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Advertising Chester as being hay fever free, having few mosquitoes and possessing clean fresh air.
1880
Chester Nova Scotia


Credits:
Chester Municipal Heritage Society

32

Some Quotes:

By Steamer from New York to Halifax, then stage coach from Halifax to Chester:
" with four horses, changing horses three times on the way, and the horses galloping each stage, so that they left Halifax at seven and arrived at Chester about two."
- Mrs. Wurts, née Wister, re travelling to Chester c. 1870 as quoted in the Halifax Chronicle Herald, Sept. 5, 1949. Mrs. Wurts first came to Chester at the age of one and returned almost every year for the rest of her life.


"to get from Baltimore to Chester during the Second World War, was quite a trip. We'd leave Baltimore at 8 in the morning, take the train to Boston switch from the south station to the north station and get on the train that ran from Boston to Halifax. And you got on there at 9 at night and got into Halifax the next night. And then we'd spend the night at the Nova Scotian, and get up the next morning and catch the train to Chester, which as I recall left at about 7 in the morning and we got to Chester at about 10 in the morning. It was a long trip for such a short distance, but it was well worth it when you got here. "
- Stewart Lindsey audio interview re getting to Chester c. 1940


Local women "had learned to their surprise and joy that they could use their housewifely talents in the summer to augment the family income. Thanks to the Summer Visitors, boarding houses, inns and/or small hotels offered lucrative opportunities."
- Unique Women's Roles For A Small town c. 1900 in South Shore Sketches by Lois MacLeod (p. 157)


"For us, it's a chance to live a life that's simple"
- Binky Wurtz in Town & Country Magazine, Aug., 1987
"It's quiet and heavenly here. We may tell friends about Chester, but we don't draw any maps."
- Patty Wurtz in Town & Country Magazine, Aug., 1987


"People come here to drop their urban pretences and just relax. Chester is a constant. Every summer I can depend on seeing the same people."
- Andrew Creighton in Town & Country Magazine, Aug., 1987


"The usual drill was for the husbands to stay back and work and send the wives and children up to Chester for the summer so then the husbands would show up for a week or two towards the end of the summer"
- Summers in Chester c. 1950 - Sifford Pearre audio interview
"When I come back to Little Fish Island and see it waiting there, I feel a bit like Scrooge when he woke up on Christmas morning and realized it was Christmas. It was real and he hadn't missed it after all."
- Betsy Mayer great grand-daughter of Dr. John Finney


"For quite a while we drove up all the way after - when the war was over … I remember coming down the highway from Halifax and we come across the crest of the hill on old Route #3 and suddenly see "Mahone Bay" and YAY!"
- Sifford Pearre audio interview