The Widow Who Walked to Halifax

Brier Island is one of those remote and windswept places that seem like the farthest end of the world. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, silent, and even today, it’s four hours and a bit by car from Halifax, assuming you are lucky with both ferries.

But in 1828, before the roads were built, there were only two ways to get from Brier Island to Halifax, the Colonial capital: by ship halfway around Nova Scotia, or through the woods. For a poor widow who couldn’t afford ship’s passage, it meant a long, long walk.

The widow Margaret Davis was the owner of a farm on Brier Island, or at least she said she was. A neighbour said otherwise, and because land registry in those days was informal at best, the Widow Davis did not have a deed to the land. So she went to Halifax to see the Governor.

At four o’clock in the morning of March 28, 1828, Margaret had some neighbours row her across the Grand Channel to Freeport, from which point she made her way to Annapolis, on the mainland.

There was a “road” from Annapolis to Halifax, surveyed and “cut out” in 1816. But even by 1828 it had not been improved enough even for wagon traffic. It was, at best, a track. Here and there along the way, few and far between, were primitive farm homesteads, and one or two villages. Sometimes you could sleep in somebody’s cowshed, and sometimes you could sleep under a tree. But none of those details stopped the Widow Davis’ month-long trek.

And did I mention that Margaret Davis was a Nova Scotian “German Loyalist” who spoke no English? Well, fortune smiled on her, because when she finally met with the Governor in early May, it turns out he was conversant in German. He listened to her story and felt that her details and handful of paperwork made sense, and ordered that a deed be made out and registered in her name.

So when I hear people moaning about hardships under the COVID lockdowns, I smile to myself and think about the Widow Davis walking a month through the woods from Annapolis to Halifax to get justice.