The intercolonial is covered with snow

So far, so good. There’s a lot of wood left out in the woodshed and I haven’t spent any money on having the driveway cleared.

I know that’s not good news for the people who sell firewood or plow driveways; however, winter to date has been relatively painless. Temperatures in the last few days have grown chilly, but – unless something happens between the time this is being written and publication several days later — skiers are still waiting for good snow.

Skiing or not, I am grateful for the fact that I live on a hill, given that if much more melting goes on at the poles, the parking lot on the Liverpool waterfront will be permanently under water. Our climate is very much in the news.

Just over a hundred years ago, the weather was also front and centre, for precisely the opposite reason. On Tuesday, Jan. 3, 1905, it started snowing. Newspapers reported that train service was disrupted and that Boston-bound passengers on the train from Bridgewater to Middleton ran into trouble when ice covered the tracks and the train made it just to Springfield, where hungry people got off and invaded houses and the one hotel, eating everything in sight.

The train set off again, this time getting stuck in Alpena, in Annapolis County, where the cooks in a lumber camp made meals while railway officials sent another train up from Bridgewater with more food. Some passengers hired teams and drove sleighs to Middleton while the others got there a day later. Dominion Atlantic trains through the Valley had also been delayed, and when everyone got to Yarmouth the steamer set off, arriving in Boston a day late.

This was just the beginning. Another big snowstorm was reported on Jan. 31. Lumbering operations were suspended because of deep snow. More snow fell as February progressed, with a big storm reported on Feb. 13. This time the train to Middleton went into a huge bank of snow, covering the engine and piling up on each side of the cars. All able-bodied people started shoveling but by dark little progress had been made. George Boehner, who had a sawmill in the area, sent men down to shovel, and Boehner took the passengers and crew to his cookhouse for a hearty meal.

Everyone returned to the train, but the train was stuck for the night. Passengers turned the cushions lengthwise and drifted off to a restless sleep. At the crack of dawn, shoveling began again and at mid-morning the engine was freed and sent ahead for water and coal.

Meantime, the train from Halifax to Liverpool had been stalled at Chester for days. By the time it got to Bridgewater on Friday night passengers had been on the train since Tuesday, and reports said they were “decidedly up against the real thing.”

Snow kept falling, and by Feb. 28 the situation was described as unparalleled in the history of Nova Scotia. There was a continual struggle to keep the lines open, with trains no longer following any kind of schedule. The Bridgewater Bulletin said that heroic labor opened part of a line for a time, then another storm would come along and the snow blockade would continue. “There is such a vast quantity of snow that there is no room on the sides of the tracks to pile it.”

The little village of North Brookfield was said to be the only community on the lines of the Halifax and South-Western Railway that had offered to supply men to assist in clearing the tracks. The snow was even worse up in the Valley, where towns were facing shortages of food and fuel. In Cape Breton, flour had almost run out and farmers had no hay for their stock. The Intercolonial was off the tracks at Londonderry, outside Truro, covered with snow.

The chief justice of the province, Robert Weatherbe, worried that there might be actual starvation in the Valley, and reported that the town of Kentville could hold out for three or four days more. In Wolfville, three hundred men were working to clear the track between that town and Kentville, and Acadia University sent two hundred people daily to work on the tracks. Coal supplies were giving out, and schools were closed. Reports said that two thousand men were required between Windsor and Digby to open the lines.

It was three weeks before the train to Middleton was freed; more about that next week. (From the files of various newspapers, particularly the Bridgewater Bulletin, courtesy of the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, Lunenburg.)

Tom Sheppard can be reached at tsheppard@tdcmail.ca