Cape Breton's Magazine

wool and they had a machine that would card it, and the wool comes out in rolls* Makes it easy for the women who were' doing the spinning* And then later • soon too • he built a gristmill and a sawmill* There's a hill over here • I'm probably the only person at present that calls it The Sawmill Hill* Though I never saw the sawmill* It was gone a long long time before I arrived on the scene* But the sawmill was at the base of this hill, on the water* All those things were run by water. And the ..4p' i* Donald MacLean MacDonald The Upper Dam Nancy MacDonald shingle mill* There were two dams* There was one above the bridge • the railway bridge goes right over it • and there's still tiny traces of some of the old logs. And then the other one was farther up. And every night, one of the chores • I can see my father's partner, he'd go up every night • he would go and shut the water off so there'd be a good head the next day. As time went by they couldn't depend on wa? ter so they got a dynamo, and they created their own electricity. In latter years it was all coal. The coal was hauled in by teams frora Inverness, before the train carae. Then when the railroad came*through after 1900, there was a siding at the mill and the coal cars would be put there* My grandfather carae %dien he was 23 and he died v*en he was 41 • and he built those six mills* And his first and only frame house • that was his home* He died in 1863 • so that frame house must have been built in the 1850s* Must have been* Because he was a sick man for some time before he died* He had a heart condition* And Nancy • she had to take over* She was a busy wo? men* She was a great lover of flowers, the garden • and in order to keep her garden she had to get up at four o'clock in the morning and she'd garden for an hour or two before the day began* She never went away without bringing back a package of plants • that's vrtiat they call "slips*" She had to take over* My father was just 16 when his father died* And he had to become a grown-up man immediately* Under his We Buy & We Sell and We're as Near as your Telephone Sid s Used Furniture Phone 564-6123 436 Charlotte Street, Sydney Windows, Doors, Awnings, Railings, Siding Modern Aluminum Products welton Street, Sydner 562-1104 / 562-1105 I CHRYSLER SAL??S/SERViCE ''GSBEIS''''''/ 55 Victoria Road Sydney "We think Custoraer" R H YMES Flowers &Gifts; Ltd 274 Charlotte St*, Sydney Phone: 539-1214 Rhymes Plaza Florist Cape Breton Shopping Centre Sydney River Phone: 564-8411 CAPE BRETON'S MAGAZINE/15