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CHAPTER VI Commercnal

John Knight and Donald Beaton:

Both John Knight and Donald Beaton, when young men, gambled on their intuition that the small settlement on Colville Bay would someday become as important in the trading and shipping business as the then thriving community at Souris West. They were not disappointed.

Colville Bay was definitely not the centre of commercial activity in 1835, but presumably it could hold its own socially. Frank Keays records his grandfather Tom’s recollection of John Knight, as a young lad of twenty- three, a stranger in the community, dancing a set with a local girl at a ball held at the home of Widow MacPhee. He was wearing moccasins. Although he appeared to have little means, he may, even that night, have been looking with envy at the little wharf on the shore below the adjoining Keays property.1 It had been built by Neil MacDonald the year before and was probably still a topic of conversation as a valuable asset of the MacDonald family.

. John Knight was the grandson of Joshua Knight, a United Empire Loyal- ist of Quaker faith who settled on the Saint John River in New Brunswick in 1783, calling his new location Penn- field, after his former home in Penn- sylvania. He was the youngest of twelve children. Because his mother died in 1813, the year after his birth, he was brought up at the home of his maternal grandfather, Moses Vernon.2

Almost nothing is known of his early life prior to his arrival in Souris West from Halifax in 1835 to manage the business of Shattuck and McKay.3 In 1840 he severed his connection with the bankrupt company, and shortly after, John Knight became owner of the Neil MacDonald c. 1814 - April 2, 1875 wharf. He built a small breakwater to

Courtesy Picture- of the Past by bards.