St. John

 

Windsor

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The Mi’kmaq and Acadians

The Mi’kmaq were the original inhabitants of the Windsor area. The arrival of the Europeans brought enormous change to the Mi’kmaq’s way of life. The French (or the ‘Acadians’ as they were called) arrived in Hants from King’s County around 1685. By 1748, 2700 French people were settled in the Hants area. Falmouth and area was known as Pisiquid by the Acadians. A census in 1686 lists a number of Acadian families on well-established farms utilizing productive dyked fields. During Queen Anne’s War in response to the French raid on Deerfield, Mass. A raid on Pisiquid (1704), Benjamin Church burned to the ground the many villages of the two parishes (Ste. Famille and Notre Dame de l’Assumption) that made up the district and took prisoners to Boston.

St. John the Evangelist Church, Windsor NS

The Acadians were farmers and they favoured the fertile marshlands on which to grow their grain. They protected these fields with dykes which are large mounds of earth containing passageways that let the river flow onto the fields at a farmer’s discretion. These dykes are still visible today.

However, the French Acadians were viewed as a threat to the English who had control of mainland Nova Scotia. In 1755 the Acadians were deported. Alexander Murray, who at the time was in charge of English Fort Edward in Windsor, reported to have deported more than 1,000 Acadians. They were sent from Windsor by sea to the American colonies and French territories.

Following the deportation, close to a hundred Acadians that had escaped deportation were imprisoned at the Fort.

These remaining stragglers were sent to work at Castle Frederick in Falmouth or to Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island and the Digby County area of mainland Nova Scotia.

The English

The English first came to Hants County in 1750 when Major Charles Lawrence brought the 45th regiment to the junction of the St. Croix and Avon Rivers. There, a fort was built in what is now Windsor. It included a wooden blockhouse, soldier’s barracks and a variety of smaller buildings with four bastions surrounded by a wooden palisade and moat.

The fort helped to strengthen the English position in the area and served as a half-way point between English strongholds in Annapolis Royal and Halifax.

Look out and Quarters at Fort Edward

The Planters came to Hants County in 1760-61 from New England. They settled in Falmouth, Newport Landing, Windsor Forks and Brooklyn. The English colonies had become crowded and its inhabitants were eager to find new farmland. In the Pisiquid and Avon River regions and particularly in the Annapolis Valley, lands left vacant by the departing Acadians were gladly offered to these southern arrivals.

Arriving in Windsor, they quickly developed the area, forming towns and villages and building churches, roads and schools. They also established a flourishing shipbuilding industry. A large proportion of the current population of Hants County is descended from the Planters.

The Loyalists, Americans who favoured British control of the United States, came to Hants County between 1783-84. They introduced Methodism to the area. As they were largely a wealthy and well-educated people, they also founded King’s College in Windsor. King’s College still exists today as King’s-Edgehill, a private high school.

Despite the British taking control of Acadia in 1710, Nova Scotia remained primarily occupied by Catholic Acadians and Mi’kmaq. The British quickly began to build other settlements. Within 18 months of establishing Halifax, the British also took firm control of peninsula Nova Scotia by building fortifications in all the major Acadian communities: present-day Windsor (Fort Edward); Grand Pre and Chignecto.

The Great Fire of 1897

The fire started on the waterfront at about 2:30am on Sunday the 17th of October 1897. The fire was held in check until about 4am when a gale came up and within minutes the fire spread throughout the town of Windsor. By nightfall very little of the town remained. The fire was fought by crews from Windsor, Hantsport, and Halifax. An area of about 6 blocks square was totally destroyed including 4 churches (one of which was the Roman Catholic church), the entire commercial district, the waterfront, and hundreds of homes. Homes left standing were opened to the homeless as were the Railway Station, Drillio’s Barn and the Sail Loft. Damage was estimated at $2 to 3 million dollars at a time when a good wage was $10 a week.

The remains of the Catholic church in Windsor following the Great Fire of 1897.

After the Great Fire of 1897, the famous architect William Critchlow Harris was given the task of designing a new Catholic church – one which comprised both church and priest residence into a single building. He convinced the parish to use stone as the predominant building material. The residence (or glebe or rectory) was built of wood.

The excavation for this sandstone, Gothic Revival style church began in 1898 with the cornerstone being laid on August 17th. The first Mass was celebrated in the basement on November 7th, while the church was still being completed, and the church would not be completed until 1909.

The Rectory at St. John’s Church

The current church cemetery is located on Wiley Street in Windsor.

A happy and hard-working group of Knights of Columbus and friends doing some Fall cemetery work!

The population of Hantsport grew following the end of WWII. Due to thriving industries such as Fundy Gypsum, Canadian Keys Fibre, and the Minas Basin Pulp and Power Company, there were plenty of jobs and stability. In such an environment, the population grew to 1298 in 1956.
There were four churches in the town in 1956, but one was barely one year old … St. Mary’s RC Church. The small church was built in the Summer of 1955 under the leadership of Fr. Anthony Laba. It would be the mission church of St. John’s in Windsor. The first Mass took place on October 16th and the seating capacity was about 130.

Prior to the building of St. Mary’s, Mass was offered, not every Sunday but frequently, in various family homes: the Drouins, the MacNeils and even in the Community Centre (Churchill House). Catechism was taught in private homes, as well.

Active for 63 years, the church was closed and put up for sale in 2018, and was recently sold – 1 June 2020. At the final Mass on October 9th, 2018, six of the original members of St. Mary’s were present.

St. Mary Queen of Heaven and Earth – the Hantsport Mission

St. John the Evangelist and St. Mary Queen of Heaven and Earth … pray for us!

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