Cape Breton's Magazine

drive • and that was a treat. Go out quite a ways, Breton Cove and back again. And the boys used to scare us, rock the boat. Some days it would be kind of loppy and the girls would scream • but I was never scared. D. J.: The factory closed in 1939- We closed because they started sending the larger lobsters to the States and they'd get more for them than we could pay for them here. They were getting 35 cents a pound. So we just closed. D. J. Morrison with a wooden boiling vat; John Alex John'X. MacDonald; tools: a wringer to get the meat from the little walking legs, and a picker to pick arms. John Alex John X. MacDonald, Breton Cove: D. B. MacLeod had the lobster factory at Breton Cove. I spent time around there. I was there for three years. The first year I was there my brother was fishing with my father. I was going there at 7 in the morning when the lobster would be plenty in the spring, and we'd be there till mid? night. Now, if I didn't take a lunch with me for dinner • I had to walk back home from the shore, which is over half a mile, all uphill • and you'd have an hour to come home and eat dinner • then you'd have to be back there. Then 5 o'clock came, it's sup- pertime. And anybody that was living at home had to go home. They had a building down there for people from av/ay. They'd go down with their supper • the girls working in the house brought down two or three great big pails full of eggs and bread and milk and all this stuff • but we had to come home for supper. So that's two trips we were making every day. And I remember 2 or 3 different nights in the one week we worked till midnight • the lobsters were so plenty. But after they'd get scarce, we'd be all through at 6 o'clock. The first year I was there I was only a young fellow, I was picking the arms. But after that I was cracking the claws • the last two years I was there my brother had left • he had gone to Boston • and I had to fish with my father. We were getting up at 3:30 and we were hauling 65 traps and we'd be ashore about half past ?. And then I'd go to the factory and work there all day long. Same thing the next day. Six days a week. And after two weeks • say the first of June • we were starting to plant the oats. My father'd be getting ready all day. He'd be home after fishing, spreading man? ure out and sowing the oats. I'd come home at 6 o'clock and have to get the horse th'en and go and harrow them. He'd have perhaps two bags of oats sovm, you know. That meant about 4 miles walking or 5 miles walking before I'd get that harrowed under. Get in here before dark, jump in bed, up again at half past 3, out fishing, haul 60 or 70 traps. There were a lot working there. At least 25. The one at Wreck Cove was a smaller one. Morrisons were only coming as far as Wreck Cove Shore. When things would slack? en up, D. B. used to send me in the smack • smacking them and weigh them in the boat. We'd go down as far as Birch Plain and from there up to where Montgomerys Ideal Ice Cream Co. Ltd. A Complete Line of Frozen Foods Ice Cream and Fountain Supplies 162 Prince Street 56ij.-4549 Sydney