Debert ( ; 2006 pop: 1,471) is an unincorporated farming community in

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, located on its east coast. It is one of the three Maritime Canada, Maritime provinces and Population of Canada by province and territory, most populous province in Atlan ...

, Canada. Located in the central-western part of Colchester County, it is approximately west of

Truro Truro (; ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and civil parish in Cornwall, England; it is the southernmost city in the United Kingdom, just under west-south-west of Charing Cross in London. It is Cornwall's county town, s ...

. The community has two churches ( United Baptist Church and

United Church of Canada The United Church of Canada (UCC; ) is a mainline Protestant denomination that is the largest Protestant Christian denomination in Canada and the second largest Canadian Christian denomination after the Catholic Church in Canada. The United Chu ...

Royal Canadian Legion The Royal Canadian Legion is a non-profit Canadian veterans' organization founded in 1925. Members include people who served in the military, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, provincial or municipal police, Royal Canadian Air, Army and Sea Cade ...

(Branch 106), a skating rink, a community centre, two vehicle repair garages, one convenience store, and a volunteer fire department. Debert is situated near

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

and

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

ore deposits that were mined in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Debert became a station stop on the Halifax-

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

mainline of the

Intercolonial Railway The Intercolonial Railway of Canada , also referred to as the Intercolonial Railway (ICR), was a historic Canada, Canadian railway that operated from 1872 to 1918, when it became part of Canadian National Railways. As the railway was also compl ...

in the 1870s. This railway line continues to this day under the ownership of

Canadian National Railway The Canadian National Railway Company () is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN is Canada's largest railway, in terms of both revenue a ...

(CN Rail), with passenger service provided by

Via Rail Via Rail Canada Inc. (), operating as Via Rail or Via (stylized as VIA Rail), is a Canadian Crown corporation that operates intercity passenger rail service in Canada. As of December 2023, Via Rail operates 406 trains per week across eight ...

, but without a stop at Debert.

Military history

During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Debert was the location of a

Canadian Army The Canadian Army () is the command (military formation), command responsible for the operational readiness of the conventional ground forces of the Canadian Armed Forces. It maintains regular forces units at bases across Canada, and is also re ...

base named Debert Military Camp and an adjoining

Royal Canadian Air Force The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF; ) is the air and space force of Canada. Its role is to "provide the Canadian Forces with relevant, responsive and effective airpower". The RCAF is one of three environmental commands within the unified Can ...

station named RCAF Station Debert. Camp Debert was an army facility capable of accommodating division-size units where personnel received training prior to deployment to

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. RCAF Station Debert was used as a

British Commonwealth Air Training Plan The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP), often referred to as simply "The Plan", was a large-scale multinational military aircrew training program created by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand during the Second Wo ...

facility which saw pilots and aircrew from Commonwealth nations trained for military service. Demobilization of the military during the post-war brought about many other changes at Camp Debert with many of the barrack buildings and workshops being demolished. Many materials were salvaged from the demolition and reused to help construct numerous new homes in the nearby village of Debert and throughout this part of Colchester County. For a brief period shortly after the war, the Nova Scotia Agricultural College (NSAC) operated out of the old Camp Debert hospital. The temporary relocation of NSAC resulted from a major fire that had occurred at the principal campus in Bible Hill, which destroyed many barns and academic facilities. Camp Debert's role as a training facility was eliminated in the early 1950s with the opening of the much larger Camp Gagetown in

New Brunswick New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to ...

. The airfield ( Debert Airport) was downgraded at this time to an adjunct facility for RCAF Station Shearwater. A new lease on life was given to the military facility in the early 1960s when Camp Debert was chosen as the location for a Regional Emergency Government Headquarters, also known as a " Diefenbunker". This facility became the focus of the newly formed CFS Debert by the late 1960s. The primary unit attached to CFS Debert was the 720 Communications Squadron, which maintained the REGHQ and provided communications support to

Canadian Armed Forces The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF; , FAC) are the unified Military, military forces of Canada, including sea, land, and air commands referred to as the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force. Under the ''National Defenc ...

units throughout

Atlantic Canada Atlantic Canada, also called the Atlantic provinces (), is the list of regions of Canada, region of Eastern Canada comprising four provinces: New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. As of 2021, the landma ...

and around the world. Substantial radio transmitter and receiver stations were constructed close to the nearby villages of Masstown and Great Village to support the military operations at CFS Debert, providing worldwide radio communications. In 1971 the aerodrome and training facilities were declared surplus and were purchased by the provincial government to create the "Debert Air Industrial Park" as well as a municipal airfield. CFS Debert was closed in the mid-1990s and decommissioned in 1998 with remaining military facilities being transferred to a local development authority named "Colchester Park". The ongoing residual military communications role of Debert was transferred to the transmitter/receiver facilities near Great Village and Masstown. The Debert Airport is now also the location of

Royal Canadian Air Cadets The Royal Canadian Air Cadets () is a Canadian national youth program for young individuals aged 12 to 18. Under the authority of the National Defence Act, ''National Defence Act'', the program is administered by the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) ...

Summer Glider Scholarship program for the Atlantic region. More than 50 cadets earn their

Transport Canada Transport Canada () is the Ministry (government department), department within the Government of Canada responsible for developing regulations, Policy, policies and Public services, services of road, rail, marine and air Transport in Canada, tra ...

Glider Pilot License during a 6-week course each summer. The Debert Airport also offers the Advanced Aviation Course through Royal Canadian Air Cadets as of summer 2011.

Paleo-Indian discovery

A significant

Paleo-Indian Paleo-Indians were the first peoples who entered and subsequently inhabited the Americas towards the end of the Late Pleistocene period. The prefix ''paleo-'' comes from . The term ''Paleo-Indians'' applies specifically to the lithic period in ...

site was discovered on the grounds of the old military camp by a private contractor who was preparing a plot of land to be used as a

tree farm In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated Plant stem, stem, or trunk (botany), trunk, usually supporting Branch, branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, e.g., including only Bark (botan ...

. Researchers from Saint Mary's University were requested to conduct a thorough archeological excavation on the site. Preliminary reports suggested that the site held evidence of human activity that pre-dated any other sites found within the northern part of

. The site was designated a

National Historic Site of Canada National Historic Sites of Canada () are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC), as being of national historic significance. Parks C ...

on 19 October 1972.
/ref>

Climate

Debert has a

humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers, and cold ...

( Dfb) with warm, wet summers with cool nights and long, cold, and very snowy winters. Debert's inland position gives it some of the warmest summer days in all of

, but also gives it some of the chilliest winter nights.

References

Debert on Destination Nova Scotia

External links

Debert Military History Society
{{Coord, 45, 26, 12.9, N, 63, 27, 23.3, W, region:CA_type:city_source:GNS-enwiki, display=title Communities in Colchester County Unincorporated communities in Nova Scotia