BY KARLA KELLY
Digby Courier
Digby County’s New France and Lake Jolly are just two of the many Nova Scotia sawmill ghost towns best-selling author Mike Parker has resurrected in Buried in the Woods: Sawmill Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia, due to hit bookstores in May.
Buried in the Woods is the second in a two-part series about ghost towns of Nova Scotia, about communities built upon the timber and lumber trade.
The Stehelins, a wealthy family from Gisors, France, carved out the settlement of New France, 27 kilometres south of Weymouth along the Silver River between Langford and Little Tusket lakes in 1895. They eventually acquired nearly 10,000 acres of land, which provided ample lumber for their sawmill.
Dozens of Acadians and Blacks from the Weymouth area and communities along St. Mary’s Bay found employment in the lumber camps and sawmill, as well as in the settlement itself.
A pole railway was built to move lumber out of New France and a wharf and adjoining lands were acquired in Weymouth to accommodate the shipping business.
With the death of the matriarch, Marie Therese Stehelin, in 1910, Emile moved the remaining members of his family to Weymouth to run the business from town, leaving behind their home, which sank into disrepair at the hands of nature and vandals.
In 1923, everything in New France was sold and, in 1948, the Mersey Paper Co. assumed ownership. Eventually, all buildings were leveled, leaving only ghosts to haunt the once vibrant community.
Parker says his initial plan was to write one book on ghost towns, but research altered the idea.
“So many ghost towns were unearthed (and many still remain to be found), that the decision was made to break it into two books,” says Parker. “The first book, Gold Rush Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia (Pottersfield Press, 2009) focused upon abandoned mining settlements.”
Most of Nova Scotia’s deserted lumber towns are literally buried in the woods and forgotten, but, through painstaking research and a mosaic of over 200 vintage photos, Parker has provided a fascinating look at these once-vibrant communities.
“Pictures are windows to the past,” says Parker. “We catch a glimpse of a lost era when wood was king and thousands of Nova Scotians were employed in lumber camps, sawmills, shipyards and factories that manufactured wooden products.”
Ghost towns have long held a fascination for Parker - perhaps, in part, because he grew up less than 16 kilometres from Lake Jolly.
“Growing up in Bear River, I visited the remnants of Lake Jolly many times and read or heard about the community over the years,” he says.
“Every province in Canada has at least one book about its abandoned settlements, and Nova Scotia is no exception, having several books published covering specific ghost towns.”
Nova Scotians have a passion for their history, and Parker says, in his years of travel, he has always found people helpful and generous with stories and images.
Parker was born and raised in Bear River, the son of the late Malcolm Parker who for 50 years was a hunter, angler, trapper, athlete and guide. He instilled in his son the love and lore of the wilderness.
“History was always of interest to me from a young age but, when my dad died of a heart attack in 1980 at the age of 67, I realized I had taken his stories of these times for granted and now they were gone, never having put them to tape or paper.”
Knowing there were many others like his father, Parker set out to preserve their tales, which resulted in his first book, Guides of the North Woods, published in 1990. Two years later came Wood Chips & Beans, which describes life in Nova Scotia lumber woods during the early 1900s.
Parker has written 11 books over 20 years dealing, ranging from Canada’s merchant navy in World War II to the history of firefighting. He is currently researching for two future publications, Ghost Islands of the Atlantic and End of the Line, the story of the Dominion Atlantic Railway.
Parker will be participating in an authors’ workshop and book signing at the Bailey Chase Books Museum and Gallery in Paradise, Annapolis County, May 15, for The Inside Story in Greenwood; and a Chapters New Minas signing June 19 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
