Description Historic Battery Hill Guns Will Go To Salvage Depot

A landmark familiar to generations of Pictonians and to hundreds of vistors will disappear in the near future, the local Salvage committee having secured from the department of national defence, Ottawa , the eight cannon on battery hill to be turned in as scrap iron. 

 The Cannon pointing east and guarding the mouth of the harbor have been there for possibly a century , it is said , but two larger ones pointing due south were installed about 50 to 60 years ago. While they were never called into service for purposes of war, they were used target practice when the old Pictou battery under the late Captian "Joe" Gordon was active, and for years in the last century a 21- gun salute was fired from them each year on the queens Birthday . 

 When King George and Queen Elizabeth Visted Pictou in 1939 a salute was fired from Battery Hill by the 83rd Battery , R.C. A., then in command of Major D.D. MacDonald, V.D. This Battery was a lineal descendant of the old Pictou Volunteer Artillery, organized in 1807 , but the 83rd brought their guns with them ; they did not attept to use the old cannon.

 With their days of effectiveness behind them in their present state the cannon , which not even in their hey-day ever came into action against an enemy, will now be put to use in canada's war effort and by some freak of chance may yet play their part in actual warfare.

 The german field gun, relic of the last war, and the cannon, which formerly stood on the grounds of Pictou Academy , Have already been secured by the energetic salvage committee and have been removed .