80 Commercial

The cheese box industry in Souris was important to the whole Island. It is thought that the veneer machine used to make the boxes in Acorn’s Mill was the only one in Eastern Canada. The Mill supplied about forty—eight cheese factories in all. For those near at hand: St. Catherines, Dundas, Gowan Brae, Red Point and Red House, the mill delivered the cheese boxes made up. For the western end of the Island, the materials for the boxes cut to exact measurements were delivered in bundles to Dillon and Spillett’s in Charlottetown. They assembled them there for delivery to other parts of the Island.

The cheese boxes were made of yellow birch. Logs were cut five feet long. (These logs ranged from 12 inches to 26 inches in diameter). About twenty of these five-foot logs were put into a tank and boiled for 24 hours. A retort from the boiler went into the tank and kept the water boiling.

The logs were then taken out and put through the veneer machine. A large lathe with dogs or andirons on ends held the log solid. There was an iron carriage which moved ahead and on it was a knife five feet long which fed into the revolving log. The operator peeled off strips five feet wide and one-eighth of an inch thick. The strips came off the lathe like a roll of paper. Every four feet, the strip was torn off so that there were bands from this veneer machine five feet by four feet.

These bands were later cut into four strips, each five feet long and twelve inches wide, to make the main body of the cheese box. Strips three inches wide for the sides of the cover of the cheese box and strips one and a half inches for the bottom trim of the boxes were cut from scrap pieces of the bands. The covers and bottoms of the boxes were made of spruce or fir groove and tongue boards put together and then cut in circles fifteen inches in diameter for the bottom and fifteen and five-eights inches for the top. These parts were then assembled with special tacks on a special machine to make a round box with cover just the size to hold twins or triplets of cheese, total weight 80 to 90 pounds.63

Souris Silver Black Fox Company Limited

In the year 1913, two enterprising young Souris men were busy signing fifty dollar shares in a unique and exceedingly profitable industry—the breeding of silver foxes. The two men were Dr. Augustine A. MacDonald, President of the Company and Charles D. MacKinnon, Secretary-Treasurer. The other three founding directors were J. Augustus White, James C. Fer- guson, and Reginald H. Stems.

It was a risky business. The monopoly of the Big Six Combine had agreed not to sell breeding stock. Robert Tuplin, however, sold a pair of foxes to his nephew Frank Tuplin who in turn sold two pair of breeding stock to Hol- mans of Summerside. The monopoly was broken, the silver fox boom was on, and Souris was in on it.

The site chosen for the new fox ranch was in natural surroundings in a wooded area at the back of what is now Richard Power property east of Souris. The first caretaker was Edwin Clay of Dundas, who was also a shareholder. The ranch was built to the same design as the Victoria Farm Ranch at North River, outside Charlottetown, which was said to be the most up-todate in Canada. Reginald Stems was president and supervisor of the Victoria Ranch and no doubt the guiding hand in the new Souris Company.