January 2014
Editorial
Dear friends,
History is about people: people who write history and people who make history. One of our distinguished members, Mr. Daniel Lund, passed away last November. Daniel was one of those people who worked diligently to protect our local history. Al Smith and Paul Bogaard, in their article on Remembering Daniel, show Daniel Lund’s long-standing love for the Sackville area and his wish to protect and preserve its history, something that he valued dearly, especially in his later years. With text and photos (and on your behalf) we thank Dan Lund for his long-standing support to the Town of Sackville and the conservation effots of the Tantramar Heritage Trust (THT). We will certainly continue to document, preserve and protect our heritage with his spirit in mind. Al and Paul’s contribution makes it abundantly clear why we should continue to do so.
Daniel Lund, dressed as George Rogers for a ceremony at the compound of the Campbell Carriage Factory Museum in 2009, when he was recognized for his many contributions
But Daniel wasn’t alone in efforts to preserve and protect our heritage. A long-standing member and supporter of the Tantramar Heritage Trust, Mrs. Pauline Spatz, continues to encourage and support us at many levels of the Trust’s education and conservation activities and efforts. Our president, Geoff Martin, presents an overview of Pauline’s numerous and continuing efforts to support the Trust along with our sincere thanks for her faith in us.
And then there are those who physically contributed to protect our freedom during The Great War, as is the case for the late LL Col. Laurence (Laurie) Black of Sackville. Mr. Black’s son Larry has ensured that his father’s historic legacy with the 8th Hussars, New Brunswick, through those difficult times, is properly remembered. Larry Black and Galen R. Perras co-wrote a book on the exploits of Laurie Black over the war years entitled Black’s War. We have included in this issue a photo of the front cover of the book, co-authored by Larry Black to recognize the many contributions of Larry’s father in wartime. I have yet to read of Mr. Black’s exploits in those difficult times but it will surely be a project I look forward to remedying in this New Year.
—Peter Hicklin
Remembering Daniel
by Al Smith & Paul Bogaard
Daniel Lund, in his 93rd year, died suddenly on November 9, 2013, in Sackville. With his passing the Tantramar Heritage Trust not only lost a long-standing member, it lost an exceptional friend. Dan Lund has been involved with all the major restoration projects of the Trust over the past 13 years. Without his very considerable contributions, the face of the Trust would be vastly different today.
At the 2009 opening of the Campbell Carriage Factory Museum compound, Daniel is recognized by Paul Bogaard for his many contributions to the project.
Daniel Lund was born in Sackville on September 3, 1921. He attended Sackville public schools graduating from High School in 1938. Shortly after the outbreak of WWII he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and was trained as a radar technician. Graduating from Radar School in Clinton, Ontario in 1942 he was assigned to duties in England. Through the rest of the war years he served radar stations at three different installations in southern England. Following the war, he returned to Sackville and attended Mount Allison University earning his Engineering Certificate in 1948. He went on to Nova Scotia Technical College graduating in 1950 as an Electrical Engineer. After furthering his education at the University of Western Ontario for a year, he was hired by Northern Electric working on the installation of Distant Early Warning (DEW-line) radar sites through northern Ontario and Quebec. He returned to New Brunswick in the 1960s where he worked until 1986 mainly in the employ of NB Power in the installation and operations of the microwave communications towers that linked their electrical grid. After 35 years as an electrical engineer he retired to his childhood home on Squire Street in Sackville in 1986.
Daniel’s first exposure to the Tantramar Heritage Trust was in February 1996 when he joined a 12-member Heritage Working Group chaired by Al Smith. Over a series of meetings that group, with advice and assistance from lawyer Nick Rodger, quickly initiated the steps necessary for the incorporation of the non-profit charitable Tantramar Heritage Trust in September 1996. Dan’s intense interest and sage advice was respected by all who were associated with establishing the fledgling Heritage Trust. Attending the Trust’s founding meeting on October 9, 1996, he became one of its first members. In February 1998, the Trust took possession of the Campbell Carriage Factory on Church Street with a transfer of title, via donation, from the Campbell family. In the summer/fall of 1998 we began the arduous task of inventory and cataloguing of its 6000+ artifacts followed by a major restoration of the main factory building in 1999. Dan visited the site many times, asked lots of questions and was genuinely impressed by the planning and sequencing of the major restoration of such an historic, but seriously deteriorated, building. A capital campaign was initiated to complete the restoration and to enable the establishment of exhibits. Dan was a significant contributor to that campaign which enabled the old factory to be officially opened as Sackville’s first Museum in June, 2003.
The Carriage Factory was Dan’s first donation as a benefactor of heritage preservation, but we had no idea that it was just the beginning. In 1998, the Trust was given an offer of first purchase of the old Christopher Boultenhouse mansion and property on Queens Road in Sackville. The Trust undertook the preparation of an in-depth business plan for the property purchase and repurposing it as a community Heritage Centre. Even so, the purchase price of $100,000 was simply too much for the young organization to handle and the THT Board declined the offer to purchase, needing to focus instead on the development of the Carriage Factory Museum. The Boultenhouse property was sold to a local resident and continued to be used to house upstairs and downstairs apartments.
At the opening of the Boultenhouse Heritage Centre in September 2006,
brothers Kenneth and Daniel Lund cut the ribbon.
In late April, 2001, the Boultenhouse property was again, quite unexpectedly, listed for sale by Century 21. Dan Lund was well aware of the Trust’s earlier interest in the property and approached Al Smith and Paul Bogaard in early May 2001 suggesting that that the Trust should purchase the property and that he would finance it over five years. The Trust’s Board approved the acceptance of Dan’s remarkably generous offer, and thus commenced the arduous task of property purchase. We made a holding payment on the property purchase from funds raised by the Trust sponsoring the major Yorkshire 2000 event. Application was made for a five-year mortgage but was immediately declined by the Bank even though we had a document guaranteeing the repayment of the principal amount. Three other financial institutions were approached but none would issue a mortgage to a non-profit heritage organization. We had numerous meetings with Daniel keeping him up to date on each rejection and our growing frustrations with our inability to arrange financing. To complicate matters, our 30-day holding period had expired and the realtor had a second party wanting to purchase. Finally, after nearly three months of negotiations, the Trust was able to get a fully-secured bank loan, repayable in equal installments over a five year period. The property purchase was completed and the Trust received the title documents in July, 2001. Dan Lund’s “Yorkshire stubbornness” and persistence in sticking by us was the only thing that saved our dream of a Heritage Centre.
The Boultenhouse property’s two apartments continued to be rented by the Trust to generate funding for operations. However, in the late summer of 2002, we had to vacate our temporary office in the Atlantic Wholesalers’ building on Lorne Street. So, the Trust decided to refurbish the downstairs part of the back ell of the Boultenhouse property for office and meeting space. It was only during the restoration of the “back ell” that we realized with the purchase of one house, the Trust had actually gained ownership of two distinct buildings! The back portion proved to be an earlier house built by George Bulmer and dendrochronology established that it dated back to the early 1790s.
By the late summer of 2005, the downstairs apartment had been vacated and the Trust commenced a major retrofit to convert both portions of the old mansion into a Heritage Centre. The retrofitting was done with one paid employee (Blaine Smith) and many volunteers including Dan. He spent more than a few hours working with us to restore old flooring and tearing down ruined plaster for conversion back to original construction. Dan, wanting to take on an individual area of the building, chose the upstairs area that was to become the Resource Centre and artifacts storage and registration. Dan’s funding for that part of the restoration was the seed money we needed to garner access to the provincial Built Heritage Program. So those funds, along with funds raised by member contributions in a highly successful capital campaign, allowed us to open the Boultenhouse Heritage Centre, complete with exhibits, on September 24, 2006.
Daniel Lund with Phyllis Stopps and brother Kenneth in period costume at the opening of the Boultenhouse Heritage Centre, September 2006
Daniel Lund, dressed as shipwright Christopher Boultenhouse, at the opening ceremony.The opening of the Boultenhouse Heritage Centre Museum was an amazing milestone for the Trust for in just 10 years we were able to acquire and open two museums in our historic little town of Sackville. The Boultenhouse HC opening was memorable in many ways but especially due to the involvement of Daniel Lund and his younger brother Kenneth, dressed respectively as shipwrights Christopher Boultenhouse and Charles Dixon. Dan also wanted to speak at the ceremony and shared with the crowd of nearly 200 his vision of the landscape as it was 150 years earlier. It was a remarkable moment, one we will long cherish.
So with two substantial successes Dan was firmly on-side to work with the Trust on many more projects. He would often ask us “what’s next,” and when we suggested the Carriage Factory needed a small addition, he called within a few days asking to meet with us. It soon became clear that a “small” addition was not what Dan thought we needed, but something more substantial, something that would require old timber framing and be a full two stories. His engineering mind was quite remarkable even at his “advanced years,” and he delighted in applying all his long experience to this project in particular. (See below Daniel the Aging Engineer for a few examples.) Raising the timber framing became a major event for the Trust in June 2008, the year Sackville was celebrating being recognized as a “Cultural Capital” of Canada. The following year was devoted to completing the new addition,including much restoration work to the Factory and the old Warehouse. Thanks to Dan’s vision and a very substantial contribution from himself and his brother, Ken — along with the financial support of our members and the Built Heritage Program — the full Campbell Carriage Factory “compound” was opened in September 2009.
Daniel checks out the timberframe for the Carriage Factory addition
Daniel takes a spruce sapling up the ladder for a traditional “topping out” ceremony, to express gratitude to the Red Spruce that were felled to frame the Carriage Factory addition
Daniel with sapling
to honour another tradition, placing a coin under a main postWhen Daniel asked “what’s next” we pointed to the remains of an old Blacksmith Shop, part of the compound, but which needed to be brought back to life. With a glimmer in his eye, he suggested we should make this happen. The now familiar combination of Dan & Ken Lund along with the Built Heritage Program made possible the restoration of this small building and more importantly the reconstruction of a completely operational forge. It was working at the new forge that brought the glimmer to his eye.
Daniel inspects the new working forge in the Blacksmith Shop of the Campbell Carriage Factory Museum
During this previous project it had come up in conversation that the Trust had been offered two different marsh barns by local farmers who no longer needed them and wanted them moved. Dan’s response was: “Once the forge is up and going, I want to have a look.” Increasingly frustrated that he could not “pitch in” with us the way he had in the past, Dan was determined to take that look, take the measure of the old barns, and to think it over. When later we sat down to talk, he explained how he had come to appreciate the significance of these marsh barns, so taken for granted when he was young. He wanted to help insure that one or two were saved, and through Dan’s generosity alone the Trust has now moved and fully restored one barn, the last one standing along the High Marsh Road.
Daniel doing measurements at the Scoggins barn prior to its reconstruction
With the moving of the Anderson Octagonal House and its restoration, Dan was less able to be so involved. But it was his donation that ensured the costs of moving that house could be met, and as so often it was his initial gift that encouraged us to approach our membership and seek out major government programs, multiplying his many gifts and multiplying the resources the Trust will now have available and long into the future. What a list of resources that is: the Boultenhouse Heritage Centre (now a complement of three houses), the compound of buildings that comprise the Campbell Carriage Factory, its addition, the Blacksmith Shop and, by extension, even a Marsh Barn. What Daniel has made possible for the Tantramar Heritage Trust is breathtaking. And there is more…
Daniel’s final gift to the Town of Sackville is yet to be realized, but when complete will see an 11 hectare (28 acre) addition to the Sackville Waterfowl Park. It is a project that Daniel had been working on since 1996 consolidating six parcels of land to be donated to the Town and to be known as the Daniel Lund Park adjunct to the Sackville Waterfowl Park. It will be a fitting and permanent memorial to a man who has given so much to his beloved hometown of Sackville.
Another of many tributes to Daniel’s dedication and support for the activities of the Trust, this time at the opening of the Blacksmith Shop, September 2012.
Daniel Lund (1921–2013) may be gone, but his vision and generosity will never be forgotten.
Laurie Black’s War
Author Larry Black has a new book titled Black’s War , his father’s wartime diaries, that include mention of a great many Sackville and area soldiers. Any readers interested in obtaining a copy can do so by visiting the website of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies (LCMSDS).
Daniel the Aging Engineer
Daniel’s plan for the Carriage Factory addition
his plan for the elevator shaftWith so many years of planning and engineering design in his background, Dan could not resist bringing this experience to bear on the projects we worked on together — especially in the case of the Cambpell Carriage Factory “addition.”
When we had explained our need for washrooms and reception area for the museum, that was fine, but he wanted visitors to appreciate the freight elevator and that required two stories. From old photos and the original footprint of the building added on 100 years earlier, Dan made drawings… and from these, he actually constructed a cardboard model. If you look carefully, one can see that both drawings and the original model expected a slanted roof all around. We had some interesting discussions about fitting the gear-mechanism for the elevator into that limited headspace. So, Dan drew up special plans for the elevator, which allowed him to gage the headspace required. As a result, he went back and added full gable ends onto the model…and the Addition as it stands today was built this way. From these decisions, more detailed plans were devised with the timber framers — Acorn from Nova Scotia — and when these timber frames arrived on site, Dan was the first one out there checking to see that they matched our plans!
A scale model for the addition, made by Daniel
His drawing for the horse-powered millWe also dreamed of restoring the original horse-powered mill inside the Carriage Factory, but could find very little information on this type. So, Dan worked away at the scraps of information we had found and designed how it might have gone, including gears ratios required. This particular dream has not yet been realized… but perhaps one day.
New Exhibits and Volunteer Appreciation go hand in hand
by Geoff Martin
During Sackville’s Midnight Madness, on Friday evening December 6, the Tantramar Heritage Trust held its annual Volunteer Appreciation Event. We also launched our renewed exhibits in the Wry Room and officially unveiled “Victorian Secrets,” our exhibit on ladies’ undergarments from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Too much to do in one evening? On the contrary, it was perfect. Why? Because launching new exhibits goes hand-in-glove with volunteer appreciation. Like everything we do at the Trust, it takes the efforts of volunteers and the charitable giving of our supporters. People like Juliette Bulmer and Wendy Burnett, who worked so hard to refresh the exhibits in the Wry Room, and Paul Bogaard and Inge Hansen, who were instrumental, along with our summer students, in putting together Victorian Secrets. But the greatest credit for so much of what the Trust has been able to do must go to Pauline Spatz; she has provided so many ideas, inspiration, and material contributions to our efforts over the years.
The Wry Room, focusing on domestic life in Tantramar’s past, exists because of Pauline’s donation of hundreds of items spanning four generations of her family. Also because of her continued financial support we can renew the Wry collection and we can also fund projects like Victorian Secrets (and we can keep the lights on!). It’s worth saying too that the Victorian Secrets display would have far fewer items in it were it not for the Wry collection. We also must not forget to mention the Dixon family, who also provided many wonderful items.
Well before the Tantramar Heritage Trust was formed in the mid 1990s, Pauline Spatz was a force as a volunteer in the community. After she and her husband Albert moved back to Sackville in the early 1970s, she became involved in the Sackville Art Association and the Sackville Memorial Hospital Auxiliary. In a tradition that continues to this day, Mount Allison music students can count on Pauline’s support to make sure they are exposed to visiting performers. She is also known as a strong supporter of Alzheimer’s research, to find a cure for the disease that took her beloved husband well before his time.
Surely among her biggest impacts in this community is her support for the Trust over the life of our organization. She has been there from the beginning, supporting every major capital campaign: at the Boultenhouse Heritage Centre, the Campbell Carriage Factory Museum and most recently for the Anderson Octagonal House. She provides us with annual support for our work and she was the one who got us started on building an endowment account to ensure our long-term sustainability. Anyone who attends our fund-raising dinners, general meetings, historical society talks, and annual Heritage Days knows they’ll see Pauline there because she always is. She has a generosity both in her spirit as well as her purse. She knows how to make sacrifices for the things that are important and in this she is an example for the rest of us.
So thank you Pauline and thanks to all our other volunteers and donors. You continue to inspire us and make us better people, better citizens and better supporters of our local communities. On behalf of our Board of Directors, I invite you to follow the examples of Pauline, the late Daniel Lund and our other volunteers and donors to do what you can to help us build a stronger community through appreciating our heritage.
In closing, I would like to thank our Administrator Karen Valanne, volunteers Vanessa and Mike Bass and all the others who donated food or helped in other ways to make the evening of December 6th such a success. The Trust is truly blessed to have such a large and supportive membership.
Announcements
- We’re now accepting membership renewals for 2014! Forms were mailed out in late November, but you can download it off our website at heritage.tantramar.com or contact Karen at the office if you need a copy.
- Regular winter hours for BHC are Tuesdays through Fridays,10 am — 2 pm, or by appointment. Just contact the office by calling (506) 536-2541 or emailing
tantramarheritage@gmail.com. - Heritage Day is coming up on February 15, 2014. We’ll be having our popular breakfast, along with heritage displays, activities and guest speakers. Look for further details to come in January. If you’re interested in volunteering for this event, let Karen know. We can use lots of help!
