CHAPTER VII Community

It is easy to visualize Souris in the early nineteenth century: smoke rising from ten log homes, a few animals grazing in enclosed pastures dotted with tree stumps, patches of green gardens and crops, and small boats resting on the shore. Souris, near the close of the century, was an entirely different place, according to the map of 1880.

By then the “ten farms” were greatly divided. The thickest clusters of buildings were on the west end of Main Street below Chapel Avenue, with another cluster in the center of the .Village. There were only two buildings north of the railway tracks, the Dominion House and the Miley MacPhee property. The Dominion House, a double tenement, was later owned by Michael O. Cheverie.

With its rapid growth, crowded buildings and new status as a “commer- cial metropolis” Souris faced a number of problems. At this time, the Village was more self-contained than today, though nearly the same population.‘ Most families kept hens and many kept a cow. All who kept a cow raised a pig or two on the surplus milk. But Souris had no public pasture lots. Those without land of their own for pasture allowed their animals to roam untended. In the early days, those at the west end of Main Street got their water from the spring near Wright’s Mill on Souris River. Those at the east end got theirs from the spring on Stone’s Wharf.2 Later, a number of wells were dug for public use but providing clean water for the Village continued to be a problem for many years.

At one time, a stream ﬂowed from behind the present High School down the hill at an angle through Prince Avenue and on through a bog behind the Kentucky Fried Chicken building. It continued down Breakwater Street and ended at the shore by Stone’s Wharf. It was probably a convenient source of water at one time, but it became a problem in later years. Even though it had dried up, water took this route, spring and fall. Jack Cantwell, a Souris citizen, who died in 1984 at age 98 remembers cows being pulled from this bog. After the railway was built to the wharf crossing this old stream bed, water accumulated north of the embankment at times. Town records of 1912 note that the Railway was then co-operating with regard to drains.3