settlement. When the alarm (originally the church bell) rang everyone grabbed a bucket and ran. Bucket brigades started at the shore or at a pump and ended at the fire or the threatened buildings. Seldom were the tires put out. At best they were controlled and allowed to burn themselves out. Mills were particularly prone to catch fire because of the sawdust and shavings that lay round about.

In later years Souris had its own fire hall and as late as 1935 the station contained stacks of red buckets for use in the traditional bucket brigade. Souris had its greatest fire in 1959, when buildings housing the town hall, the fire hall, Bill Blackett's Shoe Repair Shop, Howard Fougere’s store, the Alfred Stubbert and Clarence MacAulay families and Mrs. James Poole, the telephone operator, were destroyed. The fire hall burned before the fire engines could be removed. and Mrs. Poole remained at her switchboard until the wires had burned through. The blaze was fought by bucket brigade until the arrival of the Charlottetown fire department at 3 o'clock in the morning.

But the spirit of citizen involvement in fighting fires is not dead in Souris. Several years ago Ray Leard, a co- author of this tale, heard the fire alarm and rushed with his extinguisher to the scene of the fire, which was on Chapel Street. He arrived before the fire department and immediately attacked the blaze to the great surprise of the man whose house was on fire. “This is the Souris Fire Department?" he exclaimed.

In the Fall after fishing and farming was done the men went into the woods to cut wood for lumber and firewood. In the winter they hauled it home on bob sleighs in 10 foot lengths to be cut by cross cut saw or with a horsepower mill. This latter was a tread mill: plank treads on an endless belt operated by the steady pacing of stolid horses. Sometimes bulls were used instead of horses. At other times tread mills were used for threshing grain. The most important grist and saw mill in the Souris area was John MacGowan’s at Gowan Brae at the head of Souris River.

The site of an old French mill at Rollo Bay was in the 18605 a distillery operated by an enterprising man named William Leslie. He was famous not so much for his spirits as for his imagination and ambition as an in- ventor: he attempted to construct a flying machine operated by cranks and levers but, of course, no motor. A neighbour, Jeremiah MacCarthy. did the blacksmith work to Leslie’s specifications. Unfortunately, the craft crashed, and Leslie became the laughing stock of Souris. Many people thought him “queer in the head," and his family was ashamed of him, for only a fool might think that something heavier than air could fly.

Women’s work, on the other hand, centred in those days on the home and garden. They had an easier time of it in the winter than in the summer, for then there was less churning to do, no stumping or hoeing or binding of

This house was built by Dr. Peter Macintyre, a Member of Parliament and Lieutenant Governor of Prince Edward Island. Today it is a group home for mentally handicapped adults.