Research for P.S. Duffy Chapter

As part of a SSHRC IDG, I travelled to Amherst, Nova Scotia in the winter of 2017 to gather information about the history of the local internment camp. I visited two local museums. The first, the Cumberland Country Museum and Archives, houses a large number of delicate wooden objects of varying sizes carved by the men who were held in the largest POW camp in Canada during the First World War, which happened to be in Amherst. Though the converted iron foundry is no longer standing, these objects offer a lasting legacy of the men who were imprisoned there. The second, the Nova Scotia Highlanders Regimental Museum, has among its holdings a hand-carved working wood cello and bow. The cello and bow were donated to the museum in 2007, after having been stashed away in an attic for decades. In particular, the head of the cello is carved in a unique fashion, portraying what could be described as a caricature of a human face with wide lips, a strong, flat nose, and piercing eyes, while the scroll of the instrument forms two ears. According to the museum description, the “head of the cello was carved in the likeness of a sergeant the prisoners did not like.”

Drawing on the objects I examined during my research trip, I place this cello in conversation with American writer P.S. Duffy’s novel, The Cartographer of No Man’s Land which includes the depiction of a local German teacher who is imprisoned in the camp during the First World War, simply because he has German roots. The essay appears in On the Other Side(s) of 150: Untold Stories and Critical Approaches to History, Literature, and Identity in Canada (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2021), available for order here: https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/O/On-the-Other-Side-s-of-150.

Thank you to the Nicole Richard and Rebecca Taylor at the Cumberland County Museum and Ray Coulson at the Nova Scotia Highlanders Regimental Museum for their knowledge and advice.

Photo taken by Jennifer Andrews, 2017.