Interview (telephone) with Nelson MacAskill son of Neilly Hector MacAskill
Nelson's memories of Stirling (July,/2020)
Working at the mine, selling cars, hauling pulp, operating dump trucks
Jeanette: You were saying about your Dad that he was a salesman for a motor company.
Nelson: Yeah. He sold cars and trucks. He sold vehicles for MacEachern Motors in Antigonish and he had two pulp trucks and two dump trucks on the go as well, when we were there in Stirling.
Jeanette: So, he was a contractor then.
Nelson: Yeah. He was working at the mine; he was selling cars; he had two pulp trucks with drivers on them and the dump truck and he had a half ton truck. My grandfather drove a bit as well and he used to go to Sydney and pick up coal and stuff for people with it.
Jeanette: Would he be picking up any coal for the mine?
Nelson: No, it was usually for household use and anything else that people wanted picked up in Sydney as well.
Jeanette: So, he’d get someone else to run those trucks for him?
Nelson: Yeah. He didn’t drive the trucks himself, no.
Jeanette: So, he had pulp trucks so there was some sort of woods work going on at the same time I guess.
Nelson: Yes, well whoever wanted their pulp hauled – They used to haul the pulp into Soldier’s cove. Sometimes on a Saturday, I would go with him and he’d take a load in. They dumped the pulp right in the water there. They dumped it right in the Cove and they boomed it from there.
Jeanette: What does that mean – “Boomed”?
Nelson: Well they would dump it in the Cove and they would put a lot of logs that were tied together with cables in a boom and they would take it down the Bra D’or Lakes or wherever they went with it. I’m not sure where it went from there.
Jeanette: That’s pretty interesting. I remember heading to St Peters, there was a place where they took the pulp and they stored it there. They would take it so far.
Nelson: Yes, I remember that. They peeled pulp there. It was all peeled pulp that they stored there. They would get more for peeled pulp.
Jeanette: I remember that with my brother. He’d get my sisters to peel it for him and he’d give them so much and then (he’d make a profit).
Where the MacAskill family lived in Stirling
Jeanette: I’m looking at the little map I had made.
Nelson: Looking at the Lake, if you are coming up from the Stirling road, that goes over to Loch Lomond. If you were turning up there (our lane), Norman Johnson should be the first one on the left and then there would have been us.
Jeanette: What about Donnie Shaw?
Nelson: Donnie Shaw would have been - Do you remember where Jack and Flo lived?
Jeanette: Oh Yes
Nelson: That was the house.
Jeanette: Were they on the same lane as Norman
Nelson: They were on the same lane but on the opposite side coming up.
Jeanette: So, what you are saying is going up the lane, Donnie Shaw would have been on the right and the Johnson’s would be on the left.
Nelson: On the left.
Jeanette: You folks. You were on the left?
Nelson: We were on the left and then MacDonalds were above us.
Jeanette: Yeah, on the left?
Jeanette: I think I put some one else on the other side of the road.
Nelson: On top of the hill, there was a new house built up there. It was right on the top. I don’t remember anybody living in it.
Jeanette: That would have been on the?
Nelson: On the right going up, at the top. My uncle Lloyd stayed with us for a while. He worked at the mine too – mom’s brother - he used to walk up through the woods to go to work at the mine.
Jeanette: Yeah, it would be right there.
Trip to the Archives
Jeanette: You were saying you would have to wait to get to the (Nova Scotia) Archives to check something out.
Nelson: That street, to be sure. (Editor's note: Nelson and his sister, Linda, disagree on how the houses were situated).
Jeanette: So, would that be shown somewhere in the Archives?
Nelson: It will show in the Archives, yes.
Jeanette: Why was that? Was there a map of the whole area (showing) where everybody lived?
Nelson: Well there was a map – see my sister, Linda is familiar with all of this stuff and she said, “It’s in the Archives, and I know where I can find it.” And I said. “good, when it opens we’re going. “
Jeanette: I never got a chance to do research at the Beaton institute or the (Nova Scotia) Archives. That will be one of my next steps. Jackie Murdock Dan (MacLeod) from Stirling. out behind the lake there, told me that the mine people were trying to incorporate Stirling into a town and they had all these streets/house mapped out. (He said) they had applied to the Province for it to be a township. I’m wondering if that is what your sister had seen.
Nelson: It is.
The road from Stirling to Loch Lomond
Nelson: I tried to get over to Stirling last summer. I didn’t realize the Stirling road - you can’t get through it.
Jeanette: From Loch Lomond, no (you can’t).
Nelson: It takes a long time to go around. You have to go back down to Grand River and up.
Jeanette: That’s right. It’s a long way. (Editor’s note -The provincial Dept responsible for road maintenance has stopped repairing the road between Stirling and Loch Lomond. It is now closed to vehicular traffic.)
Nelson: The Last time I was in Stirling was in 1984. Jack and Flo were still alive.
Jeanette: I remember when I was a kid there was a bunch of houses along there.
Nelson: So many of houses in Stirling were moved out.
Jeanette: All of them were pretty well.
Nelson: The MacLeod who had the sawmill, did a lot of the moving.
Jeanette: He did most of it. There were some people who did it themselves.
The Old Sawmill
Jeanette: The sawmill - do you remember that? I think that might have been down by the time you were there.
Nelson: No, I remember the mill. My father worked for him (Dan Alex MacLeod) for years around the sawmill, before the mine started.
Jeanette: Could you see it from your house?
Nelson: No, you’d kind of walk over and go down the road a little bit.
Jeanette: Oh, the road that takes you around the Lake?
Nelson: No, the road that takes you to….
Jeanette: To Framboise.
Nelson: Yes.
The Pumphouse/Wood Stave piping
Jeanette: Do you remember the pumphouse?
Nelson: Oh yes, very well.
Jeanette: That’s where we used to swim. It wasn’t a pumphouse then. It was just a foundation. So, I went there a few weeks ago and I saw the foundation. It was a lot smaller than I remembered it to be when I was a kid.
Nelson: No, it was a very tiny little building.
Jeanette: And it had three concrete footers so there may have been three pumps there, I don’t know. There’s one pipe - like there’s a concrete pier, I guess. It has half a circle cut out of it where the pipe would have lied on top of it. I think that pipe wasn’t quite, I don’t know, 8-10 inches there at that point when it left (the building) but people described it as maybe a foot and a half wide and it was this wooden pipe.
Jeanette: And the wooden pipes – you said (in an email) that you remembered them?
Nelson: Yes, just as plain as anything.
Jeanette: One of the Architects (who contacted me- Harvey Freeman), he was familiar with “Wood Stave Piping”.
Nelson: I’ve seen it in other places as well.
Jeanette: So, was that just lying on the ground?
Nelson: No. There was like a Trellis under it.
Jeanette: Oh, OK, like something holding it up every so many feet?
Nelson: Yes.
Jeanette: I don’t know if you are familiar with Lidar. It’s like aerial photographs but it gets rid of all the vegetation and you can see so much above (and below) the ground. Behind the mine where all the houses were, I could see all the foundations of the houses. I could see where there was a ditch and I could see where the water tank was over behind the mill. And you could see where the water pipe was going to the mill and where it was going right straight across up the hill where the houses were and then right out to the pumphouse, like a straight Bee-line. The pipe obviously would have gone under the road, at some point.
Put Lidar map here
Nelson: Yes. It didn’t go over the road that’s for sure.
Jeanette: So, as far as you remember, that pipe was wooden all the way down to the pumphouse?
Nelson: Yes. What I can remember, it was wooden all the way down.
Jeanette: That’s pretty interesting. I have been trying to track down the water system there. So, in some of the pictures I have on the website, the more recent ones, you can clearly see the water tank. It is behind the mill as per Wendel Holmes interview. When he was a young man, he worked at the mill.
Nelson: Yeah, I met him when I was with my Dad.
Loch Lomond connection
Jeanette: Your Mom and Dad - they were from Loch Lomond, right?
Nelson: Yes, they were. That little house that we were in; MacLeod skidded it over for him, to Stirling and then he built a piece on it when it got to Stirling. It was only a tiny, tiny, tiny place.
Jeanette: Yeah, most of the houses there were small. Who knows how long people thought they would be living there but it wasn’t very long that it (the mine) was going.
Nelson: No, No.
Jenette: It took a while to get it going.
Dogpatch
Nelson: I mentioned to my daughter a couple of times, about Stirling. My youngest is very interested in History and Genealogy. She’s really into it and when I mentioned Dogpatch, she said, “Dad!” So, when your pictures came, I had to direct her right to that site. Laughter. That’s what everybody called it. Nobody thought much of it, I guess. I don’t know who Mom and Dad knew. We went out to visit quite a few times.
Jeanette: “ L’il Abner” was popular back then.
Nelson: Very, yeah, very. Nobody meant anything derogatory about it.
Jeanette: There were fourteen houses there. I think anywhere there was a bunch of houses (at that time), it would get called that. (People call clusters of houses subdivisions now).
Nelson: Yeah. We didn’t get our nickers in a knot back then as we do now.
Jeanette: That’s right. Laughter
The Stores
Jeanette: I guess you remember the stores?
Nelson: Oh, yes.
Jeanette: Would there be a particular one, you, being a kid at that time, would have preferred?
Nelson: Not that I can remember; a particular one, no. I remember Mom and Dad dealt with one in particular. I can’t remember which one it was.
Jeanette: Do you remember my father’s garage?
Nelson: I can remember pulling in there with Dad.
Jeanette: And the Morrison’s store would have been right across from it.
Nelson: Yes, Morrison’s store, I remember well.
Jeanette: Do you ever remember anyone saying that Morrison’s store may have been there in the 30’s (as well as the 50s) though I only have one note that may indicate that.
Nelson: I don’t know. If this was years ago, my father had a memory like a steel trap.
Jeanette: Yes, well a lot of that information is lost but it is amazing how much information there is still.
Nelson: It would be nice to revive some of it.
When the MacAskill family left/ came back to Stirling
Nelson: I know when we came back in 57, there was some change.
Jeanette: Oh, yeah?
Nelson: We left in 54 and were back in 57. When we left in 54, the mine was getting ready to shut down. That’s why dad left, and we went to New Brunswick. Then he got hurt in Newcastle in 56 then we came back there (Stirling) in late 56 early 57 and there was nothing left there then. There was hardly anything left.
Jeanette: It was all taken down then, pretty well.
Nelson: It was all taken down at that point.
Jeanette: So, when your Dad went to New Brunswick, was that Health Steel that he went to?
Nelson: He went to the Brunswick Mine in Bathurst first then he went to Health Steel and it was at Heath Steel that he fell down a shaft.
Jeanette: There was another family who stayed in Stirling, the Mossmans. Were you familiar with them?
Nelson: Yes. And I remember them up in Bathurst.
Jeanette: They were at Health Steel and I understood from Zane Fanning - do you remember the Fannings.
Nelson: Yes. I remember the Mossman’s they rented a cabin out on Chapel Island Road. We lived on Chapel Island Rd too, so they weren’t too far from us. We used to go visit them in Newcastle too.
Jeanette: He, according to Zane, died there probably in 57 or so. Does that make sense.
Nelson: Yeah. It seems to, now that you mention it, yes.
Jeanette: So that place was probably a dangerous place to work. So was Stirling actually. A few people died there.
Jeanette: Do you ever remember people talking about people dying there.
Nelson: I heard my father speak about it, but I don’t remember names or numbers. Dad got crushed in a bulkhead. He fell 72 feet.
Jeanette: That was up at Health Steel?
Nelson: That was up at Health steel.
Jeanette: Why did he come back to Stirling in 57 when everything was closed.
Nelson: He couldn’t work.
Jeanette: That was their home, then, basically.
Nelson: Yes, it was. They came back there. He had every rib in his body broken. There wasn’t one rib in his body that wasn’t broken, and he couldn’t work for probably a year and a half – two years – close to that. And he came back to Stirling and he owned the old place at that time in Lower Loch Lomond. There were 350 acres. He didn’t do a lot of work, he couldn’t do too much but it was him and my uncle Alex and my mother’s brother and her father and somebody else and they cut pulp on the old place for a year or two. That’s where the money – where the living came from.
Jeanette: Well he already had some trucks which helped at the time, right – pulp trucks.
Nelson: No when we left Stirling in 54, he left everything. And I think a lot to do with, if I’m not mistaken, a change of government. The government changes and the trucks get parked.
Jeanette: Oh yes, I remember that pretty clearly - a lot of patronizing going on there with private contractors.
Nelson: It was Angus Archie MacQueen who moved us up, well mom and Dad, in 58 up to Walton where they spent most of their life really. That’s where they are both buried. We moved in 58. Dad was working on the old place in Loch Lomond, but we were living in Stirling. And then in 58 Dad got a job at the mine in Walton. It was Angus Archie who moved us with his truck.
Jeanette: There’s a picture of him standing by one of the Mindamar trucks.
Nelson: That’s him. That’s definitely him.
Five Island Lake aka Stirling Lake
Nelson: You know it wasn’t that many years ago that I realized that they called that Five Island Lake. We always called it Stirling Lake.
Jeanette: Yes, we did too. I knew that, I guess because I was from around there. When I was a kid it was always Stirling Lake (that we called it). There used to be a sign (“Five Island Lake” there on the corner but now it’s gone, and somebody made a makeshift one.
Nelson: Oh, did they.
Jeanette: Do you remember any hockey teams playing Hockey there (on the lake)?
Nelson: No, I don’t. I do remember in the wintertime they would race cars on the Lake.
The Stirling School
Nelson: I remember walking to school. There were a lot of kids walking back and forth to school there as well.
Jeanette: I think at one point there was – Dan Alex had that old school and made it into a mill, and he had found an old roll call and there were over 200 kids (names).
Jeanette: Do you remember what your teacher’s name was?
Nelson: No, I don’t, but I’m thinking in amongst that old stuff mom had, I might be able to find it because I think there was a report card there.
Jeanette: Oh, that would be very interesting to get a copy of that.
Nelson: I remember one incident when I was going to school, and this would have been in 54. I forget whose bull it was, but the bull got loose. The bull was a mad bull and it was running through Stirling. The bull was presenting quite a problem. It was quite the racket; kids were hiding in buildings and everything else. And I can remember a bunch of men in the back of a half ton; I think it was Dad’s half ton. They ended up getting the bull. I don’t know if they killed it or got it tied up or what.
Jeanette: oh, my.
Nelson: My grandmother taught there in 57.
Jeanette: What was her name?
Nelson: Alice MacRae.
Jeanette: I guess she lived in Stirling, then?
Nelson: Yes, she lived in Stirling. I can’t remember where it was - below us but to the right of us. It wasn’t on that same street. There was a driveway that came up to it all by itself.
Jeanette: That might have been Jean Taylor’s place, on the (main) road toward the mine.
The Company Houses
Jeanette: I’m starting to put everything together now. I have a good idea where all the houses were and where they went, especially the company houses. Do you know where any went?
Nelson: The company houses? I know at least two of them went to Sydney.
Jeanette: Would that have been out in Westmount?
Nelson: I’m not sure where but I know MacLeod moved them. I remember one going in 57. I remember us all watching it. They went out the Stirling road with it, through Loch Lomond.
Jeanette: He went that way with most of them.
Nelson: With all of them. He wouldn’t have gone down over the mountain would he? He must have gone out through Soldiers Cove.
Jeanette: I think he went down the mountain. I’m pretty sure.
Nelson: It would make more sense, but it was a pretty steep hill to go down with a house.
Jeanette: Yeah I suppose. There’s an article in the Cape Breton Magazine about Dan Alex moving houses but it’s not specific about the route he took. (Editor’s note: Dan Neil MacDonald confirmed with me that the houses were moved down the mountain and that they had a tractor on the back to prevent the house from moving too quickly down the hill. Dan Neil’s house was on the route from Stirling to Sydney. He remembers several of the houses going past his house. See Dan Neil MacDonald’s upcoming interview for more details.)
Why the mine closed
Nelson: I remember my father saying that a lot of people said it was open twice and that it would open a third time.
Jeanette: That’s right. I don’t think it will ever open again.
Nelson: I asked Dad one time why did it close and he said the big reason it closed is that they ‘high graded’ it and then they started losing ground bad.
Jeanette: What’s ‘high graded’ mean?
Nelson: ‘High graded’ means they go after the high-quality ore. Its a bad mining practice and you end up with a lot of cave ins and fall ins and stuff like that. That happened at the Walton mine too. They high graded it too and that ended it.
Jeanette: That’s an interesting term I hadn’t heard before but the prospector (Joe Richman) who I interviewed, was telling me stuff like that. (Click here on Joe Richman to read his interview.)
Editor's note Keep an eye out for what Nelson finds at the Archives about the request to incorporate Stirling as a town in the 50s. Is he right or is his sister, Linda, right about the location of the houses on their lane?
Nelson's memories of Stirling (July,/2020)
Working at the mine, selling cars, hauling pulp, operating dump trucks
Jeanette: You were saying about your Dad that he was a salesman for a motor company.
Nelson: Yeah. He sold cars and trucks. He sold vehicles for MacEachern Motors in Antigonish and he had two pulp trucks and two dump trucks on the go as well, when we were there in Stirling.
Jeanette: So, he was a contractor then.
Nelson: Yeah. He was working at the mine; he was selling cars; he had two pulp trucks with drivers on them and the dump truck and he had a half ton truck. My grandfather drove a bit as well and he used to go to Sydney and pick up coal and stuff for people with it.
Jeanette: Would he be picking up any coal for the mine?
Nelson: No, it was usually for household use and anything else that people wanted picked up in Sydney as well.
Jeanette: So, he’d get someone else to run those trucks for him?
Nelson: Yeah. He didn’t drive the trucks himself, no.
Jeanette: So, he had pulp trucks so there was some sort of woods work going on at the same time I guess.
Nelson: Yes, well whoever wanted their pulp hauled – They used to haul the pulp into Soldier’s cove. Sometimes on a Saturday, I would go with him and he’d take a load in. They dumped the pulp right in the water there. They dumped it right in the Cove and they boomed it from there.
Jeanette: What does that mean – “Boomed”?
Nelson: Well they would dump it in the Cove and they would put a lot of logs that were tied together with cables in a boom and they would take it down the Bra D’or Lakes or wherever they went with it. I’m not sure where it went from there.
Jeanette: That’s pretty interesting. I remember heading to St Peters, there was a place where they took the pulp and they stored it there. They would take it so far.
Nelson: Yes, I remember that. They peeled pulp there. It was all peeled pulp that they stored there. They would get more for peeled pulp.
Jeanette: I remember that with my brother. He’d get my sisters to peel it for him and he’d give them so much and then (he’d make a profit).
Where the MacAskill family lived in Stirling
Jeanette: I’m looking at the little map I had made.
Nelson: Looking at the Lake, if you are coming up from the Stirling road, that goes over to Loch Lomond. If you were turning up there (our lane), Norman Johnson should be the first one on the left and then there would have been us.
Jeanette: What about Donnie Shaw?
Nelson: Donnie Shaw would have been - Do you remember where Jack and Flo lived?
Jeanette: Oh Yes
Nelson: That was the house.
Jeanette: Were they on the same lane as Norman
Nelson: They were on the same lane but on the opposite side coming up.
Jeanette: So, what you are saying is going up the lane, Donnie Shaw would have been on the right and the Johnson’s would be on the left.
Nelson: On the left.
Jeanette: You folks. You were on the left?
Nelson: We were on the left and then MacDonalds were above us.
Jeanette: Yeah, on the left?
Jeanette: I think I put some one else on the other side of the road.
Nelson: On top of the hill, there was a new house built up there. It was right on the top. I don’t remember anybody living in it.
Jeanette: That would have been on the?
Nelson: On the right going up, at the top. My uncle Lloyd stayed with us for a while. He worked at the mine too – mom’s brother - he used to walk up through the woods to go to work at the mine.
Jeanette: Yeah, it would be right there.
Trip to the Archives
Jeanette: You were saying you would have to wait to get to the (Nova Scotia) Archives to check something out.
Nelson: That street, to be sure. (Editor's note: Nelson and his sister, Linda, disagree on how the houses were situated).
Jeanette: So, would that be shown somewhere in the Archives?
Nelson: It will show in the Archives, yes.
Jeanette: Why was that? Was there a map of the whole area (showing) where everybody lived?
Nelson: Well there was a map – see my sister, Linda is familiar with all of this stuff and she said, “It’s in the Archives, and I know where I can find it.” And I said. “good, when it opens we’re going. “
Jeanette: I never got a chance to do research at the Beaton institute or the (Nova Scotia) Archives. That will be one of my next steps. Jackie Murdock Dan (MacLeod) from Stirling. out behind the lake there, told me that the mine people were trying to incorporate Stirling into a town and they had all these streets/house mapped out. (He said) they had applied to the Province for it to be a township. I’m wondering if that is what your sister had seen.
Nelson: It is.
The road from Stirling to Loch Lomond
Nelson: I tried to get over to Stirling last summer. I didn’t realize the Stirling road - you can’t get through it.
Jeanette: From Loch Lomond, no (you can’t).
Nelson: It takes a long time to go around. You have to go back down to Grand River and up.
Jeanette: That’s right. It’s a long way. (Editor’s note -The provincial Dept responsible for road maintenance has stopped repairing the road between Stirling and Loch Lomond. It is now closed to vehicular traffic.)
Nelson: The Last time I was in Stirling was in 1984. Jack and Flo were still alive.
Jeanette: I remember when I was a kid there was a bunch of houses along there.
Nelson: So many of houses in Stirling were moved out.
Jeanette: All of them were pretty well.
Nelson: The MacLeod who had the sawmill, did a lot of the moving.
Jeanette: He did most of it. There were some people who did it themselves.
The Old Sawmill
Jeanette: The sawmill - do you remember that? I think that might have been down by the time you were there.
Nelson: No, I remember the mill. My father worked for him (Dan Alex MacLeod) for years around the sawmill, before the mine started.
Jeanette: Could you see it from your house?
Nelson: No, you’d kind of walk over and go down the road a little bit.
Jeanette: Oh, the road that takes you around the Lake?
Nelson: No, the road that takes you to….
Jeanette: To Framboise.
Nelson: Yes.
The Pumphouse/Wood Stave piping
Jeanette: Do you remember the pumphouse?
Nelson: Oh yes, very well.
Jeanette: That’s where we used to swim. It wasn’t a pumphouse then. It was just a foundation. So, I went there a few weeks ago and I saw the foundation. It was a lot smaller than I remembered it to be when I was a kid.
Nelson: No, it was a very tiny little building.
Jeanette: And it had three concrete footers so there may have been three pumps there, I don’t know. There’s one pipe - like there’s a concrete pier, I guess. It has half a circle cut out of it where the pipe would have lied on top of it. I think that pipe wasn’t quite, I don’t know, 8-10 inches there at that point when it left (the building) but people described it as maybe a foot and a half wide and it was this wooden pipe.
Jeanette: And the wooden pipes – you said (in an email) that you remembered them?
Nelson: Yes, just as plain as anything.
Jeanette: One of the Architects (who contacted me- Harvey Freeman), he was familiar with “Wood Stave Piping”.
Nelson: I’ve seen it in other places as well.
Jeanette: So, was that just lying on the ground?
Nelson: No. There was like a Trellis under it.
Jeanette: Oh, OK, like something holding it up every so many feet?
Nelson: Yes.
Jeanette: I don’t know if you are familiar with Lidar. It’s like aerial photographs but it gets rid of all the vegetation and you can see so much above (and below) the ground. Behind the mine where all the houses were, I could see all the foundations of the houses. I could see where there was a ditch and I could see where the water tank was over behind the mill. And you could see where the water pipe was going to the mill and where it was going right straight across up the hill where the houses were and then right out to the pumphouse, like a straight Bee-line. The pipe obviously would have gone under the road, at some point.
Put Lidar map here
Nelson: Yes. It didn’t go over the road that’s for sure.
Jeanette: So, as far as you remember, that pipe was wooden all the way down to the pumphouse?
Nelson: Yes. What I can remember, it was wooden all the way down.
Jeanette: That’s pretty interesting. I have been trying to track down the water system there. So, in some of the pictures I have on the website, the more recent ones, you can clearly see the water tank. It is behind the mill as per Wendel Holmes interview. When he was a young man, he worked at the mill.
Nelson: Yeah, I met him when I was with my Dad.
Loch Lomond connection
Jeanette: Your Mom and Dad - they were from Loch Lomond, right?
Nelson: Yes, they were. That little house that we were in; MacLeod skidded it over for him, to Stirling and then he built a piece on it when it got to Stirling. It was only a tiny, tiny, tiny place.
Jeanette: Yeah, most of the houses there were small. Who knows how long people thought they would be living there but it wasn’t very long that it (the mine) was going.
Nelson: No, No.
Jenette: It took a while to get it going.
Dogpatch
Nelson: I mentioned to my daughter a couple of times, about Stirling. My youngest is very interested in History and Genealogy. She’s really into it and when I mentioned Dogpatch, she said, “Dad!” So, when your pictures came, I had to direct her right to that site. Laughter. That’s what everybody called it. Nobody thought much of it, I guess. I don’t know who Mom and Dad knew. We went out to visit quite a few times.
Jeanette: “ L’il Abner” was popular back then.
Nelson: Very, yeah, very. Nobody meant anything derogatory about it.
Jeanette: There were fourteen houses there. I think anywhere there was a bunch of houses (at that time), it would get called that. (People call clusters of houses subdivisions now).
Nelson: Yeah. We didn’t get our nickers in a knot back then as we do now.
Jeanette: That’s right. Laughter
The Stores
Jeanette: I guess you remember the stores?
Nelson: Oh, yes.
Jeanette: Would there be a particular one, you, being a kid at that time, would have preferred?
Nelson: Not that I can remember; a particular one, no. I remember Mom and Dad dealt with one in particular. I can’t remember which one it was.
Jeanette: Do you remember my father’s garage?
Nelson: I can remember pulling in there with Dad.
Jeanette: And the Morrison’s store would have been right across from it.
Nelson: Yes, Morrison’s store, I remember well.
Jeanette: Do you ever remember anyone saying that Morrison’s store may have been there in the 30’s (as well as the 50s) though I only have one note that may indicate that.
Nelson: I don’t know. If this was years ago, my father had a memory like a steel trap.
Jeanette: Yes, well a lot of that information is lost but it is amazing how much information there is still.
Nelson: It would be nice to revive some of it.
When the MacAskill family left/ came back to Stirling
Nelson: I know when we came back in 57, there was some change.
Jeanette: Oh, yeah?
Nelson: We left in 54 and were back in 57. When we left in 54, the mine was getting ready to shut down. That’s why dad left, and we went to New Brunswick. Then he got hurt in Newcastle in 56 then we came back there (Stirling) in late 56 early 57 and there was nothing left there then. There was hardly anything left.
Jeanette: It was all taken down then, pretty well.
Nelson: It was all taken down at that point.
Jeanette: So, when your Dad went to New Brunswick, was that Health Steel that he went to?
Nelson: He went to the Brunswick Mine in Bathurst first then he went to Health Steel and it was at Heath Steel that he fell down a shaft.
Jeanette: There was another family who stayed in Stirling, the Mossmans. Were you familiar with them?
Nelson: Yes. And I remember them up in Bathurst.
Jeanette: They were at Health Steel and I understood from Zane Fanning - do you remember the Fannings.
Nelson: Yes. I remember the Mossman’s they rented a cabin out on Chapel Island Road. We lived on Chapel Island Rd too, so they weren’t too far from us. We used to go visit them in Newcastle too.
Jeanette: He, according to Zane, died there probably in 57 or so. Does that make sense.
Nelson: Yeah. It seems to, now that you mention it, yes.
Jeanette: So that place was probably a dangerous place to work. So was Stirling actually. A few people died there.
Jeanette: Do you ever remember people talking about people dying there.
Nelson: I heard my father speak about it, but I don’t remember names or numbers. Dad got crushed in a bulkhead. He fell 72 feet.
Jeanette: That was up at Health Steel?
Nelson: That was up at Health steel.
Jeanette: Why did he come back to Stirling in 57 when everything was closed.
Nelson: He couldn’t work.
Jeanette: That was their home, then, basically.
Nelson: Yes, it was. They came back there. He had every rib in his body broken. There wasn’t one rib in his body that wasn’t broken, and he couldn’t work for probably a year and a half – two years – close to that. And he came back to Stirling and he owned the old place at that time in Lower Loch Lomond. There were 350 acres. He didn’t do a lot of work, he couldn’t do too much but it was him and my uncle Alex and my mother’s brother and her father and somebody else and they cut pulp on the old place for a year or two. That’s where the money – where the living came from.
Jeanette: Well he already had some trucks which helped at the time, right – pulp trucks.
Nelson: No when we left Stirling in 54, he left everything. And I think a lot to do with, if I’m not mistaken, a change of government. The government changes and the trucks get parked.
Jeanette: Oh yes, I remember that pretty clearly - a lot of patronizing going on there with private contractors.
Nelson: It was Angus Archie MacQueen who moved us up, well mom and Dad, in 58 up to Walton where they spent most of their life really. That’s where they are both buried. We moved in 58. Dad was working on the old place in Loch Lomond, but we were living in Stirling. And then in 58 Dad got a job at the mine in Walton. It was Angus Archie who moved us with his truck.
Jeanette: There’s a picture of him standing by one of the Mindamar trucks.
Nelson: That’s him. That’s definitely him.
Five Island Lake aka Stirling Lake
Nelson: You know it wasn’t that many years ago that I realized that they called that Five Island Lake. We always called it Stirling Lake.
Jeanette: Yes, we did too. I knew that, I guess because I was from around there. When I was a kid it was always Stirling Lake (that we called it). There used to be a sign (“Five Island Lake” there on the corner but now it’s gone, and somebody made a makeshift one.
Nelson: Oh, did they.
Jeanette: Do you remember any hockey teams playing Hockey there (on the lake)?
Nelson: No, I don’t. I do remember in the wintertime they would race cars on the Lake.
The Stirling School
Nelson: I remember walking to school. There were a lot of kids walking back and forth to school there as well.
Jeanette: I think at one point there was – Dan Alex had that old school and made it into a mill, and he had found an old roll call and there were over 200 kids (names).
Jeanette: Do you remember what your teacher’s name was?
Nelson: No, I don’t, but I’m thinking in amongst that old stuff mom had, I might be able to find it because I think there was a report card there.
Jeanette: Oh, that would be very interesting to get a copy of that.
Nelson: I remember one incident when I was going to school, and this would have been in 54. I forget whose bull it was, but the bull got loose. The bull was a mad bull and it was running through Stirling. The bull was presenting quite a problem. It was quite the racket; kids were hiding in buildings and everything else. And I can remember a bunch of men in the back of a half ton; I think it was Dad’s half ton. They ended up getting the bull. I don’t know if they killed it or got it tied up or what.
Jeanette: oh, my.
Nelson: My grandmother taught there in 57.
Jeanette: What was her name?
Nelson: Alice MacRae.
Jeanette: I guess she lived in Stirling, then?
Nelson: Yes, she lived in Stirling. I can’t remember where it was - below us but to the right of us. It wasn’t on that same street. There was a driveway that came up to it all by itself.
Jeanette: That might have been Jean Taylor’s place, on the (main) road toward the mine.
The Company Houses
Jeanette: I’m starting to put everything together now. I have a good idea where all the houses were and where they went, especially the company houses. Do you know where any went?
Nelson: The company houses? I know at least two of them went to Sydney.
Jeanette: Would that have been out in Westmount?
Nelson: I’m not sure where but I know MacLeod moved them. I remember one going in 57. I remember us all watching it. They went out the Stirling road with it, through Loch Lomond.
Jeanette: He went that way with most of them.
Nelson: With all of them. He wouldn’t have gone down over the mountain would he? He must have gone out through Soldiers Cove.
Jeanette: I think he went down the mountain. I’m pretty sure.
Nelson: It would make more sense, but it was a pretty steep hill to go down with a house.
Jeanette: Yeah I suppose. There’s an article in the Cape Breton Magazine about Dan Alex moving houses but it’s not specific about the route he took. (Editor’s note: Dan Neil MacDonald confirmed with me that the houses were moved down the mountain and that they had a tractor on the back to prevent the house from moving too quickly down the hill. Dan Neil’s house was on the route from Stirling to Sydney. He remembers several of the houses going past his house. See Dan Neil MacDonald’s upcoming interview for more details.)
Why the mine closed
Nelson: I remember my father saying that a lot of people said it was open twice and that it would open a third time.
Jeanette: That’s right. I don’t think it will ever open again.
Nelson: I asked Dad one time why did it close and he said the big reason it closed is that they ‘high graded’ it and then they started losing ground bad.
Jeanette: What’s ‘high graded’ mean?
Nelson: ‘High graded’ means they go after the high-quality ore. Its a bad mining practice and you end up with a lot of cave ins and fall ins and stuff like that. That happened at the Walton mine too. They high graded it too and that ended it.
Jeanette: That’s an interesting term I hadn’t heard before but the prospector (Joe Richman) who I interviewed, was telling me stuff like that. (Click here on Joe Richman to read his interview.)
Editor's note Keep an eye out for what Nelson finds at the Archives about the request to incorporate Stirling as a town in the 50s. Is he right or is his sister, Linda, right about the location of the houses on their lane?