Unreliable geographies by Aeneas McHaar
No. 4: Beaver Bank, Nova Scotia, Canada
44º 48’ N, 63º 41’ W
Those planning a meal out in Beaver Bank, Nova Scotia, would be well advised to read an online restaurant guide first. There are 3 eateries in this community of 18,000 people, offering a variety of cuisines.
Under the term ‘Pizza’ appears Supreme Pizza, which one happy customer praises for its ‘great pizzas, best in our area’. In the ‘Diner’ category, Ole Henry’s Take Out Diner receives no reviews, which may explain its later transformation into the Black Crow Pub (listed under the ‘Unknown Category’ category). This is extolled for its ‘really good club house sandwiches – can’t wait to try the well talked about wings on thursday nights’. It is unknown whether these are different wings or the same wings as first appear in the really good club house sandwiches. It is also unclear whether the origin of these wings has any relation to the name of the establishment. New kid on the block is the Foosing Chinese Restaurant which, as well as serving fried dumplings with a slight aftertaste ‘and a nice crust’, is also recommended for its Honey Garlic Cashew Chicken Guy Dong.
Edinburgh’s Beaverbank sophisticates should beware of sneering at their Canadian cousins since – despite modest resources – Beaver Bank has a long tradition of high standards. The first habitations here were built in 1776 by former American loyalists – the Barnsteads of Boston – who, in a remarkable show of principle, preferred to remove to Nova Scotia than remain another moment in the ghastly new United States. A family of Oxford shopkeepers moved in after 1812, but business really took off with the arrival of the Railway Company 43 years later. Its presence allowed lumbermen to send Beaver Bank timber cheaply and efficiently to Halifax, and also permitted all the comforts and conveniences of West Yorkshire to be sent to Beaver Bank by return. The first Station Master, a former navigator from Co. Cork, built his house next to the tracks, also running it as a hotel, bar, telegraph and post office. It has since rationalised its operations to focus on essential core activities, trading for the last few years as our new friend the Black Crow Pub.
From the 1840s, 4 sisters (born in Weston under Lizard, Staffordshire) ran the Grove School for Country Girls. Theirs was essentially a finishing school, inculcating proper habits in several generations of Nova Scotian womanhood who had previously been exposed only to rough woodsmen. As one sibling expressed it in an early prospectus: ‘Miss Grove intends to take a limited number of boarders whose moral and intellectual improvement will form the objects of her constant care. Their health will be attended to and they will be required to take constant and regular exercise.’ Different charges were made depending on whether the girls brought their own spoons and bedding. The sisters Grove – who were also behind setting up the town’s first Anglican church, and the writing of the island’s first children’s book, Little Grace or Scenes in Nova Scotia – never married.
Causes which galvanise small and apparently uncomplicated communities are sometimes surprising. More so than the burning down of the Grove School for Young Ladies in 1943, more than closure in 1964 of a Royal Canadian Air Force radar station (apparently haunted by cement-drowned servicemen and regularly visited by aliens), more even than the chronic local dearth of eating-out alternatives, Beaver Bankers find themselves united in irritation at careless orthography. From the 1950s onwards, remote officials had for no good reason styled the town’s name as Beaverbank. This, in a world of diminishing wide open spaces and little else to do, mattered so much that in 1997 cheesed-off locals petitioned the Provincial Government for a reversion to the original spelling. They were successful, achieving the wholesale and expensive replacement of numerous maps, official documents and road signs as a result.
One can only applaud such grit and attention to detail if one lives locally.