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Some Observations on the Social Strata of Bear River Village in the 1950s:
When I grew up in the village in the 1940s and 1950s it held perhaps 1000 souls in its economic zone, down perhaps by half from its heyday of the 1890s. As noted elsewhere it was for all intents and purposes simply another white Anglo-Saxon protestant enclave among a host of similar communities that made up most of southwestern Nova Scotia after WW2. Even so, the Village was not without some subtle social stratification that could be recognized even by a 12-year-old. To my teenage mind there were four key elements driving the community’s social stratification: i) old money and its associated status; ii) religion (at least in the eyes of the participants); iii) residential location, and iv) young widowhood and associated poverty.
i) Old money and its associated status:
From perhaps 1860 until 1905 the focus of the community was producing sailing ships; which ships went proudly around the world. A few of those same ships were owned by local entrepreneurial merchants who began plying their wares down the Atlantic seaboard and throughout the Caribbean. They flourished! And then iron ships came along c1905 and the industry stalled. Looking for a revival c1920 one of the newly-monied families decided they would build a pulp mill. Unfortunately, they, and a host of good-intended local investors, lost their shirts.
However, some of that early money was hidden deep in mattresses, and the elaborate homes had already been built, and some of the last vestiges of the monied trading class, still in evidence in the 1940s and 1950s, provided an elite social stratum within the broader community of farmers and loggers, and civil servants. A couple former military officers brought some additional gentility into this mercantile elite mix. However, that whole segment eventually gave way to the vestiges of age in the late 20th century; all that is left today are the houses.
ii) Religion:
The community contained five major church institutions: i) Baptist (largest congregation, 2nd largest building, an evangelical tendency); ii) United (originally Methodists, largest building, a close 2nd largest congregation, a sight tendency to no-nonsense Puritanism); iii) Advent Christian (immigrated in from the central US seaboard in the 1860s, a missionary tendency, and some evangelistic fervor, smaller but committed congregation); iv) Anglicans, (servicing ex-pat Brits and former German mercenaries, small, lingering), and the Roman Catholic (small, Acadian-derived, located on “Indian Hill” (local Reserve since 1821), and willing to look off-reserve at converted sheep in need of a shepherd whose tradition would dictate adherence). There was unspoken competition among the first three mentioned factions for the Protestant souls of the Community. Both the Baptists and Adventists would bring in US evangelists for week long prayer and gospel meetings at least once a year; they quietly competed on that circuit. The Methodists (United) would not do anything particularly special, except perhaps participate in the annual weeklong interfaith service session (often all 5 churchs did), and hold the odd Ladies Aid church supper in the vestry primarily for their own adherents. The quality of and personality of the Minister was always a key factor and could spell the ascendency of a church for a decade. Often, if a good Baptist felt slighted by the minister, the family would switch allegiance to the Methodists, and vice versa, and occasionally those changes became forever. By my day the mercantile elite was no longer a significant factor in church adherence, or influence; status generated from the strength of perception and personality within the congregation, and the extrovertedness (“careful, not too much!”) of the pastor!
iii) Residential location:
The third key social-determining ingredient at least in my youthful teenage mind, was “Where do you live?”. Those of us who lived within the core of the village simply assumed, by right of location, more social acceptance than those who lived further out. If you could get to school with a mile or so walk, you would then be included as part of the Village in any ‘competition’ against those from further away. There were a series of four lines surveyed in 1784 for Loyalist settlers and located perhaps 15 to 20 km away to the east. In 1950 people living on those rural lines were generally referenced by the youth of the Village as ‘back-liners’ and in the eyes of that Village youth they had little status! Imagine my surprise when I got to a Regional High School in Grade 10 and realized that I, in the eyes of those kids who lived in the county seat, was simply another “back-liner”!
iv) Widowhood and associated poverty:
As a young teenager I was not consciously aware of this stratification class; however, it has become quietly apparent to me in the last 25 years as I have delved in detail into the history of my own family and have seen similar circumstances quietly repeated in a couple other Village families.
My mother and her three children (4, 6, and 7 years) returned to Bear River from Upper New York state after she lost her insurance salesman husband in 1933 to an unanticipated massive, heart attack while he was “on the road” pursuing his vocation in another upstate community. She was effectively left penniless, and it took her the winter to amass the funds to get herself and her children back to Nova Scotia, which she did in 1934.
[Of what my mother was apparently not aware was the fact that her husband appears to have taken out an insurance policy listing their oldest children as beneficiaries! This came to light c2006 via a 1956 advertisement in The Troy Record (New York) seeking information on the whereabouts of the two oldest children and instructing them to come forward by September of that year to claim certain “abandoned property” held by New York’s Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Should the parties not come forward “such abandoned property will be paid to the Comptroller of the State of New York.”]
So, there she was back in NS and enjoying the safety and comfort of the family farm, all would be well! But alas, not so!
I have only recently become aware that my mother and my grandmother were both described as “stubborn” and living again in the same household was no longer feasible. So, my mother convinced her sister to take in the kids for the remainder of season while she went to work as a waitress at a local upscale hotel catering to US summer tourists. The process worked, my mother retained some pride, and for the next seven years she managed to keep her family together with the assistance of community members who were willing to lend a hand with the kids during the summers. During the winters she worked on a day-basis ($1.00/per) wherever she could find occasional employment, and not infrequently doing housework for the old-monied class! She followed that regime until the fall of 1941 when she married my father, and his regular military pay cheque allowed her to climb to the next rung of the Bear River social status ladder.
My point here is that those elements – former mercantile elite, church affiliation, urban vs. rural, and young widowhood poverty really determined the interplay within and around this Nova Scotia village – the community and all its residents were colored to some greater or lesser extent by the paint pigments contained in that can. In my opinion the story of that 1950s Bear River is less fulsome without some description of its paint mixing experience and outcome.
RAR Dec 2024 |