On Feb. 6, David Olie will be talking about the early military defence of Yarmouth.
Olie’s talk will cover the period from the founding of the township in 1761 to shortly after the war of 1812.
He will be discussing both the defensive structures that guarded the harbour and the town, and the organization of the militia that manned those defences in peace and war.
Olie says that in the later part of this period there were two blockhouses, one at the rock on Forest Street (on the hill west of where the former Rock Cottage building was), guarding the landward approaches, and the other at the southwest tip of Bunker Island, defending the harbour.
“The earthworks of the second blockhouse are still easily seen today,” he said,
The militiamen would have been armed with muzzle-loading flintlock muskets, and some of them were trained as gunners to operate the muzzle-loading cannons in the blockhouses and detached batteries.
On Feb. 13, Sandra Fitzgerald will be speaking about the history of Arcadia. On Feb. 20 Peter Eldridge will be speaking about Camp Mooswa.”
On Feb. 27 the topic is the early art scene of Yarmouth County, with Virginia Stoddard, David Sollows, Wilfred Allan, and several others.
