson, who, during a heated exchange when swords were drawn, drew his revolver and shot Msiri. Bodson was also mortally wounded.

In Msiri’s absence, many chiefs fought amongst themselves and the region became unstable. In the course of leaving the region, Stairs died of malaria. His body was interred in the European Cemetery in Chinde, Mozambique, at the mouth of the Zambezi River.