IMAGE CITATION

Date: 1924

Subject:

Orignal Work:

Place: Hectanooga, Digby County, N.S.

Ownership/Collection: Collection of Dr. Elsie Charles Basque

Source: Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax

Reference Number: P113/ N-6893

Image Use: Free for personal research and non-commercial educational use.

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IMAGE INFORMATION

Joe Charles was the son of John Charles by his first wife. He was born in 1873, and died in 1940. He married Margaret Labrador Charles and was the father of Elsie Charles Basque and Lucy Charles Power.

"Joe's business card was probably issued before I was born. My sister was born in 1905. She was about five years old when the family moved to Port Joli, where she says she started school. She doesn't remember being in grade one or grade two, just that she started school at Port Joli. According to this time-table, I'm assuming that he used this card after 1912 or thereabouts; probably between 1912-1916 or maybe even as late as 1920 when he became ill with T.B. Very few Mi'kmaq people of that era had business cards. Joe was truly years ahead of his time.

On bright summer nights, I remember the phenomena we call northern lights racing across the sky in Hectanooga. I remember clutching Papa's hand as tightly as I could, being fearful of the unknown beauty that flashed before us.

I remember being outside listening to the roar of a plane, a sound totally alien to our ears in 1927, knowing that what we heard was Charles Lingbergh on his solo flight to Paris. "Man has conquered the skies", Papa said. A statement not quite fathomable to an eleven year old's mind.

A couple of years later we listened in awe to the first radio in our little village. Joe again prophesized "Man is still conquering unknown horizons". Again I held his hand tightly as we walked home in the bright moonlight. "Not in my lifetime," he continued, "but maybe in yours man will walk on the moon." Years later, when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, my son, Brian, called from Minneapolis, "Mom! Grandfather's prophesy has come true!"

Joe was truly a remarkable soul. Self-educated beyond his years, a hunter, a trapper, always conscious of the environment, a story-teller "par excellence," a historian and above all--a Dad. A dad who instilled in me the value of an education, taught me principles to live by, qualities to sustain me and above all else--he loved his daughter."

KEYWORDS

transportation; canoes; guns; tobacco pipes; moosecalls; Charles, Joe; Yarmouth; Nova Scotia

Keywords Only This Site