Nova Scotia

ANNAPOLIS ROYAL AND DIGBY

The use of oxen for draught purposes is characteristic of Nova Scotia. It is practised by French, Germans, and English, and is so common nowhere in Canada. Along the country roads one sees the oxen coming along at a leisurely pace, swishing their tails; their red hides, touched by the summer sun, blending harmoniously with the landscape; and casting long shadows on the white road. Yes, the ox is the beast of burden up and down the Province. His harness has an unfamiliar look. Of arched yoke and boles he is often ignorant, and the comfort of collar and harness would lull him to slumber. Just behind his ears he carries his yoke, strapped to the base of his horns and around his forehead. He is shod with iron shoes like a horse, and is at once the admiration and the derision of the Yankee, who would not for a moment tolerate such slow progress. He calls the ox the “Blue-nose automobile.” I have heard the patient quadruped spoken of as one of the four characteristics of the Province—apples, oxen, cold nights, and pessimism. For the latter I should now substitute optimism. Besides, the Blue-nose never was pessimistic. At most he was (as you may see by reading “Sam Slick”) merely apathetic—unresponsive, or as other observers have declared, serene.

Here is the eastern gateway of one of the most celebrated apple-growing districts of the world. Long before Tasmania, South Australia, and California began to grow apples, it was the orchard of the Empire. Following the eastern course of the river between North Mountain (which shelters the valley from the Bay of Fundy) and South Mountain, there stretch seventy-five miles of fruit lands and enchanting scenery. Here is grown the luscious apple which is found in all the world’s great markets. The apple-tree is the dominant note in the swelling landscape, and in early June the whole valley is a scene and scent of sheer beauty, comparable only to the orange-groves of Seville or Santa Clara. This apple is not, of course, indigenous; but none can tell who brought the first pommier from Normandy. Perchance it was Lescarbot himself. At all events orchards were flourishing here in abundance long before the expulsion of the Acadians. Ere the building of the Dominion and Atlantic Railway (now taken over by the Canadian Pacific), the apple production of “the Valley” was some twenty thousand barrels annually. Within a few years the output had grown to half a million. In 1911 it reached 1,750,000 barrels.

Last year the apple-growers received a serious check. It was not a good apple year. There was the weather for one thing, not merely of this but of the season of 1909, when the embryo bud was formed. A more serious and more permanent drawback I found to be the want of capital. They complain here that too much British capital is going west. Everything conducted on a large scale needs capital, and the whole situation was clearly explained to me by a leading orchardist in the Valley, who is a man of education and substance, and the argument was echoed by others who follow the industry.

“There is plenty of money in apples,” said he, “and we should be producing not one but thirty millions of barrels a year. The trouble is—and there is no need to disguise it—that while a number of orchards which have constantly been well cultivated, fertilised, and sprayed, always yield the usual crops of the finest fruit, the great bulk of our trees are partially starved and neglected. Far more trees have been grown than can be brought into fruit-bearing with the present skill, labour, and capital.”

To plant and grow trees is a simple and not expensive operation. With such soil as this and proper attention, little or no fertiliser is needed. But the continued production and marketing of the fruit involves much more skill, labour, and capital. Owners of orchards having the means of fertilising 100 to 150 trees, soon found it a difficult matter to grapple with an orchard area of 500 to 1000 trees. Such attempt often resulted in less actual returns than the small orchards had produced. It is simply a question of want of capital, as it would be in lumbering, mining, or fishing.

As a result a very considerable proportion of the apples now produced are discarded as unfit for packing.

“It is out of the question,” continued my informant, “for us to do business with a mere fraction of the capital necessary to produce a proper quantity of the wonderful crops of fruit which twenty or thirty years ago excited the admiration of European pomologists, and gave a world-wide fame to this district.”

In other words, the orchards are vastly greater, but too much of it is with wood, not fruit. However, be it said, that the number of trees now capable of bearing are healthy and vigorous. While orchards in other lands bear earlier, the trees are far less healthy and sooner decay. The Annapolis Valley trees reach a great size, and I have been shown many bearing fruit in profusion at the age of 100 and even 150 years. Labour and capital are the great need of the district.

Even when the yield of the fine fruit is large, there appears a disquieting drawback. Many were the complaints I heard of the greed of the carrier by steamer or railway, or of the middlemen, as if these were in a conspiracy to squeeze the last cent out of this industry. For apples for which the Covent Garden dealer receives 30s. a barrel, the grower has often to be content with 5s. I was told of one middleman who often gains 50,000 dollars in a season; while the last season three middlemen made an average profit of 40,000 dollars each.

I found here, as elsewhere in Nova Scotia, the existence of a deep-seated grievance not yet voiced abroad as it may be. Bitterly does the farmer and the fruit-grower complain of that tide of population promoted out of the Canadian public treasury, which has been not only sweeping in its current tens of thousands from the old country, but the many stalwart youth from the Maritime Provinces as well, whose strength is so much needed at home. The millions spent in Western development are as a thorn in the side of the Nova Scotian. Hence, therefore, the warmth of the welcome he extends to the Canadian Pacific Railway, which this year will formally invade “the Valley.” Yet the action of this great corporation is rather merely a symptom than any cause of that awakening prosperity and general accession of enterprise which I noted throughout this part of the Province.

With regard to fruit, it cannot be pointed out too often that Nova Scotia is nearer the British and other European markets than any other part of the continent. Some of the best fruit growing sections of Canada and the United States are near the Pacific Coast, and the eight or ten days necessary to bring their fruit to Atlantic ports, besides the extra freight charges, must certainly serve as a serious drawback to those States and Provinces from which New Scotland is free.

But not merely British but a great deal of Nova Scotia capital is invested elsewhere—particularly in the Far West. The East is always financing the West. They tell a story of a Kansas man on a visit to the East, who looked with characteristic scorn on its old-fashioned methods and remarked to a New England farmer: “You are surely foolish to stay here where you have to do your spring ploughing with a pickaxe and your planting with a shotgun. Why don’t you come out West? Not a stump, not a stone in sight; soil ten feet deep; crops of one year make you rich.” The New Englander listened with evident interest and then said: “I am holding six mortgages on Kansas farms, and if you fellows will just keep it up, and pay the interest, I will try and pull along very well where I am.”

Just how many mortgages on farms, how many title-deeds to fertile sections of land or valuable city lots in the rapidly developing West are to-day in Nova Scotian hands, and are a source of wealth to the ancient Province by the sea, it would be difficult to compute.

Not so long ago when the citizens of Winnipeg began to negotiate for land on a bend in the Red River in the immediate environs of the city for the purpose of a public park, it was found to be already in the possession of enterprising Nova Scotian capitalists. There are other instances.

In the Annapolis Valley the advent of the Canadian Pacific Railway is the great abiding topic of interest. Reports of its plans and movements are canvassed by all classes and all interests. It is said that the railway has decided to build four new steamers for a fast direct steamship service between Nova Scotia and Boston and New York. These vessels will be larger and faster than any at present engaged in the American or Canadian Atlantic Coast steamship traffic. This is one of the important developments that will follow the taking over of the Dominion Atlantic. These steamers, which will be able to make over 20 knots an hour, are to run between Yarmouth and Boston, Halifax and New York, and Halifax and Boston. There will also be a fast steamship service between Digby and Boston, and across the Bay of Fundy between St. John and Digby. The fleet of six steamers which the great corporation will take over with the Dominion Atlantic road will be placed on the subsidiary services.