Revisiting Canso and the Whitman Wharf House Bed and Breakfast.

I first heard from Geoff by e-mail that they were planning to visit Canso after they had discovered my website, www.whitmanwharf.com and that the house that used to belong to her grandfather, Harry Whitman, was now Whitman Wharf House Bed and Breakfast.

“Would it be possible to visit,” they asked, even though it was “out of season.”

In our email exchanges, Geoff sent me several family photographs of the Whitman family taken during the period of WWII, when Joan was 6-10 years of age and was living with her mother and grandparents here in Canso during WWII.

A photo from 1952, depicting a group sitting on a large bald rock, the Canso harbour and freight buildings on Whitman’s Wharf behind them, was taken at the back of the house when Joan (17) had only just met her future husband Geoff (18). After graduating from University Joan and Geoff married and 52 years later they delighted in revisiting Joan’s former childhood home.

Over the two days that our guests were with us I discovered all sorts of incredible bits of history; fragments of stories and history. “Every week my grandmother had tea,” Joan explained as she went on to describe how the social elite of the town, each had a day when they were home to receive guests for tea. She remembered details of the housekeeping from her grandmother’s days, when the ritual of the washing and ironing demanded a row of flat irons. Although much of the house remains unchanged in architecture, Joan’s memories were intricately tied to her grandmother’s furnishings; the piano in the parlour and a large display cabinet of stuffed birds that stood close to the fireplace in the drawing room. She spoke of the “den” but the connecting wall to the kitchen has since been knocked through to make a larger, brighter kitchen. The dining room had always served that purpose, except for when it was the doctor’s surgery; the entrance for patients through an external door that we have not used. There was a sink in a little room adjoining the surgery, Joan explained, and on opening the door discovered that this space now housed the washer and dryer, though there was still a sink in there it was positioned against a different wall. Earlier I had been told that this was the former “pantry” so clearly the room had been repurposed several times.

And what of the age of the house? I have tried to pinpoint the exact date of the building of the house from photographs and also the “fixtures.” There are decorative cast iron metal hinges on the impressive eight foot high wooden doors which are in Eastlake style,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastlake_style and date from the beginning of the Arts and Crafts movement. Although unable to give an exact date, Joan’s mother had been born in 1908 in the house. The house had been built by Joan’s great-grandfather, (Donald McLaine) on her maternal side, who had worked for the Commercial Cable Company. He subsequently sold the house to Harry Whitman, her grandfather.

Perhaps by some extraordinary coincidence Geoff’s grandmother, and Joan’s, both on their maternal side, were sisters. Their father, Donald McLaine, hailed from Mull, an island off the north-west coast of Scotland, renowned for its beauty.

Geoff’s grandfather, Walter Prendergast worked for the Commercial Cable Company in Hazel Hill, where Geoff’s mother was born. Walter Prendergast was quite a sportsman, and he appears in several team photos in the Canso Museum.

While here, Joan gave me several photos of the Whitman family and a short history of the Whitman geneology that she had written:

‘Abraham Whitman of New England Loyalist stock, (settled in the Annapolis Valley,) moved to Chester and then to Canso in 1812.
A son, Abraham N. Inherited and expanded his fathers’ business.
His son, Isaac, was the hero of the famous “Pirate incident.”
His son, Captain David, was Evelyn Whitman’s great grandfather and the father of Isaac J., her grandfather. This Isaac began an independent business in 1884 and later joined with his son Harry to form ‘I.J. Whitman & Son.”
The two Whitman firms, A.N’s and I.J.’s were rivals but the relatives remained friendly. A.N.’s sons, Edward and Clement carried on the larger store and their wives Mrs. E.C. and Mrs. C.N. were the social arbiters of the town.’