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Siamese cat Chen Ching watches over Lou
Collins as he sits down at the kitchen table. (Contributed
photo)
Lou Collins Lays Down His Pen
By Ian Robert Ross
Halifax said farewell, last month, to one who
spent a lifetime preserving our city, inside and out. Louis William
Collins will be remembered, especially by Southender readers, as a
voice that called for the keeping of our heritage and sought to
broaden our minds through a lifetime dedication to education.
Lou Collins was born at home on Liverpool
Street, July 26th, 1922.
As a boy, his favourite thing on a Saturday
morning was to go with his brother, Laurie, to the docks on their
bikes to see the Newfoundland ships that had come in and hear the
stories of the sailors.
His father, a fisherman, had come to Halifax
from Newfoundland and would eventually be a part of the crew that
manned the MacKay-Bennett which laid cables across the Atlantic.
Lou’s family had purchased much of the land
around their Liverpool Street home, which included an immense barn.
Being an adept carpenter and contractor, he dismantled parts of the
barn but left enough standing to create two flat-roofed houses which
are still there. “The next generation built in between,” explains
Pam, and there is still a former cottage on next-door London Street.
Pam and Lou were retired by the time they built their present home on
family property, in 1989.
“It was a tight, extended family unit,”
remembers Pam, remembering the way it was when she met and married
Lou, the wedding held on July 23, 1955. Before 1941, much of the land
around the original house on Liverpool Street was rural and was
subdivided between the family. “It was all open field across the
street. Lou often recalled that there were 60 head of cattle across
the street and horses grazing,” explains Pam. “There was no tram; Lou
had to walk to university.”
As a boy, Lou attended Chebucto School and
Bloomfield High School (where he was president of both the History and
Debating clubs) and then went on to Dalhousie for his BA, MA and
Diploma of Education.
Education marked the greatest facet of his
professional life, and he remained committed to teaching long after he
had officially “retired”. Lou’s first position had been at King’s
Collegiate School for Boys, in Windsor, where he served as housemaster
and Grade 11 teacher in 1949. He then moved on to teach English and
History at Richmond School Junior High in Halifax. His dedication to
youth flowed outside the classroom as he was involved in coaching
basketball, hockey, swimming and especially the scouting movement, as
Scoutmaster for the 14th Halifax Troop. He was also the
probation officer for the school.
And during that time, he found other causes to
lend his voice to, too. Pam recalls, “In 1951 to ’52, there was a
$700 pay differential between women and men teachers regardless of
whether they held the same qualifications. Lou was among the first
person to advocate equal pay for equal certification.”
Lou became a founding member of the Nova Scotia
Teacher’s Union and the N.S.T.U. Credit Union. He retired from
teaching in 1983 but continued teaching a course on Halifax History
with the Halifax Department of Continuing Education and was a frequent
lecturer at the Elderhostel programs at Saint Mary’s University, Mount
St. Vincent, and U.P.E.I. through the Atlantic Canada Studies program.
Pam had also been a teacher and taught at
Chebucto school. As Lou worked with the local scout troop, Pam
volunteered with the guides, so they often crossed paths and it was
inevitable that they would become a couple. At their wedding in 1955,
the scouts and guides provided their honour guard.
They had three daughters: Margaret, Heather and
Diane, and presently two granddaughters (Anastasia and Beatrix.) Of
course, they also had numerous pets. There was a dalmatian, named
Omnibob, and then a border collie named Princess, but most notably
were the Siamese cats that Lou was so fond of and who joined him when
he sat to write. (They were Boots Ming Toy, Chen Ching, Tortisan,
Sable and Misha.)
“He loved cats. A Siamese sat around his neck
when he sat in his chair and when he wrote, the other cats sat on the
table.”
For many years, Lou Collins connected with us
each month in the pages of the Southender, where he penned Southend
Notes, and later Collins’ Corner. His columns were written by hand,
though later Pam would type them up before sending them in to the
editor of the day (Collins saw several come and go over the years.)
Common subjects included political leadership, the coming of the
future and, often, the benefits of taking thoughtful pauses in life.
His own thoughts often went toward “English poets” and the “history of
people”, says Pam. Of course, the meeting of old friends and sharing
of time, were also maintained as valued moments to be appreciated.
“While the play of events in our past has its
own attractions and rewards, it has been the contact, however nebulous
and distant, with the human players of the past that has most
attracted my interest and eccentric tastes,” Lou wrote. “It often
seems to me that the juice of life sometimes clings more readily to a
telephone call and the echoes it leaves that may be found in the more
precise and factual accounts that characterize the sober pages of the
work of distinguished historians.” [July 1996]
“He would walk around the house and walk around
the garden, have an idea, then pursue it,” says Pam. Upstairs in the
house was his study, piled high with books and with a desk in front of
the window, but his favourite spot to write was on the kitchen table.
“He liked the hubbub of everyday life around him when he was writing.”
However much he liked the busyness, his trips
to the garden inspired him to caution against it. “In a period when so
much chaos and hype appear to rule our world, moments of quiet
reflection become rarer as our days march on,” Lou wrote, adding, “One
must therefore, be grateful for such opportunities to reset the
balance of our lives.” [April 2000]
Sadly, it became evident that time was catching
up with him. In the time since they were married, this year was the
first that Lou had not composed an anniversary poem for Pam. It was
becoming more and more difficult to write.
Lou’s other legacy is as an avid preservationist
of heritage. He was an early member of the Heritage Trust of Nova
Scotia where he served twice as Vice President and was instrumental in
writing the Heritage Trust’s constitution. He was a member and fellow
of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society, first chair of the
Landmarks Commission and a member of the Genealogical Association of
Nova Scotia, as well as numerous heritage societies from Cole Harbour
to Rockingham. Mayor Walter Fitzgerald had appointed him Honourary
Civic Historian. In another lasting contribution to our city, he was
one of the participants selected to redesign the crest of the Halifax
Regional Municipality.
Perhaps his most noteworthy involvement was with
Historic Properties. In the 1960s, he’d been a co-author of the “Call
for Proposals for the Redevelopment of the Heritage Buildings on the
Halifax Waterfront” and eventually would be one of the influences who
led to the breakthrough change in policy for Parks Canada to begin
funding historically-centred business developments as they did
residences. Historic Properties would be the original. Due to this,
and together with his so very many other projects and contributions,
Governor General Romeo LeBlanc awarded him the Order of Canada on May
8, 1996.
The citation reads: “The driving force behind the
Historic Properties initiative to restore the Halifax waterfront, he
works tirelessly to protect his city’s heritage and history. As Civic
Historian and a research associate of the Nova Scotia Museum, he has
verified the historic significance of sites, discoveries, buildings
and date and has generously shared his findings with his fellow
citizens through his writings and lectures.”
He has left each of us with our own challenge
also. Writing after the passing of several well known Canadians, in
February 2002, Lou propounded, “For those of us who remain it will be
all the more important that we challenge our youth to respect and
preserve the traditions we have enjoyed as Canadians.”
We all owe
a great deal to Lou. There are some of you who were once his students
and many of you were once his friends. Countless readers of the
Southender were his fans and his contributions here have forever
blessed these pages. Yet, beyond the body of writing that he leaves
behind, there are the foundations of our community’s past that he made
stronger. He protected them for us, and for those who follow us as
Haligonians, whose very lives he bettered through his passion to
educate, inform and inspire.
The tranquil garden behind the Collins
home, which inspired many of
Lou's columns and writing. (Ian Ross
photo.)
- Published in "Southender Magazine", October,
2007 |
