Small
Like many young men in Cape Breton at the time, Angus L. MacDonald (later Premier of Nova Scotia) and his two brothers enlisted to serve in the First World War (1914-1918). Although their hometown of Port Hood was a small seaside village on the west coast of Cape Breton Island, it sent nearly a tenth of its population off to war.
Because of their Scottish ancestry, MacDonald and his fellow volunteers were eager to join a Highland regiment. In early 1916, the 185th Battalion began to recruit men for the Nova Scotia Highland Brigade –Canadian Expeditionary Force. Recruitment was headquartered in Sydney and rough training began at the nearby abandoned mining town of Broughton. This battalion, which came to be known as the Cape Breton Highlanders, joined three others–the 85th, 193rd and 219th–to form the brigade. Further training was carried out at Camp Aldershot, Nova Scotia during the summer and in October, the entire Nova Scotia Highland Brigade consisting of four thousand men sailed aboard the S. S. Olympic for England.
As part of the British Empire, Canada sent over 600,000 men to fight for “King and Country” during the Great War. Treading in the footsteps of their Highland ancestors who had first arrived on Cape Breton’s shores with General Wolfe’s 78th Fraser Highlanders in 1758, the young men of the 185th Battalion would participate in many of the famous battles of the war—Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Arras, Ypres and Cambrai in which thousands of Canadian soldiers fought and died. Although the 185th would be broken up shortly after arriving overseas and its men sent to the 85th or to fill the depleted ranks of the Nova Scotia 25th Battalion, the soldiers still maintained their identity and were among the vanguard taking the highest ground at Vimy Ridge. Its motto: “Siol Na Fear Fearail” (the Breed of Manly Men) would still be carried with pride during the Second World War where it earned battle honours at Monte Cassino and Corianno Ridge in Italy, and at Delftzijl in Holland. It survives today as the Second Battalion of the Nova Scotia Highlanders.
Angus L. MacDonald would be formed by his experience in the trenches as were many of his Port Hood kinsmen and he and many others continued to maintain their “Highland connections” both at home and overseas.
This exhibit portrays the small coastal community of Port Hood in the years leading up to the Great War—its citizens, its institutions, events and activities and the relationshi
