A Subscribers Story

Editorial By: Anne (Dorey) Hare – Photography By: Christopher Cooper

In 1914, my grandfather, Richmond Dorey, built this little building for my grandmother Amy to operate as an ice cream parlour. My father, Albert Dorey, was eight years old at the time and this became a bit of a family business. My Aunt Beckie, told her daughter how, when she was fourteen years old, she would walk around the cove and pick up the cream from the dairy farmers to make the custard. This was put in a tin canister and set in a wooden ice cream maker.

Anne’s Aunt Rebecca (Beckie Dorey) strikes a pose in front of the Ice Cream Parlour c. 1919

My dad’s job, at eight, was to help pack the ice and rock salt in layers around the canister inside the bucket and grind the custard until it hardened. This job was done in the Ice House attached to the barn still on the property. The ice cream would then be kept cold in the Ice House until it was served.

Anne and Andy still have the original signs for the Ice Cream Parlour

The front room of this two-storey house is quite bright with large windows on three sides. Tables were set up in the front room with pressed back chairs from the Dominion Chair Company of Bass River, Nova Scotia. Ice cream was served in glass dishes.

In later years my father finished the upstairs of the little house and used it as a summer cottage. Now, with indoor plumbing, our daughters and their spouses have each lived in this house overlooking the beautiful Hubbards Cove on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. Hopefully our son will also have the same opportunity in the future.

Anne (Dorey) & Andy Hare

The ice-house is as in good a shape as it was nearly a hundred years ago

Again Beckie is with her mother Amy Dorey on the little verandah c. 1920

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