Commercial 79

The lumber mill was located in the center of the Town, beside the rail- way track in the building later used by Eastpac for fish processing and later still by Babineau Fisheries Limited. Glynn Stewart, who worked in the mill from 1920 until it closed in 1939, says that the correct name was Klondike Mills. it was managed by Herb Acorn for Prowse Bros. of Charlottetown.

There was an average of eight workers in the mill itself and another crew

€ (_ »¢, . 4‘ t i « Photo by Morley S. Atom. Courtesy Pictures of the Past by Lends.

Acorn’s First Sawmill - Klondyke Mill, owned by Prowse Bros.

Note the old Souris Court House in the background.

Three men identified in this photo: Ephraim MacCallum - standing on the'logs, third from the right ‘ is wearing a striped shirt. Phil Carter is fourth from the right with the white hat. Bill Walsh is the man standing behind the boy with his arms crossed. Babineau Fisheries now does business on this site.

working in the woods, making a total of about twenty in all. The mill made cheese boxes, barrel staves, softwood for the local trade and hardwood staves for sale to St. Pierre and Miquelon. Every year, they would ship about fifteen to twenty thousand staves there. These hardwood staves were not bowed and were used to make fish drums into which the fish was pressed. The mill also shipped trap supplies to the Magdalen Islands, as well as boat materials and building supplies of every kind.

Most of the wood for the mill came from Acorn’s woodlots in Glen Corra- dale and on the North Side. In addition, farmers cutting their wood for the winter would save out the yellow birch and sell it to the mill for a good price. Later, a disease got into the hardwood. It would not be possible, today, to get Island logs of the type then used by the mill; wood lots have deteriorated since then.