Meet the People in our Neighbourhood

During the summer of 2020 we were all feeling a lack of connection due to the pandemic. In an effort to reach out to community members we set out to get to know our neighbours and volunteers a bit better, slowly building our oral history collection while we're at it. Our goal is to eventually sit down with each and every community member and learn what drew them and their families to Avondale and any fond memories of the past and inspiration for the future they'd like to share.

We hope you enjoy this ongoing series and learn a bit more about the people who contribute to the vitality of this community.

Dawn Allen, August 21st, 2020

Olwynn Hughes: Okay, so first question, what is your name?

Dawn Allen: My name is Dawn Allen.

OH: What year were you born?

DA: 1956.

OH: What is your connection to the museum?

DA: Right now, I've just become a board member and at our last AGM, I accepted the role of Vice President.

OH: And I know you're on the board for the West Hants Historical Society too, so what inspired you to be on both boards?

DA: I don't really know, Carolyn vanGurp asked me if I would want to be on it, but, just, I feel such a strong connection to the river I guess. You know, I see great opportunities here and hopefully something, something can be, can be made of that in the future.

OH: Do you want to tell me a bit about the General Store that you made?

DA: The General Store? Okay. Well, my parents are both from the area and you know, the river would have factored into their lives the same way as it did mine. My father was from Cheverie and my mother was from Riverside, and that's on the Cogmagun River. So Dad and Mom got married in 1950, and Dad's mother and father were always involved in the Mercantile business along the shore.

And so dad's mum must have bankrolled the store in Center Burlington for Dad to take over. We closed the store in 1977. And it, you know, it's just, I always remember being a store brat I guess, and yeah, so it's connected right to our house. And when I look at early Burlington history records, our store on the spot that our store is, it always was a store for as long as Center Burlington, or Burlington at that time really had settlement in it.

So there was a Captain John Mann who operated a store at that location and I think, you know, the back part of our store is actually an earlier building that would have been his original store. Burlington is quite an old community as are most of the communities along the river, and so our house and store were built together a little later on, out in front, very close to the road in 1910 by a man named Robbie P Harvey.

OH: I heard that you kind of brought new life into it with a mini museum.

DA: Yes at this point, you know plans aren't totally finalized. But the store, much of it is just the way it used to be, you know with the big high ceilings, and the big shelves and that sort of thing, and I do open it by appointment and if people want to come in and take a look. Now during the last two summers, I did open it specifically on certain days. I got everybody to sign as they came in and it was amazing. The very first time that I, you know, that I did it I couldn't believe the people and the interest, and Tacha actually shared the post on the Facebook page of this Museum and it received so many views and shares, you know, Tacha told me like, “Dawn, this, in Facebook speak, this is amazing”. Right ,so people are interested in you know, the, the old store.

OH: So can you tell me a bit about this mapping project that you’re doing?

DA: Okay. Let's see, Richard Armstrong is someone that is very interested in history, and I think his parents were very interested in history. He's from the Falmouth area, I believe and I met Richard years ago in a GPS course that we took together and I keep bumping into him.
So, his particular area of interest, or one of his areas of interest, is identifying old Acadian homesteads I guess you would say and you could always ask him more about that. However, his real desire is to, you know, get out there and use his knowledge to pinpoint locations where, this is definitely a cellar, this is definitely a foundation. So I ran into him again at the West Hants Historical Museum, which I'm also a member of, and so we started mapping these locations of the cellars just by using the great imagery that's available through Google Earth and through the West Hants Regional Municipality and so with his knowledge and you know the tools that you have, anyone has available to them on the internet is you know what we've started doing and so we've kind of put things on hold for a bit, but you know, we will continue with it.

OH: What did you do? What's your line of work before this?

DA: That's a good question. I am one of those students who was, you know, just your average, like I used to think I was a grade “A” student, but when I look back on the old report cards, I really wasn't. But I liked everything, every subject, a little bit, and I guess I'm kind of interested in everything. So when I was in grade 11 and 12, we had an interesting geography teacher at Hants West Rural High and his name was Mr. Crickmer. You know, geography was a little bit of this, a little bit of that. One day we'd be analyzing fishery statistics and the next day we'd be looking at aerial photos through stereoscopes. So geography is what I decided to take when I was at university and that brought me into a career where I was always working and getting information from maps, you know combining information under the direction of different researchers, combined with some field work and that sort of thing. So that was really my line of work, and eventually though I got to the point where creating maps by hand, which was what I did, that sort of thing was done more and more with computers. And so I had to go back to school and learn how that was done. So I went to the College of Geographic Sciences, down in the valley, in Lawrencetown, and that, through summer jobs, between my two years of the program, took me to Cape Breton Island National Park for a summer job and then eventually I was able to work for the last say 14 years of my career with Parks Canada. So it was a great experience.

OH: Do you think that your experience as a cartographer and with Parks Canada helps you with what you are doing now?

DA: Oh, definitely, yeah. It really does. I've always had an interest in looking at maps, you know, old maps, new maps, remotely sensed imagery, old air photographs. You can learn so much from them. It's true a picture is worth a thousand words. I even created at one point, using historical records, a map of the old cemeteries in our area. So it was like 11 by 17, it's of more of the western part of Hants County, and not so much the interior, but all of the old cemeteries and new cemeteries. Just interested in people's last names and where they were settled, where the really old cemeteries are, and sometimes people are buried on their own farmscapes, their own landscapes. Just that whole idea is interesting.

OH: Did you ever come to Avondale when you were a child?

DA: When I was a child? Oh, gee, I always knew Avondale was here and my uncle married a woman who is from Belmont. Let's see now. I definitely had driven around in the area and saw how beautiful it was and knew that, you know, it had a rich Acadian heritage, for instance, but I don't think there really was any major reason for me to come over, but you know, definitely knew of its existence. Yeah.

OH: Now that you are more involved with Avondale, what do you hope to see in the future of Avondale?

DA: What I hope to see is just unearthing more of our history relating to the entire, you know riverscape and how Avondale was connected with all the other communities, and I know the museum here has some very interesting artifacts and old pictures. Again little pictures, worth a thousand words and just think you can learn so much from them. And I think that if there's a way to display more community history, I think that we learn by looking back through the past and it allows people to have pride. So I hope that there's there are ways, smart ways that we can think of delivering the history of Avondale and other communities to to the General Public

OH: What do you see your contribution being to the community in the future?

DA: Hmm? I don't know, I think just having an interest in it. The possibilities are endless. I like doing volunteer work and if I can help with the database and the association of Nova Scotia museums has ways and means online to show people the history of Nova Scotia, and I'm currently working with the database and I don't know, just anything that I can volunteer with to help out.

OH: What do you love about Avondale?

DA: What do I love about it? I love looking at the lay of the land. I think it's beautiful. The cemetery that I looked at when I was doing the cemetery pamphlet, the large cemetery out there, you know the history on the tombstones, on the gravestones, is just amazing. I love the Mounce houses and any of the old houses in the area, if they can be preserved, I think that's wonderful. The history of the farming in this area, the Acadian history. I go by the Shaw’s farmstead there, the Shaw properties, and I think next year there's going to be a Mosher family reunion, and the Moshers have been here, they were the first founding families. They were shipbuilders. You know, just that whole history, right from start to finish and you know, not forgetting the relationship between the Acadians and the Mi’kmaq. I think this whole area here, it's so resource-rich, that of course the Mi’kmaq, the early people's, this is a prime area for them to get food and shelter and to have transportation. So, you know, you can't forget about that. Just the melding of all the cultures, it's so fantastic, we are so lucky.

Sara Beanlands, July 22nd, 2021

Sara Beanlands
My name is Sara Beanlands. I am a direct descendant of Beulah and Anthony Shaw, who were my grandparents and they, the Shaw family, were one of the original families that came in the 1760s when the Planters arrived in Newport Township; they have been here ever since. And they still live here, so it's been several centuries of Shaw family here in this area and lots and lots of stories in oral traditions that go along with that history; and in fact, many of those stories predate the Shaw family arriving. My understanding is that they were actually scouts for the original Planters so they arrived a couple of years earlier than most of the Planter settlers that came to the area. They were here somewhere around 1759, 1760. And they came to look out, sort of scout around and see what kind of properties were available and then relay that information back to New England.

Carolyn van Gurp
We understand you've been doing archaeological work on your family property, could you tell us a bit about that?

Sara Beanlands
I grew up in Halifax. My mother grew up in Poplar Grove, and every weekend, particularly in the summertime, we would come here to visit my grandparents. So, my grandfather's Anthony Shaw, and my grandmother was Beulah Shaw, originally Beulah Allen. And we would come up here every summer and I would spend significant periods of my childhood in Poplar Grove. And we were always playing outside, always playing outside and I can remember playing in foundations and cellars and going through all the old out buildings and the barns and seeing all of this ancient- what seemed to me at the time to be ancient, history. It was everywhere, it just surrounded me when I was a child, and I didn't understand very much of it at all but I did know that my family had been here for a long time. So, as I got older, I just began to have an appreciation for history, for my own family's history, but really for the greater history of the area. I began to learn a little bit more about actually how long my family had been here and that they were very much a part of the Planter settlement of this area.

Richard Thibideau Arrives
When I was 11 a stranger came to the farm, to my uncle Allen's farm on a motorbike. And he was apparently from Maine, and he kind of, he just arrived, out of the blue. He came up and found my uncle working in the fields and they struck up a conversation and he said to him, “You know, I've been doing a lot of my own family research and genealogical studies” and that sort of thing and he said, “I'm pretty sure, based on what I've discovered, your farm is where my ancestors lived.” And my uncle said, “Okay, well I don't really know” but he said, “There are some old cellars and foundations on the property. Want to go have a look at them?” And so this stranger said, “Yeah, I'd love to.” So my uncle showed him around. Like I say, I was 11 or 12; maybe I didn't even know this had happened.

Twenty Years Later
So then maybe like 20 years later, or maybe 15 to 20 years later, we were all sitting around my uncle's kitchen table having dinner and he mentioned that this man had called him again, this time from Florida but it was the same man. And he said, yes, he was just calling to see if we'd found anything or if we had any new information. And I was like, “Who are you talking about?” And he told me this story about this stranger having arrived, and he told me his name and he said, you know, he was an Acadian. That he believed this was where his Acadian ancestors had lived; this was their village. He's pretty sure and he was just checking to see whether or not we had any additional information. I had never heard this story before. I had never heard anything about Acadians being in this area, I mean I guess I knew and we all know, in some sense, but it didn't have any- it didn't really have any significant meaning to me. And I was just floored by this information. At this time I was studying history at university and studying archaeology. And I said, “Well, did you get his address, is there a way I can contact him?” and he said yes, so he gave me his address. I wrote him, and I remember, I sat down and wrote him like a handwritten letter. And I sent it to him and it basically just said, “I've just heard this story that you believe that this may have been where your ancestors came from. This place is very special to me because it's where my ancestors come from, And would you be at all interested in working together to see if we can, you know, build this narrative that we're so connected to, but yet we're so separated from?” And he immediately wrote me back. At that time he was in his 70s. I was in my late 20s so it was an unlikely friendship. But we became the best of friends.

Acadian and Planter Descendant Collaboration Begins
He immediately wrote me back and he said, “Let's do this, let's see what we can find out. You work on the Shaw history and I'll work on my Acadian family connections to the property and let's see what we can find out.” So we began to do that. He would feed me information about what he knew about the Acadian settlement. His name was Richard Thibideau, we all lovingly called him Dick. His Thibideau family ancestry, he had it all right back to Port Royal, every single individual, and every cousin identified and that sort of thing. He'd found some historic mapping where you could see there's a bend in the St. Croix River that's still there. It’s a really big bend you can't miss it so when you're looking at historic era photos, or even historic mapping going back to the mid 18th century, when you see that bend in the river, you know where you are; it's a marker. So he had identified a number of Acadian dwellings, or at least there are indications of Acadian dwellings, around that bend in the river. And they were labeled as village Thibideau and he knew this was where his ancestors were from. And this is why he believed that what was the Shaw property, was the same place. So I started to collect oral traditions from my family, and to my great surprise, it turned out that the Shaw family had unwittingly preserved a great deal of Acadian history within their own oral traditions. And because their... that land had been passed down from father to son, to father to son, since the mid 18th century, and the land had never been sold, there was this unbroken chain of oral traditions that has been passed down to my uncles. And it's really interesting, there are all kinds of place names in particular. None of what you would ever find on a map. They only existed in the oral tradition, and had that land been sold or divided as it so often is and continues to be, those place names would have completely disappeared because they only existed in the family. But they were the name of the farm. When my grandmother was there was Willowbrook farm, and that was in recognition of the French willow trees that were on the property when the Shaws arrived in the 1760s. There was the old French road. There was French Orchard Hill, the old French mill, the old French house. There were all these place names that I had grown up with, but they didn't... you know it's funny you can hear something over and over and over again, but without the context to make it meaningful, it was just another place name. It had no meaning to me whatsoever. But once I realized that perhaps the Thibideau family had occupied and lived on this land before the Shaws had arrived, perhaps these place names were in reference to this earlier family that had lived there.

Mapping the Land
So I started to map out all of the place names that seem to refer to the Thibideau family or to the Acadian settlement. And then I started to talk to- unfortunately my grandfather had passed away, but- he passed when I was quite young, so I never got to talk to him. Very, very unfortunate. But I did start to talk to my uncles, and I've said this many times: we have a lot of really advanced technology that we use in archaeology ground-penetrating radar and electromagnetic geophysical instruments that we use, but there is nothing more accurate and more efficient, than a Nova Scotia farmer. “You guys,” I said to them, “Is there anywhere on your property that you know there are archaeological features or cellars or foundations or depressions that you know that don't belong, that aren't associated with the Shaw family?” and he said, “Absolutely, I do.” He said, “Actually I filled several of them in only recently.” Because up until the era of the modern tractor and bulldozer, most farmers in the area, if you had an old cellar on your property, you would plough around it. And then, with modern machinery, they started to fill those in and level them off. So he knew exactly where they were and he knew that they weren't associated with the Shaw Family occupation of the land.

The Old French Road
So he took me up one day, we went up to one of the areas that's called French Orchard Hill. He walked me straight up. And he said, “Just dig here.” So, I talked to Richard Thibideau and I said, “Look, we've got a really good location, I think we should do a small archaeological test excavation, not a big dig or anything but let's test this area and see if we find evidence of an Acadian, pre-deportation Acadian house or evidence of Acadian settlement or anything like that, then we can really say with a great deal of certainty, not only do we have an Acadian settlement here but this is the Thibideau family home.” And he was really excited, so excited to do that. He was still in the United States at the time so I put together a very small crew. This is up on my uncle Allen's, sorry my uncle David's farm and in fact if you take the Ferry Road and continue it to the left-hand side of the Anglican Church there's a little pathway that carries on into the fields and goes all the way down to the St. Croix River. That, in the Shaw family tradition, was always called The Old French road.

Carolyn van Gurp
Is that where there is a little sign?

Sara Beanlands
Yes, it's exactly so, that's why we put the sign there. So that is actually the physical remains of that earlier cultural landscape that is associated with those Acadian settlements. That road that goes all the way down. And the road itself, I can remember my Uncle Fred, who was born in the Old Stone House, telling me that they used to leave their rubber boots down at the end of the Old French Road, and when the tide went down they would ford the river, leaving their boots on either side, right, and then they would walk up what we now call the LeBlanc Hill and over to Windsor. That's actually how some of the Planters in this area would get across.

The Test Dig
So we put together a little crew, and we dug and we did indeed find evidence of a pre-deportation house in that area. We had- what was really interesting is that there were no Planter period artifacts associated with that particular feature. So it was a depression in the ground that had been filled in. So we weren’t looking at a building that had been possibly used by the Acadians, and then by the Planters or anything like that. There was no plant or cultural material there at all. It was all dating to the mid-18th century, just actually prior to the deportation, and we were able to date that particular site, I believe it is 1750-ish. But we had a lot of pipe stems that we could date and ceramics that are typically found in association with Acadian settlement. So we had a really good idea that yes, this was Acadian and yes this was pre-expulsion.

The Acadian Congrès
So I immediately called my friend Richard Thibideau who was now in Florida and said, “Oh yeah, I think we have got it. Fairly certain that this is an Acadian site, based on all the research that you've done. I think we can say we likely have some remains of the village Thibideau.” And I said, “What do you want to do now?” That was in 2004. In 2005, the Acadian Congrès was being held in Grand Prè and they were having family reunions all over this area. Congrès are held once every five years, and they select a place. Sometimes it's in France, sometimes it's in Atlantic Canada or Acadia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Maine. So they have them all over the place but generally speaking, somewhere in the Maritimes. So that year in 2005 they were going to hold the Congrès at Grand Prè, and the Thibideau family reunion was going to be at Grand Prè. And we hatched this plan, that wouldn’t this be a great time to announce to all the Thibideau descendants that would be coming back for this family reunion that we think we've rediscovered where this, this sort of lost Thibideau village was? So we thought “Oh this is a great idea”. He contacted the organizers at the Thibideau family reunion. They put a spot for us in their schedule, and we were going to do a little presentation and you know it's all going to be wonderful. So I put together a PowerPoint. And I had never at that point in my career, I had never spoken publicly. You know, I'd never been in front of a crowd or anything like that. So I was already nervous, but I was feeling excited to share this information. And it wasn't until that day I arrived at Grand Prè and there were hundreds of people, hundreds of Thibideaus and then a big tent set up, and I was walking up onto the stage, and I just felt like I had been punched in the stomach. And I thought, “Oh my God, I've made a terrible mistake. I have made a terrible mistake. How can I, this Planter descendant, go up in front of all of these French Acadians, and tell them about their history. When my family is now living on the land from which they were expelled?” None of this hit me until I was walking up the stage. I've made a terrible mistake. I can't do this. This is so insensitive. They're going to hate me, but by that time I was walking up on the stage so there was nowhere to go. But so, Dick gave his little part of the presentation first and he talked about how we had met and, you know, our exchange of letters and all that sort of thing and then I got up and I did my little PowerPoint about the archaeology that we had found. I was very, very nervous, and it's well documented how nervous I was by some of the press that was there. I couldn't get the PowerPoint to work. I knocked the microphone over; it was a disaster. But at the end of it I said I’d spoken to my family before and we would really welcome any of you here today. If you would like to come and see the area, come and actually see one of these cellars. We'd love to have you come to Poplar Grove; so we can meet tomorrow morning at the Windsor Tourist Bureau and we can all drive down there together and I would really, really love to make that happen.

At Poplar Grove
So, the next day my aunt had gone and bought a few pastries, like a plate, and she bought an extra thing of lemonade, and she had it laid out on the table. And I drove up from Halifax and I got to the Windsor Tourist Bureau and it's packed. It's packed, there's like 100 cars there with four people in each car, and I was like, “Oh my goodness!” So I called my Aunt Joanne. We started to drive and I called my Aunt Joanne. I didn't think we had cell phones in 2005 but I called her and I said, “Okay, I'm coming with the Thibideaus, there's a few more than we thought. And I don't know if you have any extra lemonade.” Well, she said to me, “What are you talking about, you're coming with the Thibideaus? They're already here.” Another 75 had bypassed the Tourist Bureau and had gone directly to the site. So when we got there, I mean there were just hundreds of people, the CBC was there. What was really interesting, there was a man who had been sent from The Times Picayune in Louisiana, which is the largest newspaper in Louisiana, he'd been sent to cover the whole Congrès. Well, it turns out he was a direct descendant of the Thibideaus who had lived on the, what was now the Shaw farm. So he'd come up to cover it. There were just like... it was unbelievable. Unbelievable. So we took everybody up and walked around the site and we showed them some of the artifacts and they all sort of got to know each other and there were people who were, you know, relatives who had never met each other, who are meeting each other for the first time on the site of their ancestors' village. I mean it was, it was one of the most amazing days of my life. And they were so nice to me. I really thought everybody was gonna be mad at me. But they spent the whole day there, and in fact, over the next few weeks, people would come from all over. And ever since that day in 2005 we have had Thibideaus come from Europe, all over North America, Atlantic Canada, the United States, come every summer to come and visit the site, and they will. My aunt Joanne has kept a guestbook of every single Thibideau that has come with all their names and the date and that sort of thing. And there are 1000s of them in the book.

Family Stories

Carolyn van Gurp
So, we’ve got to get them scanned.

Sarah Beanlands
We do, no, we really do, we really do. So, that was 2005. One of my favorite stories from 2005, was when my mom was a little girl. She used to hear her father, my grandfather Anthony, talk about the Tippy Toes. And in her mind, she was just a child, she and my aunt Marilyn thought the Tippy Toes were these little gnomes that lived under the bed, and they were nice; they weren't malevolent or anything but they were little creatures that lived under the bed. And she had forgotten about them, you know, they're just things they talked about when they were children. She had forgotten all about them until that day in 2005, and she came over to me and there were Acadians everywhere and she came over and when she said, “Sarah, the Tippy Toes don't live under the bed.” She said, “The Tippy Toes are here.” He was saying Thibideau. And it really struck me, because obviously my grandfather knew the name of the Acadian family on whose land the Shaws had arrived. Obviously through the oral tradition they knew where all of these places were; they still refer to it as the old French Road, French Orchard Hill, the old French house, the old French mill. There was so much history and oral tradition and knowledge that had been retained simply through that connection to the land. But in one generation, when he was speaking about those Acadian settlers had distorted to become little gnomes that lived under the bed. To me, I never even heard about either of them. I'd never heard about the Thibideaus or the Tippy Toes. I didn't know anything about it. So had we not done all of that in 2004-2005 when we did, I think we were at the very end of the survival of that oral history because it had, like I said, it had just distorted from real historical human beings to fantasy gnomes, to being not there at all.

Planning the Big Dig
It was 2015 when we had another Thibideau reunion and we did the Big Dig. We made up T-shirts that just said the Tippy Toe Diggers. We did all of that and then I didn't do a great deal because I was going to school and I sort of started my career and that sort of thing. And then it was in 2013, well, just before that, just after all of the… a year or so after we had the big reunion, Dick Thibideau and his wife Doris came back to Poplar Grove and they brought their trailer, like their camper van. And he took his trailer up to the top of the hill, French Orchard Hill where we had done the first little dig, and he placed his camper right there. They stayed overnight for several days. I have pictures of them- they're sitting out there with their wine glasses, and they camped right on top of the cellar that we had dug. And he was the first Acadian since the mid-18th century to watch the sunrise from that spot so that was really, also a really amazing, an amazing experience.

So I wasn't doing a whole lot, we were still compiling information and that sort of thing and I was getting historic photographs and stuff and there was, I had heard this story from my uncle about the old French house. And it wasn't there anymore, but we knew where the foundation was. If you remember, I said Dick Thibideau had identified five dots along the St. Croix River that he thought were indicating five structures, and we knew we found one. So we were looking for the other ones, and I figured, well, if this foundation is referred to as the old French house, it’s probably the place to start to find the next one! But then I found- my father went through his old slides, and in the 1960s he had taken photographs of the farm, and some of the different old buildings that were standing there, and he had a picture of what everyone was referring to as the old French house. And I thought all this is great, but it doesn't look Acadian really. It looked very Planter, like you can see the Planter homes in the area. They're very distinctive because they're very symmetrical, and that kind of architecture in the Planter period having symmetry was really important. So you have two windows on either side of a door that's centrally located and it's a very, that's a very New England style of architecture, very different from the Acadian style of architecture. And we don't have very many examples. We only really have photographs left of what some of these pre-deportation structures look like, but it didn't look-- it looked Planter to me. So I thought, okay well we can still maybe dig and see.

The Old House
But the more I looked at the photograph, the more I started to see something really, really weird in it. So, there was, you know, sometimes if you have a building a structure that's built, against, right up adjacent to another structure and you tear one of those buildings down, you'll get a shadow of that original structure. So I started to see a shadow in the photographs, and then the more I looked at it, the more you could actually see, there's a house inside of a house. And I wondered, did the Shaw family, when they arrived-- because we know from the historic documentation that when the Planters arrived in the Poplar Grove area, they didn't-- well, when the Acadians left, they didn't burn the buildings the way they did at Grand Prè and other places. They seemed to have left a lot of the infrastructure intact in this area for whatever reason. And I started to wonder, is this, is there an Acadian house inside this greater Planter house? And the only way we would know would be to dig, right, because the building was gone. In fact with the photographs that we had, the building had been moved by teams of oxen in the late-19th century, up the hill from the original foundation. It was actually intact when I was a little girl, I think it came down in the 1980s, but they pulled up the structure, which says a lot about the integrity of that structure, they pulled it up with teams of oxen, closer to the Shaw family house that they eventually built. And they used it as an outbuilding, basically, for hay and for chickens and various other things. But they knew where that foundation was-- the original foundation was, and I could remember as a child playing there; a little garden used to grow around the foundation. Every summer you look out into the field and there would be this garden that was, there's nothing else in the field but this garden would appear out of nowhere; it's actually delineating the foundation of what they call the Old French house.

The Big Dig
So in 2013, we decided to do another small test excavation to see what we could find. And I wasn't sure, I was hoping it would be like 2004, we would put shovels in the ground, turn over the sod, boom, there'd be a pre-deportation house and, you know, that's number two. But it didn't turn out that way at all. We started to excavate and we were getting tons and tons of artifacts and cultural material, but it was all Planter. And I thought well, it is very likely that up until then all of the oral traditions that had tested had demonstrated their validity, they were very, very accurate. Here's the first time that I've come across something. This is supposed to be the foundation of the old French House, but I'm finding Planter artifacts. And maybe that oral tradition, maybe like the details about it had migrated, you know, I mean the old French house was actually over here, but I wasn't really sure. But I also thought, you know if I'm right and there's an Acadian house inside that Planter house that maybe if I dig, the more I can get through that Planter occupation, that I might be able to find an Acadian occupation underneath it. So at that point, I figured, well, this is going to be a pretty substantial dig.

Okay, that this would be a pretty substantial dig; if we were going to do it, it was going to be a major effort to do it. And so I thought, well, I think it's really, really important that we invite the Thibideau family, those people that we met who had come in 2005 and had been coming every year since, to invite them to do this with us, because really, this is their culture, this is their history. I didn't want to do it without them, to be honest, so I got in touch with Dick Thibideau again and we kind of put a call out to all these Thibideaus that we have met from all over North America and said, “We're going to dig, we're going to dig the old French house, and if so, if any of you would like to come and dig with me, just get in touch with me and we'll make it happen.” And I did the same thing I did in 2004. I thought I might get five people. And didn't I get like 75 people from all over North America “We want to come and dig”. So at that point, we really had to put some framework around what we were going to do because I didn't have enough resources, I didn't have enough gear, I didn't have enough supervisors. So, we managed to pull together. I think just about every archaeologist in Nova Scotia came for two weeks to help supervise, because these were people who had never done archaeology before, they had no experience. We didn't want to do anything that would harm the archaeology. I mean, the archaeology, we had to do it right. So we needed a lot of supervision. We like to say it was-- we didn't have any funding for the project, but it was funded on enthusiasm. We actually reached out to the Avon River Museum and asked if we could use the big building up there to have a barbecue like a homecoming barbecue, and we went over to see the winery, who donated wine. We had a big barbecue right here, in this museum, where all the Thibideaus came, and then we dug for two weeks up at the site of the old French house. We had everyone from four year olds, from the community to 81 year olds who were Acadian descendants. We had many, many Thibideaus from Arkansas and Texas and Florida and Maine and anywhere you can imagine, Louisiana, of course, who had all come to dig with us. And they dug beside the Shaw family. So we went through the Shaw family material culture first and then we started to go through what ended up being an Acadian occupation underneath it.

Family Connections
We never finished the dig. I always wanted to go back and finish it but it just, yeah, it takes a lot, it takes a lot of resources to pull something like that off, but we were able, at the very least, to identify that, yes there was an Acadian occupation underneath this Planter settlement. Clearly, it became clear to me as well and actually looking through the historic mapping that the Shaw family-- so, now we're talking about the early 1800s, so not the first Shaws that are on it, but likely their grandsons-- it seems as though that building that was the old French house was still standing when the Shaw family arrived. That the Shaw family likely moved into it, as they were building their own homestead. They moved into that Acadian house and lived there for a period of time. They built their main house, which is no longer there, but they built the main Planter house just up on the hill a little bit, and then their sons extended the old French house into another Planter house that we can actually see on some of the mapping, it's right where it is. But it was again this amazing connection between two families whose backgrounds and experiences were completely different. In many ways, you know, we had Acadians, who had come and been expelled and New England Planters who had come migrated up and taken over that land. How many times did they meet? Maybe a couple of times in those early days but they would have had this shared experience on the landscape, without ever really knowing each other. And yet, here we were in 2015, digging. Descendents of the Acadian family, the Thibideaus, and the descendants of the Shaw family, and truly we were just one big family. And we've been one big family ever since 2005. And, you know, you'll often see, not so much anymore-- my uncle's getting older-- but they would always fly an Acadian flag on their home, so you know if you drove by you would actually think it was an Acadian home but, the experience of digging with those descended communities, the two of them together, learning. So it, all of us, we all had to go through the Planter occupation first and you'd have some of the Thibideaus they would run up to you and say “Oh my God, look what I found!” And it would be Planter artifacts, but they would be like, “What could this be for?”, like “This is so cool. This is amazing!” And then the same thing happening when Shaw family was finding pieces of [??] and other Acadian ceramics, they're like, “Oh my God!” So there was this opportunity to reconcile, not just these two families, but these histories that are really very painful in many ways. The archaeology was so powerful to bring people together to reconcile, to have these sort of contested histories on a contested piece of land, come together and share that experience, share those histories, respect each other's histories and learn about each other's histories, particularly through that cultural material was amazing. It changed my entire perspective on how archaeology should be done, and how powerful it is and how it can bring people together, like I say from completely opposite cultural spaces to really unite them.

A Powerful Experience!
And it's been just a remarkable, remarkable experience for everyone and we still, you know, I've been to Louisiana to go visit them. They come here like I said, usually typically every year. They come from all over just because when you think about it, often, you go, “Well, for me, if I was going to look for where some of the Shaws came from and I was in New England, say, probably the closest I could get would be a community. I could probably pinpoint what town was, but the possibility of actually finding the very cellar, or foundation or structure that my ancestors lived in would be highly, highly unlikely.” And I think that's the case for most people.

So for somebody to be able to come back to a landscape that is very similar, I expect, to what it would have been in the mid-18th century, to be able to come back and actually stand on the very spot and touch the very things that your ancestor left and in fact, you are the first person to touch those objects, since they were there, they were dropped by your ancestor, that kind of connection, that tangible connection to history, is incredibly powerful. And in fact we had people again who met. There was a woman from Arkansas, who had come, she heard about the day she spent two weeks digging with us, and a man from Meteghan in Nova Scotia, they were digging together and they started to talk and they realized they were cousins. And they were meeting for the first time on this archeological dig, in sort of this Planter context, and it was really, really, really special. I wish we could do more and I would really like to do more up there. If I could, in the future. But even just to have that opportunity once was absolutely amazing.

So that's sort of my connection to the Acadian history, it's not that I set out to discover it or, but it was that it just seemed to be... It's there. And really all you have to do is scratch the surface. And it changed, I think my whole family's perspective on ownership as well. This had been their land for over 200 years, but all of a sudden I think they felt like stewards of the land, as opposed to owners, and I'm so grateful that they were so gracious and having all of these people come back.

Village LeBlanc Across the River
We did another small dig, just across the St. Croix River, so if you're standing on my Uncle David’s property on the site where we did- French Orchard Hill, where we did the first dig, and you look across the St. Croix River, there’s a big hill. And my understanding is that there was likely a blockhouse on the top of that hill, that they used to signal from Fort Edward and there was a, there's a whole series of these blockhouses through which to communicate.
I can't remember the name, there was- but there was also a large Planter settlement there as well. But we're looking at the historic mapping once we've identified where Village Thibideau and we could anchor that village on the map, then we could get a much better understanding geospatially of where these other communities might be located. And there was one on the top of that hill, that was called Village LeBlanc. So we went over there and did a little bit of testing as well. And what was really interesting there, was in 2005 we noticed that there were all kinds of LeBlancs at the Thibideau family reunion. And it turns out that from the very early days of Acadia, the LeBlanc family and the Thibideau family, there was a lot of intermarriage. There were many, many LeBlancs that were intermarried into the Thibideau family and they were all sort of part of this larger extended family. And I mentioned to them all, “Pretty sure over on that hill, that's the LeBlanc village”. And all of a sudden, again we had this sort of epiphany. While we're standing on Thibideau village, we can see LeBlanc village. We have all these LeBlanc and Thibideaus and you know if you're standing on the top of that hill, you can yell and you can hear from where we're standing, you know, in the Thibideau area. You can communicate very easily between the hills, and maybe this is one of the reasons that those two families are so connected and have been so connected over time. So there were just so many amazing- so much amazing information that I think it's subtle and it's nuanced and it gets lost in the list and the historic documents. And you know, all of these subtle connections to the landscape that are lost when the historian tries to pull the narrative out of documents, that you can actually rediscover when you bring people back onto the land and share these stories. And, you know, it's really, it's very, very powerful.

I'd love for us to do more of it in this area because this area now is sacred to many, many Acadians. Where before we started, and even me, I had no appreciation of the Acadian history of this area. None whatsoever. This was all Planter, right? And again that speaks to what are we missing about the Mi’kmaq presence on the landscape, which we know was extensive. And if we've been here for, you know 300 years, they've been here for 13,000 years. And how do we bring everybody back to have these experiences. We do believe we did find some Mi'kmaq artifacts in those layers that we were digging on site, which is in no way surprising, it is to be expected. So, yeah it's a really, I think it’s a really powerful way to connect with history and anybody can participate in that and so sure there's more but...

Next Steps

Carolyn van Gurp
So Sarah, as you know, there were 25 stories in what you just said. I know how privileged James and I are to hear this and now this will be transcribed so your story is recorded and will be shared. But what's going through my mind, same question as you have, is how can we extend this amazing learning further? One of the things we've been talking about around here is arranging a dyke walk. A curated walk either with interpretive panels or with guides. My other thought is that the next Acadian Congrè is in 2023 or 2024. Just wondering if you have any ideas, thoughts of what can happen here to keep that connection going?

Sara Beanlands
Well, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have another family reunion, and they will come, They will come, they come anyway, they will come and if we could have something more formal? It's amazing, that day the museum was so gracious. They just sort of opened it up and it was amazing. So this museum is very much a part of their experiences and coming back to the land, I'm sure we could do something like that and maybe even reach out to some of these other families where we don't yet necessarily have- We haven't pinpointed the location of their settlements because in many cases, you know, these are operating farms. We have new families that have come in and that oral tradition is broken, and we'd actually have to go in and do it the hard way, not just go to my uncle and say, “Where should we dig?” So there are definitely other Acadian families who have shared in the making of this landscape in Acadia, that would, wouldn’t it be wonderful? And to see that experience again, people meeting each other and collective [?]. I'm sure there's, I'm sure there is.
I would love to do even, maybe on a smaller scale, because once I realized that we were going to have like 100 people come and dig, I needed porta potties and I needed buckets! And so maybe not on such a large-scale but even to have more regular public archaeology programs, a little bit smaller-scale, but where we can have the systemic communities come back, and participate in recovery in their own past. But also have community members, local community members. I loved that the farmers would drive by; we had all these tents set up on the hill that you can see from the road and the local farmers would drive by and they would stop and they would talk and they’d go, “Allen, why do you have circus tents up there on your field?” Right? But to also engage community members because I think that's really important. Engage them in that archaeology, in that history.

Mi’kmaw Artifacts?
When you do archaeology, you become part of the history of that site, you actually are an active participant in that site’s history and that experience is amazing. So the opportunity even on a small scale to make that available to people, and obviously to the Mi’kmaq because we're doing a dig right now in Kings County, where we have a really big Mi’kmaq crew, and I think if you think that it was powerful for the Acadians to come back, we have to say that now that we're working, that's 5000 years old, and that is life changing.

Carolyn van Gurp
You mentioned that you did collectively find some Mi’kmaq artifacts. We know they were there but this has to be documented, we have to have the artifacts.

Sara Beanlands
Absolutely. Oh absolutely, so they're all registered. There weren't that many. But again, that's not a reflection- that in no way is a reflection of the Mi’kmaq presence on the landscape at all, but we didn't get, you know, we didn’t get to the bottom. But yes, and you know, I bet if we spoke to some of the farmers in the area I would not be surprised at all to find that people have shoe boxes under their beds of stuff as well. The archaeological context in that case is gone. So their scientific value is diminished, their cultural value remains significant. But also if we could talk to people and find out where even the general vicinity of where these things were found, that would give us a great place to start piecing that back together. There's no question that were we to look, we would find significant Mi'kmaq sites, all along these rivers. We know, even on the St. Croix, there is a huge site. There is a very, very significant Mi’kmaq site that goes right back to five to 8000 years ago. So, they're definitely there.

Carolyn Connors, July 30th, 2020

Olwynn Hughes: Alright, well, first of all, what is your name?

Carolyn Connors: Carolyn May Connors, I was a Webb before I was married.

OH: When were you born?

CC: I was born April the 8th 1944.

OH: Do you have family history in Avondale?

CC: I lived in Avondale since I was 5 years old.

OH: Did you live in what is now Bob Miller’s house?

CC: Yes

OH: Do you have any favourite childhood memories from here?

CC: Plenty, because back then we were just about free range kids and we got to do many, many, many things. My father was an orchardist at the Mounce farms and we were all over the place pedaling apples. That wasn't so much fun. But we did it anyway, and we were free range in the Orchard and climbed trees, and picked cherries, apples, plums and pears, and raspberries. Many raspberries.

I can tell you a little story about my brother and raspberries. My brother's two years younger than me, and he used to pick raspberries and no one knew at the time that he was colorblind. So he had a real hard time picking raspberries because he couldn't tell which was red and which is green. Yeah, and he had a real hard time, we talked about it the other night actually and he said, “Oh, my, he said that was just the worst”. He said, “trying to pick raspberries when I had no idea whether they were green or ripe”. Yeah couldn't tell the color.That was John [Webb]. Yeah, my older brother, older than Paul [Webb]. Yeah. Yeah.

OH: Did you attend school here?

CC: Yup, I attended school in the Avondale school until I was in grade 8. I started in the high school in Brooklyn, Grade 8, first year it opened. Yeah, I went there until grade... I finished grade 11 and then I got married that summer.

OH: Do you have any relatives that made significant contributions to this community?

CC: Well Paul, Paul wrote a book on the community and did a lot of research and picture taking, and the book is here in the museum. And yeah, he did. He did a lot of research on the community. Yeah.

OH: What has changed here since you were a child?

CC: Oh my land, what has changed? Everything has changed. First of all, you don't know your neighbors. Don't know hardly any of them anymore. Of course, I don't live right in the community now, but I still am attached to the community. Not that they're not friendly and they probably are, but just that you just don't.

A lot of times you don't have time, especially before, because everybody was working, and I was working, and my father, putting it on, when somebody moved into the community. My father was the first one there to welcome them, always - everybody - and at that time we knew everybody in the community, everybody. And now I can drive around the community and I hardly know anyone, you know, except some of them, Vivian and Russell, and ones that have been here forever. Did you interview Vivian and Russell? She probably would be pretty good. Yep. She's been here all her life and she lived in the farm down below where Bob lives now, where it's Basil's place? That was their home. Yep. They lived there. That was their home.

OH: Do you remember any community traditions?

CC: Oh my goodness. We always had Christmas concerts in the hall every year and everybody participated. And, I know Mary Taylor, who lived where Linda and Greg live, her and I used to write plays, for the concert, on people in the community and we used to have a blast. It was so much fun. It was fun writing it, playing it, and acting bad. We always had embarrassing things about whoever we were writing it about, we'd find something embarrassing somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. We had a blast. That was one tradition that we always had.

We always had Sunday School. I was in the choir back then and we had CGIT, Canadian Girls in Training, and we used to do different things with that, camping and similar. Yep. Just not Girl Guides. It was just Canadian Girls in Training, similar [Boy Scouts] to the same. Matter of fact, I found my shirt the other day in my closet. I didn't think I still had it. It's pretty old. Yeah. It's very very old.

Hm, what other traditions would there be? Always spent time at the Wharf. Just we were there always, and we swam off the wharf, jumped in the water off the wharf. Now everybody's scared to death of tidal, whatever they’re called, you know. We always swam off the wharf, always in the mud doing mud sliding. Always, always, always, always, and oh, yeah, it was hard going home when you were all full of mud. You didn't have water like we do now. Like hoses and stuff like that, used to have to get in the tub and yeah, we didn't care that much for it.

We always had a store right here. Everybody spent their time at the store, out of the store, around the store, and there used to be a store halfway up the hill in Avondale. Yeah right next door to where Sarah [Harvey] lives. Yep right there on the corner. Yep. Yeah, Chip Hill road. Yeah, used to be a store there. And I think, I'm pretty sure that used to be the post office too, can't quite remember, but I think it was the post office.

We were always doing things at school. And through the church.

OH: So you attended church here at the Avondale United Church?

CC: Yup

OH: Do you still attend church there?

CC: I haven't lately but I think I'm going to.

No, as far as traditional things I can't think of anything. I know my traditional thing, my father never ever ever missed taking us to the Apple Blossom Festival. Never, we went every year and it was a big day, big day. Yeah, he made sure we went to the Apple Blossom Festival every year, and I still do. I still do. I took Parker, my grandson, him and I used to go until he got so he didn't really want to go anymore. And then maybe every now and then I take one of my girlfriends. No, but of course, wasn't any this year. But we... I usually try and go early so I can park handy and usually park in the same place and go. Yeah, that was one, that was one tradition that I had that you, you just always did.

I'm trying to think what we did on July 1st, because we used to do things on July 1st, but I think most of them were just kind of around... here there wasn't any… oh, no, we used to go to Hantsport, which I still do. Yeah, that's right. They had a parade and celebration at the yeah, community center and stuff, and my first cousin lives in Hantsport. And yeah, we used to go down there. On July 1st, that's right.

What else did we do? What else is a celebration? Well, most of the other time my poor dad was working, and we were. We were working. We worked beside, like, for a long time and then I got married and moved out for a couple of years and then he got sick, and I had to move back home and then Paul was only 10 years old and dad was not able to do everything that he did so I ended up staying.

OH: Where did you move when you got married?

CC: We moved where I am now [Belmont]. Yeah. Yeah, only we had the half of the house made into an apartment. We had half the house and was made into a... we had a kitchen and the bedroom and the bedroom upstairs. Yep.

OH: Did you have a role in starting the museum? Or do you remember anything about starting the museum?

CC: Not really a role, I certainly was very interested in it, but not per se a role. Although I watched everything, everything that ever went on, like the laying of the Keel and all that, and building of the, you know, the building of the ship [Avon Spirit] and oh, yeah, I watched. I was down here all the time watching this, all the time. Yeah, but no I didn't really have didn't have a role in it. But really glad, I'm really glad to see it happen. Yeah.

OH: What was your line of work?

CC: I was an LPN nurse at Dykeland Lodge. I worked there for 30 years. Yeah.

OH: What would you like to see in Avondale in the future?

CC: Well, I certainly do not want to see the museum go. And I would love to see another boat being built. I don't even care if it's a canoe being built. I would love to see another being done. But you know, like if we can keep it the way it is and hopefully keep the water from ruining it. And I always wondered why it was built so close to the creek. I never, ever, ever figured that one out, never. I wondered why it was ever built so close, like even when they were building it. I kept thinking, I mean, it's okay, maybe the tide doesn't come up there right now, but if the wind was blowing one night or a storm you don't have a chance. And now the tides are higher because the water. I couldn’t believe the picture I took the last time here at the flooding. That just about got up to the door.

I'd still like to see the history stay in the boat building and all that, and have it just to know, because I mean this was a big, big shipbuilding place. Big, and I mean it was a big community at one time. There were a lot of houses, some of them burnt [down]. Yeah. No, I'm hoping that they keep it. Otherwise, you don't have, we won't have anything.

OH: What do you think the museum and these sort of events bring to the community?

CC: Acknowledgement that we're here. Probably some monetary things that come into play and I don't know. I know I love it, and do I ever miss it. Oh big time, but I think it's awesome, the festivals. Just absolutely can't wait till they come back. Can't wait.

OH: What do you love about Avondale?

CC: Peace. Quiet. You're not afraid of anything, like you, you feel comfortable, very comfortable. I don't think we've ever had anything really bad. Well. Nothing, you know, really. Trying to think if there was anything.

It's just peaceful. I mean, there's nothing like coming out and just sitting down at the wharf. Or here, out back, whatever, but it's just, I mean, it's just a quiet community like nobody, I mean I say I don't know everybody but I mean, I know a lot of people in the community that it's just, just a wonderful community. Can't say anything bad about my community.

OH: Do you have any photos or artifacts that you want to share?

CC: I don't, other than my CGIT thing, but no, I don't know, like Paul had quite a bit of stuff. And so I never ever had, I never ever had anything. I don't think, I don't think I've got anything. I shouldn't say that. Yeah, but I shouldn't say that because, eventually down the road, my daughter in law with my son or whatever, were going to go through the closet, and in the closet are things that belong to Albert's mum and dad and I don't know whether I was going to check with the museum, I don't know whether the Museum's interested in anything or not, but I know a lot of it is like, oh, ice cutting machine things, and I don't know what's there. And when they used to have to cut ice in the pond to put the ice house in the sawdust, back when you didn't have a fridge. Yeah, they used to yeah, and I don't know what's there, we, I haven't, I haven't looked. It was all underneath the eaves of the house like way up in behind and I haven't gone in there to look for anything, like never, never touched anything. They just stayed there forever and ever and ever and ever and it's still there, but I want to clean the closet and see what is there and I don't know whether anybody, whether they might be even interested in putting it in the boat house or something, like hanging up. I don't know what's there Olly, I'm going to I'm going to look one day.

OH: Do you have any stories or memories you want to share? Any stories tied to specific places here?

CC: Well the orchard for sure, because I spent a lot of time in the orchard and we used to have a u-pick, and that was interesting, and I met all kinds of people from Halifax and everywhere, all over the place because dad was sort of organic, not a hundred percent organic, but pretty no, he didn't have any pesticides, but he did have fungicides like for spray and yeah. No, it was, it was busy, because I mean I was looking after the house and looking after Paul, picking stuff. And then I, then I had my own kids, I had two of them, and it was, it was busy. Yeah, my neighbor across the road used to babysit and I used to take apples to the stores and town, apples and fruit whatever, and it was busy, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. It was, [but] I wouldn't trade it for anything, it was just, it was just a really good life and the kids had a good time too because they were free range and they used to spend half of their time down here with Vivian and Russell and their kids and everybody looked after everybody else’s kids. Like you didn't, you didn't worry about them all day long, because somebody was there, you just didn't, you just didn't worry about them. So it was like free range kids. You can't do that now, but I mean you'd be, you wouldn't be a very nice person if you let your kids run around and all that stuff.

It was, it was a wonderful place to live and a wonderful place to bring up the kids. Yeah. It was really good. Yeah kids had all the dyke, they could drive a little dirt bike up there and be out of everybody's hair, not making any noise. But I can't think of anything in particular because I mean we were busy. We worked, it wasn't all play.

Yeah, I knew almost every tree in the orchard. I don't now. No, we had one accident in the field one day and a guy hit his head on the truck and, oh my gosh, on the tailgate of the truck and his mother was so scared. She only had one son. He was really hurt. That was the only really bad accident that we had other than once in a while somebody would fall out of an apple tree. Those trees were tall with the ladder. I can tell you right now. They weren't they weren't fun to pick apples on those trees. They were tall. They're not they're not small like Bob's got them now. They used to be big trees. They were tall ladders. I can tell you right now and I, boy I didn't like getting up on the top part of the ladders. It was awful.

My dad wasn't well at all. He had bleeding ulcers. He had a really hard time. But he never, he never stopped working. He never stopped working and he had pain like you wouldn't believe and he just never stopped. Worked and worked and worked. And then he used to look after the Mounces, Tom Mounce, and Ralph, he looked after Tom Mounce, and I don't know whether anybody's heard, but the house is haunted.

OH: Do you have a ghost story to tell?

CC: Just that my dad and Fred Sanford used to live on Chip Hill and he always was around helping, helping out. He was my driver before I got a driver's license, and they were up looking after Tom. And he was in bed and they had taken his tray in for supper. And they just got out in the big room where they were watching news on TV and they got out there and sat down and all of a sudden they heard the tray upside down, smashed all over the place. Both of them jumped up, went back in. Tray was sitting on his bedside, never moved, and they looked everywhere for something broken. There was nothing broken anywhere. Nowhere.

And one other time my father went upstairs, and he laid something on a table in the hall and him and Fred, and I think they had another, I wonder if they were showing somebody the house? And they went upstairs, and they came back down, and dad went to pick up his thing that he left on the table and he said to Fred, “Fred”, he said, “where's that box?” He said “I just set there”. Fred said “I don’t know”. Dad said “well you must’ve took it”. Fred said “I never touched it”. It was gone, and nobody was there, just my father, Fred and another person that they took, was showing the house to, yeah, no way.

You know where Matt and Lise used to live halfway up the hill? That place is supposed to be haunted too, and I asked Matt one day if he had any strange things happen. He said no, he didn't. I said, “well there was strange things used to happen in the house”. He said, “when I moved in”, he said, “I just told them that I had heard”. He did. He said, “I just told them I didn't want anything to do with any ghosts or anything in this house”, and he never had any problem. Yeah. It's up in the attic, way up. No [I don’t know what happened], just that there was noises and different things, yeah. So yeah, it was funny. I don't think the other house, I don't think the other house was haunted, the one where Emma and Morgana lived, I don't think they were, not that I know of. But I know you know, Tom's was.

You still got that on? Because well, I'll tell you a story about my father and that was when we lived in Canning. We lived in a house, just temporarily until we moved to Avondale, and the man that lived in the house, he said “there's a room upstairs”, he said “I don't want anyone near it”. He said “my wife's stuff is in there”. She had passed away and dad said that's alright. We just locked it, you know and everything he said “no, we don't need to go in there for anything”. So anyway, Johnny and I were just little, he’d probably only be one, maybe two, I'd be three, four. Four, because I was five when I moved here, five and a half. And in this one night, they had heard a ruckus upstairs. He thought, “those little buggers they're out of their bed running around upstairs, me and Johnny. So up the steps, he started to come to give us the old devil to get us in bed, back in bed. And there was a lady at the top of the stairs all dressed in white, standing there. Dad said, dad said, I stopped on the stairs, he said, “I swear to God”. He said, “my hair went right up”. He said, “right the back of my neck”,said she turned and walked into the room with the door locked, through the door. So that was all right. He never told my mother.

Now this, my mother and dad separated when I was six or seven. She'd been living in Halifax. I hadn’t laid eyes on her until I was 18 when I got married, my aunt brought her to me to meet me, and we were talking one day and we were just talking, she said, “Dad ever talk about that, did your father ever tell you anything about that house down there we lived in?” I said no. She said, “that place was haunted”. I said, “oh, don’t talk so foolish”. She said “I'm telling you right now”. She said, “that place was haunted”. I said “Mom!”. Here I knew all the time what my father told me, right. She said, “Carolyn, I went downstairs one day to get potatoes” and she said “I walked down the steps and here was this woman down on the bottom of the steps all dressed in white”. She said, “I just turned right around and I went right up them steps”. She said, “from then on your father got me potatoes”. She said I wouldn't go near the cellar steps. I said, “really, mum”. I said, “well, let me tell you a story”. So then I told her what Dad told me now. They were separated; neither one ever mentioned that to each other.

So that's how I believe in anything haunted. Yeah.

Louis Countinho, August 13th, 2020

Olwynn Hughes: So first of all, what's your name?

Louis Coutinho: It's Louis Coutinho. C-O-U-T-I-N-H-O.

OH: What year were you born in?

LC: 1953?

OH: Why did you move to Avondale, or how did you find out about Avondale?

LC: Well, we obviously are the owners of the new Avondale Sky Winery, my family is, and so, my son lives here. We live in Windsor. It's only about a 15-minute drive from home to here. We may eventually move to the Avondale area, but my son's here, so it works for us.

OH: So is the vineyard why you heard of Avondale or had you heard of it before?

LC: Oh, yeah, we’d heard of it before, and we've been visiting here before. It made it very interesting when we found the winery was for sale. My sons were quite keen and that brought us here.

OH: Have you lived in the area your whole life?

LC: In the Windsor area for 15 years, in the HRM for 30 years. So we've been around for about 45, in Nova Scotia.

OH: So you lived in the HRM for 30 years. Did you hear of Avondale then? Did you know about the Avon Spirit and all that?

LC: No, honestly never heard of it.

OH: That's okay. Not many people know about this place. So you have the vineyard now and that has the Garlic Festival, obviously down here we have Full Circle. Do you think those festivals bring a lot to Avondale?

LC: They definitely do. Now we’ve been to the garlic festivals before, haven't been to any festivals here on the waterfront. We're looking forward to that, obviously with COVID, your impact is just like we are, so this year is a little bit of a hiatus, but we're looking forward to those, and yes from our perspective, it's important to make this place a destination, and whether it's here on the waterfront or at the winery. Those are all important things for our community.

OH: What do you think Avondale has to offer to people moving here?

LC: Just the quiet rural life, you know, it's nice to be able to drive through corn fields, and farms, dairy farms, sheep farms, cattle farms, and then I see some other farmers here that grow organics. And so the clean air is a big attraction, but the people are really friendly and we've not met one person here who has not been very welcoming. I think there’s a sense of community here that I don't see in too many places that sort of really makes this place really attractive.

OH: What did you notice about Avondale when you first came here?

LC: The lushness. I like the fact that the well kept homes as you're driving in. There's people who'd like to take care of the properties, the lawns are mowed, you know it just looks generally like a well-maintained community and the other thing that we noticed was you know, there were a lot of people here that know each other and that's very comforting. So we like, we like that about the community.

OH: When you bought the vineyard did you find out any history about that property?

LC: Yes, the Mosher house was really fascinating for us, because the other buildings were brought on site. The church is, you know, from Walton and the barn was from Mantua. So those two buildings are obviously all the one is a little more local, the Mantua Barn’s a little more local. Seeing Captain Moshers house on the property and getting to know a bit of the history of Captain Mosher and boat builders, and found out some information here in the museum and the whole boat building era, that was really fascinating for me to see the connection with this community and the building on the property. Yes.

OH: What was your line of work before you bought the vineyard.

LC: I was the CAO for the town of Windsor, Chief Administrative Officer. Some people say town manager. So I was, I was their CAO for the last 14 years and prior to that I worked for the Halifax Regional Municipality.

OH: What do you see your contribution being to the community in the future?

LC: In the future? I want to be a partner in the community, and one of the things I'd like to see is whatever benefits that we accrue, also accrue to the community. And so it will be nice to be able to partner with the museum as an example, with your fundraising efforts. I’d like to engage the farmers when we have tours. There are sometimes tours that come to see the vineyard, but it would be nice to engage some of the local farming community here, and see if they’re willing to be part of the tour, so people can see how, you know, where their food comes from as an example. You have a lot of people who live in the cities that don't really know where their food comes from, but it would be nice to have the tour where people see where their corn comes from, where the milk comes from, beef comes from, that type of thing. So we've been talking to a few of the tourist companies and seeing if we can make a sort of a local, rural, community tour and can end up in our Winery, which is, which is fine. You can do a wine tour and hit every wine facility there is in Nova Scotia, or you can do a nice tour that shows rural life as it exists in Nova Scotia. So we're, we're hoping we can start doing this sort of thing, but COVID has put certain restrictions right now. So we're in the planning stages of making it happen.

OH: Okay, what do you hope to see in Avondale in the future?

LC: Well, I'd like it to stay a little bit the same, you know, you don't want to see it too commercialized, and I know that some of the residents and some of the community would probably not want to see this become a big tourist Mecca, you know, they'd want to see sustained growth, you know in a much more reasonable fashion. So whatever we do, I think it would be interesting to know what the community wants. For this area and how we can be part of making it happen for the community.

OH: Awesome. Final question. What do you love about Avondale.

LC: Everything. The weather, the clean air, the people. We've got, we've got it all, you know, got the tides. A lot of people don't experience tides. They have lakes, but it's, there's so much here. There is the whole ecology and the way people live here is attractive to us.

Sean Countinho, January 13th, 2021

Tacha Reed: What was your introduction to Avondale?

Sean Coutinho: So the first time I came to Avondale I was doing the due diligence, we knew the business (Avondale Sky Winery) was up for sale, so we came to check out the winery and have a pleasant drive going through the windy roads. It was the middle of summer, so it was July, it was absolutely gorgeous and I had a friend visiting from Germany. We had gone to Three Pools, and did a little bit of a jumping around in the water and then came over here and had supper and it was awesome. It was a good time. So yeah, we actually drove down to the water too and looked off of the dock by the museum, it’s a gorgeous area.

TR: Beforehand, did you have any experience working in a restaurant or vineyard?

SC: Oh, well, not really, not a whole lot. I worked at the Keg for a little bit, so I have some experience with backhouse. My first job ever, besides goalie coaching, was washing dishes at Smitty's, so I was a dishwasher, but that was obviously quite miserable. All the egg and everything you had to clean. But yeah, so I worked as a dishwasher, a host, a little bit of a server role as well, but nothing like this, where all of a sudden I’m running the kitchen side of things and the winery. Just before we bought the business, during the due diligence phase, I did a sommelier course, an introductory sommelier course, so that's where I learned a lot about the wine making and different wines and our region and that kind of stuff.

TR: So now that you've been in operation a full year, I know this year was not a typical year seeing that it was a pandemic, but you know kind of what the business is now, what do you envision doing in the future? Do you have any big bright things you want to reveal? (laughter)

SC: Ah, so many, so many, (laughter) a long list. Yeah, there's lots more we want to do with the community, which is awesome. We did the garlic weekends five times last summer, which was great that we were able to do that. We'd love to do more of that and maybe just do markets every weekend. When it comes to summer time I would love to have a food truck party. A couple food truck parties during the summer. I think that's awesome, I always loved it in Halifax, so I think that would be a good draw. Lots of food, which is always a good time. But no, I've got lots of big plans, like I'd love to have a community rink in the backyard. I'd love to have some chalets and some things for people to stay over after any kind of celebration. There's lots in my head, but it's all a long-term plan.

TR: So being that you basically consider yourself a city boy, now that you've been in the country for almost a year or so, what is the biggest challenge that you've found?

SC: I find it sad that there's no delivery.

TR: Food delivery?

SC: Like I lived on Barrington Street before I lived here, so it's a complete 180 living downtown Barrington Street, Halifax to the valley. There I could look outside on my deck and I could see more people in one minute than I see pass by the winery in a full day. So getting used to that's a little different and just, yeah all the food that I could get delivered, or if I wanted to do anything and I was feeling a little anxious I could meet up with friends no problem or just go out and I'm sure I'd run into somebody. So I think that's part of it, just like if I want to have a couple beer and then just go home, it's not as easy (laughter). Everything is a bit of a distance and I’m used to just being able to walk everywhere and not have to worry about driving. I think that's part of it, getting used to that, but other than that I love the country.

TR: So I guess the other side of that is, now that you've lived in the country is there something that you feel like you can’t give up now, that you didn't really realize you were missing in the city and now you can't live without it? Or are you not there yet?

SC: I think I'm getting there, like I’ve got some of the toys. I'm like, if I'm going to be in the country, I'm going to live a bit of the country lifestyle. So I got myself a telescope, which you've seen. Being able to look at the stars anytime is amazing, and really the lack of light pollution is beautiful, and then having like a little mini bike so I can rip up and around, I couldn't do that... and the best part of all, we're getting a dog this weekend. I was never able to have a dog in the city. An apartment is just too small, you need land and now there's lots of room for a puppy to run around, so very excited. In three days we get a puppy. That’s some things I don't think I could do in the city. TR: Is there a boat in your future? (laughter)

SC: Ah, maybe. I'm used to boating, my buddies in the city all sail. We would normally be, if it's not a crazy summer where I'm working like I'm now, I'd be out on the water 2 - 3 times a week. So I definitely miss getting out on the water and sailing. I don't think you can really sail out here, it's probably more of a motorboat sort of spot, but you never know. We'll see. I'd be up for it and I know it would be a good easy way to get my friends to come visit me to go for a rip on the water, they're pumped to come do that.

TR: So the one question we always ask is what do you love the most about Avondale so far?

SC: What do I love the most? There's lots, honestly I guess it's just the impression I think that I had and how much it's... I was like I'm going to be in the middle of nowhere and I'm not going to have any friends around and I just assume people are going to be older and it's going to be kind of like one of those kind of dying communities and it really isn't at all, it's so lively around here. As soon as I met Ryan (Beecroft) from down the road, he was at the winery and he told me about some of the fun things that happen, the Friday nights by the wharf, and ping pong and all these awesome things, like I played hockey back in the day too, so there’s good pickup. So yeah I just found that it's pretty awesome for all the kind of stuff that I love to do and the people that I like to be around, it's really easy. It’s easy in this area for sure.

Eva Evans, July 24th, 2020

I was lucky enough to be born in Avondale almost 73 years ago, and I grew up here and I attended the Avondale School to grade 6, and then went to Hants West Rural High School. And at that time sometimes it was a one-room school and sometimes a two-room school. My favorite teacher was Mary Taylor, originally Mary Laffin from Moose Brook. I remember our annual field days when we had games and races, probably including sack races. These were held in the Curry Field then owned by Ralph Stillman who then lived in the place which is now owned by Nicholas Hughes. I recall one year, we were terribly disappointed because Mr. Stillman was grumpy and at that time, didn't allow us all to have our field day there. I'm not sure what happened. Anyway, it was a big disappointment to all of us kids.
My younger brother Dennis recalls that routinely the older boys fetched a bucket of water from Mr. Stillman’s well for the school to use. And at least on one occasion he kindly rescued a young schoolgirl who had been locked in the school outhouse

Other field days, which we enjoyed, were the annual 4-H Field Days held on various farms. It was called the three-cornered 4-H club because it took in Poplar Grove, Avondale and Belmont.

It wasn't like today when 4-H has a wide variety of activities from rabbits to cooking to fashion. The only project we had was dairy cows. Each year each member got a new calf to care for and to train, meaning to walk around the show ring with a halter, and to stand properly. One year, I named my calf Louise after a favorite great aunt. I meant it as a compliment, but other people teased me that it wasn't a compliment to name a cow after a person.

Two important skills we learned, well besides learning to judge dairy cows, we also learned public speaking every year. We had to write a speech and present it, and we also learned how to conduct meetings following the Robert's Rules of meetings. And those skills were very valuable in later life.

The leaders of the Three-cornered 4-H club were my father, Roland Parker, a Guernsey breeder, purebred Guernsey breeder and Marguerite Mosher, nee McCully, her husband was another Guernsey dairy farmer, Irving Moser in Poplar Grove.

In those days there were several Guernsey farms on this road; and it was more popular than the prevalent Holstein breed of today. Milk and cream were shipped in cans to Farmers Dairy, picked up by the farmers truck from the end of one's driveway. And we were lucky on one field day, the Farmers Dairy had a trailer or canteen in the field and we could buy ice cream.

The farm I grew up on here in Avondale and and returned to with my family in 1991 is on land on the corner of the Avondale Road and the Avondale Cross road, which was originally granted to John Harvie, one of the planter settlers who arrived on the Sally, in 1760. In a small book, “Newport Landing, a Historical Report Written in 1976”, Paul Webb writes: “John Harvey built a beautiful house... about 100 yards from the road on a hillside facing the township of Windsor. The house was square shape with a four-sided roof containing one large chimney in the center.” I never saw this house as it burnt down on May 11th 1941 according to the newspaper at the time. Paul Webb states in his book that John Harvie called the farm “Roseway”, after his former home in Scotland. Sometime between 1897 and 1907, Weston Harvie, a descendant of John Harvie, sold the farm to my great uncle Leonard Parker, married to the Louise mentioned above. Leonard sold it to his nephew, my father Roland Earl Parker in 1940.

My father expanded Roseway, buying on the East the land of George Allison, on the south the Burke dyke from Mrs. Burke, and finally the Curry Field to the west and located here in the village from Ralph Stillman in the early 1970s.

A year after the devastating loss of the original Harvey House in 1941, just a year after my father bought the farm, my father married my mother Ethel Maude Smiley, eldest of a prominent farming family in Mckay section, Smiley's Provincial Park.

My parents built a one-bedroom house just behind the site of the original house and had three children there before building a large house that resembled the Harvie house in many ways. Basil Robarts remembers getting logs out of the woods from what he called the “undivided lot”, behind the Old Stone House, for the new house using my father's horses, Doll and Queen. In 2013, he told me from his room at Dykeland Lodge that the biggest tree for the new house was 36 to 37 inches at the bottom. Basil recalled that the logs were not all out then the April thaw came, so my father fed the horses around 4:15am. Basil would come up around 5:00am to take Doll and Queen to the woods before the ground became too soft. Eventually, they got all the logs out and then Claire Etter’s father came and took the logs by truck to Brooklyn to be sawn into more boards at the Etter’s sawmill. The house was completed in 1953 and the Parker family of five moved in.

It was one of the first houses in Avondale to have flush toilets, a big improvement over the outhouse. I have enjoyed living in this house for nearly 50 years. One thing I love are the views from every window in every direction.

The house was purchased by my husband Albert Evans and myself in 2004 along with about 34 Acres of the farm. We have a vegetable growing business including several large greenhouses and call it “As You Like It” farm, because like William Shakespeare’s birthplace, it's near the Avon River.

The rest of my parent’s farm is still Roseway Farm Ltd, belonging to my brothers Howard and Raymond and myself. In 2020, the dykeland part was sold to the descendants of Henry Knowles who had been farming in Avondale since 1768.

Elizabeth Ferguson, July 27th, 2020

Olwynn Hughes: Now, what is your name?

Elizabeth Ferguson: My name is Elizabeth Ferguson.

OH: What year were you born?

EF: 1935.

OH: Did you grow up around here?

EF: No, I was born in Halifax. So I really started my life in Woodside. My father was with the sugar refinery down there. Then when the war was on we moved to Dartmouth, when the war was over we moved to Halifax. And then I went away to Acadia University and got married. So in my married life I lived back in Halifax where I was teaching, and then Dartmouth, then Prince Edward Island, and then we moved to Pictou County. I lived in Stellarton, and then we moved to this area particularly.

OH: How did you come to Avondale?

EF: Well, we split up, my husband and I split, and so I was on my own and basically I've lived in this area ever since, on my own for a while. I rented Wallace Point, [Hugh] McNeil's place when they were away still in the Navy, and then I bought the house at the bottom of the hill here from Jim and Elizabeth King. And from there I moved up the hill where I've been ever since, for over 30 years. That's the story of my life.

OH: Did you ever attend church here at Avondale’s Church?

EF: Oh, yes. Yes. Avondale United, yes. Actually I play the organ there now when they have service.

OH: What was your job?

EF: I was a teacher I taught in the city, and then Dartmouth,and then Charlottetown, and then East Pictou High. So I've taught a lot of places, and my teaching has covered every grade, from primary through grade 11, and one year I had a grade 12 homeroom class. That was an experience.

OH: What subject(s) did you teach?

EF: Well, when I moved to this area I joined the community choir so word very quickly got around that there's a new musician in the area, and they called me to teach music first as a substitute in the schools. And then I got a full-time music job in the elementary schools. So that was interesting.

OH: Did you have any role in the start of the museum?

D. Oh I was involved. Yeah. Well, I don't remember if I was ever Treasurer but I was on the executive. I know that Hugh McNeil played an important part, and Ken Mounce, who doesn't live here any longer, he had a lot to do with it. So we were all executive members. So yes, I certainly had something to do with it.

OH: How did you first hear about Avondale? Why did you come here?

EF: I first moved to this area because after my marriage broke up I needed someplace to live. I was an Anglican, and the Anglican minister at that time was the Reverend Richard Walsh and he told me one day when we were talking, he told me he knew of a place to rent. People were looking for somebody to stay in their home for seven years until they finished his military service and they wanted somebody to house sit. So I then became, I'll never forget the night it was Mayday, Victoria Day, May 24th, or whatever I think, and I moved up that one kilometer long lane to the McNeil homestead, Wallace Point all by myself and I got up there, looked around, and I couldn't see another sign of life, but I absolutely loved being up there with the deer and the rabbits and everything else. And so I stayed there for I think, that was Victoria Day 1983. So I stayed there until maybe winter ‘86. In the meantime I bought myself a second hand Jeep with a snow plow attached to it. I bought it in Halifax or Bedford or that area and drove it home on the hottest day of summer, and I still still remember the men who were working on the road laughing and shaking their fingers at me as I drove by with the snowplow. Anyway, I got that home and had to plow that kilometer long lane for one winter, maybe two winters and then finally the man who became my husband had joined me too and so one winter it became too much. So when the house here in Avondale that the girls Janice and Loretta now own, when that came on the market we decided we had to get out of Wallace Point with its kilometer long lane and very cold winds coming off the river. So we bought the place that Janice and Loretta are now in, and so I’ve been in this community ever since. After my husband died the house I'm in now came on the market, and I bought it and I think that's probably 33 years ago, and I proceeded to fix it up and add to it and I've been there ever since.

OH: Do you know how old the house you’re in now is?

EF: I think it goes back to the eighteen hundreds. I have information on it, but I can't give you the exact number of years, but it's not new. Definitely not new when I bought it.

OH: What do you love about Avondale?

EF: I think it would be better to say is there anything I don't like about Avondale, and no there's nothing that I don't like about Avondale. Yeah.

OH: What do you hope to see in the future?

EF: What do I hope to see in it? Or of it? Well there seem to be new people moving in all the time. And of course, there's going to be great excitement starting this year on August 17th. They're going to film a horror movie, a Stephen King type of movie. I don't know how long they estimate it's going to take to do it, but there is certainly going to be a presence of them around for a while starting August. Well, actually It's going on now. They were there today for a while.

OH: Do you think it’s going to disrupt the peace and quiet of Avondale?

EF: I think it only disrupts it if you let it. I can go into my house and be there with my kitty cat and nothing has to disturb me unless I let it.

OH: What do you see as your contribution being in the future?

EF: My contribution in the future. Well, I'm going to be 85 years old this year. So I don't know that I have much left to contribute. Really, I just love being here. But no, I don't see myself making the type of contribution I did when this museum was being started and so on.

OH: Do you find anything interesting here and are there any areas of interest for you?

EF: I don't know what you would consider interesting. You know, I'm still busy with my volunteer work which is driving my car for Dial-A-Ride. When people need drives they call our coordinator and sometimes I get called to go pick people up and take them for appointments or whatever, here and there. No, other than doing that, before this epidemic or whatever you want to call it started, I used to swim at King's Edgehill and I played Bridge every Wednesday down in Port Williams, but things have slowed down considerably now and I'm not sure that they're going to pick up again. So I love to read you know, I do the puzzles in the paper every day and when there is church up in the little Avondale United Church, which I played the organ up there for them for their services. But other than that you know, I just come and go, I go into town every morning for a coffee. And while I'm there I go to Sobey’s and get what groceries I need. And so then I watch quite a bit of TV at home. Other than that for now, that's about it. Until things pick up again. Yes,yes, yes.

OH: Have you noticed any changes in Avondale since you moved here?

EF: Well for instance this year, they're not having, probably you know more about this, the big weekend [Full Circle]. They used to have more people coming in. They're not having that this year. So there really aren't as many new people around just for the weekends or that sort of thing, things seem to have quieted down a little bit. Yeah. Well, we'll have to wait and see won't we?

OH: But do you see any changes like with the community, not necessarily to do with the pandemic.

EF: But just that's just it. I don't know that there's as much going on down here as there was back in the 80’s. I mean that was kind of an exciting time with the building of the Avon Spirit and its launch and you know, there was more going on then, but I would say there doesn't seem to me to be as much going on now.

OH: Do you have any artifacts or anything that you want to share?

EF: I have a wonderful old map of the whole community and I think you have one like it downstairs, but I think maybe mine is bigger because my next door neighbor in the little house came by and I was showing it to her and she said “Oh yours is bigger than the one at the Museum. You should donate back to the museum”. I just found that rolled up in the rafters in my basement when I bought my house. Yeah, so I don't know where it originally came from but I know where it is right now. You know, I made a lot of changes in my house. I had to, I had to make changes in the house. It's old, but I changed almost everything and I built an addition to make it more livable, nicer. An addition on the back with all windows looking out over the river and so on. That's where I pretty well live, in that addition on the back and I added a downstairs bathroom and laundry room, but as for artifacts, I have some old things but they are things that came from my family that I brought with me. So I don't think I have anything that I found in the house except for that map of the area rolled up in the rafters in the cellar.

OH: Is there anything you want to talk about? I don't have any more questions.

EF: I think it's neat what you're doing and trying to create more of a history of Avondale, which used to be called Newport Landing I guess and you know, we've done things here in the past year since I moved in, with the arrival of the Planters who came after the expulsion of the Acadians in the 1700’s, and we've put on pageants and I'm sure there must be movies or whatever of that sort of thing. I have lots of snapshots of people all dressed up and pretending they were Planters coming from the New England states and coming here to take over the lands from which the Acadians were expelled. But you know, other than that, it just seems to go on and there doesn't seem to be much as much of that sort of community thing going on here as there was say 20 years ago.

Nicholas Hughes, August 6th, 2020

Olwynn Hughes: Okay! First question, what’s your name?

Nicholas Hughes: My name is Nicholas Walter Grant Hughes. The Walter and the Grant come from my two grandfather's.

OH: All right. What year were you born?

NH: I was born in ‘64, in Bristol, England.

OH: When did you move here?

NH: I moved here 20 years ago.

OH: Why did you move here?

NH: Because, saying Vancouver wasn't big enough for me anymore. It was time to leave.

OH: All right. What drew you to Avondale?

NH:Oh... dreams and hopes.

OH: How did you hear of Avondale?

NH: I didn't, it was by accident, which seems to be the case for most people who end up here.

OH: What is your role with the Museum, or did you have a role in the museum?

NH: Not really officially, I guess it started as the boat builder/shipwright. Yeah, then as time went on, it was just help out when I can. So I'm on the board to fill up the numbers a lot of the time. You don't really need me now, but before it was a case of getting enough people involved, but now it’s 15, this year. So you don't need that, I think, but no, no I enjoy it.

OH: You were part of the boat building school weren’t you?

NH: Yeah, I was.

OH: Can you tell me a bit about that?

NH: It was a dream of Hugh McNeil and, like, semi-fashioned on boat building schools, and there was only one in Canada at the time, but there were lots in the States, obviously ones in other countries, so yeah. That was what [was planned], the Avon Spirit had sailed away, that project was done, but the space was still there, space was here. So we wanted to see both spaces utilized still, not for it just to be nothing going on, like okay, what's next, what's next?

So that was the start of the boat building school, and still a museum, and Cafe, whatever else is going on too, but the shipyard to be used. As a school, a place of learning, for whatever, but to be used, in that it's a Shipyard right? To be used for that kind of idea. Yeah, but basically for it to get used, not just to sit idle, for the community to take it up.

OH: Was moving here a big change?

NH: Uh, no, it wasn't a big change at all. It was just me and my dog, we drove across the country in a van, and I had friends here. I'd actually lived here before, but over in St. Andrews, so the other side of the Bay of Fundy. I’d been there for two and a half years. So, I mean, I’d been in the Maritimes. I’d only spent, I don’t know, maybe 48 hours in Nova Scotia, but I knew what the feeling is like and St. Andrew’s is a small town surrounded by country. So I knew, and that's where I basically lived before, the environment. So yeah, so it wasn't like moving from the country to the city, city to the country. It was kind of the same thing but different coasts, but yeah, I really liked it, the people were warm and welcome.

OH: What do you think Avondale has to offer for people that move here?

NH: Oh man, everything you want? It doesn't involve living in a big city. It's got everything you want. Yeah.

OH: What are your hopes for the future of Avondale?

NH: I'd like it to become... So whatever the population was in its heyday, whatever that population was, meant that this area could handle those numbers of people, it could sustain them, because food was local, blah blah blah. I would like to see Avondale, I’m just talking about Avondale, like you could go broader, but for just around here, for there to be as many houses and as many people as there were back in whatever year it was, Eighteen fifty, sixty, seventy, and you know, whatever the heyday was of Avondale, with ships here, blacksmith shops, bars. I'd like to see a nice village. Yeah. Yeah. So rather than, like, these old villages, all the old villages around here used to be f****** busy, bustling places, right? Very busy, but everybody moved away. Obviously the first reason cited nowadays is jobs, jobs, jobs, but that's becoming less of a possible reason, as everybody just saw recently, 2020, and everything that's been going on. Man, closer to home is obviously better. It always was, we just forgot. We thought it was more exciting, we were willing to do two hour commutes and s*** like that. But, no man, you gotta stay closer to home for a huge variety of reasons and it's not just Covid. It's the health of the planet. Yeah. These more important, bigger issues out there with expanding populations. So if we all stayed close to home right around Avondale, it’s the perfect place in my opinion, we could have our own school, a little school, while we just go back to the way things were a little bit in that respect. Everything kind of closer to home.

OH: Yeah, so going off of, like, how things used to be, would you want to tell us a bit about the history of the property you live on and, like, the trail?

NH: Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know much about the earlier history. A fellow by the name of Ralph Stillman owned it and really whatever period of time 40, 50 years ago he seemed to be the biggest land owner actually in Avondale. In that he owned what we call the Curry Field with the high point in the heart of Avondale. That was his, and he also owned basically all back to the vineyard, my place, 60 Avondale Crossroad, right beside the community hall, and then woodland in behind there. And then, yeah, he sold the Curry Field to Raymond’s dad, and then he sold the backfield that I have, the backfield there to the vineyard, and then I got my little chunk there. And so that was the remains of the Stillman homestead that I ended up with, so I know there's lots of stories like everybody in the community went to school in the community hall would know about stories about him, and I guess it was his niece,Ola.

OH: What about his niece?

NH: His niece Ola lived there, Ralph Stillman and Ola lived there in the period that Millie (McCullum) and Ralph (Lyons) and stuff were still attending school. And so I know he was a blacksmith, kind of homesteader guy, was regarded as a local blacksmith. I've heard that story. But yeah any of those people can tell you way more than I know. I’ve have never bugged them for knowledge or stories, but they used to go over to our well apparently for the Community Hall to get water for them, that’s one story about the place. And so the trail that’s on it right now, it was really just a trail that I started using, I didn’t create it, everybody else used it, including cows and animals, it was theirs, but that was my easiest way to get up to Raymond Parker's shack on the hill. So I started doing that kind of, and Raymond was kind of using that way to come down. So yeah. So it kind of just got beat in a bit and then we have Devan Archibald and Matt Smith and his people wanted a trail thing and they asked about it. But anyhow, sign a piece of paper saying that it could be part of the trail system, I said yea, no problem, of course.

OH: What do you see your role being in the community in the future?

NH: I’ve got no idea, I’ve been thinking a lot about that myself.

OH: What do you love about Avondale?

NH: I know it's cheap, it's generic, but everything.

So yeah, it's 10 minutes, I got stuff to do, you guys got stuff to do. I could tell you for hours what I like about you Avondale. Yeah.

OH: Do you think that, like, we have a movie being filmed here, we have the festivals, do you think that those bring something to the community?

NH: Yeah, absolutely. Like I said earlier, the place was bustling. Yeah, Saturday night in Avondale, hundred twenty-five years ago, yeah, holy cow. People from all over the world, waiting on tides, waiting on ships. Sailors from everywhere, bars, people, life, two or three churches fully occupied, like, yeah. So definitely, I like that there’s more people here. Yeah, and it's to be expected, if you live within an hour [of the city], I come from Vancouver, so I come from our country’s large urban center. And land prices went up and people moved further, further out, commuting, commuting, because they can’t afford the heart of the city, this kind of thing, and Avondale... There's going to be more and more people. That's the way it's going to be. So everybody in Avondale should, really, our community, everybody that lives within that distance from Halifax, because Halifax is booming right now. Nobody’s seen anything like it. Yeah, it's booming. And so anywhere within that hour, or distance, possible commute, that you're alright with an hour because you go to the city to work and have bills, 55 minutes. I did it. Well 50, I'm not a speeder. And I did it for 15 years while you guys were growing up, made the commute from Avondale, back and forth to the city, and [it’s a] super easy commute compared to a Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa commute. Right? And it's beautiful. There's tons of land. There's more than enough room for lots of people. I think Avondale’s going to keep growing and it's not as if it’s going to grow or not, it's going to grow, it’s how you'd like it to grow, what you'd like to see, what you'd like to get started like start planning, planning for the future. Just for more and more people. And I like the fact that Avondale and Nova Scotia is a sharing province. I got welcomed, man, some 36 year old and a dog shows up in a beat-up van from a little town in Vancouver, I don't know if I would have got the... or just outside of Vancouver... if I would have got that same welcome. Nope. Nova Scotia people were very welcoming and trusting from the start.

OH: Did you find any artifacts or old things when you moved onto the property?

NH: Yeah, well, I did, I found a huge c-clamp, actually there’s on in this one building. Yeah, it's funny in a way, because you always expect to find s*** in a building that's falling in on itself. Yeah. No one’s going in underneath it. It's an intact building. It's just come in on itself, and as you pull it apart, dig, dig, so it's like twelve layers of s*** on top of it. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and then I come across an old rake, because this was supposed to be Ralph’s, one of the blacksmith, kinda, areas anyhow, and so I figured I'd find lots of bits of metal and that. So I found an old rake, where a piece of galvanized tubing had been welded onto the rake head, which I still use to this day, but it doesn't break, it’s got a metal handle on it. I use it for raking fires, and a huge, like the C-clamp, the big metal C-clamp for building ships. It's down here in the museum. So I’ve seen one there, and I’ve seen one a couple other places and there was one big f****** C-clamp there, maybe even bigger than the one that’s here. And so that’s the one hanging from the cedar tree, at the house by the picnic table.

And so those were the two artifacts that I found on the property. There is of course junk because every farm around here used the back of the property as the junk pile, scrap place. You could even call it a storage yard because it is, you might need parts, might need anything. So there's tons of stuff actually that, you've seen the cars in the back of the vineyard, those old cars. Yeah, that kind of thing, and the back of Raymond's place. Yeah, there's stuff back there.

OH: What was your involvement in the Avon Spirit?

NH: Very little, really. I showed up here after she had been hauled out of the shipyard. She was outside the shipyard and she was being rigged by Lynn St. Claire Patterson. Yeah, he did all the rigging on it and various other things were done. I didn't do anything on the actual Avon Spirit. I was there, I had to do stuff, hung out. And then two or three weeks later I think it was, actually Hugh [McNeil] asked me if you want to sail around on it, because I had just hung out here, I wasn't sleeping here or nothing. I was over in Kingsport with my friends, but yeah just started coming by, helping out.

I went to school for boat building. Yeah, I like boats and I showed up here. Oh, yeah. This was an artifact in that house in Kingsport. The lady that owned it, Carol Carpenter, bought the house off of the wife of the guy who built the original Spirit [the FBG]. So the original Avon Spirit is from, the FBG, is from Kingsport. So Carol Carpenter, who was Sophie's, my ex's, mother bought that house off of the G Gibson Frigates and she was a school teacher actually in Kingsport. Everybody knew her more than they knew Fred. I might be getting this wrong.

So I actually have a mast or a boom of the original Avon Spirit. The FBG that was in her barn that I tore down for her. She didn’t want it, she told me to take it, and she gave a lot of the FBG artifacts that are here. Yes. So they're from Carol Carpenter who was my mother-in-law basically, and so I was staying at her place. She had mentioned this place, and I came. So I hung out here, slept over there. And yeah, that was that mast, but that's over in St. Croix, over the thing, so that’s part of the original FBG.

OH: You still have it?

NH: Yeah, it's mine. Maybe I'll give it to the museum. Yeah. I actually want to incorporate it into whatever my next house is. I want to have it in that, except it's like a pretty big thing. Yeah, that's a cool thing.

OH: Well, I guess, do you have any other artifacts like that?

NH: That box of treasure. Yeah, no. Well, I mean I do. Everything I have, you’ve seen my barns and they are all artifacts that I stumbled upon in one form or another and dragged home thinking they were cool. I don't have any use for them or it's just cool, who knows.

OH: You have the top of the steeple of the church, right?

NH: Yeah the church steeple. So what happened was, I'm walking around Avondale all the time, basically. Yeah, when I first got here, and I stumbled upon, literally, the very top most [part of the steeple] when you look at the old pictures, not the current one. So the older pictures of the steeple. There was a ball, whatever diameter, and then it went up again, another ball then went up again, another ball, and then on top of that ball, the last ball or the last bit of piping. Anyhow, I'm getting it wrong, but you get the picture right? It's kind of transgression up,there was this, like, a ball and the pointy part made out of wood [that was turned]. So it used to be covered in lead. There wasn't any lead on it, it had to come off because it was probably, I won't say it's the last thing to go on the church, but it was the last thing to go on the Spire. So over time degradation of the materials over like a hundred and forty years or however old the church is. Maybe it's only a hundred and twenty I got no idea. It wore out, it fell off and who knows how long it had been sitting there. So I took it home with me. Why not? Obviously, no, it wasn't a big deal. It's just a chunk of wood. I could have made another in a half hour on the lathe, right? Yeah, the hard part's getting it back up there. Yeah. So, yeah, so, so that's on the kitchen table. Very top of the steeple. Yeah, that's cool. Just thinking how many years it could’ve been there, just saying everything that went on, all the people's lives. Yeah, I like that church. I really like that building.

Olwynn Hughes, August 11th, 2020

Tacha Reed: So, was Avondale the first place you lived when you were born or did you live somewhere else beforehand?

Olwynn Hughes: No, I lived in Windsor first. We moved to Windsor. We lived in a couple places there. And so Avondale was kind of the last place we settled that we still live in.

TR: And how old were you when you moved to Avondale?

OH: Just after Finn was born, so like almost four, I think, yeah.

TR: Growing up in Avondale, is there anything that you really remember as a kid that stood out?

OH: I remember the New Year's tradition of going to the church and ringing the bell. I remember a couple years. I was the youngest so I got to ring the bell, and then my grandpa would always come for Christmas and he was the oldest, and so we would ring the bell together. I always remember that, and yeah, I remember coming to the museum for Fun Fridays. Yeah, and I think Allie [Harvey] did it for a bit, Allie and the Bonang son would do it and that was fun. Yeah. Those are the types of things I remember.

TR: What do you find has changed about Avondale since you were a kid?

OH: I think there's definitely a lot more people. I wasn't, obviously, around for the Avon Spirit and all the big stuff happening. But when I was younger, there wasn't as much happening, but now I feel like there's a lot more. Or maybe I'm just noticing it more. But yeah, there's more festivals and stuff obviously, and the vineyard, so that wasn't like, you know, full-on when I was younger.

TR: Did you go to school in the area?

OH: Yeah, I went to Brooklyn Elementary School and West Hants Middle School and I go to Avon View High School.

TR: And you graduate next year?

OH: Yes.

TR: Do you have any relatives that made a significant contribution to the community?

OH: I guess my dad did, he did the boat building school in the shipyard and he sits on the board, and my mom ran the cafe for a few years too, that's how they met.
Yeah, and my mom was also the vineyard manager for the winery. So yeah, and the trail [Westbrook] is on our property as well. So I guess it's kind of a contribution. Yeah.

TR: What would you like to see happen in the future for Avondale? How would you like to see it evolve and grow?

OH: I would like to see more tourists doing stuff and especially, like, the movies being filmed, I'd like to see more of that kind of thing because you know, the area around here is so pretty and it can pass off as some parts of the States, so, it's easy. It can be used for all of that. And I think a lot of people around here definitely appreciate seeing new faces around here. So new faces would definitely be nice and new families and all of that. I think it's actually just the right amount for festivals and stuff for the summer and you know, we're usually opened up for weddings and everything. So I think we're kind of at maybe a maximum for events. But yeah, yeah.

TR: Do you think you will stay in the community and live here? Are you going to go off on other adventures?

OH: I think I’m gonna go off on other adventures for a while, but my plan is to come here every summer for Full Circle, at least stay for like two weeks. But other than that, no, I have plans to go elsewhere for University and work abroad for a bit. But eventually I think I'll come back here.

TR: Do you think your time spent working at the museum has influenced what you want to do later on in life?

OH: Yeah, it definitely has. Well I started working here because I wanted to be an archaeologist or anthropologist. Now, I'm kind of leaning towards agriculture and environmental stuff and working here has influenced that, with the rising tides and all, and working with you with the fish and stuff. So yeah, I started working here for one job prospect and it kind of led me to another, which is kind of cool.

TR: Yeah, just one last thing. This project wouldn’t have happened if it weren't for you, and you talking about a project you had done when you were much younger. Do you want to just briefly explain what that was?

OH: I think in grade one or two, just Elementary School, I interviewed Raymond Parker for a school project and I did like a big poster about everything I learned, and that was kind of my first introduction to learning stories about the community and it really made me want to learn more about the community, and now I love like talking to the older residents of the place and learning their stories and everything. And I like learning how things are connected, because when I talked to Raymond, he told me about this raven that this kid had as a pet that would steal chalk, and then I talked to someone else and he told me the same thing, and he was like best friends with that kid and all of that stuff and yeah, I like learning. There's so many connections in Avondale.

Kim Lake, January 18th & 21st, 2021

Tacha Reed: What brought you to Avondale?

Kim Lake: What brought me to Avondale is, firstly, family. My husband grew up in Avondale, Devin Lake, and his family, his parents before that, are from here. Multiple generations on his dad's side of the Lake family. So prior to moving to Nova Scotia we were living in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Once we had kids we decided to move closer to family, so when we first moved we moved to Wolfville, which is where Devin now works, but yeah, we were feeling a pull to be closer to family and not knowing much about the area myself, we obviously spent time visiting here and I just immediately fell in love with the community, especially after being in Yellowknife. That was the first place where I really felt a sense of community and got to really experience what it's like to be part of a close-knit community where there's people always around to make events happen and just be there for one another. So after living in Yellowknife, I was really seeking that feeling again and it was really evident that Avondale has a lot of that, so it felt really natural to move here, and then of course having his parents close by with the kids was a huge pull for us.

TR: Now that you've been here a little while you've definitely kind of immersed yourself in the community, you recently took on the position of president of the Heritage Society and then you also are the coordinator of the Full Circle Festival. Given that we are in the middle of a pandemic you've been given a huge challenge to reinvent that event, how do you feel at this particular moment in time thinking about planning events for 2021?

KL: Yeah. It's certainly a challenge. I feel being Nova Scotia we're really fortunate compared to a lot of places and that we're still able to even consider the possibility of getting together in small groups. Some places in the rest of Canada it just doesn't even seem possible to be dreaming about that at all, but I think here, given our population size and kind of the effects that the pandemic has had on us compared to other places it seems more feasible to at least dream about some possibilities for the summer. So we are going ahead with planning some kind of event, what that looks like exactly we're not too sure, but given the amazing location that we have here and the ability to again collaborate with fellow organizations like the winery, and the Museum of course is an integral organization to collaborate with, and the outdoor possibilities, like the ability to be outside I think opens up some options for planning for the summer. So, yeah I think there will be something possible, but I don't want to say too much about what it'll be. We did try to do some online things last year, but recognize that that's kind of a separate skill set and itself to be able to host online events, that really takes a team of people who are very knowledgeable in videography and the online world, which is a little bit outside of I feel our board’s skill set because Full Circle is so much based on that in-person feel, people being together as a group. So we're really trying to think about ways to bring that in-person feeling again this summer, especially since it will be summer and you know our hope is that people will be able to be outside together enjoying live music.

TR: So ideally you need to recruit some new volunteers with technological skills to help out.

KL: That would be wonderful. If there's a plethora of volunteers in the area with technological skills, certainly the museum and Full Circle would be very keen to absorb your skills. But yeah, I think there is value in sharing, certainly arts and other forms of communication online, I don't think that’s going to go away whether or not the coronavirus goes away. There's, you know a real value in sharing that way, but like I said, it feels like a really tailored skill set to be able to do that in a way that's going to be really engaging so I think over the next year or so that could be an opportunity for growth for both organizations, Full Circle and the museum.

TR: It seems like the neighborhood we’re kind of going through this resurgence of having lots of young children. What would you like to see happening in Avondale to help accommodate all of the current youth that are now here.

KL: I would love to see a resurgence of the youth through the Loop Group..

TR: Avondale Youth, or Avondale Youth Loop Group?

KL: Loop Troop (laughter), whatever it was called, there's a poster inside of it in the hall and I would love to see that again. Part of the reason for moving to Avondale was obviously for our kids and to give them that sense of community, which I never grew up with, and yeah, there are lots of kids around and I would love to see more local events and opportunities for them to get around. There was an idea too that Glenn Parker suggested to me about starting a little theater group in the hall and having some local youth do an annual theater show, which would be really cool. I think whatever the interest of the youth probably should be driving what happens, but it would be really great to see some regular programming or even just get-togethers. You know, we are starting to collect rec supplies. So whether it's arts and crafts activities or physical activities, we've got soccer balls and frisbees and yoga mats. We're definitely starting to collect resources here at the Museum to make all of those things possible and recognize the importance of creating opportunities for youth to engage in that kind of stuff. So just getting the word out that the resources are available and hopefully we can see more things happen as they grow older. Well, I guess there are older ones, mine are quite young. I think it takes that old cliche saying it takes a village. I feel like we have the village and it's just a matter of continuing to host events and create energy around them.

TR: So like many of the people that live in this community, you're incredibly creative and during the pandemic I would say you were able to find a bit of a silver lining and you took the time to put together your first album, which you actually are going to release tomorrow. So you've been dropping a few songs lately, what does this album kind of represent to you?

KL: Mmm. Well, it's true. This is the first album that I've been working on. I've been writing songs since I was a teenager, but the timing just kind of came together in some ways due to the pandemic. It's always something I've had in the back of my mind, but yeah, definitely with the pandemic shutting everything down, it just allowed for time to spend focusing on music, but also kind of gave me the sense of urgency around wanting to actually put something out to share with people. It felt like a time when a lot of people, especially my creative friends were kind of turning towards their arts and their craft to kind of find a sense of calm and peace in the world, and that's definitely something that music has always given me, so yeah, it was kind of dual purpose in that it was selfishly giving me something to focus on and create to bring calm, but also I just had time to work on it as well. But what does it represent to me is really connection and coming together with like-minded people is ultimately what this album represents. It's called Flesh and Bone and the song that I wrote called Flesh and Bone, the title track, I wrote in May during the pandemic and it's about that idea of of wanting to be with people in the flesh (laughter) and the whole process of making an album really would not have been possible without a number of other people, primarily Jesse Griffith, who I know is a good friend of yours too, but for those of you who don't know he's an incredible musician in his own, right. He has countless projects under his belt, but currently Wandarian is the project that he's working under and he's just such an incredible inspiration to me. As soon as I mentioned to him that I wanted to make an album he was right on board immediately. He was like, all right, we're going to make it happen. And if it weren't for him saying that I really don't think it would have happened. So I'm so, so grateful to him and 2020 will always be about making this album together with him. And then he put me in touch with Charles Austin who did a lot of the recording for us, both at his studio in Halifax, Ocean Floor Recording and then he also came out to Avondale. So I just have so many incredible memories from that time, even though it was hard in a lot of ways, like you mentioned, silver lining, so many of my memories are positive because of the process of making this album and being with other people. Other friends like Tony Wood from Windsor, who owns the Spoke & Note, and a new friend now, Gina Burgess, who I would not have met without going through this process either. Charles put me in touch with Gina to play fiddle on the album and now she's become a dear friend of mine, too. So yeah, ultimately this album is really about connections with others and I will forever be grateful for the opportunity to have done this

TR: So now that the album is ready, actually you have copies.

KL: Here it is, iIt even features the Avondale wharf on the back.

TR: So what's the next step with this? I mean, it's a pandemic, so normally in previous times you would have probably gone on tour or something, but how do you deal with launching an album in this new version of the world?

KL: Well to be honest performing is never something I've done a whole lot of, to me music has always been very personal and performing is very new to me. So I didn't have a huge vision ahead of the pandemic of what releasing an album might look like, but now that it's here I feel like we are lucky that there are a few venues around that are hosting some music. So tomorrow, for example, I'm playing at the Wine Grunt in Windsor with Jesse and Gina, so that should be really fun. I've heard from a lot of friends that are going to be there. So hopefully it's just a celebration with some of the people that I love and beyond that the music is going to be available online, so I'm just really hoping that as many people who are interested will have a listen to it and to connect to it in whatever way they feel and it will be available for those who want to listen. I'll be looking for other places to play, probably not in the imminent future, but hopefully, yeah, we can get a whole band together. That's really what, again this album has shown me, is that I love playing with other people. I don't love performing by myself. I find it really intimidating, but I love playing with other people so hopefully when it makes sense to do that, they'll be opportunities to perform as a band.

TR: Since you’ve completed this album have you still been writing, is the second album halfway done already (laughter)?

KL: Maybe it is (laughter). I wouldn't say halfway done, but yeah, definitely this has been inspiring to encourage me to continue writing. Yeah, it's something that I don't think I'll ever stop doing and I do have a few more songs under my belt that we’ll be playing tomorrow at the Wine Grunt.

TR: Awesome!

KL: And yeah, I would love to make another album at some point in the future.

Raymond Parker, August 12th, 2020

Olwynn Hughes: What is your name?

Raymond Parker: My name is Raymond Parker.

OH: And what year were you born?

RP: 1955.

OH: Have you lived your whole life in Avondale?

RP: Pretty much except for 20 years when I went down the road to Hogtown, aka Toronto.

OH: Do you have family history in Avondale?

RP: Yep, back several generations on my father's side, the Parkers, and then not in Avondale but in Hants County up in... well, my mother, my mother was a Smiley from Smile-A-While Farm, part of which eventually became Smiley's Provincial Park.

OH: Do you have any favorite childhood memories from here?

RP: Favorite childhood memories. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what pops into my mind, which wasn't exactly childhood, more adolescence. And I see you've interviewed Carolyn Connors. So anyway, what popped into my mind was, as you know, her husband Albert passed away a while ago and somehow I thought of this, this is a bit of a story. But anyway, so Albert used to help out both my uncle Harold and my dad, they were both dairy farmers with various chores and especially in the haying season, and well actually, silaging season around here's in June. Albert used to drive my uncle's old W4 International tractor hauling the wagons full of silage back and forth from the fields to the elevator, which carried the silage up into our 40-foot high silo. That old tractor had terrible brakes and Albert really had to come onto them to have any effect. The elevator was a big, noisey, screechy thing. You had three or four guys on the ground dragging the silage out of the wagons onto the elevator with special silage forks, and one or two more up in the silo. Ha ha, as a kid it seemed Iike a big operation.

Meanwhile out in the field, my dad would be on the 1955 Ford tractor hauling the forage harvester, and I would be in the wagon behind pulling on a rope attached to the spout of the harvester to evenly distribute the silage as it blew out. This was a great job for a kid but I was absolutely terrified every time dad had to get off the tractor and lean over the rotating pickups to clear the harvester when it bunged up, which was often. It was a terrible racket, with everything on that machine shaking and vibrating at 1800 rpm, and designed to draw anything in front of it into its steel maw. From my vantage point in the wagon all I could see was his head and shoulders as he leaned over the machine. Crazy. That's one part of "the good old days" I'm super happy to see the end of.

Anyway one day, Paul Webb, who you've heard of, I'm sure, whose father ran the orchard for the Mounces at the time and they all lived in the bungalow on the Cemetery Road. Anyway, Paul and I were friends and still are, we were you know, we were I don't know how old we were 13 or 14, maybe younger. Anyway, one day, the silage wagon was empty and had the tractor attached to it and Paul says “let's jump in the wagon! We’ll get a ride to the top of the hill with Albert". So we jumped into the wagon, and the wagons have these tall sides on them because it's silage not baled hay, and so we jump in and Albert gets on the W4 and hauls the wagon up the steep hill behind the house at Roseway where my sister Eva Evans and her husband Alby live today. And so we get up to the top and Paul and I get out of the wagon and then Albert sees us and apparently he hadn't noticed that we'd gotten in the wagon down below. So anybody from olden times, will know that Albert had a real talent for colorful language. Oh man, we got it full-on, just full-on because you know, he's basically, what he was saying, underneath all the colors were, you know, if that hitch pin had come out, if something had happened and the wagon had gotten away going down that hill, you know, we could have been killed. So that actually never, never, it's never happened on our farm, but still, stuff does happen. So anyway, I always remember that as a story of my life, early adolescence, or something like that. There's your story.

OH: Did you attend school here?

RP: Yes, I went to the little white schoolhouse in Avondale for primary and grade 1. I don't know if grade primary was half a year, or it was the year before that was half a year. But anyway, so I went to grade 1 and that time it was, as I’m sure you know, it was a multi-class one room, well actually, two room schoolhouse. But anytime I was there they were only using one room. Yeah, but then by grade two they built Brooklyn District Elementary, so I got bussed there.

OH: Do you remember any Community Traditions from the area?

RP: What springs to mind is the community picnic. Which was, I don't know if it was the first of July, sometime in summer and I think it may have been just one day on Saturday or Sunday, which you may have heard about it from other people, but that was cool. You know, it was just, you know, three-legged races, one thing and another, and the whole Community got together.

What was probably way more significant in my life were various 4-H activities including the local 4-H field day. We had a really vibrant 4-H club, and they were all across the country, and Hants County had several 4-H clubs. Ours was called the Three-Cornered calf club. My dad was one of the leaders, and so was Marg Mosher. Of course, there were a lot more dairy farms around then, and my dad was a dairy farmer. So we had lots of calves and older cattle. Then, once a year, there would be a local 4-H field day, which would be held at, you know, hosted by a different farm each year, and that was cool.

The 4-H members, you know, they show off, we would show off our herds and be judged for who had the best animals. So you might, you might have a calf or you might have a whole "herd", which would be a calf and a one, two, and three year old. You lead them around the ring and you get them prettied up and mix up a kind of blue dye in water to dunk their tails in and make them extra white somehow. And the idea was you're supposed to be training your calf all through the season, so that when you go to do the show ring they will stand still, walk ahead, back up, step sideways etc., to show off their best characteristics, like fashion models on a runway. We were supposed to keep feeding and production records, and we had to practice judging cattle too. I wasn’t so diligent with all that, but through no effort of my own, because my dad was a, his thing was breeding the ideal purebreed Guernsey herd, I tended to clean up at the field day and then later at the Hants County Exhibition in September too. That was my dad's big, big part of the year, was to take his cattle and show them over the week of the exhibition. He took a lot of pride in his prize dairy herd.

The coolest thing about that 4-H field day, which I remember, was they always got the milk truck driver, who was Ivan Fletcher in those days, to bring a big milk can of cold chocolate milk, and then we would scoop out the milk into cups and they sold for five cents a cup and that was pretty special, as otherwise we never had chocolate milk, at least in our house. The chocolate milk was packed in "dry ice", which was another novelty.

Another thing we did at 4-H was public speaking, and the winners from our local club would go on to the annual county competition which was held in the gym at Hants West Rural High School. My brother Dennis and I would kind of cheat by plagiarizing stories from old Reader's Digest magazines, stories like "I am Joe's Liver". Ha ha. We also learned square dancing at 4-H, which might have helped spark the passion for social dancing that I developed later in life.

OH: What was your cow's name?

RP: Well, I couldn't tell you what their names were, there weren't, you know, they were always changing. But I can tell you that it definitely started with ‘R’ and probably had a Rose in it somewhere because my dad's farm was Roseway Farm, part of which I still live on today. And all of his, you know, he could trace the genealogy of his cattle back generations and generations and they were named accordingly, according to the parents, their grandparents on both sides, and so forth. So it might be Roseway's Rosalee Rebecca Regina, or some such. I didn't much keep track of the names myself--those cows all looked pretty much the same to me, ha ha.

That reminds me that another big farm related event was the annual grain harvest in the fall. Up until I was 10 or so, before the advent of the self propelled gain combines, it was a community affair where the local farmers would join together and go to a farm to run the thrashing machine and bring in the harvest, and then after a few days of that move on to do the next farm. The mostly women folk would have to prepare huge meals to feed all those workers at once.

OH: Did you hear stories growing up about relatives that you never met?

RP: Okay, so here's my chance to go. Dr. Raymond C. Parker, who was well known in medical research at the time, was my father's cousin, and may have been the inspiration for me being named Raymond. Dr. Parker was born here in Newport somewhere, went to Acadia, and afterwards he did a PhD at Yale. Eventually he went to work at Connaught Laboratories at the University of Toronto. He was instrumental in the development of the Salk Polio vaccine, in that with his team at Connaught, they developed a method of tissue culture to grow "Medium 199". This is a kind of synthetic medium that you could grow viruses in, including the polio virus. So that was critical because otherwise, you know apparently for the polio virus the only hosts were humans and monkeys. So being able to have a culture to experiment with to make vaccines was critical. I think Dr. Parker died in ‘74. He was three years older than my dad.

A funny story about that is, when I was a struggling graduate student in Toronto, one time I had this part time job, going around to people's homes and interviewing them. I think the client in this survey was TV Ontario. At that time TV Ontario had some kind of a little electronic box that people could put on top of their TV set and somehow interact through this box with the TV or with the station, and they wanted to know how people felt about the experience. Anyway, the interviews were already set up for me, so I would just call and go, basically sitting in people's living rooms having tea and chatting. Anyway, I’m at this one older couple's house somewhere in midtown and you know chit chatting, and “Oh Raymond Parker, any relation to Dr. Raymond C. Parker?” Well, so this couple had worked their entire career at Connaught Laboratories and they said Dr. Parker was a much loved fixture there. They were over the moon about my connection to him, and they said you must go down to Connaught and tell them who you are and they'll be tickled to, you know, introduce you and show you around, you know. Unfortunately I was preoccupied with other things at the time, and never followed up, obviously to my great chagrin now. Actually it's only in the last few weeks that my sister mentioned that, well she held back on the story about Dr. Parker so I could tell it, that I kind of started looking into it again and of course now, with Google, it's easy to look up, and I have to say I didn't appreciate what a terrible, terrible scourge polio was for decades and decades up until this vaccine became available, and the crucial role that Dr. Parker and the people at Connaught played in its development. The vaccine was released I think in April, 1955, just two months before I was born. So most anyone my age or younger can be thankful for the development of the vaccine. It took some years after that for the vaccine to get fully out into the community and then planet-wide. I was just reading that the World Health Organization instituted a global eradication program for polio in 1988, with some success.

I think not 100% success, but it's you know, we're dealing with this Covid-19 virus now and so it seems timely to give a nod to our public health organizations at all levels of government and non-governmental institutions too. Although public institutions have been getting a bad rap now for several decades, I hope that we can see today a bit more with Covid-19 how important they are, including those having to do with health, and that's my story about my relative, Dr. Raymond C. Parker. I can also say that having had treatment big time for acute lymphocytic leukemia, I'm a big fan of Canada's public health system anyway. It's saved my life at least twice, so far!

OH: Were you involved in starting the museum and, like, the Avon Spirit?

RP: No, not really. Not at all. I was still living in Toronto at the time, working, so I wasn't really involved.

OH: Did you ever sit on the board though?

RP: Nope. Part of the reason for that is, a few years after I came back from Toronto and I was, you know, making a go at developing an organic market vegetable business, so I was super busy.

OH: Was that your line of work?

RP: It was when I came back from Toronto and so yeah, I was preoccupied with my vegetable business and then, around 2005 I think, we heard that the gypsum company, United States Gypsum, or USG, was planning this massive expansion coming across on the Avondale side of the Ferry Road. I and another community member got an invitation to meet with the main environmental consultant for the mine at their offices in Dartmouth. I think they had the idea we could serve as community ambassadors for their plan, but when we walked out of the office, we looked and each other, and said, "Man, this can't happen," because we'd seen maps of their plan for a new open pit mine that would eventually be three kilometers long, a kilometer wide, and seventy meters deep, blasted out of the middle of our our peninsula, which itself is not so much bigger than that on this side of the Ferry Road. We said, we've got to get organized and for, you know, saving our watershed, so I got involved in that and that pretty much became my life for the next several years.

And of course the great thing about this community and on the peninsula as a whole, actually, groups of people right across the province really stepped up. We formed the Avon Peninsula Watershed Preservation Society, or APWPS, to preserve the watershed and tried to make sure that our interests and the voices of the creatures of the watershed were heard as well. This culminated in our submission to the province in November, 2009, with our comments on USG's environmental assessment report. I think the museum has a copy of our report, along with some maps and aerial photographs that we developed. So that's why I didn't get too involved in the museum, although many community members did serve on both the museum board and with APWPS at the same time.

By the way we'd certainly welcome new blood, so to speak, new energy into the watershed society. Our situation with the watershed is still a bit dicey as I understand that USG has been bought by a German company and we don't know what their plans are. On the other hand, this may provide an opportunity to expand our trail system, and even to repatriate or otherwise protect the watershed somehow, if the new owners are cooperative. There's lots of possibilities for what we can do, including lending support to the Friends of the Avon River and their efforts on behalf of the river regarding the twinning at the Windsor causeway. Check out "Save The Avon River" on FB, if you're not already subscribed. Many, many people in the community came on board the watershed society just at the right time in our dealings with the mine and the various levels of government, both locals and people that moved here from away. We're lucky that we have some pretty civic minded people here on the peninsula.

OH: So, what do you love about Avondale?

RP: Well, the people of course, and the spirit to work together to make good things happen, and the land. Here's a passage from the last page of our APWPS submission:

"Imagine a sacred place where three rivers meet to form a beautiful peninsula of rolling hills, mixed farming, forests, streams, and a heritage that is alive. In the wooded upland interior are rare and endangered orchids, and other rare flowers, trees and lichens. Caves and sinkholes, formed by the erosion of the underlying gypsum, provide shelter for many small animals, including hibernating bats who may come from as far as PEI and NB to overwinter. This "karst" landscape is spectacular and offers great opportunities for hiking, bike riding, cross-country skiing, and horseback riding, or just wandering around in the magical gypsum woods. Farms and communities in the surrounding lowlands thrive on the water that is stored, filtered and buffered by the upland watershed."

"Of course this place is real… the Avon Peninsula watershed has many features that are unrepresented in our protected area system, and it's our candidate for protection for present and future generations. It would be terrible to see it sacrificed for another open pit gypsum mine. Besides, we need our watershed, and we love this place."

And it's not just the rare and endangered plants and animals that we share the watershed with, but try to think of all the plants and animals that live together here, it's a long list, albeit not as long as it would have been only a few hundred years ago. So, the rolling countryside, the watershed, with its underlying karst geology and its creatures, the farmland near the roads, the river with its coming and going twice a day just continues to me to be just, just mind-boggling. And, so, the land, the people, certainly the heritage here. We know there must have been people here for thousands and thousands of years and why wouldn't they come here, at the place where the three rivers meet? And before that, dinosaurs, volcanoes…

OH: Final question. What do you hope to see in the future of Avondale?

RP: Well, I would like to see the continuation and evolution of our community spirit and our civic institutions like the museum and boat shed, the wharf committee and the community hall, the churches, the trail association, etc. And darn it I'd like to see fish passage and a free flow of water upriver at the causeway. I'd like to see us wake up to climate change and be an inspiration to other communities. I'd especially love to see a revitalized watershed society. Most of all I'd like to see a time when there is broad recognition that really, we're all swirling patterns of energy, momentarily sharing this radiant space all together. Beautiful.

Thanks for the interview Ollie, and I wish you all the best!

Zacchary Paul, August 21st, 2021

Tacha Reed
So first, I'd like to acknowledge that we are on unceded Mi'kmaw territory, and I'm very happy that you're here with us. This is very exciting. I guess first I'll just ask you to state your name and a little background of who you are and where you're from.

Zacc Paul
All right. So my name is Zachary Paul - Z-A-C-C-H-A-R-Y P-A-U-L, Membertou First Nation in Unama'kik, part of Mi'kma'ki. For several years, I just lived in Halifax, and I was a downhill skateboarder, still am, less seriously now, but for the past year it's kind of been a transition to a new focus, which is really nice. Prior to coming to the truckhouse I didn't really have any idea of indigenous issues really because I was off living a nice happy life, not worried about all that. Yeah.

Tacha Reed
So what was your first introduction to the Avon River? How did you become aware of -- is it something that you always knew existed or was it...

Zacc Paul
No, so this is an interesting story actually. It all started on July 1st, two years ago or last year. That's last year, yeah.

Tacha Reed
2020?

Zacc Paul
Yeah, so I decided that my original plan last year was to go on a tour, a skate tour across North America. I had a bunch of events lined up, then COVID happened. So I decided I still wanted to do something. So me and my friend we're going on this trip. We're going to go travel around the Maritimes, find all these hills, but on my first day of travel on July 1st, I was driving down the highway and I saw a porcupine on the side of the road, stopped and poor guy was still alive so I had to help him go over, and I picked up a bunch of his quills while I was there. And so we did our trip. And when I was in Annapolis Valley, I ran into Sandy. This is my second time meeting Sandy, and I was like, "Oh, hey, Sandy, what are you doing?". "Oh, I'm at the river", and I was like, "Okay, I'll come say hi someday; you'll see me there". So three weeks went by. My buddy cut his hands really bad, had to go back home, and my other friend came and took him, so I was alone. I remember I was in Red Clay Farms in North Economy -- or Upper Economy rather. I had a full tank and $3.87 when I left there. So I get to Truro, I'm low on cash, I remember these porcupine quills. I said, Hey, you know, if someone's gonna buy them, it's gonna be the trading post there. So I went there; they gave me 25 bucks. I took that 25 bucks and I put -- you know, filled up Christine, my car, got a cup of coffee. I was like, All right, man, I'm happy, haven't had a smoke, though, so let's see if we can go find some smokes. Went over to Sma‘knisk in Truro; they're a smoke shop. Walked in. "We've got no cartons, we got no packs, we've got no tins". And I was like, "All right, you got any singles?". "Yeah, 3 for 5". Sitting outside, right, I had my coffee, full tank, cigarette. Man, I was happy, right, sitting there, nowhere to go. No plans. And then this guy started talking to me. It turned out he was the owner of the shop. I asked him if he had any cash work, and he got me stripping tepee poles that evening. Gave me a hundred bucks and left. Like, that was -- that was wild. "Here's your money. See ya." So then when I was done there, I was driving south, no idea where I was going. It was nighttime. I saw that exit for Windsor. Boom. Sandy pops up in my head, and I went down there and showed up. That night I slept next to the fire, and, well, the next day I got the briefing, and, I mean, here we are over a year later.

Tacha Reed
So you've been there ever since?

Zacc Paul
Um hum.

Tacha Reed
Amazing. So the place that you're talking about is Treaty Truckhouse 2. Most people don't realize, locally, what the treaty truckhouse stands for and what you do there. Do you want to just explain that a little bit.

Zacc Paul
So truckhouses are -- they're a provision in the 1752 Treaty, basically says, "said Tribe of Indians shall have constructed at the river Shubenacadie or any other river of their resort, a truckhouse furnished therein with all the necessaries, and they may trade their fish, fur, feathers, fowl," all that kind of stuff, at the truckhouse. So that was back in the 1750s. That quickly fell out of use. It turned into the Certified Trader Network, which was essentially traders were licensed to do business with indigenous people, and they were given, you know, basically a list. Here's your trading items, and here's what they're worth. Beaver pelt would be worth, you know, so many pounds of flour, so many pounds of another meat, so on and so forth. Moving into more contemporary times, we have --they've basically retook that truckhouse idea and used its legal precedence because that's legal precedence to have a structure next to a river that's occupied by First Nations, whatever river it is. And the truckhouse is the legal reason that you can be there, one of the legal reasons they can't kick you out. And now it's kind of turned into a political tool. So when there's an issue -- so at first -- the first truckhouse we saw was Alton Gas on the Shubenacadie River. Second truckhouse was Truckhouse 2. Third truckhouse was down in Saunierville. It has since been removed. But -- and then there's talk of another one going up maybe for Owl's Head, but they're basically a very strong lease -- legal precedent to gather and to occupy a space, usually used when there's an issue, very important issue, that needs addressing. Salt caverns, blocked river, moderate livelihood, although they're changing the name to Treaty Fishing being threatened, and, you know, the sale of endangered areas and protected areas.

Tacha Reed
So when the -- I'm trying to think back to when, kind of, this all started. I believe it was Darren Porter doing his hunger strike next to the causeway gate that kind of brought attention to the Mi'kmaw community and brought people out, initially, and from my understanding, you've been kind of recording when they open the gate and recording fish kills. What have you seen taking place at the gate site over the last year since you've been there?

Zacc Paul
So originally, back before the ministerial order was in place, we saw the only operations of the gate really were a 6-minute opening and closing window in the middle of low and high tide. So this, this would basically be, your tide would be coming, in coming in, coming in, coming in, the gate's still closed. Then at a certain point it would open a little bit. Most of that time water would be going out because the head level would be higher on one side than the other. A very low velocity period for a very small window. So it was basically open for 12 minutes a day. And really, only believably passable for fish for about 4-6 per day. So that was what we originally saw. There was a lot -- the only time there would be an extended gate opening would be when there was excess water. And so we'd see, you know, a 6-12 hour opening of one gate and a lot of water coming out, which is not conducive to fish passage.

Tacha Reed
And was that more related to, like, spring flooding, like, letting the water through that was coming from the lakes?

Zacc Paul
Even in the fall, but yeah, anytime there was the former Lake Pesaquid was getting too high, they just drain it. And that was the only reason. You know a lot of people are trying to say that there was constant fish passage, there was consistent fish passage; there really wasn't. Then I think those operations continued through the fall into the winter. And then in the spring, the ministerial order got enacted. Almost immediately, we saw an extended gate opening, 45 minutes to an hour, to let the incoming tide in. They've since kind of rolled that back a little bit, but it's been kind of weird. They'll let, like, just above the minimum in during the day. 15, 20 minutes, something like that. But then in the evening, they'd let almost double that in. Just for numbers, often in the day we'll see the gates closing around 2.3, 2.4 meters above keel blocks. In the evening, we're seeing 4.2, 4.5, 4.8 when the gate's closed. So in the evening they're letting almost double the tide in when everyone's asleep, conveniently. That might be part of the idea to say "Oh look, it's not letting enough water in and if you guys -- look at all these problems, it's so low". When in reality they can let through a lot more. But as for the gate operation themselves, I think that's a pretty sufficient description of what we've seen. One of the best days we ever had there was the day those gates opened and we saw a river running out for the first time. Man, that was real nice. It was really nice.

Tacha Reed
So now that we have a new local government change, and we're now PC, what would you like to see happening over the next little while in relation to the causeway?

Zacc Paul
I'd like to see this obstinate stance and this this problem-oriented thinking -- a lot of people I've seen, it's just basically issues -- we've got this problem, we've got that problem, we've got this problem. There's no real solutions being put forward for anybody. What I'd like to see is the new government in the area focus on that. Stop trying to override the Fisheries Act; stop trying to override DFO; stop trying to override indigenous rights; and, you know, move forward. This is what we have to do. It's federally legislated that the gates have to be open, that fish passage has to be a priority. And we're kind of seeing the end of humans having more priority than our environment. It's a very strong idea of mine that humans are the only species that are able to, like, really, really sculpt our environment. We can bend, and we can move, and we can fix our own problems. Fish and our other brothers and sisters, the swimmers, the four legged, the crawlers, all of them, they can't. They've just got to kind of deal with what we do to them. So with species with the ability to modify the landscape as much as we are, I believe we have the ability to bend our society to cause the least amount of impact on our brothers and sisters who don't have that ability. And it's really our duty as -- well, we're the stewards of the lands, all of us. We all have to take care of this place to ensure that our society doesn't hurt others.

Tacha Reed
Is there anything else you'd like to share? Is there any advice for people in the community who maybe don't fully understand what's going on? Anywhere that I could recommend to direct people to educate themselves?

Zacc Paul
Yes, come on down to the truckhouse, Truckhouse Number 2 on the Avon River causeway. Our address is 1705 Highway 101. Please do not stop on the side of the highway. There is Exit 7, and there's Exit 6. Exit 7 is probably your easiest way to come in. If you're coming from the Halifax direction, then you would come in and go onto the off-ramp, and right before you get to the overpass, there's a flag on the left. Follow the road that flag is on. It will take you right to our encampment. If you're coming from the Valley way, you would go on the off-ramp, you would take a left, you would go over the overpass, and the flag would be on your right. Same thing, follow that road down. Exit 6 is -- you can go off of... this is the weird part. You've got to go off of the highway onto the off-ramp, and then halfway on the off-ramp, you've got to stop and take a left to go over the median and then go over the on-ramp, and then you'll get to the road that takes us to there. So if you want to try that one, you're more than welcome, but Exit 7's the easiest. And, you know, we're -- we've got people on site 24/7. We're pretty much there all the time. We're more than willing to have these conversations with anybody who's interested. Anybody with contradictory viewpoints -- like, that's the thing. We're a very non-judgmental space. We'll just sit and have a conversation with you. If we don't come to agreement, we don't come to an agreement. There's no animosity there. We'd like to be as open as possible to all the peoples so that we can have a well-rounded viewpoint and express a well-rounded viewpoint as well.

Tacha Reed
Thank you so much for sharing your story of what brought you to the Avon River, and I really hope that as a community we all come together and find solutions that work for future generations to keep this such a wonderful place to live.

Zacc Paul
Um hum

Tacha Reed
And that we stop destroying Mother Nature, and try to remedy some of the harm that we've caused in the past.

Zacc Paul
Right, because the only thing that's going to happen, man, is she's going to buck us off. Mother Nature don't care. The planet's been depopulated many times before, and it's come back. If we do enough damage to the Earth that we'll be unable to survive on it, she will continue. The human race at that point will be a thing of the past, and life will come back. So that's -- it's not, really, we're going to destroy our planet it's just going to destroy the planet for ourselves. The planet is a living being, and it's very powerful, it's very strong, very resilient. It's come back from way worse before, and it'll do it again. So we've really got to be concerned about the next generations of our people. All of our people. Because if we mess up, there's really no second chance for us. And that'll be a shame, you know, be a shame. We're capable of so much, and we're capable of seeing so much and achieving so much, but everyone's getting stuck up in the grind. Money's important, things are important, but your planet and the way you treat her isn't. Thankfully we're seeing a lot of people wake up, and, you know, start to realize that what we're doing is unsustainable. We've got to change things. But those people need to speak up more. You know, we need to come and gather and talk to your elected officials, talk to your government bodies, and lobby for change. Don't lay down and accept what they're doing when you know that it's wrong. Stand up and fight. Stand up and stand for what you believe in. And the more people we have doing that, then the harder it's going to be to ignore.

Tacha Reed
Thank you, Zacc.

Zacc Paul
Thank you, Tacha.

Tacha Reed, August 27th, 2020

Olwynn Hughes: Alright, first of all, what is your name?

Tacha Reed: Tacha Reed

OH: All right. What year were you born in?

TR: 1978

OH: So what is your connection with Avondale?

TR: I'm currently the facility manager, but my first introduction probably happened a year or so after I moved into the area. Bryan (Woodworth) and I often on weekends would go on road trips and after a year or two we kind of knew all the main routes, so we started taking random little off turns. So one day we decided to cross the bridge by the Tidal Bore Market and took a left there on Avondale Road, and instantly I was like - wow, where are we? The cows in the field and the orchards… and then all of a sudden you come upon Sherman Hines’ house and I remember going - where are we, what is this place? As we came around the corner and saw the sign for Avondale I was like - it even has the prettiest name! Then we got to a fork in the road. So we chose to go left because we saw the sign for the community orchard and when we got to the top of the hill I started telling Bryan to slow down as we were passing the Mounce mansions. As we came out at the bottom of the hill and saw the wharf we couldn't believe that this was so close to our home and we lived without it for so long. It became a place that we could go on our drives. A few years later, after I opened Flying Cloud Boutique, I had been advertising quite a bit in What's Going On!, which was a little community paper that was run by Heather Deveaux, so she approached me about taking over the gift shop in the museum.

At that point I had my little shop open for two years. It was (located) in a 1955 airstream (camper) that we converted into a shop on wheels and it sold art made locally. It (the gift shop) seemed like a pretty good fit for me, so I just brought all of my artists with me. I was here for probably about three weeks and I realized that the main reason that people were coming through the front door was they were interested in the cafe. At that point the cafe hadn’t been open for about three years from what I know, so I decided to come up with a really small, simple menu and I started running the cafe. Then the next year we applied for funding for a Creative Community Collaboration, and that's when the arts society became a partner and we started the art programming. We brought back Artisans in Action and started the Open Studio days, which we still have now. The ladies will be here tomorrow, on Thursday. We actually hosted an Artist in Residents that first year, which is something that we're hoping to do again in the future. So yeah, that was kind of how I came to be here.

OH - All right. So what kind of pulled you to wanting to be more involved with the work that's being done here.

TR - Personally, I've always... like my life goal, I’ve seen myself being involved in kind of like a community art center, a collaborative studio space. That's why I started Flying Cloud Boutique, because I knew it was going to take me a long time to meet all those people and form those relationships to do the big picture project, and what would be the easiest way to make those connections... so we’ll have some kind of a gift shop... like meet the artists first and then build the relationships. So it was actually the word gift shop that really drew me in like, oh, that's the magic word. Maybe you know, this place could someday be what I've envisioned, and eight years later it is evolving and getting closer and closer to that. So I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

OH - All right, so you deal a lot with the river and a lot of your art has to do with the river. Why do you think it's important for people to see artwork of the river?

TR - That's interesting. Part of the way that my work involves around the river... how do I explain this… I think for me the river’s always kind of played a part in my life because I was originally born in the valley, but then we moved to the city when I was little, so all my summers would be spent in Middleton, in that area, so I would go back and forth quite constantly throughout my childhood growing up. Passing Windsor and the causeway, I was always fascinated by the water there and how sometimes you would go by and it would just be completely sand and sometimes it would be full of water. Probably when I was a teenager was when I first started to notice the grass appearing on the salt marsh there and as soon as I saw the grass it kind of clicked in my head that oh, this is really starting to change and then I became very aware, so every time I drove by the river I paid attention to what was going on there. So to end up working here many years later, especially with the job being seasonal, I'm not here in the winter, so when I come back six months later, I really notice the difference. The differences that have taken place in the environment. Like one year I came back and the whole shoreline across the river had just collapsed into the ocean. I started to become very aware of the salt marshes surrounding the river here and the shifting sandbars and watching them season-by-season get larger and larger and it clicked in that if something wasn't done about the causeway, and changed to allow the water to flow through again, this was just going to keep on growing and eventually that salt marsh was going to extend all the way from Windsor to potentially, if given the time, all the way to Hantsport, and that to me was a little alarming. I mean, it's nature doing what nature does, making the most of a bad situation, a bad situation being the causeway completely blocking the natural flow of the river. I felt that if I could help get all my thoughts and feelings out in wool and fibers, especially doing the map series, showing the changes to the river every 10 years over the last century, I thought maybe this will help other people come to see it the same way I do. I think a lot of people just take it for granted and don't really pay attention to it. I think especially in Windsor, they don't have the same connection that we do out here because the causeway is literally a giant fortress wall and they don't see the tide changing every day. They just see the false lake, which you know upon first glance looks quite nice, but the reality is it doesn't really support life and it is man-made and in my opinion, and many others, it was a mistake. I'd love to see that corrected and I will continue making art about it until things are resolved or changed, which seems to be happening at the moment.

OH - So, is there something you want to investigate further here?

TR - I think when I first became a part of this society I found that although the museum was laid out really well, and they had a lot of information, it only represented a very, very small chapter in time, where it was primarily devoted to the wooden shipbuilding, which makes perfect sense because this was the site of a shipyard at one point in time, but the reality is many other cultures have also been here over the years. Before the English took (the land) away from the Acadians they had built a really great relationship with the Mi’kmaq, and the Mi’kmaq would come and camp here every year for hunting and fishing. So my goal for the last five or six years has been to try and better tell the stories of all the people that have lived here throughout time. Last year, with a great deal of work from Carolyn van Gurp, we launched Stewards of the Avon River, which showcases the Mi’kmaq, the Acadians, African Nova Scotians and the Planters. It felt so good to kind of see that come full circle and now our goals are to continue on with that and continue telling the stories. Also for me, my job has always been a bit of a treasure hunter. Not being from here I've had to kind of put together the pieces of the history of Avondale and I've gotten to know quite a few people from the community, but there's still so many people we don't know, so this project that we worked on this summer (Meet the People in our Neighbourhood), I think it’s really, really important and I feel like it could go on forever. We need to talk to everybody, especially the older generation. If we don't get their stories then that oral history will just disappear into the ether. I think it's really, really important that we gather that information while we can.

OH - Okay do you think that like some of the history has kind of already been lost? Do you think that we'll be able to, you know, discover more and more, or like what do you think is going to happen with this?

TR - What I’m finding right now, like I said, I think of it as a treasure hunt and with each conversation that you’ve had so far there's always at least one little nugget that is worth exploring further. So yes, there's a lot of information that's been lost and there's no way to gather that now, but I think as long as we can do our best going forward to collect these stories and dig deeper and continue on, I think there's a lot of detail that we can still find out.

OH - So, the board now has 15 members I believe, so is that the first time that it has had that many members, that you’ve been here?

TR - Since I’ve been involved it’s definitely the largest board, we usually sit at around eight, so it's going to be interesting to have that many people involved. I think everybody brings something a little different. There's a number of people that have returned and have been involved in the past. Maybe not necessarily on the board, but for instance Richard Armstrong, who was part of the boat building school, so I'm interested to talk to him because that's a big chunk of our history that I'm not so versed in. Also both he and Sarah Beanlands know a great deal of information on the Acadians and the local history relating to that. So I think between all the different people and skills it's going to be really great for us and allow us to grow faster than we could with just having a board of seven or eight, you know, many hands lighten the load.

OH - Why do you think there is more interest in being on the board and being involved, especially with people that have just moved here?

TR - I think part of it is we've just been so engaged with the community in the last few years that it's allowed people to kind of come out of the woodwork and feel comfortable contributing. It's because we have this nice cozy place that people can come either for a barbecue on Friday night, or the artists come and hang out Thursday afternoons, or the different festivals. It's just allowed us to connect with a lot more people than we were in the past when the cafe wasn't open and when we didn't have as much to offer. I feel like we have a lot more to offer and because of that we're constantly bringing more people in to enjoy our community.

OH - All right. So what do you hope to see in Avondale and the surrounding area and the future?

TR - I would love to see more entrepreneurs, which I think thanks to covid-19, is happening automatically. We just have no choice but to kind of make the most of it and think locally, and because of that there's going to be lots of new businesses popping up. I feel like a lot of the local businesses are really trying hard to work together right now. Like we all have the same goals and I want to see that continue on, just a giant web of connections between all of us, where we all scratch each other's back and try to help each other as much as we can.

OH - What do you see your contribution being in the future?

TR - I would like to pivot a bit more to being solely directed towards the arts and culture side. Now that we have Carolyn and her team helping out with the curative and the heritage side of things I want to really focus on my strengths. I wear many hats but my favorite is that of the artist and sometimes I get spread a little too thin, but now with so many other people helping I'd like to really focus on that area and hopefully other people will come in to fill in some of the gaps.

OH - What do I love about Avondale?

TR - What do I love about Avondale, just about everything! We considered moving here, but I realize part of my, or one of my favorite things about Avondale is actually the drive to Avondale every day. I feel like if I lived here we would be more likely to take everything for granted. So as a slight outsider I feel like I really, really appreciate every moment that I spend here and yeah, it's just an amazing place really. It's rare that you can experience throughout the day a tide coming in and creeping right up to the edge of the shore and then many hours later completely receding and seeing the ocean floor, like to me that's just a magical experience and I'm very grateful that I get to experience that on a regular basis.

Allen Shaw, January 18th, 2021

Allen Shaw: I’m Allen Shaw, I’m one of the directors at the museum here, and my supposed claim to fame is I’m a direct descendant of Arnold Shaw that was listed in the proclamation of 1758. The history shows that he was here for the census of 1759, which I assume he showed up in 1758, which is the date of this proclamation. This (proclamation) shows my four-father, Arnold Shaw, and his brothers, John Shaw and my oral history tells me that John Shaw returned to Little Compton, Rhode Island at some point in time. There was another brother who also came up, Peter Shaw. He was a land grantee In Falmouth, and my great aunt told me that the Shaws, the “brick” Shaws, were direct descendants of that Peter Shaw. Now there's an Edgar Church in the same grant, he was married to a Grace Shaw, which would be a sister of my forefathers, and there was a Jon Wood over here, who is married to Rebecca Shaw. So actually there were five of them that came up at the same time. My assumption is they were here by 1760. This book gives you a list of all the people here in 1755 when the Acadians were expelled, but also lists the Acadians that returned to help work on the dyke and that was sometime in the 1760s. So, I'm supposedly the last farmer that's working the original grant of 1760. The Moshers and the Knowles’ were here at the same time. But if you look at the map of the land grant that is in this book (Newport, Nova Scotia, a Rhode Island Township
Founded 1760, John Victor Duncanson), they currently farm different farms than were done in 1760. Now, my niece, Sarah Beanlands, is also on the board of directors, and myself being more senior than many I was able to identify to her where all of the Acadian foundations were on the original Shaw farm, because they were not pushed in until in the 1960s. So she did excavations there and she was able to prove that the buildings, contrary to history, the houses were not burned, but the New England Planters when they came up they also inhabited the same buildings. So that's part of my family's oral history. I’m the 7th generation here. So I guess I'm connected to this museum in a lot of ways and when reading this book, I actually found out that one of my ancestors was a druggist in Windsor and he was a shareholder of five or six of the ships that were built here in Newport Landing.

Tacha Reed: Oh, wow!

AS: So anyway, that's my story.

TR: So who is your farm going to pass on to, the next generation of Shaws?

AS: Well, unfortunately my three children don't seem to be interested in farming, so that's the dilemma that I'm faced with, you know so, seven generations is not a record. I know people down in Horton who are already in the ninth generation to be on the same land grant. So it's not totally unique, but it's unusual, so I haven't got that all figured yet, I still have time.

TR: You have time. So you somehow along the way ended up with the waiting room for the Rotundus. How did that end up in your possession?

AS: Actually the way the waiting room for the Rotundus ended up in my procession was I bought the Vaughnie (SP?) and Emily Withrow property just up the road here, 319 Belmont Road, and Vaughnie was a very good friend of my father and I spent a lot of time down there as a child and when they passed on they left word to their descendants that if the farm was to be ever sold that I should have first offer on it. And they also told me that grainery that's on the barn was actually the waiting room for the Rotundus and there's carvings in there and it's the right period and the community history is that that is the waiting room of the Rotundus. Now how it got moved up there, I do not know, but I can remember as a child coming down here to the Avondale wharf and that waiting room was still there on the wharf in 1960 something, so it would have been moved up in the 1960s and it was made into a grainery. Now the roof looks like it's been modified, but the base of it is definitely a period of what the Rotundus would have been doing.

TR: Do you think that the building should be preserved and turned into something that people could visit, or what do you see in the future for the waiting room?

AS: I would like to see that Rotundus building return here. At the moment there's no suitable place for it, but if there is I would definitely like to see it returned here where people could actually visit it, because I mean, it's just a building that has historical significance and it would be most valued I believe if it was placed here, close to this Museum. So I'm hoping someday that we get this all sorted out and we find a location suitable for the Rotundus waiting room and maybe we can restore it to, as it looked in the pictures. So anyway, that's a work in progress.

TR: Did you have anything else you wanted to say?

AS: No, that’s my history. So anyway, I'm enjoying my time on the directorship here at the Museum and it's good to see such a vibrant society and we hope for many good years going ahead.

TR:Awesome, thank you Allen.

Carolyn vanGurp, July 16th, 2020

Olwynn Hughes: So, what is your name?

Carolyn vanGurp: I'm Carolyn vanGurp.

OH: What year were you born?

CV: I was born in 1956.

OH: What is your current position at the museum?

CV: I'm on the board of directors and I'm also the volunteer curator.

OH: When did you first hear the museum and Avondale?

CV: I first heard of the museum and Avondale around 2016, and it was when I was working on a history project with the group of people in Scotch Village, and looking for sources of documentation on history of this area, and somebody suggested that I get in touch with the museum here.

OH: So did that spark your interest here?

CV: Absolutely. I had never heard of Avondale. I had never been here even though it was so close to where I had been in Scotch Village. When I first came I met with the board of directors at the time to talk a little bit about the history project and to see if we could collaborate, and then I started spending quite a bit of time in the archives going through
the old documents and that was the start.

OH: Are there any specific areas of interest for you?

CV: Yeah, I'm really interested in how different groups of people interacted over time because we tend to hear mostly the history in this area of the most recent people to come here, the Planters. I was really interested in learning more about the Mi’kmaq, the Acadians, and the African Nova Scotians, as well as the environmental issues and the interaction between people and the environment, and what we can learn from people's historical interaction to address current problems.

OH: Is there something quite specific that you want to investigate further here?

CV: Both of those areas. I want to keep on working and sharing information. Learn about all four groups because I find a lot of people are not really aware of the history of the four main groups of people who lived in this area. So I'm interested in exploring that and I'm really interested in looking at what this area can offer the broader community on climate change avoidance and mitigation.

OH: Do you think a lot of it ties into the current stuff that's happening?

CV: Absolutely because, yeah, because this area and the reason why people settled here throughout the thousands of years really is because of the very unique interaction between the water and the land and so I think in particular, people have dealt with that in the past, which has a lot to teach us about the future. For example in many parts of the world people are dealing with coastal flooding and coastal problems, and that's an issue here. That's something that we can share with others, hopefully.

OH: What are your hopes for the future?

CV: Yeah. They both intersect really. I really hope that we can collectively learn from the people who came before us to really learn what worked, how people work together, and then use those learnings to create a better world, really which sounds like a lofty ideal, but I think it's possible and I think that it's necessary if we want to survive on this planet. So personally I have that dream and that hope. We can work together to learn from the past to make the world a better place.

OH: What do you think your contribution to the community will be in the future?

CV: I will continue to research using the documents that are here in the museum. I've been working on connecting descendants from all four groups of people who've lived here so that we can learn from each other and learn from our collective past and I hope to continue that.

OH: Do you find that your experience as a teacher helps you as curator?

CV: Yeah, it does for sure because a big focus of museums is really playing a teaching role, and so reflecting on what worked and what didn't work as a teacher helps me develop plans for exhibits and outreach and programming here at the museum. Teaching is very much learning also as a teacher. We teach but we learn from our students and I've learned so much from the community here and also from the visitors. So for me a really important moment was being in this museum with direct descendants of early people here, for instance descendants of the Nocoot or the Knockwood people, and to hear the stories of how that family lived here, and somewhat what happened after they left was an important teaching moment for me because I hope I can take what I learned from others and somehow craft that into lessons for others.

OH: What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment here?

CV: Oh my goodness. I can't take credit for anything at all. I walk on the, you know, the shoulders of all those who have come before here in the museum and all those who are here and all in the community that have worked so hard to make this such an amazing provincially recognized Museum, so I'd say, you know being able to build on that great work and work with others especially to bring to light some of the history of the groups that have traditionally not been really dealt with in our history in the problems as a whole.

OH: What do you love about Avondale?

CV: Oh my goodness. What don't I love, it's a magical place. It is beautiful. It has such a rich history. It has the strongest sense of community and collaboration among the people who live here that I've experienced and I've lived in a lot of communities, small communities around the world. The ability to grow food and to sit on the patio of the museum and watch the tide come in and out. That's probably my favorite thing. Yeah, totally. I see the mixing of the families who've been here for hundreds of years with the newcomers and seeing how those groups of people work together seamlessly, again learning from the past, from the rich historical past of this area to address current problems, like mining, flooding, all the issues that the community faces here.

OH: Why did you personally feel drawn and moved out here?

CV: I'd say for all the same reasons that I love Avondale, the outstanding beauty, the water, and the land. There's a strong sense of community here. The very rich history and the ability to contribute in some ways through the museum.

OH: Have you learned anything that surprised you from working here?

CV: Well, my whole notion of what a museum is has changed. I always thought the purpose of the museum was to store old things and to have them on display, and by working here in the museum and also with the museum community at large, I realized the role of a museum is so much more. It's really about community and addressing current issues, certainly. Preserving the history but preserving it for a purpose.

OH: Did you come to what was it? Jam night at the museum?

CV: Yes, when Rob was doing music here on Fridays.

OH: I noticed you kind of just wandered back to the back deck, what brought you?

CV: The fact that I heard there was food! It was also just wanting to see what the community was like. So I came for the music and I stayed for the sense of community.

OH: What do you hope that people in doing these interviews will get from them?

CV: I hope that people get a sense of what an amazing, rich, and vibrant community Avondale is. I'm sure people who live here know that already, but it's good to have that validated sometimes by people who don't live here full-time or don't have a long family history here. And I hope it sparks an interest in people in the broader community in getting involved in the museum and realizing that it is open to everybody and that you can follow any interest you have at the museum really, and find ways to find your own Niche and find a way that you can contribute.

OH: Do you think that there needs to be more interest in history and learning about your past?

CV: I think there are always those who don't learn their history. So they say those who don't learn their history are destined to repeat it and there is a lot that we have to learn from history. So to make our own lives easier in the future, I think it's really important that we do learn our history and in this time, especially as issues around colonization and race are becoming just generally more broadly discussed. There's so much to learn here to contribute to that learning in that conversation and that change. These conversations are happening around the world and in all institutions. I think it will be changing in some ways as any institution that's responsive will change for the better.

Carolyn VanGurp currently sits on the board for the Avon River Heritage Society and is the volunteer curator for their museum. She splits her time between Halifax and Avondale, partially moving to Avondale in 2018. She plays an active role in unearthing information about the Acadians, Mi’kmaq and the African Nova Scotians that have occupied the area.

Abraham Zebian, August 24th, 2020

Olwynn Hughes - First of all, congratulations on becoming mayor! First question, just for people that don't know, what's your name?

Abraham Zebian - Abraham Zebian

OH - When were you born?

AZ - 1979.

OH - How did Avondale come on to your radar?

AZ - Well, naturally living here my whole life, it's always been a favorite spot of mine, when you're driving through, it’s just calming. It has that feel to it and when you get down here to Newport Landing, and you get to the wharf and the lighthouse, it’s a favorite of my kids, so we're down here almost every weekend. They roam and they play and we throw rocks into the Avon (river) there, and it's just a nice place.

OH - Have you always been active in the community?

AZ - Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, whole life.

OH - Well, like did your family influence your interest in politics?

AZ - We have no politicians in my family or immediate family. When my father arrived here in Canada, he immigrated in 1969, so immediately coming to Canada he fell in love with the community. He always instilled in us to give back to your community because it gives to you. He was a business owner and we were supported by people supporting our shop. So always give back, this message was his teaching, do everything you can within your community and every chance you have to help or volunteer, that should be your main focus and we've stuck to that principle ever since.

OH - What are your hopes for the future of this area?

AZ - I wish to see this as an area of thriving tourist attraction. A place where when people say Atlantic Canada they mention West Hants Regional. You kind of come down the corridor through Avondale, which would be a main connector coming through, because honestly people don't realize what amazing sites, attractions, shops, and farms we have here. We were just talking about it outside, meeting with Kathy from my Recreation Department, of what's here and the people. It's about us letting it be known to the world that we are here and this is what there is here. And I'd love to see that as part of our future, just a bustling artsy scene, tourists, and a fantastic place to live, work, and visit.… you know, people from all over just coming and sharing and doing that and just growing. The more we can create the more we can grow, the more our children want to live and work and play here and then they contribute as they get older and they just keep feeding off and off and off.

OH - What do you think this area has to offer?

AZ - Recreational wise or prosperity and economics?

OH - Anything.

AZ - Honestly we can touch on every aspect of life. Me, I focus on the quality of life. You can make a fantastic living at anything that you love doing. So if you want to be an entrepreneur our area offers that chance, actually offers even a better chance than most areas because we have that type of atmosphere here. If you want to live and travel out we are strategically located. I call it a donut hole, through the donut like it's minutes away to either the city core for the city center of HRM or the valley. We're just strategically positioned in every aspect that we need to take that opportunity in the world and thrive on that.

OH - So what do you think attracts people here, like young families?

AZ - Yeah, I speak to a lot of young families on a daily basis, either through my business or the municipality, they love the atmosphere. I know a young guy, he just moved right up the road from here. They moved in because they fell in love with the community. They met a few people. They took a drive down. They’d been looking for about three or four years. They literally, like I said, the second you drive into Avondale you get that sense of, it's like a shroud coming over you, and you just you fall in love immediately here and it's intoxicating, so it brings people.

OH - What about your childhood did you love about this place?

AZ - With my childhood? There was a lot, like I said growing up I have a lot of memories here, just driving through this area here. It's just a nice family picnic area. You can sit, you can play, you can have memories of your dad or your mom tickling you and playing horse. I'm just out here right now playing with my kids. We're playing wrestling, you know, and my daughter's under the play structure there (playing) rock ice cream. So, you know, it's just the little things. You go down, you play on the mud, you jump in a little boat, you throw some rocks, you skip some rocks. It's the simple things in life, you know, it's just the natural things, that's what you create your memories from and it's literally, it's all right here.

OH - What has changed since you were a child?

AZ - In regards to?

OH - The area, the environment, the people?

AZ - The people are fantastic as the years go by the people get better and better and better, the history stays here. So with the older generation you seem to have that history being passed down from old to young and it seems to be instilled in people. I love that aspect about this area.

Environment wise, my God. I was just talking to Tacha over here now, you look at the measuring stick that she's doing now that shows you the (1 in ) 20-year event, (1 in ) 50 year event and the (height of the) Saxby Gale from 1869. It's amazing how much the environment is changing and the water levels. Just seeing where it was to where it is today and where it will be 30 and 40 years from now, it's Interesting, but at the same point you realize that this is real and we have to pay attention because in the future it's going to look different and if we don't take advantage now and be progressive and look for solutions we may be in trouble later on, but so far so good.

OH - What do you think we can learn from the history of this place?

AZ - Well, you learn where you came from, you learn where things started and the meaning of what is here. Again with the older generation, they'll tell you where the lighthouse came from or what this looked like back in back in 1970, for example, or the history of the Avon. Knowing the decisions that were made previous to where we are today. It can shape your thinking of the processes before and the processes now and what the process should be in the future.

OH - Final question, what do you love about Avondale?

AZ - Like I said, I love the people. I love the aura of the area. I love the natural infrastructure. The mature greenery. It's the atmosphere and everything related to it. One of my favorite TV shows growing up was Cheers and they say the Cheers bar is like any other bar. Well, no. No, it wasn't like any other, it was the atmosphere the second you walked in, you had Norm and you had Cliff and you had these people, like you have here. You have Tacha, Devin, Dawson. The unique people that make you want to come back. You have the pier, you have the lighthouse, you have the museum here. It's these things that make you realize this is a community. People are tight here and actually care about each other, but it's the atmosphere, that's number one hands down.