By Andrew Macdonald
It’s been 30 years since Clan Chisholm Inc. occupied the highest political office in the Town of Antigonish.
Mayor Collie Herman Chisholm died in office at age 74 in 1994. He was a charter member of the Chisholm dynasty, out of Antigonish.
Now, with the Oct. 19 municipal election about a month away, The Macdonald Notebook can report another Chisholm is eying a political run.
I refer to Coline Morrow, daughter of Collie Herman. She is a lawyer in the town.
Morrow was once married into the celebrated fishing titans that once owned National Sea Products, which later morphed into High Liner, the Lunenburg-based fish stick maker.
Her late father-in-law would have been the legendary Bill Morrow. I met Bill, now deceased, in a fishing community at White Head, Guysborough County, in 1991, when Nat Sea proposed a scallop farm in that community near Canso.
Morrow was chair of Nat Sea during the 1989-1990 year-long Canso Crisis, when a Christmas Eve 1989 Nat Sea press release stated the Canso mainstay, its fish plant, would close amid the collapse of the Northern cod fishery.
When I moved to Halifax in 1995 after a five-year reporting stint in Cape Breton, I worked with David Bentley and Lyndon Watkins, and often would run into Bill Morrow at the coffee emporium Perks near the ferry terminal. He was a true gentleman.
Antigonish Town Hall. (Antigonish).
As for Coline Morrow, she was against the amalgamation of Antigonish town and county, and a leading organizer of Let Antigonish Decide.
Another charter Chisholm Inc. member is Antigonish business leader Jeff Dee, who once owned Eastern Sanitation before selling the garbage hauler to a giant player. Dee inherited leadership and visionary insight from his late uncle road builder John ‘Nova’ Chisholm. Dee’s mother, Marilyn was a sibling of John Nova, the latter who died young at age 68 in 2014.
Denis Ryan sang at John ‘Nova’s’ funeral, singing the wedding and funeral song, Dark Island, a haunting Scottish tune which Ryan made famous in Nova Scotia bars and pubs when he fronted the 1970s widely popular Ryan’s Fancy troupe.
Dee supported the merger of town and county, pitting him against Morrow. Dee believes if Collie Herman were alive today he would have endorsed the merger. I am sure his daughter has a different take.
The Liberal savvy Clan Chisholm, out of Antigonish are also industrial and captains of commerce in the town. Morrow’s first cousin is Ronnie B. Chisholm, who with his brother John Chisholm runs the Keltic Motors Ford dealership.
Ronnie was against the merger and is a former Antigonish town councillor and former mayoral contender.
His son-in-law is Iain Rankin, the former Liberal premier who is married to Mary Chisholm. Both Iain and Mary play the bagpipes.
Iain and Mary over the Christmas holidays welcomed another baby into their home, making the household in Timberlea a four-member family, as baby Freya was born when Iain was premier in 2021.
Iain Rankin, his spouse Mary Chisholm and their dog, Weston. Rankin campaign photo
The Chisholm family’s charter member and political patriarch Collie Herman Chisholm was in strong contention to become Liberal premier in 1956 following the death of Angus L. Macdonald, one of the province’s great premiers in its history.
Chisholm was Antigonish Liberal MLA, stealing the Grit nod against a sitting Liberal in a nomination battle in 1949, so Angus L. refused to put him into the cabinet.
Iain Rankin’s spouse Mary Chisholm is a grand-niece of visionary Antigonish politico, Collie Herman Chisholm, who died in office as Antigonish mayor in 1994. Collie Herman, pictured on my 1988 Antigonish Cable TV talk show, is the father of Coline Morrow, who is running for a seat on Antigonish town council.
That nod saw incumbent Liberal John Patrick Gorman lose the nomination. At the time the Antigonish Liberal riding president, Colin R. MacDonald, my road-building grandfather, urged Chisholm to wait it out.
Chisholm became a town mayor in 1970, and died in office in 1994, at age 74. He lost the 1956 race to Tory Bill MacKinnon, a brother of former St. FX president Greg MacKinnon.
In 1956, the Liberal leadership and premier’s job were up for grabs, and Chisholm entered the race, and had a good shot at winning that convention. Harold Connolly was interim premier, after the death in 1954 of Angus L, and he was backed by the Catholics.
The race was won by Henry Hicks, who was backed by the Protestants in Halifax.
At the time, the Liberals would switch from a Catholic leader to a Protestant leader – and this tradition continued in the party in 1987 when Liberal Catholic Vince MacLean defeated Protestant Jim Cowan.
On the eve of the speeches for the 1956 Liberal convention, there was no sight of Chisholm, so he bowed out without explanation, but history talk is that he was kinda ‘tired and emotional” that night.
As town mayor from 1970 to 1994, he had many transformational policies, giving the town a modern water drinking plant and a sewage treatment plant, both in the 1970s.
In 1988, Chisholm appeared on my Antigonish Cable TV show and told me he would proudly drink a glass of treated water from the sewage plant. He ended raw sewage going into Antigonish Harbour in the 1970s, decades and decades before the City of Halifax would get its own treatment facility.
Collie Herman Chisholm in this photo with me on my 1988 Antigonish Cablevision show when I was a 21. Collie Herman’s daughter Coline Morrow is running for a seat on Antigonish town council.
Ronnie B Chisholm, a nephew of Collie Herman, ran unsuccessfully for the Liberal nod in 1999 – he was touted as a future Highways minister but lost to Hyland Fraser.
His daughter Mary Chisholm is a first cousin of Donald ‘Nova’ Chisholm, the province’s second-largest road builder.
Mary’s other cousin is John ‘Keltic’ Chisholm, who now works for Dexter Construction. Fifteen years ago, he sold his own road-building entity to Carl Potter’s Dexter. At the time, I reported the sale involved a $10M price tag.
John’s company was called ACL, which locals dubbed: Another Chisholm Ltd.
As for Ronnie B. he is a fine baker and a student of political biographies of all kinds.
Coline Morrow is definitely an OAF. It was late undertaker and crooner, Jimmy MacPherson who coined the term: OAF. It stands for: Old Antigonish Family.
For an archived story originally published in 1991 on then-mayor Collie Herman Chisholm fearing town and county amalgamation, which at the time I wrote for the Halifax Herald, click here for a walk down history lane:
