Hugh Bell’s Professional Life and Publications
When the diaries of these plant collecting trips began, Hugh Bell was a professor of botany and head of the biology department at Dalhousie University. He was 43 years old. At this point he’d been a professor at Dalhousie for close to 10 years. Prior to joining the faculty at Dalhousie, he acquired his PhD (from the University of Toronto in 1922) and served as an infantry Captain with the Royal Canadian Regiment during World War I.^[1] The notebooks presented here, are a record of his collecting trips from 1932-1934 and from 1943-1956. He died in October 1957 at the age of 68, just over a year after writing his last plant collecting entry.

During the period from 1932 to 1934, most of Bell’s collecting trips were to McNabs Island and the coastal areas around Halifax, where he was interested primarily in marine algae. His publications during this time reflect that focus. In 1932, he published Observations of the seasonal changes in the marine algae in the vicinity of Halifax, with particular reference to winter conditions^[2] and in 1933 he published The marine algae of the maritime provinces of Canada.^[3] Both of these articles were co-authored by Constance MacFarlane who was then a graduate student at Dalhousie and later became one of the few women scientists working in Nova Scotia in the mid 1900’s. MacFarlane left Nova Scotia to pursue post-graduate work, returning in 1949 to take a position with the Nova Scotia Research Foundation and to teach at Acadia University.^[4] Upon her return, she continued to accompany Bell on various collecting outings and at one point, they both worked for the Nova Scotia Research Foundation.

There is a nine year gap in the notebooks held by the Dalhousie University Archives from 1934-1943. During this period Bell seems to have shifted his focus from the study of marine algae to land based plants, though he does continue to collect marine algae. During the period when there are no notebooks, Bell was publishing research related to apple trees. He published apple related research in the Canadian Journal of Research, Section C in 1937, 1939, 1940 and 1941. When the notebooks pick up again in 1943, there is a nine year gap in any publishing activity from Bell.

From 1943 to 1950, Bell continues his field collecting but is less focused on the coastal zone. He spends a lot of time visiting bogs and wetlands in the Halifax area, particularly on the western side of the Northwest Arm and in Hants County. In these locations he collects a variety of land based and freshwater aquatic plants.

In 1950 Bell starts to publish more research, but this time his publications are related to blueberry plants. This starts with his 1950 article Determinate growth in the blueberry.^[5] He publishes five more articles on blueberry plant biology from 1953-1957. In the coming decade, Nova Scotia becomes a leader in blueberry production in Canada and blueberries develop into a global business for the province. Bell’s early research was likely a major part of the original evolution of this industry in Nova Scotia and Canada. By the mid 1950’s the vast majority of his collecting trips relate to blueberry plants.

A Story Told in the Notebooks
The unexpected charm of these notebooks comes from the personal details and small tidbits of current events that are often included in the otherwise scientific observations. For those interested in botany, there is unquestionable value in the details of precisely what plants Hugh Bell collected, when he collected them and from where. The secondary value in the notebooks comes from the contextual details included in many entries. These details tell us about life in Nova Scotia during the period, as well as a little bit more about Hugh Bell’s life and personality.

For example, on May 8, 1945 we learn that Canadian Navy Rear Admiral Leonard Murray was driving the streets of Halifax with a loud speaker imploring residents to stay in their homes during the now infamous V.E. Day Riots.^[6] These riots are a well documented event in the history of Halifax but it’s none the less interesting to read a first person account of someone who was in the city at the time, who was not really impacted by the riots.

Other entries reveal a little more about larger plans that Hugh Bell might have had professionally. In the June 12-14, 1950 entry Bell describes a trip to Yarmouth where he met with lawyer Irving C. Pink about “big shots in the blueberry industry”. Pink was a Dalhousie graduate and future Order of Canada recipient who clearly had business contacts in the area. The meeting suggests that Bell might have had an interest in blueberry production that extended beyond the botanical aspects. Further along in the diaries, on June 19, 1951, Bell describes another trip. This trip was to St. Francis Xavier University where he had a long talk after dinner with Moses Coady. Coady was influential member of the early co-operative movement in the Maritimes and one of the founders of the Antigonish Movement. It’s possible that Bell was interested in the roles that cooperatives could play in blueberry production in the region or the importance of adult education for blueberry producers. Regardless of the real intent behind both of these trips, the entries in the notebooks provide us with some clues about a broader interest in the societal context of his scientific work.

There are not a lot of first person accounts of life in Nova Scotia from this period. Bell will often record the names of people providing accommodations or lunch at a particular destination. He’ll also include details about clothing worn, individuals encountered or businesses visited. Added to this are sometimes details about the weather and road conditions and even the cost of goods and services. For readers with an interest in natural history and for those more generally interested in life in Halifax from 1932-1956, the notebooks provide a fascinating glimpse of the period.

Editorial Notes
The transcriptions of Bell’s notebooks are our best attempt at converting hand written notes to computer text for presentation online. The Dalhousie University Archives manages the original source material in print (Reference Code MS-2-749) and as scanned page images available at https://findingaids.library.dal.ca/hugh-philip-bell-fonds.

A light editorial touch has been taken with the version of the notebooks presented here. The notebooks are an informal recording of real world events. As such, spelling in the originals was not always correct. Minor spelling corrections were made throughout. Words that are important in a sentence, but could not be determined due to difficulty reading the handwriting, are provided as a best guess in square brackets. Otherwise, the corrections are made without note. McAlpine’s Directory was used as source for correct spelling of surnames present in Nova Scotia in the early 1900s. The directory is available on the Nova Scotia Provincial Archives website at https://archives.novascotia.ca/directory/.

To add value to the digital edition of the notebooks, geographic coordinates are included as a quick reference to locate areas where Bell was collecting named plants. These coordinates can be pasted directly into Google Maps to see the specific areas where Bell was collecting. Not every entry included plant collection, so geographic coordinates are not provided for those entries. Also, modern place names are used to facilitate current location of plant observations. Deprecated historic place names were verified using the The 1924 Highway Map of the Province of Nova Scotia.^[7] Modern place names are geolocated using the Canadian Geographical Names Database.^[8] If the modern place name could not be determined, the name used by Bell was kept and no coordinates are given.

Anyone interested in a completely faithful rendition of the notebooks should consult the original scanned page images noted above. The transcribed edition presented here is intended to serve as a searchable and readable version accessible to current readers.

Geoff Brown
Digital Scholarship Librarian
Dalhousie University Libraries