Origin of the Bluenose name

Tale of the Bluenoses



Reference: The Halifax Herald - Sunday, November 14, 1999
"Humble spud spawned world-famous nickname" by Leslie Smith Dow

Blue·nose (blü'nohz') n. Informal.

1 a Nova Scotian; less often, a New Brunswicker.
2 (adj.) of or associated with Nova Scotia.
3 a ship built in Nova Scotia and manned by Nova Scotians.

Canada - Bluenose stamp - 1929
http://www3.sympatico.ca/viateur.matte/Bluenose.jpg

Canada - Bluenose stamp - 1998
http://www.complast.com/stamps/CANAD...SE%20SHEET.jpg

4 bluenose, a prudish or puritanical person.
- from Gage Canadian Dictionary.

Ottawa - Most Nova Scotians are proud to be called
Bluenoses, identifying, no doubt, with the unbeatable,
graceful racing schooner of the same name and revelling
in the link to a glorious maritime past. But, that, it
seems, is not the origin of the word.

The shocking truth is that the nickname comes from
a lowly potato, and has nothing whatever to do with
the sea - or the province of Nova Scotia.

According to oral histories, it all started in 1817,
when Nova Scotian immigrants brought some unusual
potatoes with them to the Ottawa Valley and elsewhere
in Ontario; these people were likely the original
Bluenoses.

Jersey Potato stamps - 1980
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/petersstamps/sgj230.jpg

German potato stamp - 1997
http://www.virtualstampclub.com/images/gerpotat.jpg

US Potato revenue stamps - 1935
http://www.rdhinstl.com/rev/ricomp.jpg

The Nova Scotians arrived a year after the so-called
"summer of horror" - also known as "the summerless year"
because snow fell in all 12 months - bringing with them
ample supplies of a peculiar potato with a blue nub or
"nose" to use for seed, and to eat while they waited for
the new crop to be ready. The potato grew well in
Nova Scotia, and still does today, although its varietal
name is White Albert. There is a Blue Albert variety,
but this, strangely, is not the one to which the
bluenose nickname applies, says Franz Klingender,
curator of the Agriculture Museum at Ottawa's
Central Experimental Farm.

The Nova Scotians shared their potatoes with
the starving settlers - whose family names are
commemorated in shopping malls, businesses, bridges
and other sites throughout this area - and were
rewarded by having the name of the potato
transferred to themselves.

The term Bluenoses, often considered disparaging
because anybody who ate quantities of potatoes
must be poor, was applied honourably to the immigrants
from "down East." It may have been the first time
the name was used to describe Nova Scotians.

Canadian history professor Cameron Bickerton
of Ottawa's Carleton University has studied
the origins of the moniker and thinks
the Bluenose name could well have been bestowed
by Upper Canadians on their Maritime saviours.

Mr. Bickerton, who searched diligently for early
references to the term, found nothing at all
pertaining to the sea. "Bluenose could so
easily be thought to be something of the sea
and something of fishermen."

The nickname, he said, has very likely been twisted
by tourist promoters, in the same way that
Peggys Cove is now portrayed as a quaint Nova Scotia
fishing village, leading "to misappropriation
of tradition." Mr. Bickerton is confident that
there is a "consistent evidentiary base" for
the term Bluenose or Bluenoser to have come
from Upper Canada.

Dr. Helen Creighton's two books on Nova Scotia
folk traditions and songs make no mention
of Bluenose, says Prof. Bickerton. "If it were
really a genuine product of folk culture . . .
you'd find it there." He did find an early
reference to Bluenose in A. W. H. Eaton's
History of Kings Co., Nova Scotia, indicating
the peculiar blue potato was introduced to
Kings County around 1820, where there was
an agricultural revolution going on. Various
new crops were being tried, among them
the blue potato, which the emigrants
likely brought to Upper Canada.

The Nova Scotians may have emigrated after
experiencing their own "summerless year,"
says Mr. Bickerton, and because of a desire
for more land.

"It was very common practice for migrants
to carry seed potatoes with them for crops
and to eat on the road."

But even that theory could be refuted.
In May of 1897, a small item also appeared
in a York (Toronto) gazetteer advertising
"Blue Nose Potatoes, To be sold at Mr. Russell's
farm near York," according to the
Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles.

That leads Mr. Klingender to believe the potatoes
may have originally come from the United States,
and been imported simultaneously to Nova Scotia
and Upper Canada. "Trade here was more north-south
than east-west," he says. "The idea that people
were introduced to the bluenose potato in this area
(Ottawa) in 1817 without knowing it was available
elsewhere in Upper Canada is possible," concedes
Mr. Bickerton.

The legend of the bluenose potatoes has been passed
down through the generations. An elderly Ontario man,
Benjamin Waldbrook, told the story to historian
W. L. Smith. Mr. Waldbrook had heard the story
from his father, and Mr. Smith wrote it down
in his 1923 book, Pioneers of Old Ontario.
The story was retold by Harry and Olive Walker
in their 1968 book, Carleton Saga.

The many twists and turns of the origin of the word
are further complicated by numerous entries
in dictionaries of slang and euphemisms that point
to the word as having a New England origin. That
misconception, says Mr. Bickerton, can be blamed
on Sam Slick, the popular Yankee peddler created
by Thomas Chandler Haliburton. "Everyone was reading
Thomas Chandler Haliburton in New England, and
he popularized the use of the word bluenose.
He was really writing about American mannerisms
and American culture" and the lexicographers,
most of them British, missed the parody.

Mr. Bickerton says he doubts the word originally
applied to pre-Loyalist settlers in Nova Scotia,
to their habit of drinking too much rum, or to
the effects of the cold sea air on the extremities.
"They were just too poor (to drink)," he notes.

Mr. Bickerton has a copy of Noah Webster's original
1847 dictionary, a huge, 1,500-entry work in
several volumes, which contains no reference at all
to the word bluenose. This, says Mr. Bickerton,
is "very odd," and is an indication that the word
was not popularly used before this in Nova Scotia
or New England.

During the "summerless year" of 1816, wheat and
other crops died unharvested in the fields in parts
of Ontario and Quebec, buried under snow. When
the weather finally relented a little, some meagre
harvests were reaped by men wearing heavy overcoats.
Ira Honeywell, whose original settlement covered
a large part of present-day Ottawa, trekked
the 70-plus kilometres to the military settlement
of Prescott for barrels of flour, which he reluctantly -
and for a price - shared with his only neighbours,
the Dows and the Billings.

"Snow commenced falling in June, and the whole country
was continuously covered by a wintry blanket.
Practically nothing was gathered in the way of a crop.
Everything rotted in the ground. There was no flour,
there were no vegetables; people lived for twelve months
on fish and meat - venison, porcupine, and ground-hog
being varied with the thin meat of cattle, slaughtered
because there was no vegetation to sustain them,"
according to Mr. Waldbrook's word-of-mouth narrative.

"I am told that the people of Nova Scotia do not like
the title," recalled Mr. Waldbrook. "They should
be proud of it. The name recalls the time when help
from that province by the sea proved the salvation
of sorely stricken Ontario."

"Flour," wrote historian Smith, "was seventy dollars
per barrel at Quebec, potatoes were a penny a pound,
and the country was full of stories of the horrors
endured during the winter of a years duration."
Hay was even sent from Ireland to Quebec,
where the cold weather was also felt. Fortunately,
the next year's harvest, aided by the largesse
of the Nova Scotians, was bountiful.

The first literary reference to a Bluenose was likely
by Thomas Chandler Haliburton, in the introduction
to his 1849 masterpiece, The Old Judge: "Such is
the gentleman known throughout America as Mr. Blue Nose,
a sobriquet acquired from a superior potato of that name,
of the good qualities of which he is never tired of talking,
being anxious, like most men of small property,
to exhibit to the best advantage the little he has."

According to the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical
Principals, Nova Scotians have been Bluenoses since 1785,
when the then-derogatory term was applied to them by
the newly arrived Loyalists from the United States.

The dictionary notes Nova Scotians were often called
Bluenoses because of the effect of the cold Atlantic
winds on fishermen's snouts, or from drinking too much
100-proof Caribbean rum.

Yet another bluenose was the bright blue cannon in
the bow of a Nova Scotia privateer during the War of 1812,
which allegedly sent many a Yankee ship scurrying for cover.

The name was immortalized in 1921 with the launch of
Canada's most famous sailing ship, the 39-metre
(130-foot) fishing schooner Bluenose at Lunenburg.
She was lost on a reef off Haiti in 1946, but in 1963,
Olands Brewery built a replica, the Bluenose II,
which was donated to the province of Nova Scotia.

Another reference to the term as meaning "puritanical,"
or "stuck-up," likely came from a reference to Queen Victoria's
"blue-nosed" or "blue-blooded" tastes, says Mr. Bickerton.


Blair Stannard
Ottawa, Ontario


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Blair, are you a mind reader, or do you understand Danish !?
Just yesterday a Danish collector asked me about the origin
of the Bluenose name. Thanks! I will forward your post to
him :-)

Mette


TC wrote in message
...
Tale of the Bluenoses



Reference: The Halifax Herald - Sunday, November 14, 1999
"Humble spud spawned world-famous nickname" by Leslie Smith Dow

Blue·nose (blü'nohz') n. Informal.

1 a Nova Scotian; less often, a New Brunswicker.
2 (adj.) of or associated with Nova Scotia.
3 a ship built in Nova Scotia and manned by Nova Scotians.

Canada - Bluenose stamp - 1929
http://www3.sympatico.ca/viateur.matte/Bluenose.jpg

Canada - Bluenose stamp - 1998
http://www.complast.com/stamps/CANAD...SE%20SHEET.jpg

4 bluenose, a prudish or puritanical person.
- from Gage Canadian Dictionary.

Ottawa - Most Nova Scotians are proud to be called
Bluenoses, identifying, no doubt, with the unbeatable,
graceful racing schooner of the same name and revelling
in the link to a glorious maritime past. But, that, it
seems, is not the origin of the word.

The shocking truth is that the nickname comes from
a lowly potato, and has nothing whatever to do with
the sea - or the province of Nova Scotia.

According to oral histories, it all started in 1817,
when Nova Scotian immigrants brought some unusual
potatoes with them to the Ottawa Valley and elsewhere
in Ontario; these people were likely the original
Bluenoses.

Jersey Potato stamps - 1980
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/petersstamps/sgj230.jpg

German potato stamp - 1997
http://www.virtualstampclub.com/images/gerpotat.jpg

US Potato revenue stamps - 1935
http://www.rdhinstl.com/rev/ricomp.jpg

The Nova Scotians arrived a year after the so-called
"summer of horror" - also known as "the summerless year"
because snow fell in all 12 months - bringing with them
ample supplies of a peculiar potato with a blue nub or
"nose" to use for seed, and to eat while they waited for
the new crop to be ready. The potato grew well in
Nova Scotia, and still does today, although its varietal
name is White Albert. There is a Blue Albert variety,
but this, strangely, is not the one to which the
bluenose nickname applies, says Franz Klingender,
curator of the Agriculture Museum at Ottawa's
Central Experimental Farm.

The Nova Scotians shared their potatoes with
the starving settlers - whose family names are
commemorated in shopping malls, businesses, bridges
and other sites throughout this area - and were
rewarded by having the name of the potato
transferred to themselves.

The term Bluenoses, often considered disparaging
because anybody who ate quantities of potatoes
must be poor, was applied honourably to the immigrants
from "down East." It may have been the first time
the name was used to describe Nova Scotians.

Canadian history professor Cameron Bickerton
of Ottawa's Carleton University has studied
the origins of the moniker and thinks
the Bluenose name could well have been bestowed
by Upper Canadians on their Maritime saviours.

Mr. Bickerton, who searched diligently for early
references to the term, found nothing at all
pertaining to the sea. "Bluenose could so
easily be thought to be something of the sea
and something of fishermen."

The nickname, he said, has very likely been twisted
by tourist promoters, in the same way that
Peggys Cove is now portrayed as a quaint Nova Scotia
fishing village, leading "to misappropriation
of tradition." Mr. Bickerton is confident that
there is a "consistent evidentiary base" for
the term Bluenose or Bluenoser to have come
from Upper Canada.

Dr. Helen Creighton's two books on Nova Scotia
folk traditions and songs make no mention
of Bluenose, says Prof. Bickerton. "If it were
really a genuine product of folk culture . . .
you'd find it there." He did find an early
reference to Bluenose in A. W. H. Eaton's
History of Kings Co., Nova Scotia, indicating
the peculiar blue potato was introduced to
Kings County around 1820, where there was
an agricultural revolution going on. Various
new crops were being tried, among them
the blue potato, which the emigrants
likely brought to Upper Canada.

The Nova Scotians may have emigrated after
experiencing their own "summerless year,"
says Mr. Bickerton, and because of a desire
for more land.

"It was very common practice for migrants
to carry seed potatoes with them for crops
and to eat on the road."

But even that theory could be refuted.
In May of 1897, a small item also appeared
in a York (Toronto) gazetteer advertising
"Blue Nose Potatoes, To be sold at Mr. Russell's
farm near York," according to the
Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles.

That leads Mr. Klingender to believe the potatoes
may have originally come from the United States,
and been imported simultaneously to Nova Scotia
and Upper Canada. "Trade here was more north-south
than east-west," he says. "The idea that people
were introduced to the bluenose potato in this area
(Ottawa) in 1817 without knowing it was available
elsewhere in Upper Canada is possible," concedes
Mr. Bickerton.

The legend of the bluenose potatoes has been passed
down through the generations. An elderly Ontario man,
Benjamin Waldbrook, told the story to historian
W. L. Smith. Mr. Waldbrook had heard the story
from his father, and Mr. Smith wrote it down
in his 1923 book, Pioneers of Old Ontario.
The story was retold by Harry and Olive Walker
in their 1968 book, Carleton Saga.

The many twists and turns of the origin of the word
are further complicated by numerous entries
in dictionaries of slang and euphemisms that point
to the word as having a New England origin. That
misconception, says Mr. Bickerton, can be blamed
on Sam Slick, the popular Yankee peddler created
by Thomas Chandler Haliburton. "Everyone was reading
Thomas Chandler Haliburton in New England, and
he popularized the use of the word bluenose.
He was really writing about American mannerisms
and American culture" and the lexicographers,
most of them British, missed the parody.

Mr. Bickerton says he doubts the word originally
applied to pre-Loyalist settlers in Nova Scotia,
to their habit of drinking too much rum, or to
the effects of the cold sea air on the extremities.
"They were just too poor (to drink)," he notes.

Mr. Bickerton has a copy of Noah Webster's original
1847 dictionary, a huge, 1,500-entry work in
several volumes, which contains no reference at all
to the word bluenose. This, says Mr. Bickerton,
is "very odd," and is an indication that the word
was not popularly used before this in Nova Scotia
or New England.

During the "summerless year" of 1816, wheat and
other crops died unharvested in the fields in parts
of Ontario and Quebec, buried under snow. When
the weather finally relented a little, some meagre
harvests were reaped by men wearing heavy overcoats.
Ira Honeywell, whose original settlement covered
a large part of present-day Ottawa, trekked
the 70-plus kilometres to the military settlement
of Prescott for barrels of flour, which he reluctantly -
and for a price - shared with his only neighbours,
the Dows and the Billings.

"Snow commenced falling in June, and the whole country
was continuously covered by a wintry blanket.
Practically nothing was gathered in the way of a crop.
Everything rotted in the ground. There was no flour,
there were no vegetables; people lived for twelve months
on fish and meat - venison, porcupine, and ground-hog
being varied with the thin meat of cattle, slaughtered
because there was no vegetation to sustain them,"
according to Mr. Waldbrook's word-of-mouth narrative.

"I am told that the people of Nova Scotia do not like
the title," recalled Mr. Waldbrook. "They should
be proud of it. The name recalls the time when help
from that province by the sea proved the salvation
of sorely stricken Ontario."

"Flour," wrote historian Smith, "was seventy dollars
per barrel at Quebec, potatoes were a penny a pound,
and the country was full of stories of the horrors
endured during the winter of a years duration."
Hay was even sent from Ireland to Quebec,
where the cold weather was also felt. Fortunately,
the next year's harvest, aided by the largesse
of the Nova Scotians, was bountiful.

The first literary reference to a Bluenose was likely
by Thomas Chandler Haliburton, in the introduction
to his 1849 masterpiece, The Old Judge: "Such is
the gentleman known throughout America as Mr. Blue Nose,
a sobriquet acquired from a superior potato of that name,
of the good qualities of which he is never tired of talking,
being anxious, like most men of small property,
to exhibit to the best advantage the little he has."

According to the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical
Principals, Nova Scotians have been Bluenoses since 1785,
when the then-derogatory term was applied to them by
the newly arrived Loyalists from the United States.

The dictionary notes Nova Scotians were often called
Bluenoses because of the effect of the cold Atlantic
winds on fishermen's snouts, or from drinking too much
100-proof Caribbean rum.

Yet another bluenose was the bright blue cannon in
the bow of a Nova Scotia privateer during the War of 1812,
which allegedly sent many a Yankee ship scurrying for cover.

The name was immortalized in 1921 with the launch of
Canada's most famous sailing ship, the 39-metre
(130-foot) fishing schooner Bluenose at Lunenburg.
She was lost on a reef off Haiti in 1946, but in 1963,
Olands Brewery built a replica, the Bluenose II,
which was donated to the province of Nova Scotia.

Another reference to the term as meaning "puritanical,"
or "stuck-up," likely came from a reference to Queen Victoria's
"blue-nosed" or "blue-blooded" tastes, says Mr. Bickerton.


Blair Stannard
Ottawa, Ontario


-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
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On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:36:38 +0100, "Mette" wrote:

Blair, are you a mind reader, or do you understand Danish !?
Just yesterday a Danish collector asked me about the origin
of the Bluenose name. Thanks! I will forward your post to
him :-)

Mette


This is scary.

First I vote on most popular Danish stamps and almost
get them all correct. Next, I start reading the minds
of Danes. The next thing you know, I will be finding
bottles of Carlsberg in my cellar. 8*)

Oops! That already happened.

Blair





-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
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-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----

Thanks Blair for everything we ever wanted to know about bluenose and then some.
Marge Schleining

TC wrote in message
...

- snip -

This is scary.

First I vote on most popular Danish stamps and almost
get them all correct. Next, I start reading the minds
of Danes. The next thing you know, I will be finding
bottles of Carlsberg in my cellar. 8*)

Oops! That already happened.

Well, the message is the same in many languages :-)
http://tinyurl.com/2ujhw

Enjoy your drink ;-)
Mette

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 11:57:18 +0100, "Mette" wrote:

TC wrote in message
.. .

- snip -

This is scary.

First I vote on most popular Danish stamps and almost
get them all correct. Next, I start reading the minds
of Danes. The next thing you know, I will be finding
bottles of Carlsberg in my cellar. 8*)

Oops! That already happened.

Well, the message is the same in many languages :-)
http://tinyurl.com/2ujhw

Enjoy your drink ;-)
Mette




Mette:

I keep getting....
The page cannot be displayed

Blair




-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----

TC wrote in message
.. .

- snip -

Mette:

I keep getting....
The page cannot be displayed

Strange, it works for me.
Try this one instead:

http://w1.1429.telia.com/~u142900362...ergMessage.jpg

I have just checked it out, and it works.

Mette

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 09:06:14 +0100, "Mette" wrote:

TC wrote in message
.. .

- snip -

Mette:

I keep getting....
The page cannot be displayed

Strange, it works for me.
Try this one instead:

http://w1.1429.telia.com/~u142900362...ergMessage.jpg

I have just checked it out, and it works.

Mette


Got it ! Skol.

Blair




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-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----