A Capitol Loss
Dec 31, 2021
A Capitol Loss
When we bulldoze the buildings of our past to erect modern glass and steel behemoths, we obliterate a part of our culture. This story is about one of the grand movie theatres of the early 20th century. With its razing in 1992, future generations have been cheated of the memories of those places. This piece is an attempt to bring it to life.
Events
From Thistles to Cowpies - YouTube
The Memory Box
Jill Martin writes with authority about Sable Island. Her family connections to the island served as inspiration for her first novel, Return to Sable (2015) and her award winning, Sable Island in Black and White, (Nimbus 2016) which chronicle the communication challenges of this minute crescent of sand rising, at its highest, a mere 70 metres above the surrounding sea. Both a navigational hazard and a place of succour to those unfortunate souls hoodwinked by its shifting sands, Sable Island has unequivocally earned the nickname, Graveyard of the Atlantic. As part of the research for her writing, she consulted the logs of the island’s superintendents’ held in the NS Archives; the Marconi records held in the National Archives in Ottawa and the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, as well as personal letters and artefacts in her possession. This research unearthed a wealth of information on the history of communication on and to the island: lighthouses, fog alarms, cannons, pigeons, telephone, and wireless. She connected with family members descended from two of the early wireless engineers who worked call sign, SD (Sable Island) and who went on to shape the direction of radio in Canada and the United States. Just out of wireless school, these intrepid young men landed on the spit of sand and went about their work in three piece suits, jaunty hats and riding boots. Join Jill at the third bi-annual Sable Island Conference, Shifting Sands, November 9 8:30-3pm at the Halifax Convention Centre in Halifax Nova Scotia.
Join authors Jill Martin and Ruth Anne Whicher at 10:00 am in the Lindsay Room at the Halifax Library, September 14 2019 where they talk about their recent book, Murder in the Fourth: A Case of Mindslaughter.
