Backyard History

In 1815 Nova Scotia was overrun by mice.

Dr. George Patterson later interviewed people who lived through what was called Year of the Mice.

The horrors of that year left a mark on those who had experienced it so deep that he found that elderly people that had personally experienced the mouse invasion still used it as a measurement of time. ‘Sixty-two Years After The Mice,’ Dr. Patterson wrote that these had been no ordinary mice:

“They were very destructive and actually fierce. If pursued, when hard pressed, they would stand at bay, rising upon their hind legs, setting their teeth and squealing fiercely. A farmer on whom I could rely told me that having, after planting, spread out some barley to dry in the sun before the door, in a little while he saw it covered with them. He let the cat out among them, but they actually turned upon her and fought her.”

backyardhistory.ca

A fleet of Fascist Italian airplanes stop in a little seaside resort town in the Maritimes … with a dark political agenda.

On July 13th 1933 a reporter for the Moncton Daily Times was rushing towards the newly built wharfs of the tiny seaside village of Shediac. He is trying to make it in time to catch a glimpse of an incredible sight: 24 massive airplanes flying in a giant V formation that were arriving all the way from Italy...

To see plenty of photos of the Italian Air Armada's arrival in Shediac check out:

https://backyardhistory.ca/articles/f/when-the-fascist-italian-air-armada-came-to-new-brunswick

*Top Episode of 2023!

In the 1920s two hermit brothers on Grand Manan became internationally famous as the mysterious “Dark Harbour Hermits.”

Hundreds of tourists from the United States and even faraway Europe came to visit them in their homemade shacks on the beaches of the strange and isolated place known as Dark Harbour, where the hermits would entertain the tourists with their art, their poems, and their songs.

backyardhistory.ca

The Maritimes were briefly the Dutch colony of Nova Hollandia..

We’re always taught in school that ever since European colonists arrived in what is now Canada, that it was always a colony of either England or France. However, it’s a little-known fact that for a brief time the Maritimes were conquered by the Dutch, and were a short lived colony with a remarkably bizarre history, named Nova Hollandia.

https://backyardhistory.ca/f/when-the-maritimes-were-dutch

An unlikely trio is celebrated by a US President for their heroic rescue of sailors stranded for days on a rock in a storm.

https://backyardhistory.ca/f/wreck-and-rescue-of-the-velma

“They will not allow me to go home,” begins the haunting diary that Mary Huestis Pengilly wrote while locked up in the Saint John Lunatic Asylum, Canada’s first ever mental health institution.

She wrote vividly in a secret diary about her experiences as a patient in the Asylum in the 1880s, which she later published into a book. After her release, she became a high profile and outspoken advocate for reforming how mental health was treated in both Canada and the United States.

https://backyardhistory.ca/popular/f/secret-diary-in-the-lunatic-asylum

The Maritimes were home to the only German bombing in North America in World War One. Fortunately the Agent wasn't very good, and was more than willing to tell everything to an intrepid reporter...

https://backyardhistory.ca/articles/f/german-agents-bombed-a-new-brunswick-bridge

Nothing was quite what it seemed...

In the Summer of 1906 The Maritimes were captivated by a strange mystery when two young children disappeared in broad daylight from right in front of their house.

One reporter, who signed her articles simply as The Special Correspondent, went to the tiny village of Cape Tormentine to investigate the disappearances.

The more she learned about the case, the stranger it became, as she met a very unusual group of people, each of whom seemed to be hiding something...

https://backyardhistory.ca/f/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-the-creamer-children

A baseball star becomes one of the few Black Canadians to fight in the First World War.

https://backyardhistory.ca/f/fighting-for-the-right-to-fight

A simple question leads to a lost colony in Cape Breton..

What does “Fundy” mean? Where does the unusual name for the large bay between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia boasting the highest tides in the world come from? The short answer is that it’s Portuguese, but figuring out what “Fundy” means involves a lost colony, confused explorers, and a perplexing mix up..

There is some surviving evidence of a 1521 Portuguese lost colony in The Maritimes. If true, this would be the first European settlement in the whole continent, even earlier than the much more famous American lost colony of Roanoke. 

https://backyardhistory.ca/popular/f/what-does-fundy-mean

https://backyardhistory.ca/popular/f/the-lost-colony