Stretching from Halifax, east toward Cape Breton, along the coast of Nova Scotia, was the Eastern Shore Road. This road roughly followed the coast, touching the head waters of the many bays and harbours, then cutting through deep woods when it crossed overland to the next harbour. Rarely did the road skirt the Atlantic Ocean itself.
This road was a dirt track just wide enough to allow two cars or wagons to pass. It meandered around major hills, ridges, swamps and other obstacles. The road probably grew from earlier trails for walking and horses; eventually enlarged to take wagons pulled by horses or oxen. By the 1930's there were added cars and trucks. With the help of dynamite, the road had been built by man and horse power. Such a road was a growing thing, continually being rerouted over short distances, being widened, being repaired, or being regravelled. Frost and rain were yearly menaces, resulting in mud, washouts, land slides, deep holes,etc. Work on the roads was a major source of the scarce dollar. Control of the funds was much desired by the local politician as it gave him power - patronage was very much alive in rural Nova Scotia.
Such a road was not the only means of communication; in the 1930's there was still also the sea. For generations each major harbour had a Government Wharf to service the boats that went up & down the coast taking passengers and freight. Originally there had only been this sea commerce to connect communities with each other and the outside world. But over the years the roads connected communities, and as they were lengthened and upgraded, as cars and trucks increased, dependence on the sea for contact with the outside world became less important. Yearly it was dwindling away. In the 1930's passengers, rarely, if ever, went by sea anymore from Jeddore to Halifax, but major freight still came and went by sea; and the Government Wharves were kept in good repair.
About sixty miles from Halifax on this Eastern Shore Road, was Jeddore Harbour. It was a large harbour with a narrow entrance to the Atlantic Ocean. But it was not a harbour for large ships, because it was shallow over large areas with the deep channels edged by mud flats which were exposed at low tide. Only the pulpwood boats and the oil tankers regularly took on the challenge of navigating Jeddore Harbour.
The Eastern Shore Road ran along the head of this harbour, through the communities of Musqudoboit Harbour, Head Jeddore and Oyster Pond. Turning south off the main road, down each side of the harbour, to the communities of West and East Jeddore, were even smaller dirt roads. These followed the harbour shores to their lower reaches at or near the Atlantic Ocean itself. The East Jeddore Road ended more or less like a driveway to the last house.
Our house was half way down this East Jeddore road, which was a narrow, up-and-down, round-about road; sometimes deep in woods, at other times right beside the water,but often looking down on or running beside houses, fields and harbour.
But here also the road had not originally been the chief means of communication. Even in the 1930's, most houses were near or on the harbour with a wharf or at least a slipway for their own or visitors' boats. In earlier times, people had fished for a living from all over the harbour, but by the 1930's the fishing community was mainly near the harbour entrance and near the Government Wharf, which was on Bakers Point. All commercial fishing was done out in the Atlantic, so the nearer to the harbour entrance, the less daily travel time going to and fro. These fishing families for their livelihood had to maintain a good wharf with their fish sheds. But by the 1930's, the wharves belonging to the non-fishing families, as my father and grandfather, had begun to deteriorate and each passing winter took its toll. Some wharves had already gone, but the supporting log piles remained.
So the East Jeddore Road connected scattered homes for much of its distance. Homesteads where mixed or subsistance farming was carried on; fields, pastures and woods came and went along the road. But at the southern end was Lower East Jeddore, a community with houses quite close together, each with fish houses or sheds and wharves; here fields and pastures were of secondary interest. The activity centered around the wharves and the fishing boats.
In Lower East Jeddore there were a store or two, a school, a church and the post office. Here was the Government Wharf. After quite a wide bay in from the ocean, the harbour took a sharp turn through a narrow entrance opening into the hugh expanse of Jedore Harbour beyond. Across this narrow entrance from Lower East Jeddore, was Lower West Jeddore, also a relatively close packed fishing community. On a spit of sand, Marsh Point, at the narrows in West Jeddore, was a fish factory, which by the mid 1930's was in ruins, and slowly breaking up over the years with each heavy tide and storm. The last parts to go were the piles wedged deep in the sand upon which the plant had rested.
The East Jeddore Road beyond the fishing community, passed again through scattered farms until land's end, the road's end, and the Atlantic Ocean.
So the communities and families in the 1930's used water and road for commerce and for socializing, both within Jeddore Harbour and for connection to the wider world, mainly Halifax.