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WENDY ELLIOTT: KIPAWO ferry’s 100th birthday worth marking

Birthdays are always worth marking and this year, Katherine Ryan, managing director of Randall House Museum in Wolfville, had a brilliant idea for an extended celebration of the 100th anniversary of the MV KIPAWO.

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As Maritime historian Dan Conlin pointed out on July 24, the ferry was conceived in the early 1920s by the Annapolis Valley Board of Trade to foster cultural tourism.

The vessel that held 120 people and eight cars was custom built in Saint John, N.B.

It wasn’t long, Conlin said, before the KIPAWO won a place in the heart of the Valley.

The 123-foot-long ferry loaded cars by an innovative canvas sling and changed its schedule daily according to the tide.

My dad recalled that as a kid he and his friends knew harbour swims were prime when the Kip’s horn blew. Kingsport was the next stop, followed by Parrsboro across the Bay of Fundy.

Conlin told the story of fog blanketing Kingsport and the lighthouse fog horn not functioning, so a woman who happened to be waiting on the dock with a French horn blew notes that allowed the KIPAWO to dock.

In July 1934, during a rainstorm with lightning, Roy Harrington, a shovel operator on the St. Croix River hydro development, happened to be........

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