Way it Was – Blacksmith series

The Blacksmith’s – Part 1: The Shop

On hearing that the community of Port George was to be featured in the Nova Scotia Museum, memories of childhood days came flooding back. It is sad to realize that so many of the old landmarks have already passed into oblivion. Those who were children, as I was, in the 1920s, recall the three wharves constructed to form a safe haven for boats, good smelt fishing, calm waters for swimming and a gravel beach for building sandcastles. Nearby was a group of fish houses (phew!), Aunt Amaret’s house and store, Maggie’s and Bob Weaver’s stores, and the subject of this story, my dad’s old blacksmith shop.

The blacksmith has been gone since 1945, but the shop stood there vacant until 1970 when it was torn down. Elma, my sister who lived in the old home across the road, could not hold back the tears as she watched the old building brought to the ground. The dust of the years filled the air like a black cloud and hung there for some time after the old timbers, protesting to the last, yielded to the tractor.

My grandfather, William MacKenzie, who died before I was born, built the shop. No one seems to know the date of the building but I have an old ledger of Grandpa’s and the earliest date I have found is 1882. He followed in his father Robert MacKenzie’s footsteps. Robert did blacksmith and ironwork for the ships being built in Port George from 1840 to 1880.

The shop, like any blacksmith shop, was built for a purpose, not for aesthetic value. It was a no-nonsense structure with four walls, a floor and a roof, windows on all sides and a huge double door in front. A cupola on the roof helped to relieve the stark simplicity of the building.

The windows were blackened with soot so there wasn’t much light and, of course, there was no electricity. When Papa had to work after dark, we would take down the Coleman gas lantern, which was a wonderfully modern improvement over the old kerosene lantern.

There was a sign over the door proclaiming E. MacKenzie as proprietor and a yellow horse weathervane on the roof. It fell off and was broken during a Bay of Fundy gale and when Papa was repairing it, I remember my great surprise to see how large the horse was—it looked so tiny swinging up there on its iron rod.

There was barely room for the shop in that location. The north end hung out over the ledge and when the waves flung their salt spray over the rocks at high tide, it did nothing to improve vision through the sooty windows. Mrs. David Fritz, an older resident of the area, remembers that at one time a horse and wagon could be driven around the rear of the shop, but through the years the inevitable erosion had taken its toll.

The west wall was hung with all kinds of tools, wire and metal. A high counter-like shelf ran the length of one wall for a workbench, as a blacksmith did all kinds of repair work when there were no horses to be shod. There was always a pile of clean wood shavings, which made lovely curls for little girls to play with...