A HOTEL REMEMBERS: PART 1 OF 3

Published on March 2017

As you walk along Norman Street on your way to the train depot, you look over and admire the brand new Hotel as it stands on the corner of Station and Grafton Streets. You are one of the residents of Mount Uniacke a hundred and twenty-one years ago. That might seem as if we went back rather than ahead, but not really. Those were the things of the times. The train took the place of the Stage Coach, the Hotel replaced the Coaching Inn and the streets were as long as it took to walk from one dwelling to another.

The district of Uniacke goes back to land-grant days. To the travellers of that time, Lakelands and the Etter Settlement were the settled areas. There were very few dwellings in between. J.J. Deegan’s house (Allen house – little green house that was demolished last fall (that would’ve been 1979) and a Saloon beside it. Hopewell Bowen had his home where the cenotaph now stands, and a Pentz family built the house that is now the Davis house, and Joseph Britton had a home nearby. These were all on what was the Old Post Road and it went along up past Richard Uniacke’s summer home. John Pentz had his Coaching Inn near where the elementary school stands. In 1858 along came the railway and cut right through a district whose lands were already rich in history.
The first station agent was Mr. Hamilton and after a year he moved on. Three men applied to the Government Secretary for the position. Mr. C. Harding of Windsor; Mr. R. McLearn of Rawdon and Mr. J. Pentz of Mount Uniacke. Mr. Pentz’ application was accompanied by a petition signed by most of the residents of the whole district because they felt that Mr. Pentz had lost his income from the Coaching Inn with the coming of the railway, and the stoppage of the stage coach. Mr. McLearn was accepted and Richard began his long career and that of his family, with the railway. In 1859 he built a large hotel and, with his wife and small son, he moved into it. This large building was to become one of Mount Uniack’s landmarks and could it have told of its memories they might have been something like this……………..
“I was born in 1859 in the mind of Richard McLearn and raised in a field about a hundred yards from the Railway crossing (between McKay house and corner of Mines Road). I was two and a half stories tall and I stood head and shoulders above the other buildings around me. From my beginning to the end of my days I would be known as “the Hotel”. I was a plain shingled building with a balcony across the front of my second story, and an attic window in the peak of my roof. My front door opened into a wide hall, and right there was a big wood heater and its fuel was piled high beside it. Its hope was to keep the chill from the hotel. To the right was the gentlemen’s parlour with its sig-in desk. It was lighted by gas lamps hanging on chains and the smaller tables told of the card games. Over across the hall to the left was the ladies’ parlour and their entertainment came from the pump organ and singing. Their light came from lamps in brackets on the wall. Wide steps led up from the hall to four bedrooms on the second floor and more steps went up into the two attic rooms. At the end of the entrance hall was the dining room. The tables were covered with table oil cloth. A big mirror on the wall told guests how they looked and a big pendulum clock told them the time. In the kitchen the big range held the place of honour along with the bench that held the was tubs ever ready for the daily washing.
Our in the yard stood the big barn with its ten stalls where the teams could be driven right in on the floor.
There was an ice house and a couple of little buildings that were a necessity of the times. How welcome were the trains and this hotel to those who, before this, had to go all the way to Halifax by team. The journey took three days round trip. Now, their supplies could be shipped to the train depot. A two hour train ride found them in the city and their team would wait their return in the stable. The mail came by rail and was sorted at the depot. The Mail Driver, who came from Rawdon, would stay overnight at the hotel and leave with the mail the next morning for those little post offices along the road to the Rawdons.
One night in 1861, I heard the cry of a new born baby. It was the second child of Richard McLearn. It was a girl an dthey named her Ida. Through the years I would watch for this little girl who, as a baby, had called me home.
I was six years standing when I was to witness what you will only read about – Mount Uniacke’s Gold Strike. For me, it will mean the beginning of a procession of new owners. The gold strike days were not going to be Richard McLearn’s hotel days. He had built a house across the street (Steadman house- Note: the Steadman house has been replaced by a bungalow) and now he moved into it and raised the rest of his family. He went on working at the station. He sold me for $1,220.00 to Joseph Rilley from Horton. I was to learn I would stand on the corner of Station and Grafton Streets and live with the sway of what gold mining can do to a clearing in the woods.