Young recruit David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) arrived in Windsor, NS, to begin training with the newly formed Jewish Legion of the British Army at Fort Edward, with a plan to fight against the Ottoman Turks in Palestine. Over 1,100 non-commissioned Jewish officers were trained in Windsor. Ben-Gurion had enlisted on April 26, 1918, in New York City and trained in Windsor. He would later become a primary founder of the State...

CBC Information Morning Halifax began broadcasting, featured co-hosts Bob Oxley and Paul Kells, news by Frank Cameron and Brian Bullock, sports by George Young and weather by Reid Dexter. The following year, Don Tremaine became a host with Gerry Fogarty as sportscaster. By 1976, Don Connolly joined Tremaine. The show went on later to feature Don Connolly, with co-host Louise Renault, sports by John Hancock and weather by Brennan Mitchell....

At the age of 25, following the death of King George VI, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II takes place at Westminister Abbey. It required 14 months of planning and preparation. It was the first British coronation to be televised. Queen Elizabeth II is now in her 91st year (2017) and is the longest reigning British monarch in history. (Photo: Queen Elizabeth II with The Duke of Edinburgh in her...

The first Apple Blossom Festival was held in the Annapolis Valley. (Image: Promotional material for the Apple Blossom Festival, 1934 . Appleblossom.com.)

Flora MacDonald was born in North Sydney (d. 2015). A distinguished Canadian politician and humanitarian, she was first elected to the House of Commons in 1972. She was Canada’s first female foreign minister and the first woman to seek the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives, in 1976. (Photo: Wikipedia Creative Commons).

A captured American privateer and prisoner at Melville Island, Benjamin Franklin Palmer, wrote in his diary, “Four prisoners carried to Target Hill [later known as Deadman’s Island] this morning, a place where they bury the dead. I'm fearful a number of us will visit that place this summer if not shortly released.” It's estimated that, between 1812 and 1815, as many as 8,000 captured American soldiers, sailors and privateers were...

The New England Planters began to arrive in Nova Scotia to settle on former Acadian lands. Townships were established in Newport, Falmouth and Horton. Many Planter descendants still reside in the area, some on the original land grants. One of their landing places was at Boudreau’s Bank on the Rivière des Habitants (in Mi’kmaq, the Chijekwtook/Jijutu’kwejk). They later would rename the river and district Cornwallis. (Photo: The Planter's Monument. Leo...

The Highland Arts Theatre in Sydney, Nova Scotia presented a "Tribute to The Rotary Show.' The Rotary Show had started in 1955 and ran more than thirty years, providing Cape Breton theatre goers with Broadway's finest musicals with down-home, local productions at the Vogue Theatre, the Savoy, as well as at the St. Andrew's Hall. The first production was the operetta "The Red Mill." The June show featured over 80...

While the First World War raged on in Europe, by late spring 1918 the first phase of a “three day fever” began to appear. A few deaths were reported, while some victims (ages fifteen to forty) recovered after a few days. However, by September the virus appeared in North America and became widespread globally. It did not discriminate and struck fast, eluding treatment and control. It became known as the...

The victorious Royal Navy frigate HMS Shannon returned to Halifax under the command of Provo William Parry Wallis. In tow, he had the USS Chesapeake from Boston. Wallis’s captain had died during the battle outside Boston Harbour on June 1. Wallis took command and sailed the Shannon back to Halifax with the captured Chesapeake in tow. Chesapeake’s commander, Captain James Lawrence, died of his wounds on the way to Halifax....

William Cobbett (1763–1835) and family arrived in Halifax, fleeing from the United States en route to England. He had served with the 54th Regiment of Foot in New Brunswick, became a popular writer (author of The Soldier’s Friend in 1792), and was an early witness to the French Revolution. But he had also become a controversial political and pro-British pamphleteer and commentator in the United States. He had been charged...

Annie Louise Prat was born in Paradise, Annapolis County. Her life spanned a century. She was the daughter of Samuel Prat and Elizabeth (née Morse). Annie and her siblings were raised in Wolfville where her father was the first train-station master, and later became the superintendent of several stations in the Annapolis Valley. Her mother was the sister of John Morse, founder of Morse’s Tea in Halifax. Annie became a...

Charles S.A. Ritchie died (b. 1906 in Halifax). Educated at King’s College, and later at Oxford, Harvard and the École Libre des Sciences Politiques, he became a distinguished Canadian diplomat and a compelling diarist. He won the 1974 Governor General’s Award for his diary account published in 1974 as The Siren Years: A Canadian Diplomat Abroad 1937–1945. He later published three further volumes: An Appetite for Life (1977), Diplomatic Passport...

Former CBC producer Nicholas ‘Manny’ Pittson died (b. Halifax, 1937). He had a career spanning sixty years. He started in high school as an announcer at CHNS Radio in Halifax, later becoming the youngest producer in Canada at CBC Halifax, where he produced Frank’s Bandstand, Take Thirty and Singalong Jubilee, and launched the careers of many iconic Canadian singers. As an independent producer, he brought such shows as Don Messer’s...

Admiral Edward Boscawen (1711–1761) engaged a French fleet in the Newfoundland fog and, in capturing the sixty-four-gun Alcide (and the Lys), discovered a specific piece of intelligence. Among the French Admiral Hocquart’s papers was a document relating how French troops, working in concert with a general Acadian-Indian uprising, planned to pit some 8,000 men against 3,000 British in an attempt to attack Halifax. Thousands of scalping knives were also found...

Gordon Parsons died (age forty-two). He was an eclectic cinephile and writer, and a driving force in the Atlantic Canada film industry, including the founding of Wormwood’s Dog and Monkey Cinema (1976). In 1991 he became the Executive Director of the Atlantic Film Festival (which began in St. John’s, NL). Wormwood closed in 1998.

The was established by William O’Brien, consisting of five horse-drawn vehicles providing passenger transit service in the city. Through various organizational changes and expansions, the horse-drawn vehicles continued till May 31, 1896, when the Halifax Electric Tramway Company began operating streetcars. In 1949, the system changed over to electric trolley coaches and then later to gas-powered buses. By January 1, 1970, the City of Halifax was managing the operation. By...

Group of Seven founding artist Lawren Harris (1885–1970) was in the Glace Bay–New Waterford area reporting on the miner’s strike on a commission from the Toronto Star. Ten years earlier, he had been on the battlefields of Europe. During his time in Cape Breton he produced somber images from what he witnessed, one being Miner’s Houses. Earlier in the spring of 1921, Harris had also been in Halifax on his...

A ceremony attended by approximately 400 people, including American Civil War reenactment soldiers, was held at Benjamin Jackson’s grave site, marking it with a commemorative stone. Jackson (1835–1915) was a decorated American Civil War soldier, and a sailor, farmer and African Nova Scotian. He was born in Lochartville (near Hantsport). (Photo: Ben Jackson (1835–1915), a decorated American Civil War soldier, sailor, farmer and African Nova Scotian. From Historic Annapolis Valley,...

Natalie MacMaster was born in Troy, Inverness County, Cape Breton. She began playing the fiddle at the age of nine and her musical career at sixteen. By 2017 the award-winning fiddler had created twelve albums and toured extensively with many international artists. She won numerous musical awards and was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2006. Her uncle was the late renowned Cape Breton fiddler Buddy MacMaster...

Nova Scotia writer, editor and author Scott Milsom died. He was a co-founder and editor of the award-winning New Maritimes quarterly journal. He was also author of Voices of Nova Scotia Community: A Written Democracy (Fernwood, 2003), which explored why the people of small communities across Nova Scotia value the quality of life they enjoy. (Photo: Book cover from Fernwood Publishing).

The $150-million dollar Big Lift project on the sixty-year- old Angus L. Macdonald Bridge in Halifax officially reached its halfway point in the work to replace all the deck segments of the bridge. By this date, the contractor, the American Bridge Canada Company, had replaced twenty segments out of a total of forty-six, with plans to complete the deck replacement by spring 2017. An informative video of the history of...

William A. White was born in Virginia to two former slaves. He became the second graduate of African descent from Acadia University (1903). He later became a chaplain and the first black officer serving in the entire British Army during the First World War. He was the father of Portia White, as well as politicians Bill and Jack White. He was the first Canadian black person to be given an...

The National Wine Awards were hosted in Greenwich, Nova Scotia. Featuring over 1,700 wines and ciders, it was the largest wine awards event in Canadian history, featuring six tables of judges. The event was also hosted in Nova Scotia in 2011. The Winery Association of Nova Scotia indicated that, as of 2017, there were seventy grape growers and more than 800 acres under vine in various regions across Nova Scotia,...

After making their passage across the ocean in thirteen transports and one sloop-of-war (the Sphinx), Governor Colonel Edward Cornwallis (age thirty-six) and 2,547 volunteer settlers and soldiers arrived at what later became Halifax - then called Chebuctou by the French and K’jipuktuk by the Mi’kmaq, meaning 'biggest harbour'. The purpose of the Halifax was to establish a new state-sponsored settlement in British North America. The settlers included 1,174 families (with...

The Rise and Follies of Cape Breton production opened on this day at the Lyceum Theatre in Sydney. Later a recording of the show sold over 10,000 copies. Variations of the show continued to 1985. Popular songs written for the Follies include such pieces as Leon Dubinsky's "Rise Again", considered an anthem of resilience and hope for all Cape Bretoners, it was later recorded by The Rankin Family and peaked...

The CN-owned Nova Scotian Hotel opened in Halifax, boasting 130 rooms, five suites and a ballroom that could accommodate up to 275 guests. CN sold it in 1981 and it became the Westin Nova Scotian. (Photo of the Nova Scotia Hotel with Cornwallis Park in front and the Queen Elizabeth docked behind. N.S. Archives.)

Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), an Italian navigator from Venice, who had sailed from England under the authority of Henry VII with a crew of eighteen in the Matthew, is said to have planted the British flag on Cape North, Cape Breton. (Photo from John Cabot & The Voyage of the Matthew, Brian Cutherbertson

Portia White was born in Truro (d. 1968). She was the first black Canadian operatic contralto concert singer to win international acclaim, making her national debut as a singer in Toronto in 1941. The Portia White Prize was named in her honour. (Also See William A. White, June 16, 1874.). (Photo: Portia White. From Halifax: The First 250 Years, Judith Fingard, Janet Guildford, and David Sutherland.)

World travel writer (1831–1904) arrived in Halifax on the Cunard Royal Mail steamship the Canada, just in from Liverpool, England, after a nine-day voyage. Bird was travelling with her cousins from PEI (the Swabeys) who had been visiting in London. After a two-day stay in Halifax they left at 6 p.m. by stagecoach to Truro, then on to Pictou to catch a steamer to Charlottetown. Bird would stay in PEI...

On the evening of June 27, 1918, a German U-boat torpedoed the hospital ship "Llandovery Castle" 190 kilometres west of the southern tip of Ireland. She had been sailing from Halifax with a total of 234 individuals — 143 crew members and 91 Canadian Army Medical Corps personnel lost their lives as all aboard abandoned ship as it sank. Only 18 crew members and six CAMC personnel survived. Three Nova...

Spoken word artist, activist and educator El Jones was announced Halifax Regional Municipality’s poet laureate for 2013–2015. Previous poet laureates for HRM included Tanya Davis (2011–2012), Shauntay Grant (2009–2011), Lorri Neilsen Glenn (2005–2009) and inaugural poet laureate Sue MacLeod (2001– 2005). Following El Jones was Rebecca Thomas (2016–2018). (Photo: Courtesy of El Jones.)

The Metro Food Bank Society began in Halifax (later Feed Nova Scotia). The society grew into a provincial operation and supported over 148 food banks, distributing food and providing referrals to community services across the province for families in need. In 2017, over 19,722 Nova Scotians turned to food banks each month.

Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (1767–1820), fourth son of King George III, arrived (aged twenty-seven) in Halifax as commander of the troops in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (from 1794 till 1800). He was the first member of the royal family to live in North America for more than a short visit. The prince was offered the rural estate of Lieutenant Governor Sir John Wentworth as his residence....

The National Historic Site and surrounding landscape of Grand Pré was given a UNESCO World Heritage designation, qualifying under the cultural landscape category. The Grand Pré area encompassed 1,300 hectares of land and properties in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley. It was the centre of French Acadian settlement from 1682 to 1755. The National Historic Site honours the deportation of the Acadians, which began in 1755 and continued until 1762. (Photo:...