Bo was his name and he called everyone else Bo, so you would say "Hi Bo", and he would answer , "How are you Bo?", us kids would say "Hello Bo", just to hear him say, "Good morning Bo."
Most times we saw Bo, he was on his way to or from the bootleggers, and as he came along with his exaggerated limp, we would always say, "Hi Bo", just to hear his cheery " How are you Bo?" He didn't limp like most people limped ,he almost fell over backwards with each step he took.
That was about the only contact most of us kids had with Bo and none of us knew why he limped so badly,he just did.
One summer morning as I was coming through the path near his backyard, Bo was standing looking at a dory. I wasn't going to say Hi Bo this time, because that was something we kids did only in a gang to hear his response. But, I didn't have to say anything, he said," Good morning Bo, come here a minute!" I was scared, I was going to hear it for teasing him on previous occasions, but no, he asked me if I knew how to handle the other end of a cross-cut saw? I said yes, and the next thing I knew, Bo and I were working together, sawing off the last few feet of a dory, in the first step to reducing it to a rowboat of smaller proportions.
Over the next few weeks of summer vacation he and I became working partners on this rowboat, that was to be launched in Bedford Basin when we finished. He was Bo and I was Bo, though Bo was over fifty years old and I was around eight or nine, and except for the fact that he disappeared once in a while for a cool quart of ale at the bootleggers, you would think Bo and I were two kids building this boat. I was learning some valuable carpenter skills and looking forward to the fishing that Bo promised once we finished.
When the boat was finally launched, I wasn't the only neighbourhood kid in the boat, but I had a position of importance, I was the bowman, responsible for look-out duties while Bo rowed, also responsible for the anchor and keeping the anchor rope neatly coiled. Bo depended on me. I thought of myself as first mate, but Bo still just called all of us Bo!
We used mussels and periwinkles for bait most times, sometimes we cut up a perch or used the eyes from fish caught earlier. We caught lots of fish, cod, tomcod, perch, pollack,catfish, sculpin, flounder and eels. Bo taught us the art of handlining, where the shoals were located in the Basin, and sometimes some of his salty language, if his leg was bothering him and especially one time when someone stole his oarlocks.
That was another position of responsibility I held; only Bo and I knew where he hid the oars and oarlocks along the shore, and when Bo dissappeared for a few days with a hangover, or maybe a few weeks in Camp Hill veteran's hospital with his leg, I was allowed to take the boat out on my own. When Bo did return after one of his many trips to the hospital, he always had lots of what he called his Kotex, this was cotton and gauze bandages that they gave him in ample supply for the open wound on his leg.
On one of our trips alone together, he finally told me the story of his leg. He had been guncrew in the navy during the First World war, and shortly after the war he was sent to the Cdn National Exibition in Toronto to man a gun mounted on a railway flatcar. The gun had recoiled and hit him, breaking his leg and taking most of the muscle with it. The wound never did heal properly and continually festered, more than thirty years later. The government was paying him a medical pension and supplying us with loads of Kotex to clean our hands while fishing. Bo and I fished together most of that summer and the next, he taught me where the fish were, how to catch them,and how to row a boat, but the best came one evening when Bo suggested we go get some lobsters at night. I had to tell him I couldn't go because my mother expected me home at dark. After two years of partnership, Bo finally asked my name, over that period, I had learned his last name,but don't know his first to this day. When I told him my name,he said,"Is your mother Jean? '' I said yes and he said, let's go over to the telephone at the train station and I'll call her. I was really scared this time, my parents didn't know I spent so much time in Bo's company, in fact, I was told often to stay out of boats in the Basin, it could be dangerous.
Bo called anyway, and I couldn't believe my mother gave her permission, Bo had went to school with my mother and knew she loved lobster,he had played on her weakness and their schoolday friendship.
I was elated, I was going to learn to catch lobsters without the aid of a trap. We poled our way along the rocks adjacent to the Rockingham railyards, I kept the boat moving along, while Bo would shine the flashlight on the rocks just under the surface, when he spotted a lobster, he stuck out the net with the seven foot handle on it and scooped the lobster into the boat. When I took a half-dozen home to my mother at two o'clock in the morning, I was one proud poacher!
Bo and I drifted apart once I developed an interest in girls, but he will always remain the most interesting character in my life.

Handlinin'
Many are the men today that can recall their boyhood on Bedford Basin, handlining or jigging from the Irving Oil wharf at Fairview Cove. If many of them could or would return today and see a three acre container pier , and a beautiful picnic park where they spent many happy hours, it would amaze them. Pollack and mackeral were often jigged three or four at a time. Halibut and eels were often caught. Us kids would melt lead at home and fashion our own treble hooks. In the years after WW II, and before the Fairview underpass became the Fairview overpass many a happy and productive hour was spent fishing from that wharf by boys and men from Africville, the North End, and Fairview. Not far from this wharf was the Halifax city dump, they dumped the city garbage,and bulldozed it into Bedford Basin in those days, also an abattoir, with it's alluring odours, and within viewing distance was an old whale oil plant at the narrows. On top of the hill was Rockhead city prison, a miniture Dorchester penitentary. While fishing you could often observe men going though recent truckloads of garbage, competing with the seagulls, and another entertainment was watching men fill brin bags from passing railroad coal cars, throwing them over and later retrieving them to take home. When an Irving oil ship was tied up pumping oil ashore to the storage tanks, sometimes the cooks would offer us kids hot cinnamon buns to eat from our fishy fingers.

Two-hundred years of the History of Fairview exist in a book by Devonna and Don Edwards called " The Little Dutch Village" Enter (Fairview ,Nova Scotia) for the Wikipedia take on Fairview.

Charlie the Indian lived in the woods behind where the Centenniel Arena is today, he lived near a beautiful waterfall, made bows and arrows, worked as a gardener for "Ravenswood", near Mumford Rd, where the NS teacher's Union building is today. Charlie also bootlegged. His son, Freddie the Indian went to school with us. He lived in what was known as the quarry,which I think is filled in today. The old ARP (air raid patrol) dam was above the quarry and from there flowed the waterfall.

My first memory of Fairview was the Bedford Naval Magazine blowing up. I was 3 and 1/2 years old, all the windows in our house broke and the fireplace never was used again because of damage. We were evacuated to Timberlea on the Bay road. I have a vague memory of being in a big building all night. I think it was where the legion is today in Timberlea.

I remember the Fairview overpass, when it was the Fairvew underpass. It flooded so bad, water would come in car doors trying to get to the city.

We carried golf bags at Ashburn for eighteen holes for fifty cents.

The students at Mt.Saint Vincent Academy had chores before and after school, they had to collect eggs, milk cows, and hoe the garden, the Mount was self -sufficient like most institutions in those days. I remember the Motherhouse burning down in the early fifties, it was so cold that night, the water from firehouses was freezing, before it got to the fire.


We skated on Deals Pond, where the Bayer's Road Shopping Centre is today. We also skated on a pond at the top of Melrose ave. That pond no longer exists.

Bad Catholic boys went to St. Patricks Home for Boys where the Halifax shopping center is today on Mumford road, bad Protestant boys went to Shelburne, later they all went to Shelburne.

I remember the Queen as a princess, newly wed, driving by in a glass top car at the bottom of Evans Avenue.

We sometimes took the train to go shopping at Simpsons where the West -End Mall is today.
Us boys took the train to the movies at Armdale, but we rode the rails, just like railroad bums.
Sometimes we even walked on top of moving boxcars, just like the cowboys in the movies.

In the summer we often hitchhiked to Horseshoe Island on the North West Arm to swim, or we hitch-hiked to Bedford to swim at Moir's Dam.

We swam off the rocks in Fairview Cove right behind White Rose Oil , we were always in the water on May 24th week-end. There was much more sewage in the basin in those days than now, we just pushed it aside and jumped in!

The Wandlyn Motel was once called Middlemore Home, a home for British refugee children?


Bob Cole, owned " The Biggest Little Service Station in the Maritimes", he usually had a parrot or monkey there to entertain kids, it was located across from the quarry, now a car dealership.

We would think nothing of going to the top of Main Avenue (Geizers Hill) where the TV tower is, then through the woods to Suzie's Lake to swim.

We followed the garbage man,doing his rounds with horse and wagon while reciting this little ditty:" Sam, Sam, the garbage man, washed his face in a frying pan, combed his hair, with the leg of a chair ,and died with a toothache in his ear."

We hunted, fished and snared rabbits where Clayton Park is today. I remember Mr. Snyder shooting a deer off his back doorstep where Sobey's is located.

Many Fairview men worked for Canadian National Railways, the roundhouse where locomotives were serviced and repaired, the Rockingham yards with hundreds of boxcars, also Fairview train station. Many single men from out of town slept and ate at Brown's Resthouse in Fairview Cove.

Irving oil had a jetty in Fairview Cove and storage tanks on the shore. I remember it blowing up when we were kids in school.

My father and his brother owned a store at the entrance to Africville, they sold it to Allen O'Neil
who later opened a store on Dutch Village Road.

Ashburn Golf Club had a pro named Kas? Zabowski ?? He had a son Raymond , it was said before he came to Halifax he used to golf in tournaments with a bag over his head. The Unknown Golfer?
Does anyone know the facts of this????

The Surburban Hockey League played it's games in the old Shirley Street Arena, us kids would always get in free and have our hot dogs and fries bought during the games, all we had to do, was smuggle a few quarts of beer in ,under our winter clothes, and place them in the toilet tanks to keep cool, this beer was for dedicated drunken Fairview fans who will go unnamed. The players managed to smuggle in their own beer with their gear and enjoyed it, before, during breaks and after games. They played three complete games of hockey, cleaned the ice between periods and we were home shortly after midnight. No advertising and no TV bullshit in those days. Also, most of those players would have worked a full day Saturday before playing. Many, if they didn't work saturday, drank beer from ten o'clock until five o'clock, then went to the arena with beer in their hockey gear. Some, did not drink or smoke at all !

From Names and Places in Nova Scotia: FAIRVIEW, Halifax County
A suburb located on the south west side of Bedford Basin about three miles from the business section of Halifax City. When German settlers took up residence in this area in July, 1751, they named it Westermolt, or Westernwold, "western forest." The English speaking people called it Dutch Village from the German word for German people , " Deutsche." The names of these families were Deal, Frederick. Gebhardt, Hiltz,Hirshmann, Meisner, Mirokel (Merkel), Shaffner, Schmidt, Schultz, Westhoefer (Westhaver), Winter, and Wentzel. The name " Three Mile House" was also applied to the area because of the Inn of that name. The hill behind was called Geizer's Hill from a German family in the district. The origin of the name "Fairview" was the Fairview cemetary in Halifax. but it was not officially applied to the village until sometime before 1941, the first time it appeared in the Federal census. Previously, the village was included in the area known as North West Arm.
St. John's Chapel of Ease was built about 1842 , in what is now Halifax City. The new St John's Anglican church was opened on a new site and dedicated on February 26,1960. St. Lawrence's Roman Catholic Church was begun on August 10,1947, being blessed on October 10,1948. St. Pius X Roman Catholic church and school was opened May 14, 1960. The new Fairview United church was opened on January 3, 1960. The Church of Christ building was formally opened on November 11,1962, while the Fairview Bible Chapel was opened and dedicated on March 20,1960. A Centennial Arena was constructed in 1966/67. Fairview school was built in 1945. Hfx West Municipal High School was completed in 1958. The new St. Pius X Roman Catholic parochial school opened in August ,1960. A new junior high school for Fairview -Rockingham was begun in 1965.

The Halifax Golf and Country Club moved to the golf course at Ashburn in 1923. The population of Fairview is largely composed of people working in the metropolitan area of Hfx-Dartmouth, or those engaged in meeting the merchandizing needs of the community. By 1941 there were 1,436 people. *Note: It became 1,437 on Christmas Day 1941 when my mother came home from the hospital with me! Paul David William Crawford.