Celebrating our History

Compiled by Peter Eldridge

In 1891 the Yarmouth Steamship Company initiated comfortable and convenient passenger service between Yarmouth and Boston––and tourists soon arrived from New England to explore Yarmouth County’s attractions. New hotels and resorts were established, for example, in Yarmouth (Grand Hotel, 1894), Overton (Bay View Lodge, 1896), and Port Maitland (Ellis House, 1897). William Day presents images of Port Maitland, and its attractions, at this interesting time.

The Village of Port Maitland

William H. E. Day

Port Maitland is a small coastal community situated in Yarmouth County 2.5 kilometres south of the Digby County line. The village lies along the old post road between Yarmouth and Digby, but a small outlying settlement also exists 750 metres west of the village, at Green Cove, near a breakwater and a sand beach. My first photograph, taken ca. 1890 from the belfry of the Calvinist Baptist Church, looks north on Main Street towards Beaver River in the distance. The white building at centre right is W. S. Porter’s store and post office at the southeast corner of Main and Hector Streets. Mr. Porter was post master from 1881 to 1911.

#1. (Album 5, p 21; YCMA)

The next photo, taken by L. G. Swain of Yarmouth, looks south on Main Street towards the Calvinist Baptist Church, which was destroyed by lightning in March 1892. The large house at right, at the northwest corner of Main and Cove Streets, was owned by Charles Fox and later by A. V. B. Bingay, who converted the first floor into a general store and post office. Mr. Bingay served as post master from 1911 to 1956. The building at the southwest corner of Main and Cove Streets was a corner store and today is called the Shore Grocery.

#2. (PH–80–PORT–8, YCMA)

Three houses to the south of the corner store at Main and Cove Streets was a three-gabled hotel, called the Maitland House, which was a stop for the stage coach between Yarmouth and Digby. The bench on the verandah was used by those waiting for the stage coach or for service from E. H. Porter’s livery stable.

#3. (Album 8, p 24b, YCMA)

In 1908 Dominion Day was celebrated in the village and at the breakwater. In the next photo we look north towards the Corner from a point in the middle of Main Street near the Maitland House. The small signs over the sidewalk at left read “Curry’s Ice Cream Parlor” and “Foreign and Local Post Cards.” The banner on the arch reads “Dominion Day 1867–1908.” A. V. B. Bingay’s residence is under and beyond the arch at left.

#4. (PC–80–PORT–45, YCMA)

In the early 1890s Josiah Ellis began to rent rooms in his and neighbouring houses to summer guests. Eventually he purchased the lot at the northeast corner of Main and Hector Streets and, after renovating and extending the existing building, opened a magnificent new hotel, the Ellis House, in 1897. This photo was used as the basis of many post cards in which the esthetically displeasing utility poles were omitted.

#5. (PH–80–PORT–2, YCMA)

According to its promotional brochures, the Ellis House was an ideal tourist destination. From its roof garden, “you can see as far out in the Atlantic as forty miles on a clear day, and inland ten lakes lie within sight.” At Churchill Lake, a short distance to the northeast, “you can enjoy a fresh water swim, lake boating, or paddling up the lake to fish trout or salmon, or seek game.”

#6. (2004–205.22, YCMA)

As well, one could walk west down Cove Street to the breakwater and the sand beach, where “you are ready for surf bathing, for motor boating, and for deep sea fishing.” The beach “stretches three miles in a crescent, its silver sands shining in the night like the reflection of a half moon. . . . Bath houses are provided free for the use of guests.” And to join the people of Port Maitland for a night of deep sea fishing “is to provide a purple patch for your memory of happy experiences.”

#7. (Wilfred Allan)

An “oxomobile” also was available to take the hotel’s patrons to and from the Port Maitland beach.

#8. (Wilfred Allan)

On 29 October 1913 fire destroyed the stores of J. E. Goudey and W. S. Porter at the southeast corner of Main and Hector Streets. The site was cleared, and eventually Porter’s store was replaced by one which had been located 100 metres to the south on Main Street. This photo, taken by Parker on 17 May 1916, shows a military parade of detachments from Yarmouth.

#9. (Ruth Kirk, Wilfred Allan)

Although the Ellis House was completely remodeled in 1922, business declined and, as will happen with large wooden structures, the hotel was destroyed by fire on 24 October 1924. On an Ellis House post card in the Yarmouth County Museum’s archives someone gave this pithy assessment: “Burned up by lack of guests and money to support it.”

I thank Ruth Kirk, Wilfred Allan, and archivist Lisette Gaudet of the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives for providing access to these photographs and post cards.

References and Notes

   [1] A version of this essay was published in the Yarmouth County Historical Society’s Historigram, vol. 15, no. 9, Oct. 2015, pp. 5–8.

   [2] The photograph at the top was taken looking south in Port Maitland from the top floor of one of the stores at the southeast corner of Main and Hector streets. The Maitland House is in the foreground at right; in the distance at left is the Bay View Baptist Church, the cornerstone of which was laid in 1892. I thank Wilfred Allan for permission to display this image.

   [3] For more information about Port Maitland please see: Historical Trails Through Port Maitland, Beaver River, Sandford, Short Beach, Darling’s Lake. Compiled and published by the High Hopes Senior Citizens Club, Port Maitland, Nova Scotia, 1985. 299 pp.

   [4] I thank archivist Lisette Gaudet, of the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives (YCMA), for providing access to photographs and to archival materials about Port Maitland. All photographs labeled YCMA are copyrighted; please contact the Archives if you wish to obtain copies. Ruth Kirk and Wilfred Allan kindly permitted me to display the remaining images.