Commercial 8 1

In spite of all precautions taken, the Souris Ranch, like many others, was short-lived. Not everyone was able to give the half-wild foxes the special care they needed in captivity. The Company closed in 1920.64

The McKay Car

The McKay car, one of the first built in Canada, had its beginning in Souris. The McKay brothers; Jack, business manager; Dan, salesman; and Stan, blacksmith and mechanic, were a great combination first in the carriage business in Bridgetowan and in Souris where they had a shop in the vacant James R. MacLean store on lower Main Street around 1900. McAlpine’s Directory of 1900 advertises them as “manufacturers of car- riages, sleighs, farm wagons and all kinds of vehicles.”5-”

Use of painting courtesy Mrs Ray lard

A 1963 painting by Fred Robertson ofa photo taken in 1893 of the James R. MacLean Store, located on south Main Street. It was later the Archibald Currie Store. Next to it is the Moynagh house,

The painting hangs in Leard‘s Store, Souris.

Around 1908, Dan McKay and Archie Pelton, both believers in the future ofthe motor car, imported a variety of parts from several firms in the United States and designed what was known as the McKay car. These were con- structed at Kentville, Nova Scotia and taken from there to a plant in Amherst for finishing touches and sold. A thirty horsepower Roadster sold for $1,300—for $2,050you could get a “Magnificent, luxurious forty horse- power, nickel trimmed, fully equipped, self-starting, five passenger touring car,” according to the advertisement of the day.66

The business did well in Amherst from 1910 to 1915; but their Amherst building, constructed on swampy ground, soon needed repairs and this, together with demands of the War, brought the enterprise to an end.67