Today the Shelburne Harbour was thick with fog and the mist that hung in the air was enough to make your clothes wet. For breakfast I had the egg, bacon and tomato sandwich with a side of yogurt and fruit while Susan, repeated that she was a 'creature of habit' and ordered her usual, scrambled eggs, bacon and multigrain toast.
We walked from Dock Street up to Water Street, a main street that's under construction so busy with all manner of trucks and machinery, road blocks and workers. The Shelburne County Historical Archives & Genealogical Society is on the top floor of the old Fire Station which is now the town hall. We met with Kim Walker whom we've met on many different occasions. Kim is always one of our first picks for dealing with the public at trade shows. She's very personable, quick witted and extremely knowledgable about the history of the South Shore. Upon arriving she told us, "this room is where the firemen dances were held. There was an old restaurant across the street called the Ritz where the Chinese restaurant is now. People would move from the dance to the restaurant steadily all night. During the dances, you could feel the ground rumble and shake with all the people in attendance."
Today, the old dance floor bore no resemblance to what it once was. Now it was a fully functioning research centre complete with all the resources you would expect from an archives. There were several shelves of old books, microfilm viewers, filing cabinets, tables, computers and the walls were shelved with boxes of records or interesting pictures and paintings from the towns history.
Kim took us through a great collection of photographs, showed us records of ship building and ledgers which described early life in Shelburne. Her collection of family bibles was impressive. There was even a tiny bible from a wooden box which contained detailed notes of one particular family. She was busy while we were there, tending to the questions of a group of Americans doing research.
After we had finished filming, we took Kim's suggestion of checking out another two historic graveyards that were nearby. One was the Methodist Cemetery where there such names as, Swansburg, Grovestine, Deinstadt, Wesley and Irwin. Just a few minutes away was the provincially registered Trinity United Church where I was able to find the flat tomb of George Gracie, a merchant, ship owner, founder of a whaling company and member of the House of Assembly. He used to live in the Cooper's Inn, the B&B where Susan and I were currently staying. Kim had given me a list of the transcriptions from every stone so it was interesting to find some of the influential people from Shelburne's history.
Having finished our work, we finally chose to eat at one of the local restaurants and decided on The Sea Dog Saloon. Earlier in the day I had spoken briefly with the manager and owner, Allan Reid, who was interested to know what I was filming. He invited us both to stop by. At the Sea Dog I took our waitress's recommendation for the seafood chowder with homemade biscuits while Susan chose an enormous plate of nachos which we ultimately ended up sharing. The chowder was fantastic and the biscuits tasted as true to home cooking as I thought possible.
Tomorrow we're heading out to Liverpool to visit the Queen's County Museum and the Thomas Raddall Research Centre. Can't wait...
We walked from Dock Street up to Water Street, a main street that's under construction so busy with all manner of trucks and machinery, road blocks and workers. The Shelburne County Historical Archives & Genealogical Society is on the top floor of the old Fire Station which is now the town hall. We met with Kim Walker whom we've met on many different occasions. Kim is always one of our first picks for dealing with the public at trade shows. She's very personable, quick witted and extremely knowledgable about the history of the South Shore. Upon arriving she told us, "this room is where the firemen dances were held. There was an old restaurant across the street called the Ritz where the Chinese restaurant is now. People would move from the dance to the restaurant steadily all night. During the dances, you could feel the ground rumble and shake with all the people in attendance."
Today, the old dance floor bore no resemblance to what it once was. Now it was a fully functioning research centre complete with all the resources you would expect from an archives. There were several shelves of old books, microfilm viewers, filing cabinets, tables, computers and the walls were shelved with boxes of records or interesting pictures and paintings from the towns history.
Kim took us through a great collection of photographs, showed us records of ship building and ledgers which described early life in Shelburne. Her collection of family bibles was impressive. There was even a tiny bible from a wooden box which contained detailed notes of one particular family. She was busy while we were there, tending to the questions of a group of Americans doing research.
After we had finished filming, we took Kim's suggestion of checking out another two historic graveyards that were nearby. One was the Methodist Cemetery where there such names as, Swansburg, Grovestine, Deinstadt, Wesley and Irwin. Just a few minutes away was the provincially registered Trinity United Church where I was able to find the flat tomb of George Gracie, a merchant, ship owner, founder of a whaling company and member of the House of Assembly. He used to live in the Cooper's Inn, the B&B where Susan and I were currently staying. Kim had given me a list of the transcriptions from every stone so it was interesting to find some of the influential people from Shelburne's history.
Having finished our work, we finally chose to eat at one of the local restaurants and decided on The Sea Dog Saloon. Earlier in the day I had spoken briefly with the manager and owner, Allan Reid, who was interested to know what I was filming. He invited us both to stop by. At the Sea Dog I took our waitress's recommendation for the seafood chowder with homemade biscuits while Susan chose an enormous plate of nachos which we ultimately ended up sharing. The chowder was fantastic and the biscuits tasted as true to home cooking as I thought possible.
Tomorrow we're heading out to Liverpool to visit the Queen's County Museum and the Thomas Raddall Research Centre. Can't wait...
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