Celebrating our History

Compiled by Peter Eldridge

In April 1871 the first Canadian census enumerated in Yarmouth County 31 sawmills, which on average were water-powered, seasonal in operation, and small in number of employees or value of product. Usually they were situated to provide easy access to logs; often they were unable to export lumber because of inadequate transportation infrastructure. Subsequently a different economic model, based on economies of scale, was tested by a series of sawmills in Tusket.

Tusket’s Titanic Sawmills

William H. E. Day

In July 1871 Andrew Mack & Company built a double gang steam sawmill in the north end of Tusket village on the east bank of the Tusket River. The three-storey mill was 85 feet long and 47 feet wide; its eighty-foot tall brick chimney dominated the landscape. My first image celebrates the chimney’s completion, an occasion for which four men stand on the chimney top, three on the top level of staging, one on the mill’s peak, and others on the smaller building between chimney and mill.

#1. (PH-80-Tusket-9; YCMA)

Andrew Mack’s mill was designed to produce six million feet of lumber annually. Its products were intended for local Tusket shipyards and for export via sailing vessels that could be loaded at the mill’s wharf. Its logs were harvested from timberlands in the upper reaches of the Tusket River and were brought downriver in an annual log drive. The mill’s log pond was formed by running a boom line upriver from the mill to the middle of the iron bridge on the road between Pleasant Lake and Tusket.

#2. (PH-80-Tusket-33, YCMA)

When Andrew Mack retired in 1877, the company was renamed N. W. Blethen & Company after one of Mack’s partners. This company prospered briefly, but in 1879 its mill was totally destroyed by fire. For more than a decade the mill site remained vacant––except for the chimney––but eventually in 1892 the Tusket River Lumber Company rebuilt and expanded the mill.

#3. (PH-80-Tusket-8, YCMA)

After four years the Tusket River Lumber Company sold its mill and timberland to Alfred Dickie, a lumber tycoon from Lower Stewiacke, NS, who became known as “The Lumber King of Nova Scotia.” He and Thomas N. McGrath formed a partnership, called Dickie & McGrath, to operate and expand the mill. Soon the mill’s annual cut increased to eight million feet of logs.

#4. (Don R. Pothier)

The next image shows Dickie & McGrath’s mill from the southeast. The main road between Tusket and Pleasant Lake (now Route 3) is in the foreground. The overhead trough and conveyor belt carried bark and scrap wood to the near side of the road. A Coast Railway siding crosses the road at right. In the distance at right is a general store operated by Thomas McGrath.

#5. (Don R. Pothier; P1987-150pf, ATCHA)

Photographs of the interiors of Yarmouth County sawmills were rare at this time because of the poor lighting. This Parker photo shows about twenty men at work in the Dickie & McGrath mill. Water hoses were suspended from the ceiling to use in case of fire.

#6. (Don R. Pothier; P1992-471pf, ATCHA)

Dickie & McGrath provided employment, directly or indirectly, for hundreds of workers in the Tusket watershed. According to the Yarmouth Times in June 1897: “The drive of logs for Dickie & McGrath now coming down the Tusket River with a small army of men working all spring numbers 70,000 logs. The largest drive ever on that river.”

#7. (P1990-172pf, ATCHA)

Towboats and harbour pilots gave sailing vessels access to the Dickie & McGrath wharf. In this Parker photo a schooner loaded with lumber is being towed down the Tusket River to deep water, ca. 1900. The south end of Tusket village is visible in the background.

#8. (PH-80-Tusket-29, YCMA)

Since large sailing vessels were unable to reach the mill’s Tusket wharf, Dickie & McGrath constructed at Tusket Wedge a new wharf that could accommodate the year-round loading of large ships even at low tide.

#9. (P2003-130p, ATCHA)

In 1908 Alfred Dickie’s company had financial problems and was sold to an English syndicate. Although the Tusket mill continued to operate as Dickie & McGrath, Thomas McGrath became just a salaried employee. In May 1909 the mill was destroyed by fire but then rebuilt. Finally in 1912 Dickie & McGrath was forced into liquidation, and by 1922 the last traces of the mill, including the iconic brick chimney, had disappeared.

I thank Don R. Pothier, Lisette Gaudet, and Peter Crowell for providing historical information and access to the photographs and post cards.

References and Notes

   [1] A version of this essay was published in the Yarmouth County Historical Society’s Historigram, vol. 15, no. 8, Sept. 2015, pp. 5–7.

   [2] The photograph at the top is of the Dickie & McGrath sawmill ca. 1907. We are facing southeast from a position near the tracks of the Coast Railway. At left is the iron bridge on the road between Pleasant Lake and Tusket. (PC-80-Tusket-17, YCMA)

   [3] For more information about Tusket’s sawmills please see pp. 252–277 of: Don R. Pothier, History of Tusket, Nova Scotia. Edited and with an Introduction by Peter M. Crowell. Argyle Municipality Historical & Genealogical Society, Tusket, NS, 2010. xvi+397 pp.

   [4] I thank archivists Lisette Gaudet, of the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives (YCMA), and Peter Crowell, of the Argyle Township Court House and Archives (ATCHA), for providing access to photographs concerning Tusket’s sawmills. All such photographs are copyrighted; please contact the appropriate archives if you wish to obtain copies.