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"I like to let every feller grind his own axe." - Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Thomas Chandler Haliburton -
Nova Scotia's First Historian

Thomas Chandler Haliburton as a young lawyer, working out of his home in Annapolis Royal and financing out of his own pocket, spent seven years collecting data and writing the first History Nova Scotia.

Haliburton loved his colony very much and he was shocked during two of his early trips to Great Britain to learn of the low opinion the English had of Nova Scotia. Travelers who had visited the port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia but barely glimpsed the rest of the colony, were reporting back to the "mother-country" unfavorably and building a false idea of his home.

Thomas had been born and raised in Windsor, beside the bustling tidal river the English called the Avon. Before English occupation the area had been settled by indigenous Mi'kmaq and later the French. The Mi'kmaq called the area "Pisiquid", which means "the juncture of two rivers". The French had lived peacefully with the Mi'kmaq for a hundred years. They Dyked the river, to create fertile fields, which even in Haliburton's day he could claim the farmland "had yielded abundant crops for one hundred years without manure."

There were many reasons, that Britain's good opinion was important to Thomas. As well as being a proud Nova Scotian, Thomas was a British Loyalist. His grandfather was one of the first Planters from Rhode Island to settle in the Windsor area after the expulsion of the Acadians. His family was Anglican. As a boy in the early 1800s [his age and the exact date of his commencing school has been lost] he'd attended the Anglican run Collegiate [Preparatory] School and then, continued on at King's College until 1819.

Haliburton felt that if he could just find a way to tell the world about Nova Scotia's rich natural resources, diverse and useful plants and animals, it's beautiful scenery and it's colourful people, he could set the record straight. So he undertook a labour of love in a small town in a young land, far from the luxury of Europes archives and libraries.

In 1823 he published "A General Description of Nova Scotia" a handbook of history of Nova Scotia. In 1829 at age 33 he published a more complete work, "An Historical and Statistical Account of Nova-Scotia in two volumes. Illustrated by a map of the province, and several engravings, by Thomas C. Haliburton, Esq., Barrister at Law and Member of the House of Assembly of Nova Scotia". Underneath which title in volume one, the Historic Account, was added the inscription of "This is My Own. My Native Land.". It had been a huge undertaking in which he'd been assisted by countless others from across the province and abroad, collecting data, copying documents, cooperating with learned men of different backgrounds and religions, not to mention the time it would have taken for correspondance to be recieved and responded to.

A General Description of Nova Scotia - Early Canadiana Online

An Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia
- Excerpts - Cornell Library Digital Collections

An Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia - Windsor

Luckily Annapolis Royal was approachable via water and land. At the time there were two "roads" in Nova Scotia, one from Annapolis Royal to Windsor, and one from Windsor to Halifax. Much traveling was done by ship, boat or canoe over the many waterways or around the coast of the colony of Nova Scotia itself. Indeed "scarcely any part of which is thirty miles distant from navigation".

Roads From Annapolis Royal to Windsor [Pisiquid] to Halifax - 1776

His History didn't reach as many people as he would have liked. Haliburton decided that more readers could be reached through the medium of humor and so Sam Slick was invented. At first he appeared as a serial in Joseph Howe's Novascotian newspaper but Sam's popularity grew so quickly they were soon put into book form by Howe.

"...the History of Nova Scotia. On that subject permit me to say that early in life I twice visited Great Britain , and was strangely, and I may say painfully, impressed with a conviction that has forced itself upon the mind of every man who has gone to Europe from this country - namely that this valuable and important Colony [of Nova Scotia] was not merely wholly unknown, but misunderstood and misrepresented. Every book of Geography, every Gazetteer and elementary work that mentioned it, spoke of it in terms of contempt and condemnation. It was said to possess good harbours, if you could find them for the fog, and fisheries that would be valuable if you only had sun enough to cure the fish - while the interior was described as a land of rock and barren, and doomed to unrelenting sterility. Where facts were wanting, recourse was had to imagination; and one author stated that these woods were infested with wolves. Not content with the introduction of these savage animals, he represents them as being endowed by Providence with the remarkable power of ascending trees in pursuit of their prey...In short...[Nova Scotia] had become a bye word 1 and a proverbial term of reproach. It's name was a name of terror, in the nurseries, and the threat of sending a refactory child to Nova Scotia was equivilent to sending him to the devil."*

"Shortly after the History of Nova Scotia was written I retired from public life, and, having more leisure time than before, I felt I had not accomplished all I wished [in writing the history], that though something had been attained there was still much more to be done. It occurred to me that it would be advisable to resort to a more popular style, and, under the garb of amusement to call attention to our noble harbors, our great mineral wealth, our healthy climate, our abundant fisheries, and our natural resources and advantages...I was also anxious to stimulate my countrymen to exertion, to direct their attention to the development of those resources, and to works of internal improvement, especially to that great work which I hope I shall live to see completed, the rail road from Halifax to Windsor, to awaken ambition and substitute it for that stimulus which is furnished in other but poorer countries than our own by necessity. For this purpose I called in the aid of the Clockmaker."**

Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Haliburton explained that he wrote specifically about Nova Scotia and Nova Scotians -

" ... sketches of "Life in the colony" were drawn from nature, after a residence of half a century among people whose habits, manners, and social condition they are intended to delineate. I have adopted the form of a tour, and the character of a stranger, for the double purpose of avoiding the prolixity 2 of a journal, by the omission of tedious details, and the egoism of an author, by making others speak for themselves in their own way. The utmost care has been taken to exclude anything that could by any possibility be supposed to have a personal reference, or be the subject of annoyance. The "Dramatis Personae" of the work are, therefore, ideal representatives of their several classes, having all the characteristics and peculiarities of their own set, but no actual existence...

I have also avoided, as far as practicable, topics common to other countries, and endeavor to select scenes and characters peculiar to the colony [of Nova Scotia], and not to be found in books...

This distinctive character is produced by the necessity of a new country, by the nature of the climate, the want of an established Church, hereditary rank, entailment of estates, and the subdivision of labour, on the one hand, and the absence of nationality, independence, and republican institutions on the other...

The Nova Scotian, who is more particularly the subject of this work, is often found superintending the cultivation of a farm and building a vessel at the same time; and is not only able to catch and cure a cargo of fish, but to find his way with it to the West Indies or the Mediterranean; he is a man of all work, but expert in none...

[he] is a handy, frank, good-natured, hospitable, manly fellow, and withal quite good looking as his air gives you to understand he thinks himself to be. Such is the gentleman known throughout America as Mr. Blue Nose, a sobriquet 2 acquired from a superior potato of that name... 3 "

"Forward" written by Thomas Chandler Haliburton for his book
The Old Judge or life in the Colony
Published 1849***

V/F v105 #27
Pg 1 - 3

**Excerpt From -
"Thomas Chandler Haliburton : A Study in Provincial Toryism"
by Victor Lovitt Oakes Chittick, P.H.D., Professor of Literature and Language at Reed College
New York, Columbia University Press 1924
HRL SG 921 H 172c
Pg 179...[as] reported in "the Novascotian"...June 13, 1839, in an account of a public dinner given Haliburton at Halifax...

*** "Forward" To -
"The Old Judge or Life in the Colony"
by Thomas Chandler Haliburton
Originally published London, Henry Colburn1849
Volume Consulted was published by the Tucumseh Press, Ottawa, Canada, 1978

See Also - T.C. Haliburton Bibliography

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