Nova Scotia (26 page)

   
In May of 1790, the Sierra Leone Company was granted the
rights to set up a government in territory in West Africa. They
needed settlers and John Clarkson, the company’s recruitment
officer, encouraged Black Nova Scotians to emigrate yet
again.

   
Thomas Peters was one of those disgruntled Nova Scotian
Blacks. He had been a slave in North Carolina and later a Loyalist
soldier. In Nova Scotia, he felt cheated out of the freedom and
land he was looking for. Peters persuaded many of those around him
in Shelburne and Birchtown that a better life could be had away
from Nova Scotia. In January of 1792, about 1,200 Blacks left Nova
Scotia for Africa. In short order, almost a third of the Black
population of Nova Scotia left to start a new life and a new
country on the continent of their ancestors.

   
Still other Black Loyalists remained in Nova Scotia and more
would arrive during the War of 1812. However, slavery continued in
Nova Scotia. Loyalists with slaves tried to hold onto what they saw
as their rights of ownership, while their disenfranchised
“property” began to take their case for freedom to Nova Scotian
courts. It wasn’t until the abolition of slavery within the British
Empire in 1833 that the buying, selling and ownershipf of slaves
was completely eradicated here. While Nova Scotians sometimes speak
proudly of having granted freedom to American slaves, it was a
freedom that came grudgingly from those owners and merchants in
human misery.

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

A Prince for Nova Scotia

Halifax hit the bottom in its
postwar slump around 1788 and after that things began to look up.
Prince William, son of King George III, arrived from England with
an entourage of fashionable folk and this gave Haligonians an
enhanced self-image. William was rich, of course, but he was also
used to living a life on the wild side, which allowed him to feel
right at home in Halifax, where no one would criticize him for
being noticeably drunk a good deal of the time.

   
If the French Revolution had any effect at all on Halifax, it
was not in the realm of politics but of fashion. Well-to-do Nova
Scotian women shed their hoop skirts, stays, laces and bustles for
sexier garb involving low-cut bodices and a reduced arsenal of
underclothing. Upper-class men had taken to tight breeches, layered
waistcoats, oversized collars, tails, short hair and oversized
hats.

   
The lower classes still wore the same old stuff. Women were
attired in bulky, cumbersome dresses and covered their heads with
mob caps, while the men of the house wore rustic breeches, puffy
shirts of coarse cloth and three-cornered hats.

   
Governor Parr died and, in 1792, John Wentworth filled his
shoes. Thomas Raddall suggests that Wentworth got his job in return
for a favour. Mrs. Frances Wentworth had been sleeping with naughty
Prince William and her husband, John, had been good enough to look
the other way. It was a scandal that rocked the sensibilities of
some respectable people in Halifax but life went on as
usual.

   
Governor Wentworth landed his job just as tensions were
mounting again with the French, which meant that Halifax would
return to full military alert as a naval base. The fleet returned
and press gangs went back to the streets and taverns to “enlist”
the men needed to fulfil the bloody demands of war. The military
man at the top was General Ogilvie, who would take more than his
fair share of glory for his expedition against the tiny colony of
St. Pierre and Miquelon off the Newfoundland coast. There the
French governor, Danseville, surrendered without putting up a fight
and he, his staff and a couple of hundred fishermen were hauled off
to Hnalifax as prisoners. Ogilvie fancied the bell from the church
in St. Pierre and that too was hauled to Halifax for St. Peter’s
Church. The French prisoners were scattered around Nova Scotia,
while Governor Danseville was eventually paroled to live in a fancy
estate outside of Dartmouth, thanks to a generous allowance from
the British government. Danseville must have been well-liked by the
enemy. Many of the St. Pierre fishermen stayed on in Nova Scotia as
well, some assimilated into Acadian communities.

Another Prince with a Grand
Plan

In the spring of 1794, another
prince, Edward, had found his way to Halifax after a number of
family squabbles with his father, King George III. Halifax was
looking like a pretty good place to fob off troublesome members of
the royal family. Edward was unlike his brother William in many
ways. He wasn’t quite as lecherous or raucous and he consumed less
alcohol. But he liked to play military games and push people
around. Both pompous and vicious at times, he abused the authority
accorded by his royal rank. King George had bestowed upon his
troublesome son the title of Commander-in-Chief of Nova
Scotia.

   
Edward was certain the French would one day assault Halifax
and try to take it over, so he wanted to see the town fortified.
Suddenly there was scads of money to be spent on Halifax. Edward
had a French “mistress,” which of course seems somewhat odd, given
his paranoia about French invasions and the fact he was the
military leader intending to do battle with the French. Alphonse
Thérèse Bernardine Julie de Montgenet de Saint Laurent (Madame St.
Laurent, for short) lived with Edward as a kind of common-law wife,
and if anyone pondered the indelicacy of this, no comment was made
to Edward.

   
Fortunately for Halifax, Edward wanted to see the town
develop into a much grander place. He oversaw the building of
roads, public buildings, the great fort of the Citadel and all
manner of military structures. He had a fancy for mechanical toys,
which led to the building of the clock tower on Citadel Hill,
completed in 1803, three years after his departure. For his own
comfort, he built a big house facing the Commons for Madame St.
Laurent and himself. He also called for the reconstruction of the
dingy barracks a stone’s throw from his new
estate.

   
If you were to visit the Citadel today, you might wonder how
the fort fits so snugly on the top of this great drumlin deposited
eons ago by the glaciers. Well, Edward had his workers excavate the
top of the hill by some fifteen feet. As you might imagine, it was
no mean feat to simply give a brush cut to the top of a small
mountain. After this extraordinary labour, the new fort was built
with massively reinforced bunkers against the worst possible
attacks.

The Maroons from Jamaica

One
of the factors that made the Citadel construction possible was the
arrival of a group known as the “Maroons,” a corruption of the
Spanish word
cimaroon
, which means
wild or untamed. The Maroons (also known as the Trelawny Maroons)
were from Jamaica and had been slaves for the Spanish up to the
time the British took over in 1655. Upon the departure of the
Spanish, the Maroons were given weapons to continue harassing the
British even after the exodus of their former masters. This was
probably more a move of revenge toward the English rather than
goodwill toward the Maroons.

   
Armed and dangerous, the feisty Maroon population proved to
be excellent guerrilla warriors and the British failed to force
them back into the cruel harness of slavery. A peace treaty signed
in 1739 would allow the Brit ish and Maroons to co-exist on the
island, but the Maroons, in the bargain, agreed to help capture
runaway slaves of the British and also to fight alongside the
British if the island was ever invaded. In return, the Maroons were
“given” land to live on as well as “Freedom and
Liberty.”

   
The Maroons were short-changed on the land deal. There was
not enough of it to grow sufficient food. They had many complaints
against the plantation owners and the grievances were not settled
by the British, so the Maroons took up arms again in 1795-96, only
to be tracked down by British dogs and persecuted even further. The
British, eager to preserve their slave economy here, feared that
co-existing free Blacks among slaves was dangerous, so they came up
with a plan to get rid of the Maroons.

   
Over the years, Halifax had gained a reputation
as a place to send people who were unwanted by the authorities so
it seemed like a good destination for the Maroons. Through various
persuasive techniques, the British actually succeeded in sending
the Maroons off to Nova Scotia with the promise they could live
here as free people. Late in July of 1796, the
Dover
,
the
Mary
and the
Ann
arrived with 568
Maroons and a British commissioner – a general named Quarrell – and
his assistant, Ochterloney.

   
Halifax authorities weren’t prepared for this. They made
Quarrell keep his ships four miles off shore and refused them
permission to dock lest the uncivilized Maroons create havoc in
their supposedly well-cmannered little city. Quarrell wrote a
letter to the government convincing them that the Maroons had
displayed excellent manners while aboard ship and that they were
willing to help build Prince Edward’s Citadel if they could come
ashore.

   
A deal was struck and even the Maroons felt somewhat
flattered by being able to help build a fortress for a prince,
although clearly they had been manipulated back into a position not
far removed from slavery. They moved into barracks and tents and
were paid regular soldiers’ wages. By September they were asked to
move to Preston, where Governor Wentworth found them to be a
convenient labour pool for his summer home there. The Maroons were
promised clothing, shelter, food and even a judiciary system for
resolving grievances and punishing crimes. Their first winter in
Preston, however, was said to be one of the worst in Nova Scotia’s
history. There were shortages of everything and the Maroons were
not happy with their new home. They viewed themselves as an
independent nation with the right to dictate their own future. One
thing became clear to these people who had grown up in a tropical
climate: they wanted to move to some place warmer, like India or
the Cape of Good Hope.

   
Wentworth wasn’t prepared to let them sail off as free
people. The Maroons had proven to be good workers and extremely
useful to the advancement of Nova Scotia. He thought if they could
somehow be assimilated into Nova hScotia society, they would be
happier. (It was probably the best thing he could think of; he
couldn’t alter the climate.) Halifax “society,” however, was
frightened by the Maroons who worshipped a god named Accompang.
They were polygamous and buried their dead at ground level with
rocks piled on the bodies and provisions left for their journey
into the afterlife. Given the barbarity of the British military
practices and the lasciviousness of their nobility, it’s ironic
that the Maroons would be taken to task for their beliefs or their
lifestyle.

   
The governor thought a little stiff Christian religion
coupled with English schooling could fix things up, so he sent an
Anglican minister and a teacher to Preston. The Maroons saw no real
harm in letting their kids be sent to school and even allowed them
to be baptised, but adults would have none of this for themselves.
The hypocritical Governor Wentworth, himself having fathered
several children by Maroon women, was insisting that polygamy cease
and that all Maroons become Christians.

   
They continued on as workers – cheap labour – constructing
roads and buildings in Halifax, but they refused to cultivate the
land they were given because they seriously believed they would
still be leaving for a home in a warmer climate. All the while,
their upkeep was being paid partly by Nova Scotia but primarily by
the Jamaican government, which was footing the bill to keep them
far away so their own slaves would not be inspired to demand a
similar freedom.

   
One conniving Nova Scotia landowner offered to buy the
Maroons from the government as his own labour force for £10 each
per year. The Maroons were a proud, resolute people who never lost
their love of freedom. They insisted they were nobody’s slaves and
could not be bought. Grievances were sent all the way to London. In
1800 the majority of them followed in the footsteps of the Black
Loyalists and sailed on to Sierra Leone, although a number of their
descendants remain in Nova Scotia to this day.

A Mediterranean Touch

Along with the Citadel, Prince
Edward had other grandiose plans for military development in
Halifax. He built a fort in the shape of a star on George’s Island
and laid a chained boom across the Northwest Arm on the westberly
side of Halifax. It was anchored with a ring bolt in Point Pleasant
Park, at a location still known as Chain Rock.

   
Edward liked the look of the round towers made of stone that
he had seen in Corsica and thought Halifax needed such a
Mediterranean touch. So began the building of Martello towers at
Point Pleasant, the eastern Battery and York Redoubt. He also
established the first European long-distance telegraph system in
North America s– a massive undertaking which involved relaying
messages from hilltop to hilltop by way of a system of flags,
wicker balls and drums (or lanterns at night). In its heyday, this
system could convey messages from Halifax to Fort Anne in Annapolis
Royal.