Halifax Harbour is one of the world's largest and deepest natural harbours. Originally known as Chebucto (an Anglicization of a Mi'kmaw word meaning "at the biggest harbour") the harbour was noted by early European explores for its vast basin, deep passage and ease of defense. While searching for a place to set up the first French colony across the Atlantic Champlain came across Chebucto Harbour but passed it by, simply noting it on his map as "a good safe bay". This was probably because of its distance from the fur trade, which was the central force driving the Port Royal colony. Through the 17th century, and possibly earlier, the French ran a fishing station on McNab's Island at the harbour's mouth, and would send a handful of missionaries to the region, like Father Thury, as the Chebucto Region was the annual meeting ground for the Mi'kmaq who would have a week long feast along the shores when the alewives swarmed in the waters.
The French would never start a colony at Chebucto, despite acknowledging its suitability for such endeavors. DeLabat, the engineering office at Port Royal, was sent in 1711 to survey Chebucto Harbour with the purpose of planning a new fortress and colony to replace their lost one at Port Royal. This colony, despite being mapped out, was never started since 2 years after DeLabat's survey the entirety of Mainland Acadia was given to the English in the Treaty of Utrecht. In 1749 the harbour would finally have its first permanent European settlement: Halifax.
Devil's Island
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| A Photograph of the settlement on Devil's Island, likely from the 1930's |
Devil's Island is a barren strip of land at the mouth of Halifax Harbour which is crowned with a rotting old lighthouse and a single crumbling home. Primarily, its only known by those who live in Eastern Passage where the bleakly bare little island is visible from most of the shoreline. From Halifax the view of it is blocked by the much larger McNab's and Lawlor's Islands. The island has a rather sinister reputation which seems to have come mostly from its appearance and rather ominously misleading name.
As happens quite often, once I began to dig into the islands history I found it went much deeper than I would have thought. Though we only have official record of permanent residency after 1830 when the Henneberry's moved from South East Passage, there is evidence of a family who settled the island in the 1750's, and that other leased the island after this. There is also possibility of an Acadian family having lived there sometime before that, though there is little solid evidence for this.
It's likely that most readers, if they have heard the name of Devil's Island, have done so due to Helen Creighton's work. It was here that Helen did much of her early folksong collecting at the advise of the Hartlans in South East Passage who directed her to visit Ben Henneberry who was known in the area for his songs and stories. Back when Helen visited the island in 1928 it was a much different place from what you'd see if you visited today. There were several families living on the island in relative isolation from the mainland. It had two lighthouses then, several houses and was the base of one of the Harbour's lifeboat stations (which had been the first in the province when it had been established in 1882). When Helen she arrived she found a community of 17 houses, 14 of which were occupied. The island had its own school as well.
Naturally, looking at the island today one will wonder what happened to the little settlement on the island. It is this which is at the heart of most of the stories that circulate about the island today. As with many legends, those surrounding the island and its ominous name seem to relate to sort of interplay between the knowledge about the former settlement of the island (still visible by the lighthouse keepers house and the lighthouse, as well as through Helen's stories) and the present absence of this settlement. In truth the settlement was largely abandoned in the 1940's when the residents came ashore out fear of the German U-boats prowling outside the harbour. Those that remained after eventually moved to the mainland as life on the island became less and less desirable as infrastructure on the mainland improved while the island remained without electricity, running water or more than one telephone. As well, motorboats made it easier to reach the fishing spots which the island had once been advantageously close to. The final nail in the coffin was the installation of the automatic lighthouse that stands today which was installed in 1967 and made the lighthouse keeper who remained there quite redundant.
It was through one of the explanatory legends that I first came across the name of Devil's Island. My father would tell me the story from time to time, often during our trips to nearby McNab's. Though the story was brief and fanciful, there turned out to be a surprising amount of truth to it. His story described a fishing village that had once been on the island. He told of how the people cut down the trees that once grew in a thick mass on the island. However, after several strange occurrences of which details I have forgotten, the town burned to the ground, leaving the island as it is today. The story went the that devil was in the wood they had built the town from, and that he had been responsible for the fire.
There are several other stories surrounding the origin of the name of the island which confuse and muddle its history. Hewitt, a school teacher who wrote newspaper articles about the area, recorded a story about some men who had sailed out to the island only to be stranded there for several days by bad weather. When they finally returned and were asked where they had been they apparently replied that they didn't know "unless it was the Devil's Island." However, Hewitt recorded another story for the origin of the name as well. During the period when the island was used as a grazing land, some shepherds were staying in a house on the island when some mainlanders came with guns to the island. They came ashore, climbed to the roof and discharged their guns down the chimney. This frightened the shepherds, who fled back to the mainland where they reported that the Devil had been there.
Helen Creighton's partner, Doreen Senior, had refused to ever return to the island after her first visit having the unshakable and unnerving feeling the the place was literally possessed by the devil. Helen Creighton herself recorded a story about Casper Henneberry (presumably a corruption of Gasper, who will be discussed further on) who lived on the island and who saw the Devil one night in the form of a halibut (Bluenose Ghosts, 110). He apparently saw this in the banking of the house, which may have helped contribute to the later stories about the devil being in the wood. The next day he went out to the water, and just of the island capsized his boat and drowned. No one could find a reasoning behind the accident, but later found signs of a struggle on the shore where from which Casper has set out. One of the sets of footprints was cloven, so the islanders said the devil must have come after him. The Hartlans of South East Passage claimed this was how the island had gotten its name. However, counter to this story as early as the 1820's the name Devil's had been in place on English maps which is a decade before the first Henneberry's arrived.
As happens quite often, once I began to dig into the islands history I found it went much deeper than I would have thought. Though we only have official record of permanent residency after 1830 when the Henneberry's moved from South East Passage, there is evidence of a family who settled the island in the 1750's, and that other leased the island after this. There is also possibility of an Acadian family having lived there sometime before that, though there is little solid evidence for this.
It's likely that most readers, if they have heard the name of Devil's Island, have done so due to Helen Creighton's work. It was here that Helen did much of her early folksong collecting at the advise of the Hartlans in South East Passage who directed her to visit Ben Henneberry who was known in the area for his songs and stories. Back when Helen visited the island in 1928 it was a much different place from what you'd see if you visited today. There were several families living on the island in relative isolation from the mainland. It had two lighthouses then, several houses and was the base of one of the Harbour's lifeboat stations (which had been the first in the province when it had been established in 1882). When Helen she arrived she found a community of 17 houses, 14 of which were occupied. The island had its own school as well.
Naturally, looking at the island today one will wonder what happened to the little settlement on the island. It is this which is at the heart of most of the stories that circulate about the island today. As with many legends, those surrounding the island and its ominous name seem to relate to sort of interplay between the knowledge about the former settlement of the island (still visible by the lighthouse keepers house and the lighthouse, as well as through Helen's stories) and the present absence of this settlement. In truth the settlement was largely abandoned in the 1940's when the residents came ashore out fear of the German U-boats prowling outside the harbour. Those that remained after eventually moved to the mainland as life on the island became less and less desirable as infrastructure on the mainland improved while the island remained without electricity, running water or more than one telephone. As well, motorboats made it easier to reach the fishing spots which the island had once been advantageously close to. The final nail in the coffin was the installation of the automatic lighthouse that stands today which was installed in 1967 and made the lighthouse keeper who remained there quite redundant.
It was through one of the explanatory legends that I first came across the name of Devil's Island. My father would tell me the story from time to time, often during our trips to nearby McNab's. Though the story was brief and fanciful, there turned out to be a surprising amount of truth to it. His story described a fishing village that had once been on the island. He told of how the people cut down the trees that once grew in a thick mass on the island. However, after several strange occurrences of which details I have forgotten, the town burned to the ground, leaving the island as it is today. The story went the that devil was in the wood they had built the town from, and that he had been responsible for the fire.
There are several other stories surrounding the origin of the name of the island which confuse and muddle its history. Hewitt, a school teacher who wrote newspaper articles about the area, recorded a story about some men who had sailed out to the island only to be stranded there for several days by bad weather. When they finally returned and were asked where they had been they apparently replied that they didn't know "unless it was the Devil's Island." However, Hewitt recorded another story for the origin of the name as well. During the period when the island was used as a grazing land, some shepherds were staying in a house on the island when some mainlanders came with guns to the island. They came ashore, climbed to the roof and discharged their guns down the chimney. This frightened the shepherds, who fled back to the mainland where they reported that the Devil had been there.
Helen Creighton's partner, Doreen Senior, had refused to ever return to the island after her first visit having the unshakable and unnerving feeling the the place was literally possessed by the devil. Helen Creighton herself recorded a story about Casper Henneberry (presumably a corruption of Gasper, who will be discussed further on) who lived on the island and who saw the Devil one night in the form of a halibut (Bluenose Ghosts, 110). He apparently saw this in the banking of the house, which may have helped contribute to the later stories about the devil being in the wood. The next day he went out to the water, and just of the island capsized his boat and drowned. No one could find a reasoning behind the accident, but later found signs of a struggle on the shore where from which Casper has set out. One of the sets of footprints was cloven, so the islanders said the devil must have come after him. The Hartlans of South East Passage claimed this was how the island had gotten its name. However, counter to this story as early as the 1820's the name Devil's had been in place on English maps which is a decade before the first Henneberry's arrived.
In researching the island, I wasn't surprised to find multiple stories about the Devil's presence there. The name lends itself to such stories and the Devil has been a prominent figure in mainland Nova Scotian lore since the earliest days of English settlement. It is almost natural for him to have played a role in the legend of the island. What I was surprised to find was evidence that there had once been a forest on the island, and even more surprised to find more evidence of fire. According to Hewitt, in early days there was a forest on the island which had been burned before the Henneberry's arrived in 1830 so that there could be pasture land for Eastern Passage's sheep. There is evidence supporting the idea that the island was once forested. When DeLabat surveyed the Harbour in 1711 for French settlement, he called the island "Green Island", probably for the same reason that in the earliest years the English from time to time called it "Wood Island".
The name, like the forest and the fire, may have some factual roots as well, though the source seems almost as dubious. The story that circulates in history books today is that before the arrival of the English to
Halifax the island was inhabited by a man named Deville and that the current name is simply a corruption of "Deville's Island". There appears to be little evidence for this story, but it has caught on, likely because it sounds more credible than the other stories about the Devil.
Though so much of the islands history is rather murky, we can pull a fairly cohesive story out of the muck. As with much of the area, it is unclear whether or not there were any Acadians settled on the island. However, we do know that the island's history goes back much further than the Henneberrys. When Halifax was founded in 1749 the island was granted to Captain John Rous. Rous was one of the towns most prominent early settlers. He was elected to the governing Council in 1755, was an important part of the fisheries for the colony, and was also an influential political and military figure in his day. He had impressed his superiors so much in the 1745 capture of Louisburg that he was rewarded with a commission as a captain in the Royal Navy. In this role he was at the command of the naval portion of the assault of Fort Beausejour. He was also at the taking of Quebec. Though Rous is the first name we can veritably attach to the island (in fact Devil's Island is called Rous' Island on early maps) there is no evidence that he resided on it. On the earliest maps his residence is marked as the northern tip of MacNab's.
Despite Rous not living on the island, the first mention of the island being inhabited goes back to the days of his ownership, when he probably was leasing the island. In 1755 in letter about an unfortunate incident of scalping at the Payzant house in Mahone Bay, Col. Sutherland mentions that one of the causalities was a young man whose family was residing on Captain Rous's Island. Sutherland believed that the raiding party had first gone to that Island and forced the young man to lead them to Payzant's. This young man's name was not recorded in the story so his identity remains a mystery.
The next owner appears to have been Richard Bulkeley, Rous' son-in-law who best know as the Editor of the Halifax Gazette. He was another influential figure in the early history of Halifax. He served on the colony's council, once as president, and had many high ranking political and military appointments in his time. Like his father-in-law, it appears that Bulkeley never lived in the island, but may have leased the land. There is record of him possibly having leased the island to a sailor by the name of Kay.
Bulkeley sold the island to Jacob Horn of Eastern Passage, a farmer and former soldier who used the island as a pasture for his sheep. The islands in the harbour were generally favoured for this purpose in the early Halifax, since it was considered safer as there were less predators on the islands and on these islands the herd could not wander into the woods and become lost. Horn, like the owners before him, never lived on the island. At most they had temporary residences. Horn is likely responsible for a good deal of the clearing of the forest on the island.
The Henneberry's are the first recorded permanent residents of Devil's Island. They also are the islands most famous residents. Andrew was the first Henneberry who settled there. His children Andrew and Gasper. They reported that their father had bought a third of the island in 1830 from Jacob Horn's son and had cleared half of the island and built a house. This may have been when the trees where finally and fully removed from the island. They claimed that no improvements had been made on the island before their houses and their fathers were built, helping support the idea that they were the first to stay there long term.
From the 1830's on the community grew and soon the Henneberry's were joined by the Faulkners (many of who would come to server as the lighthouse keepers) and the Edwards. The community built its first school in the 1840's, and eventually had its own post office. In 1852 the first lighthouse was placed on the island at the request of the local sailors, merchants and traders as the island had been responsible for at least a dozen shipwrecks. Without its trees it stood at most 11 feet above sea level and proved virtually invisible at night. This first lighthouse was built on the southwest corner of the island. The second lighthouse was erected further down, in 1877.
In 1885 the provinces first lifeboat station was established on the island, to help rescue the many unfortunate crews who found themselves wrecked on the numerous shoals between the harbour's islands. This station closed in 1940, but the men who worked there were responsible for saving the lives of countless sailors. The rest of the story of the island revolves around Helen, the war and the automated lighthouse as has been told earlier in this article.
Anyone interested in visiting Devil's Island should follow this link http://www.mcnabsisland.com/.
Anyone looking for more detailed information about the islands history may find The Hewitt Articles interesting. Also the site run by the Friends of MacNab's Island was a great help in this research.
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