July 2, 1924
Bluenose Sailor’s Greatness
Nova Scotia’s compelling influence on those who visit it or live in it is illustrated by the hold it has taken of Archibald MacMechan of Halifax, who has been revisiting his native Ontario for a few days. Prof. MacMechan has been at Dalhousie University for over thirty years, and in spare minutes has written entertainingly and with enthusiasm of his adopted Province. His conversation has the same flavor, and it will not be his fault if the "Bluenose" province does not receive due recognition. He was born at Kitchener, and went from Prince Edward County, in Ontario, which has no little pride and tradition of its own, to a Province which is older and as different as the seacoast can be from the interior.
"Traverse the Province from end to end," he once wrote in his little pamphlet, "The Nova Scotia-ness of Nova Scotia," watch the groups at the railway stations, and your chief impression will be of sturdy men, comely women and chubby children, with the good red blood coursing through the clear skin. The cosmetic is fog, perhaps, and sea air. The face of the Nova Scotian girl is often like the face of the wild Nova Scotian rose."
But it is of the sailors of Nova Scotia that Dr. MacMechan is most proud. Last year he published a little book to their glory, called "Sagas of the Sea," real stories of adventure derived from family records and memories, and from documents. The book is a remarkable record of true stories from an adventurous life, and will be followed by another volume in the near future. The following paragraphs from one of the stories. "The Captain’s Boat," reflect the author’s own views of the high place earned by these brave men:
"The deep-sea captains of Nova Scotia took their wives with them on their long voyages; and these stout-hearted women shared with their husbands the perils of great waters. The ship was their floating home; the big, comfortable cabin, the nursery. Nova Scotia children had memories of sliding down the tilted cabin floor in a storm, of ‘northers’ in Valpariaso, of watching a vast expanse of sail against the sky as they lay on the cabin top in halcyon weather.
"No stauncher vessel ever floated than those built in Nova Scotia ship-yards of Bay of Fundy spruce. Their keels furrowed every sea. The master mariners of the Province were a race apart, intrepid, skilled, resourceful, strong in character, strict in discipline, kings of the quarterdeck. They met every chance of the treacherous sea with unshaken hearts. They might be dismasted in the Indian Ocean, or crushed in Arctic ice floes. Yellow fever might carry off their crews in Rio, or their cargo might catch fire off the Horn. One and all they proved equal to every emergency. Wrecks and disasters only threw into relief the heroism of captain and crew. They lived to tell the tale. But the common form of epitaph for many an able ship was "Never again heard of." – Toronto Globe.