A Village of the Most Primitive Description

A Village of the Most Primitive Description. . Canal Camp , You are looking at a part of the remains of what was known as the “Canal Camp.” The row of stones in this area represent the largest feature found to day at Port Wallace. An archeological investigation was carried out in 1997 by Archaeology students from St. Mary’s University but unfortunately nothing was discovered to indicate the use made of this particular building. However, it is in the area known as the Canal Camp where the workers and their families lived during the late 1820s. There is a reference in early records to a kind of tavern in this area and this may be the base or a part of the walls of that structure. In the late 1820s Captain William Moorsom, a British military officier, visited an wrote about Port Wallace. A village of the most primitive description has gradually risen about three miles from Dartmouth; the first huts were constructed of logs, loose stones and mud, roofed with boughs and rough strips of bark, and their very existence was scarce discoverable till you almost stumbled over them… The principal cabin or that where liquor is retailed was originally distinguishable by a long pole planted in front of the door, like those which in Canada designated the residence of a captain of the militia. Latterly, this tenement has assumed the aspect of a little tavern neatly boarded on the outside, and capable of affording what we still see expressed on some out-of-the-way country signs as ‘entertainment for man and horse’. The inhabitants of this village and other cabins scattered along the line are Irish emigrants, who land without a shilling in their pockets and here find immediate employment.