Biographies

Helen Creighton

It doesn't feel right to have a blog about local history and folklore without having an article on a personal hero of mine, Helen Creighton. So, though late, here it is:

Helen was born in 1899 to a well off Dartmouth family. She lived most of her life in the Evergreen House which had been built for Judge James and now operates as a museums in both the Judges and her memory. Helen's life began rather remarkably. She had every advantage in life, and a superstitious boost to boot. Not only was she born to an upper middle class family with ties to two of the wealthiest and most famous families in Dartmouth, but she was also born with a caul; a thin veil of placenta over the head of a newborn which was held to be a sign of good fortune and favorable destiny by Nova Scotians of the time.

Helen was the daughter of Alice and Charles Creighton, descendants of the James Creighton who I have already written about in previously. Her grandfather on her father's side was Thomas Colton Creighton, a ship captain lost at sea in 1866. Through her grandmother, Annie, Helen was related to the famous Samuel Albro, the wealthy New England business man for whom the lake in Dartmouth is named. Helen was the niece of Walter Creighton whose home was feature on the Dartmouth Heritage house tour this past year, and on whom an article will follow shortly. Walter and Charles grew up with the widowed Annie Albro. Since the employment opportunities for a Widow were slim in the late Victorian Era, when the money Thomas left to his family ran out both Charles and Walter had to begin working at a young age to support their family. Charles left school and began working at the age of 14 and Walter doesn't seem to have been far behind. Both took a bookkeeping course in their teens. Walter remained a bookkeeper through his know career, while Charles took his skills and started a wholesale grocery, importing and brokering business under the name "C.E Creighton and Company." The company did very well and put his family firmly into the upper tier of Dartmouth families. 

Helen's head start in life; the money, her education the Ladies' College in Halifax, her easy upbringing, and the caul on her head all pointed her toward great thing. In time she would accomplish as much but she had a lot of trouble getting there. Despite Helen's station in life she struggled with the same search for meaningful employment I think many of us can related to. For years she dreamed of becoming a published author, a dream which she struggled to achieve for years while drifting between her volunteer obligations and jobs she was either on a short contract for or considered herself grossly unqualified to perform.

Between jobs Helen was sending short stories to Maclean's in hopes of being published and following her dream. She wrote under the name Golliwog, a name which she had lifted from an American children's book. She worked primarily on stories and a full length novel based on the Golliwog character of the original children's tales. Though technically this copyright infringement, Helen was unaware and trudged on anyway despite the many rejections she received based on this work. However, in time her stubbornness would pay off and she was given a slot on the radio, playing the role of "Aunt Helen". The show was a children's show on which she read from her unpublished works. The show was very successful and got her enough attention to be welcomed into the Canadian Author's Association.

This organization brought her to Ottawa, where at the encouragement of friends she met in the CAA she moved for a year to get her footing as a writer. She hoped that the flood of new experiences would bring her inspiration and for a while it seemed to help but even with all of the excitement of Ottawa after a while Helen found that it was her stories of home that the publishers were picking up. She decided to move back home to re-immerse herself in the province that was offering her so much material, but in one of the great ironies of life she found that the romantic image of home which had been such a reliable muse for her wore thin as soon as she was back in the familiar setting, and suddenly she struggled to even write at all.

Stuck in her tracks and frustrated again, Helen sought the advise of Henry Munroe, the provincial superintendent of Nova Scotia and a personal friend of her's. At the time Munroe had a keen interest in preserving the folksongs of the province and had started his own radio show for that purpose. When Helen came for direction, Munroe suggested she take up the same task. Around the same time another author, Dr. Mackenzie, had published a collection of ballads from Northumberland which had been received with some success. Munroe felt that Helen could do the same, but with ballads from the rest of the province. He told Helen that if she could find just one Child Ballad her fortune would be made; a statement which folklorists will recognized as grossly inaccurate. But Helen took his advice and though it would not bring her fame, the decision would bring her fame and purpose. Later she would admit that at that time when she set out she didn't have a clue what a folksong or ballad was.

Helen got her first break only a few days later while on a picnic with her friends in Eastern Passage. While conversing with a local man at a picnic the conversation shifted to local history, which prompted the man to tell Helen about the renowned storytellers at nearby Hartlan's Point. The man told her that if she went there she could hear stories about pirates, buried treasure and many things even more fantastical. What made it all the more tempting for Helen to investigate was that the Hartlan's were known throughout the passage for their songs as well. It was by this chance conversation that she would come to collect her first songs and stumble upon the real gem, Devil's Island. Enos Hartlan, the first informant of her career, gave her much material to publish and also directed her to that barren little island past the end of the point where she would meet perhaps her most famous informant, Ben Henneberry. It would be the Henneberrys and Hartlans who would provide Helen with so much of the material needed to propel herself to fame.

Helen's trips to Hartlan Point and Devil's Island are some of the most iconic of her career; responsible for the image of the little woman wandering around the province with a melodeon and wheelbarrow. These journey's also gave her many of the ballads in her first publication Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia which would, eventually, bring both her and the province international fame. She published this first work in 1932. It would bring her only a little money, but most importantly it would start her on her lifelong path to become one of Canada's greatest folklorists.

Not being a folklorist by training or trade, Helen learned almost everything as she went which often lead to regrets about lost chances and improper recordings in her early days. Helen ran into a great deal of trouble recording her early work. Having no musical training and trying to write down musical notation was troublesome. Her earliest recordings, like those on Devil's Island, were done by dragging around her famous melodeon and trying to mimic the notes of the singers as they went, but this was slow and cumbersome and destroyed the natural context of the song entirely. She did, however, get a big boon when she recruited a professional musical teacher, Doreen H. Senoir who was visiting from England, to transcribe, as well as getting recording equipment from the government; however, at the time this equipment was finicky and fragile, recording on a wax cylinder. Still, both of these made the whole process much easier.

Like most folklorists of her day, it took her a while to truly recognize the value of anything that wasn't a Child Ballad, which she only managed to record eleven of for her first publication. These were the bread and butter of her first collection and the mark of the trade that her collection was worth its salt, but most of the songs she recorded where true Nova Scotian songs, like the ballad of "Meagher's Children." This ballad recorded the events surrounding the deaths of two small children in the woods. The song is based on the actual disappearance of Jane and Margaret Meagher, age 6 and 4 respectively, who in April of 1842 wandered away from their family's farm at Lake Loon and after a massive effort where found days later dead in each others arms. It was tragic tale which haunted the towns for many years. It was these sorts of local songs would bring Helen most of her fame in the end, especially "Farewell to Nova Scotia", which has been toted as a provincial anthem for over half of a century.

Helen also only learned to appreciate the value of recording other forms of folklore, such as the folktales and superstitions which she would come to focus on in her later career. This expanded her collection significantly and has provided a invaluable historical resource for the province but was only done as an afterthought, starting off as a sort of incidental collection when she accidentally found someone who had no valuable folksongs. A lot of the branching out Helen did in her career was due to this sort of making due or because of the meager profit her books which forced Helen to find other ways to market her material. She was stubborn about making it in her chosen field adn her stubbornness would pay off. She even got a briefly run radio show in 1938 which expanded her success while also giving her informants a chance to sing their songs on the radio; a rare thing in a time when such public broadcast of folksongs were still done by professionals (as was still the case for many of the songs on Helen's show.)

In the end, after years of painstaking work, Helen would go on to be one of the most important figures in the Canadian folklore field and certainly one of the best known. She was a researcher and author whose career spanned over sixty years, leaving behind a collection of over 4000 individual items of folk culture to be preserved for future generations. The collection has been described as on of the country's most significant cultural resources. Her work put her in collaboration with the CBC, The National Museum of Canada and the The US Library of Congress. She would go on to earn six honorary doctorates and many awards, including the Order of Canada.

Anyone looking for further information should pick up Helen Creighton- Canada's First Lady of Folklore by Clary Croft. I also recommend they pay a visit to the Dartmouth Heritage Museum which runs out of her old home at 26 Newcastle St.