Cape Breton's Magazine

ground and it wouldn't go down in the ground so much--it would run off to the river when the ground was wet enough. But today it's got nothing--it's just like a prairie--just dry land now. We used to get big freshets one time. We don't get them any" more. We don't get the water. This here farm was all washed out one time with a freshet when we had a saw? mill here. Over there--that was the mill dam out that flat there. And this high wa? ter came and the dam broke out, and we lost a lot of lumber, and it undermined the barn that was down there, too. The on? ly thing that held the barn was the piers on the centre of the barn--they held--and it was rocking like that. There was a cow and a yearling and the horse in the bam. And the flooring that the cow' was on wasn't spiked--and they floated from under her. And she broke the rope she was tied to and swam out underneath the sill of the barn. We had a pile of slabs out there--it was about 15 feet high--and that was the only thing she could see clear of the moun? tain. And she made for that. And she got up on that. Well, she couldn't get off it, and she was there stranded on the slab pile. And we got a rope on the yearling-- oh, the water--there was about 10 feet of water out along there--it started undermin? ing the house at that corner, dug a hole over 8 feet deep. It was lucky it didn't hurt the house any, kept working out. And we got the yearling and pulled him through the water and got him in the house here. When the water was high, we thought the house was going, to go. My father took my mother and the three of us and got us on the side of the bank and down to my grand? father's- -he lived down below. And he came back here, and the next morning there were 3 or 4 fellows from up the road came down with ropes. My father got the ropes on him? self , and went out and got them on the cow, and they pulled the cow off the slab pile and over through the water to the house. A* Atomic Energy of Canada Limited Chemical Company L'Energie Atomique du Canada, Limitee Societe Chimique And the road down below here at the end of this field--that whole side of that mountain came down, shut the road off, shut the brook off and everything--they had to build a road across over the top of the mountain to get out of here in the winter. (And that's because of how much water came down the Margaree River at one time?) Yeah. (And today?) You never see it coming up o- ver the banks hardly. Very seldom. No, it was an awful freshet. (But it made for a better salmon river?) Yes. Yes. Public Inffermatioii Centre Glace Bay Heavy Water Plant, South Street An ins?M into the atomic a?? tluough MODELS FILMS EXHIBITS VisHs By Groups From High Sciiools, Service Qubs, Church Organizations Can Be Arranged At Any Time Of Tbe Year OPEN DAILY, JUNE TO SEPTEMBER Alex Stonn: You know, I bought a piece of land on Havenside--just a barren piece of land. There were no French constructions or anything on it. I decided to test the ground, see what it was like--perhaps build a summer cottage. So around '70 or '71 I dug on that land to see where the bedrock would start. I dug a trench across it, and that trench is still there today. And lo and behold, when I reached about a foot, foot and a half down--there was an unusual big square block of granite laying there. And I almost got vibes, that this didn't belong there. I was digging around that rock and I found a human skeleton-- old and brittle, just falling apart. I thought, oh my god, it may be some old grave site. I tried to gather all these bones up and put them in a little box and reburied them. I found with that body many small cannonballs, clusters of them. You know, you read of guys digging up skele? tons that they shouldn't be digging up, and hearing noises in the night--well, I never had a run-in with that sort of thing. But I had a bloody nightmare--a real bloody nightmare--about the guy who this skeleton belonged to. I dreamt that this guy was aboard of a ship, and he was at odds with his captain--it was an old 16th century ship. And I dreamt that he was standing in the grand cabin, arguing to high heaven with his captain, and that his captain did away with him and buried him there. And all that time I was a sort of witness to it. And to tell you the truth, I did stop digging there. On my own land!