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=Grand Pre, Nova Scotia= | =Grand Pre, Nova Scotia= | ||
Revision as of 19:14, 5 January 2017
Grand Pre, Nova Scotia
Halifax Subdivision (Mile 46.65 from Windsor Junction), Mile 62.46, (from Halifax)
- Next Station East: Horton Landing
- Next Station West: Wolfville
Facilities & Features
Commerce & Industry
- Four apple warehouses
- Livestock Loading ramp
Description & History
Grand Pre was settled by Acadians about 1680 and grew to become the largest of the Acadian settlements around the Minas Basin. The village was destroyed in 1755 during the Acadian Expulsion. New England Planter settlers arrived in 1760. Grand Pre became a productive farming area but town and village life concentrated on the nearby harbour at Wolfville. When the Windsor & Annapolis Railway arrived in 1869, Grand Press was initially served by only a small W&A station on the south side of the mainline along with a team track for freight.[1]
However a line of willow trees and an old well associated with the vanished Acadian village across the track from the station quickly became a scenic attraction for tourists attracted by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Evangeline" which was set at Grand Pre. The W&A promoted the surrounding landscape to attract American tourists. In 1907 a Wolfville resident with Acadian roots, John Frederic Herbin, bought the land across from the station believed to be the site of the Acadian church so that it might be protected and built a small memorial cross.
Herbin sold the land to the DAR in 1917 on the condition that Acadians be involved in its preservation. The railway made major investments at the site hiring a landscape architect to work with the DAR's head gardener to create a large memorial garden at the site. In 1920 the Dominion Atlantic erected a statue of Evangeline created by the Canadian sculptor Louis-Philippe Hébert. The railway donated a piece of the land in the park to the Acadian community to build a memorial church in 1922. A new picturesque, log-cabin stye station was built on the north side of the tracks in 1925 connected to the park by landscaped paths. The church opened as a museum in 1930 jointly run by the Acadian community and the DAR.
The 1920s also saw a major expansion of the apple industry at Grand Pre. A small apple warehouse built to the west of the station before World War I was enlarged and joined by three larger apple warehouses in the 1920s.
After the decline in passenger travel in the 1950s, the DAR sold the memorial gardens to Parks Canada in 1957. The station was eventually closed and moved to nearby Evangeline Beach where it was converted into a summer cottage. The apple warehouses fell out of use as the apple industry in the Annapolis Valley declined in the 1950s and were demolished one by one. The last warehouse, the Grand Pre Fruit Company warehouse, was converted into a carpentry shop and dance studio in the 1990s but was destroyed by fire in 2008.[2]
Today an interpretive centre at Grand Pre occupies the site of the old fruit warehouses and tells the story of the Acadian settlement of Grand Pre and includes displays on the railway's promotion and development of the site.
Operations & Orders
Grand Pre became a destination for passenger specials carrying tourists to Grand Pre as well as Sunday picnics specials and special Apple Blossom excursions run from Kentville. Double-headed passenger specials with locomotives coupled end-to-end would use the Grand Pre siding to reverse the run around the passenger consist so a locomotive could reverse the direction of the excursion train and return to Kentville.[3]
Gallery
Grand Pre circa 1890s.
The Flying Bluenose, Train No. 124, at Grand Pre, circa 1914.
Cover of Highlights of Nova Scotia History showing the New Yorker passing Grand Pre.
Grand Pre, air view from the south with the Grand Pre Station, Water Tower and fruit warehouses with the memorial park behind, 1931.
Grand Pre air view from east with the Grand Pre Station, Water Tower and memorial park with Wolfville in distance, 1931.
Post card made from Air view of Grand Pre Station, Grand Pre Water Tower and Grand Pre Park, 1931.
Grand Pre Memorial Park entrance with DAR sign, 1941.
Topographic map from Kentville to Hortons Landing circa 1956.
DAR No. 1046 with short five car freight traverses the marshes just east of Grand Pre station, on Monday Oct 8, 1956.
RDC pulling into Grand Pre
References & Footnotes
- ↑ Windsor and Annapolis Railway, Report of Alexander MacNab, C. E., November 1, 1873. pages 14, 21
- ↑ "Fire guts apple warehouse in Grand Pré", CBC News, May 20, 2008
- ↑ M. Allen Gibson, Train Time, p. 33-35
