The Island Hearse: Funeral Journeys and Community Memory
The Island hearse, drawing signed L. B. Jenson; PIHS collection. The drawing’s c.1860 inscription is not a verified construction date.
A community object
Pictou Island’s surviving horse-drawn hearse brings together several parts of the Island’s history: the care of people who died, the work of neighbours at a funeral, travel along Island roads, and the crossing home when a death occurred on the mainland. Preserved in its Hearse House, the vehicle brings those journeys and memories into view.
Island accounts say the hearse came from McLaren Funeral Home in Pictou around 1910. Its date of manufacture is unknown, and no contemporary purchase record has yet been found. [1, 2]
The Hearse House · PIHS collection. PIHS collection
The journey to burial
The PIHS funeral-practice interpretive panel describes pallbearers walking beside each wheel, ready to help if the hearse became caught in a rut. It also recalls black horses and black palls for adults, and a white horse and white palls for children. The panel preserves these memories of Island funerals. [1]
The same panel records a later adaptation: as horses disappeared from the Island, the hearse was modified to travel on a pickup truck. It describes the return by ferry of people who died on the mainland, including Billy MacMillan, with mourners and pallbearers accompanying the casket. The funeral journey could therefore begin across the Strait, before continuing toward an Island burial ground. [1]
The lamps and lanterns
Two mounted lamps appear above the driver’s position in the drawing signed L. B. Jenson. The community historic-sites account separately describes attendants carrying lanterns beside the wheels. The lamps on the hearse were separate from the lanterns carried beside it. [2, 3]
The work behind a funeral
The hearse was only one part of death care. Island accounts also remember the people who prepared those who had died, made coffins and helped carry them. Margaret MacCallum, later Margaret MacDonald, was a trained nurse appointed Public Health nurse for Pictou Island by December 1925. Later Canadian Nurses Association memorial material credits her with preparing deceased people and conducting funeral services. The later account describes her role caring for those who had died, but does not establish that she was a licensed undertaker or embalmer. [4]
In his study of Gaelic Nova Scotian death and burial traditions, Shamus Y. MacDonald cites Ruth Munro’s history for a coffin made for Frank Munroe in 1974, described as the last built on Pictou Island. Munro described it as the last coffin made on the Island; later funerals have not all been checked to confirm that claim. [5]
Preservation and memory
The Hearse House preserves the vehicle for visitors. The community historic-sites account dates the conversion of its earlier shed into a display building to 2012. It also records beliefs that removing the hearse from its dwelling, or a horse stopping during a funeral journey, could foretell another death. These beliefs are part of the traditions remembered alongside the hearse. [2]
The hearse, drawing and community accounts each preserve part of this history. Questions remain about the vehicle’s origins, its lamps and how it was used.
The Hearse House; PIHS collection. Individual photographer and date unrecorded.
Sources and further reading
Pictou Island Heritage Society, Church Cemetery and funeral-practice interpretive panel; text credited to Lorne Matheson.
Pictou Island, Historic Sites: The Hearse. A later community account, not independent confirmation of acquisition, construction date or operating customs. It mentions carried lanterns but supplies no lamp-colour code.
Drawing signed L. B. Jenson in the PIHS collection. The inscription alone does not establish when the vehicle was made.
The Canadian Nurse, December 1925, Royal Victoria Hospital alumni notice for Margaret MacCallum; Canadian Nurses Association memorial biography for Margaret (MacCallum) MacDonald, 1897–1977. The appointment notice and later memorial account support different parts of her history.
The colours of the hearse lamps are unknown. The black-and-white drawing cannot tell us the colour of their glass or whether colours signalled the age or sex of the person who had died.
