Haunted Harbours (7 page)

In later years, the government officially apologized to the Acadians, yet the expulsion remains a black mark on the scrolls of Canadian and Maritime history.

I found the roots of this story buried in the pages of a short article I found in the March 18, 1889, Halifax
Herald
. It takes place in a little town called Aylesford, situated midway down the north shore of Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley.

On the northern shore of Nova Scotia, facing the Bay of Fundy, is a massive and formidable wall of cliffside, a naturally formed defence against the sea and any invader. Unfortunately the cliff-side seawall also makes a particularly nasty fence .

Directly across from the town of Aylesford is a break in the seawall that the old folks used to call French Cross. Some say it earned its name because of the large cross the Acadians left behind them as they fled their British expellers, while others believe that the name is meant to simply mark the place where the French crossed the Bay of Fundy. Nowadays this location is better known as the town of Morden, a name that echoes strangely the French word for death: mort.

In 1755, Acadians living in Grand Pré and Canard were forced to surrender to the British army.

Several hundred of them were held prisoner in the confines of the Grand Pré parish church, surrounded by a legion of well-armed British redcoats. In the harbour a small flotilla of British ships were eagerly waiting, ready to bear the surrendered remains of the Acadian population to an as yet unknown destination.

The news flashed down the Gaspereau River, spreading like a plague that touched the heart of every Acadian inhabitant in the region. A meeting was called to decide how the remaining Acadians in the area would deal with the British victory. They were split between flight and surrender. About sixty Acadians headed up the river, keeping away from the roads and the clear waterways for fear of the British.

The journey was a costly one. Their supplies quickly ran out and they were forced to subsist upon a diet of berries, fresh fish, and whatever game they caught. Dysentery broke out among the refugees. They were at the mercy of the elements without benefit of any kind of medical aid.

They hid in the Aylesford hills and began digging a series of graves for the increasing number of their dead that eventually came to be known as the French Cross Burying Grounds, a make-shift graveyard in a barren sandy field near where they camped. The refugees lacked even a clergyman to sanctify the burials.

The Mi'kmaq helped the Acadians as best they could, bringing in the game and medicines they foraged. Thus, the Acadians were supplied with deer and moose, and they were able to for- age mussels from the rocks of the shoreline. Partridge and rabbit supplemented their meagre diet. The Mi'kmaq steeped alder leaves to treat fever and stomach ailments and to wrap about festering wounds; boneset, bearberry, and poplar leaves were used to treat colds.

The Acadians continued to hide as the autumn dragged slowly into the winter. The Mi'kmaq kept them fed and informed of the goings on in the outer world. They decided that their best plan of action was to stay at French Cross until the early spring, and then to cross the Bay of Fundy and journey on towards Quebec where the French were still welcome. They erected their winter tents over the graves of their people by a brook that emptied itself down into the waters of the Bay of Fundy, where they remained safely concealed from the English forces. They could watch the sea and chart the course of the English sailing vessels. They waited there until the spring. Throughout the winter the Mi'kmaq had helped the Acadians construct enough canoes to travel safely in. They worked through the winter, peeling the birch trees and laying the bark.

By the spring the Acadians were ready for their escape. They said goodbye to their rudimentary huts and hide tents and the graves of their fallen loved ones. They erected a large wooden cross to watch over the makeshift graveyard, then loaded into the canoes and paddled across the tumultuous spring waters of the Bay of Fundy.

No doubt many looked back and saw that large wooden cross make its silent promise to keep watch over their dead. The Acadians made their way to New Brunswick, and most never bothered trying to travel any further. There were friends and family and farmland aplenty. What more did they need?

In later years the British found the graveyard. Perhaps in the heat of war they might have laid waste to it, but years after the old war had ceased, they simply viewed it as the remains of a sad story. Yet night after night, for years to come, the treasure hunters would make their way into the darkness of the French Cross Burying Grounds. Treasure-dowsers and vagabonds alike would root through the bones and the dirt, hoping to find the remnants of French treasure. It was whispered that before fleeing Acadia, the refugees had buried what treasure they couldn't transport in a large coffin-shaped iron box that was supposed to be buried some-where in the graveyard.

Again and again, the treasure hunters sought out the fabled French Cross iron box, yet all who searched for it ended up poverty-stricken. Men swore that their picks and shovels and pry bars bent and twisted in the hardened Acadian dirt, and many claimed that they were chased from the burial grounds by a long yellow spirit. Others swore that every time they dug down with shovels, they would strike the iron box, and it would travel through the dirt. No matter what the story, the end result was always the same. The treasure was impossible to find.

There are many guesses as to what this treasure might hold. Most talk of golden coins, rare gems, and other valuable collectibles that a typical Acadian dirt farmer might have tucked beneath his seed corn and plow.

For myself, I think the treasure might have been something far more prosaic — perhaps a cherished French psalter, a chalice and candle sticks, or maybe even a portrait of great-grandpère. Who knows? The treasure may be out there still, ready to be dug. Or perhaps it's just a ghost of a treasure, a fantasy wish that's destined never to be found.

10
THE PIPER'S
POND PIBROCH
WINDSOR

I have been a member of the Halifax Storytellers' Circle for a very long time. I first joined when the group met every month at the Alderney Gate Library in Dartmouth. Back then, it wasn't much to speak of, just a friendly little group of folks who got together to tell tales to whatever audience might show up. We've been to a lot of places since then, telling our tales to whoever cares to listen.

This is a story I heard back in 2004 at the Haliburton House Halloween festival just outside of the little town of Windsor, about sixty-six kilometres northwest of Halifax. The Storytellers' Circle was telling tales in support of the event. We were performing outside in the middle of the woods, in a comfortable open canvas tent. The wind was blowing softly through the autumn leaves, and it was perfect weather for ghost tale telling.

Our host told this tale to two separate tours with the help of a ghostly bagpiper who showed up at the appropriate moment. I didn't get to hear this presentation because I was busy telling my own tales in the tent.

It wasn't until afterwards that our host kindly related the tale to me again.

Thomas Chandler Haliburton was born in Windsor, Hants County, in 1796, and gained fame as an author, a lawyer, a politician, and a judge. He is best known for the creation of his cantankerous tale-telling Yankee peddler, Sam Slick, whose clever quips, “barking up the wrong tree,” “quick as a wink,” “raining cats and dogs,” and “facts are stranger than fiction,” are perhaps better known than their author.

In January of 1833, Thomas Haliburton purchased forty acres of land located on Ferry Hill, just overlooking the town of Windsor, Nova Scotia. He took it upon himself to name the estate “Clifton” after his wife's own home in Bristol, England. There he and his wife lived happily in their modest one-and-a-half story home.

Today the house looks very different than it did in Haliburton's time. Successive owners have altered and added to the house, but the memories still remain. Some say that the ghost of old Thomas Haliburton still walks these halls and winds his clocks, but that tale belongs to another story entirely.

There is a pond not far from Haliburton House and there is a tale that the locals have been telling for years.

Long before it was called the “birthplace of hockey,” Windsor was known as Pesaquid, a Mi'kmaq term meaning “junction of waters.” This name referred to the convergence of the Avon and St. Croix rivers which flow into the Bay of Fundy.

The British blockhouse of Fort Edward was built and fully garrisoned in the mid-1700s in Windsor and it is here that we first pick up our tale.

His name was Jamie Donaldson, and he was a piper in the Highland Regiment. He'd been stationed at Fort Edward for some time, and while he was there he fell madly in love with a miller's daughter. Her true name is unknown but for the sake of this story we'll call her Donnalee Jenkins. Let's make her beautiful, as all great loves are, give her curly hair, the colour of a raven's wing, with eyes as sharp as needles and painted the pale haunting blue of summer forget-me-nots.

Every night while he was supposed to be keeping watch Jamie would meet his lover by the pond. It was a dangerous business, skipping out on his duty, but he was young and reckless and madly in love. Soon, orders came down and Jamie Donaldson's regiment was scheduled to ship out.

“I'll run away with you,” Donnalee Jenkins swore.

They made a pact to meet that night by the pond, but as fate would have it, the young piper was caught trying to sneak over the wall. He was fortunate that it was only a sergeant who caught him trying to slip away with a bouquet of incriminating forget-me-nots in his hand, picked from beside the stockade wall; his bagpipes were tucked under the other arm.

“And where do you think you are going?” the sergeant asked. “It's a wee bit late for the picking of wildflowers.”

Jamie opened his mouth and closed it, trying to remember how to speak, but the sergeant only smiled.

“Got yourself a wee colleen, do you now?”

Jamie shrugged and sheepishly grinned.

“And are you going off to say goodbye to her one last time before we ship out?”

“That's it,” Jamie said. “One last time before we ship out.”

The sergeant fixed him with a gaze as sharp as any bayonet.

“And you wouldn't be harbouring any wild notions about running off and deserting your post, now would you?”

“Oh no, sergeant, sir,” James said, shaking his head so hard he thought it might fall off. “Nothing of the kind.”

The sergeant's face darkened like a storm cloud. “Don't you ‘sir' me, boy. I work for a living,”

And then he let slip another smile.

“I'm thinking that this post might be a wee bit overprotected. Perhaps it's best if you take some air while I keep an eye out for hostiles. Mind you, be back before roll call. If the captain catches you out playing tomcat, it'll be both of our heads that roll in the dirt.”

So over Jamie went, clambering down the rope he'd slung with the help of the kind-hearted sergeant who lowered his bagpipes down to him. The forget-me-nots were tucked into a pocket in his tunic. Off he went, headed for the pond where Donnalee stood waiting.

Only she hadn't waited. The sergeant's untimely delay had held her lover up just long enough for Donnalee to lose hope.

“He's not coming,” she said. “They've caught him and they've hanged him, or he just doesn't love me enough.”

She walked six times around the pond as she waited, before finally working up her courage enough to do what she had in mind. She laid her baggage down and picked up a large chunk of granite. Using the ribbons from her hair she tied her skirt up around the rock. Then, holding the dress-bound granite in her arms like the baby that she and James would never have, she leaped into the deep end of the pond.

At the last she thought better of it and kicked for the surface but the rock was far too heavy and bound too tightly. It carried her straight to the bottom. She tried to scream and swallowed dirty pond water and her face turned a colour that nearly matched her forget-me-not eyes.

Not more than five minutes later young Jamie came by the pond.

“Donnalee!” he shouted, but there was nothing but the laughter of an unseen moonlight whippoorwill that answered his call. Jamie circled the pond seven more times until he nearly fell over Donnalee's luggage. Fearing the worst, he knelt and peered down into the water, searching until he saw her staring up at him, her face a pale blue moon of sorrow.

He knelt there and wept until his tears had cried themselves dry. Then he stood up as straight as a trooper on dress parade. He straightened his uniform and scuffed the loose dirt off with his hands.

He scattered the forget-me-nots he'd picked upon the waters of the pond. Then he blew on those bagpipes, a long last haunting pibroch — a lament for the dead. He marched around the pond, playing his last pibroch until the coyotes howled and the hoot owls called back at him. And then he marched straight into the pond, playing the bagpipes right up until the very end.