Old Sydney - Sketches of the Town and Its People in Days Gone By

By J.G. MacKinnon

In the foreword, MacKinnon describes his book as containing history, but the greater part consists of tradition - accounts of past happenings that have been handed down by older generations, fireside versions that are now known to but a very few. The historical portions were gleaned from books, newspapers, letters and public document'.

Insofar as the book was originally published in 1918, the author heard many of these traditions directly from those who witnessed them.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Names, past and present (1918 and earlier)
• First on Sydney harbor
• Sydney's first settler - United Empire Loyalist, John Meloney
• Meloney's cow - Cow Bay
• A seat of government
• A garrison town.
• The Black Watch
• 'Mine or Nobody's'
• An Indian war scare
• Our true ghost story
• The Ingoville farm
• The French willows
• Old time justice
• Judge Marshall
• The Flahaven murder
• The Washing-Brook
• Garrison society
• Temperance
• Old Sydney schools
• The bad scholar
• Old buildings
• The fairy child
• Newspapers
• A Sydney novelist
• A little poem
• Powder and pills
• Lord Dufferin's visit
• Old time elections
• The first fire brigade
• Our first band
• The Coronet Band
• Town and city
• The old 17th
• Second Sight
• Micmac legends
• Looking backward

Details

152 Pages
6.25 X 9.25"
Originally published by Don McKinnon, Cape Breton, 1918
This edition published by Global Heritage Press, Milton 2003
ISBN 1-894571-80-0 (hardcover)