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THE red tides of Fundy sweep in and out of the broad basin of the Avon twice daily, now filling it to the brim, now leaving only a trickle in a muddy bottom, its ships high and dry and navigation suspended. This wonder of the Nova Scotia coast alone rewards the visitor to Windsor. But there are other attractions. At the end of an avenue of elms is the cottage built and occupied for years by Thomas Chandler Haliburton, author of the “Sam Slick” stories, and first Canadian humorist of international reputation. King’s College, another centre of interest in Windsor, was chartered in 1788, and here in the eighteen-eighties Charles G. D. Roberts was Professor of English, and received long visits from his cousin, Bliss Carman, in the formative period of both poets.

History touched Windsor lightly and sorrowfully in the fateful days of the middle of the eighteenth century, and the little blockhouse on the modern golf links remains a treasured relic. Pisiquid was a flourishing Acadian village before the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 played fast and loose with Acadian boundaries. The English at Halifax faced Acadian discontent, and Fort Edward, built at Pisiquid in 1750, was one of a chain of defences to protect the southern coast from Indian and French aggression. It lay in the line between Halifax and Annapolis in one direction, and between Halifax and Fort Lawrence in another. It was an earthwork of eighty-five yards frontage, with bastions, ditch and raised counter-scarp. The timbers for the blockhouse were squared in Halifax in the winter of 1749-50, in the first exciting months after the founding of that city.

Five years of restlessness ensued in the once happy home of the Acadians, a restlessness which found fuller expression and tragedy at Beauséjour and Grand Pré. In the spring of 1750 Acadians were refused permission to leave Pisiquid (“Junction of the waters”), but some slipped away to Ile St. Jean (Prince Edward Island). Three years later many voluntary exiles received permission to return. In the summer of 1755 the Acadians of Pisiquid joined their fellows from other points in appeals to Halifax, but without avail, and events hastened to the Expulsion. Captain Murray was in command of Fort Edward, and it was his melancholy duty to assemble the unhappy Acadians of that region. It was slow and trying work, but on October 23 John Winslow reported from Grand Pré:

“Captain Murray has come from Pisiquid with upwards of 1,000 people in four vessels.”

The population of Windsor had by this time been expelled, or melted away in flight. In the ensuing war with France many prisoners were kept at Fort Edward, even after peace was signed, and during the American Revolution there was a new flurry on the hill overlooking the Avon as the fort primed its guns to defend against marauding privateers.

Blockhouse of Fort Edward, Windsor, N. S.