Shane Haven

Digby, Nova Scotia is more than scallops

Maritime Magic Created Long Ago

Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said of the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit. — Matthew Arnold (1822-88)

For the lack of human beings, there would be no history, and, for that matter, no one to have captured its nuances, mapped our geography, taken notes, shot pictures or drawn them; we would not possess a sense of being. History is a uniquely human contraption, and in southwest Nova Scotia, it is comprised of unique humans. A historical snapshot of Digby serves as microcosmic proof.

In his new historical epic, Champlain’s Dream, Professor David Hackett Fischer identifies the explorer who settled Port Royal as “the visionary adventurer who made a new world in Canada”. Commenting on Dr. Hackett Fischer’s tome, author and historian David Vaugeois writes of Champlain, “Envisioning a world in which different peoples and races could live and mix together, his actions prefigured a new model for society.”

Indeed, according to Robert Hersey, Program Coordinator for the Municipality of Digby, the man also responsible for heritage properties, “Four cultures flourished here: Acadians, Mi’kmaq, United Empire Loyalists and Black Loyalists. Although the last full-blood Mi’kmaq died in around 1906 in Pictou, and while that’s unfortunate, it demonstrates the successful intermingling of these four factions.” Champlain, the fantast; his vision lives on.

Digby’s very existence owes much to the flames that fanned the American Revolution, more so, to the people who opposed it, the Loyalists. Their individual and collective courage, commitment to their beliefs and unwavering dedication to the monarchy saw them through trials that bred stalwarts, ambitious and determined, undeterred by climate or circumstance. These were and are the people that lived the history and created the heritage that turned a village called Conway into a municipality known around the world for its hardy, friendly people, and its delectable scallops!

“James Moody,” says Robert Hersey, “was a seventeenth-century James Bond.” A New Jersey Loyalist, born in 1744, Moody was captured and beaten in 1780, then escaping to New York City; he was engaged in the clandestine world of intercepting rebel correspondence (hence the antique 007 image), eventually making his way to Sissiboo (now Weymouth). After working his farm, and then representing Annapolis County in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly from 1793 to 1806, Moody worked as a builder of ships and mills, dying in Sissiboo in 1809.

Moody’s bravery may have been typical of the fearless men of his time, but his actions were far-reaching. Integral to the wave of United Empire Loyalists that landed in Conway in 1783, was its future namesake, Admiral Robert Digby. Born in the United Kingdom in 1732, he became a sea captain in the Royal Navy at the fairly young age of 23, and was soon given command of the Americas Station. When the Revolution broke out, Digby (who would eventually be knighted) was instrumental in organizing the evacuation of 1,500 Loyalists. Although Digby retired to his native England, dying there at the age of 83, the town (and ultimately, municipality) was renamed in his honour in 1787.

Digby’s legacy was more than just the safe conveyance of Loyalists, a fine museum and the moniker of a town. While in Digby, he set his hand to establishing markers that thrive today. One of the most beautiful and enduring is Trinity Anglican Church. Founded in 1785, and still in regular use as a church, it was designated a National Historic Site in 1990, its deeply- toned silver bell still calling parishioners to worship.

The original small church, financed in part by a grant from Digby himself, was replaced by the current Gothic Revival structure in 1878, designed by New England architect Stephen C. Earle. Local ship-builder M.L. Oliver was charged with the interior, and its ceiling, wainscoting and pews are a testament to his prowess, a legacy in wood. “Contrary to popular belief, the ceiling of the interior is not meant to be an upturned ship,” emphasizes Doreen Evenden, a tour guide on Digby’s graveyard walks, who is currently writing the definitive history of the church.

Some of the tombstones in Trinity’s cemetery contain the graves of the original Loyalists who landed with Admiral Digby; church wardens are also buried there. “The first clergyman, Roger Viets, was sent to Trinity as a missionary from an organization based in London, England,” Doreen Evenden notes, adding, “The rector Viets was a Loyalist, and also a very humble man; we know he is buried in the cemetery at Trinity, but he declined to have a headstone erected.”

Digby has from its days as Conway been a fishing centre. The town now has about 2,300 residents, the district about 9,000. With the softwood all but cut out, Digby’s core resource — fish — remains its commercial lifeline. Geography has dictated Digby’s path, one reason that Loyalists came and stayed, but it has also played a hand in the sorrows that the people of this area have endured, wrought of the sea and its indiscriminate theft of lives.

A monument at Point Prim speaks to three men taken by the sinking of the government steamship, S.S. Princess Louise on December 3, 1883: Michael Dadey, 1st officer; M. McKenzie, seaman; and Alfred Hiltz, cook. Three names carved in stone. A chiseled, one-dimensional reminder of the people who populated, served and grew Digby.

The sea also yields its mysteries, flotsam and jetsam coughed up onto beaches at the whim of tides. One of Digby’s most famous immigrants arrived near Sandy Cove beach in October 1854. Much has been written, in books and stage plays, about “Jerome”, but it is not so much the peculiarity of his washing up on shore with a can of fresh water and a nice tin of biscuits, dressed in fine linen, and missing his legs below the knees that makes Jerome a Digby stalwart. Although he never spoke or read in the 58 years after he washed ashore, it is not him that reflects the depth of character of the people of Digby then as now. Locals in Sandy Cove cared for him, and even though government financial assistance was provided, these ancestors of the Loyalists who saw to his well-being, and the Acadians among whom he eventually died, had the choice; they chose to look after Jerome, as their forebears chose hardships for the betterment of their progeny.

Ultimately, the soul of the people that create a place in the past are what bode the nature of its future. Digby’s soul renders its past in the faces and hearts of its people today. The pride of Digby’s recent heritage has been uniquely assembled in a project known as The Elder Transcripts, honouring the ageless tradition of the passage of stories down through the generations, and meshing the pride of the past with the people that carve tomorrows. Not only does this accomplish a sense of living history, but it mirrors how history has been delivered over the centuries in communities of close-knit yet diverse people, like Digby.

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