Podcast

Peter Handley:
Hi there and good day! Welcome to North Bay's Heritage Diary. Listen up, and we shall weave for you tales of days and times gone by, which can inform today and show the way to tomorrow. This municipal Heritage Committee podcast looks at our town, our people, and our stories. This time we open our diary of voices from the past for a conversation with the late ship's captain Mac Masson, who handled craft on Lake Nipissing for many years. He was born in 1922. And this was recorded at his home in Callander in 1995, when he was 73. He talks about his family history, lumbering, the John B. Fraser, shipping on Lake Nipissing, and related topics. Please excuse any outdated references. Captain Mark Mason. We’re talking to Captain Michael Mac Masson in Callander. First of all, Mac I guess you get called that all the time. Where does Mac come from? I said Michael and Masson where do you get Mac?

Mac Masson:
My name according to my mother was supposed to be Maxim, m-a-x-i-m. And somehow rather on the birth certificate they put on it Michael. But because she thought it was Maxim, my nickname was Mac, and it stuck.

Peter Handley:
That's interesting. Back in 1922 when you were born, I guess things weren't as tight now on record.

Mac Masson:
Oh, that's right. The records weren't kept as precise as they are today, of course.

Peter Handley:
Was your family from this area originally?

Mac Masson:
No my family comes from Gig, Quebec, Bill Murray area. My father was born in Three Rivers. My mother came down to that part, and then they moved up here. My grandfather also moved up here.

Peter Handley:
Do you know what years we’re talking about?

Mac Masson:
I guess it'd be about the mid-1800s.

Peter Handley:
Did you did the family settled in or around the Callander area?

Mac Masson:
Just my dad, then the family came down. I'm the only one that was born in Ontario. All the rest of the family was born in Gig Quebec.

Peter Handley:
Did he have any particular reason for coming down to this area?

Mac Masson:
Well, he was a logger himself. He was a jobber in the bush in the wintertime. Cutting pulp first for the Pulp and Paper outfit in VISTA bank. And then things went wrong or whatever. And then he got a job down here. So we came down here.

Peter Handley:
By down here, you mean to Callander?

Mac Masson:
Yeah.

Peter Handley:
And that would be roughly when

Mac Masson:
1922. I was conceived in Quebec and born in Ontario, because I was born in September. So they came down here in March.

Peter Handley:
And your dad was in the lumbering business. So did he remain in that one when you came down here.

Mac Masson:
He said he started to work for JB Smith and retired from there. Back in those days there was no severance pay or anything like that. But his legs, he had bad legs. And he handed the bad legs down to because we all ended up with it. I can hardly move around

Peter Handley:
Arthritic legs?

Mac Masson:
Yeah, arthritic.

Peter Handley:
Did you grow up within sight of water? I mean within sight of Lake Nipissing?

Mac Masson:
I was born over where the Mill was, before we lived in tenement houses till I was 12 years old before we moved here, the old homestead which is the second house over there.

Peter Handley:
Where was the Mill?

Mac Masson:
The mill was behind us here.

Peter Handley:
You’re on Main Street North in Callander right now. Was there a creek or anything going in to the lake at that point or?

Mac Masson:
No, it was just a lake shore. Just the shore. There were no rivers going through it. Because everything was brought from Sturgeon Falls. All the logs were brought down from Sturgeon Falls for all the mills, which there was five of them here in this day at one time.

Peter Handley:
Do you do you remember them? Were they active when you-

Mac Masson:
I remember them all except for the JR Boers. Of course, they called it a mill and in reality, it really wasn't a mill. It was just a jack ladder. JR Boers cut logs up the Sturgeon River, drove them down to Lake Nipissing, towed them across the lake, and loaded up on railroad cars. And you know the road to Astroville that used to be a railroad bed. That's why it's called "Booth Road." And he railroaded to about there, dumped them in Lake Nipissing, towed them down to Bonnefeild, and dumped them in the creek there, into the Ottawa. A lot of that was cut up here.

Peter Handley:
You said jack ladder

Mac Masson:
Yeah.

Peter Handley:
That means they didn't refine the lumber at all

Mac Masson:
They would tow the logs down and of course they had storing grounds. But the jackladder ran all the time. Ran right up to the freeze up of course. And the logs would go up this chain and then be rolled onto railroad cars. Until each car was full. They used to haul three or four cars, and then they just had a little steam engine. The logs were just loaded here. And then continued on their way to Ottawa by drive, and towing, etc.

Peter Handley:
Did you work as a lumberjack? Ever work in the woods lumbering?

Mac Masson:
I've never been to the bush camps. I'm the only one in the family that didn't. But I worked around Mills from when I was 12 years old.

Peter Handley:
Was it a short step to becoming involved with shipping on the lake?

Mac Masson:
It wasn't very short for me. From 12 till I started full time on the lake in 1947 and then I served my time on the Seagull under Captain Darling, but my mentor was the first mate. And that took me years. And then I wrote my exams for my master's ticket that, saved time. When I wrote my tub masters ticket, I was given a first date passenger vessel ticket because the ONR was having trouble getting a first page here every spring. And Captain Morrison, who was the examiner, was sort of fed up with supplying them with people. So he said to me "if you'll give me another $15, I'll give you your first base ticket for your exam." And he said "that when you go home, I want you to apply for that job so they can get off my back." As it happened, I didn't apply for because he must have informed the ONR because I was working in service every winter, but you're working seasonally. So every winter, you had to find something else to do. So that particular winter I was working at a service station, you probably remember quarter a fisher on Bay. And that Bill Roll, Captain Roll, came to me said "I hear you got your ticket." I said, "Yeah." Well, I said "I've got it." And he said, "Oh, would you like to come on with me? This is the spring." I said, "Well, I'll have to think about it." I have to see what does going to happen there in Smiths. Because the captain there was getting on the verge of retiring. So then when spring came, I was informed that they weren't going to be doing any towing. So, I went on the ONR, the old chief as first mate for Bill Roll.

Peter Handley:
Was there any particular reason why you went from being involved with the milling process into working on the boat?

Mac Masson:
Oh, yeah. Well, of course you see again, as kids. You know, when I was an early teenager, my oldest brother always had a gas boat. And we had a couple of chums in the summer holidays, that we'd go around the shores, and pick up company logs and sell them back to the company.

Peter Handley:
You never took them out of a boom though?

Mac Masson:
No, no. They gave us 25 cents a log for every log we brought it. This was a lot of money in those days. And it just went from there. It just evolved.

Peter Handley:
When you were young, there must have been a fair number of boats on Nipissing. I had no idea the number of boats there were that were plying Lake Nipissing

Mac Masson:
I was told that at one time, there would be 28 steam vessels on Lake Nipissing of various lengths and sizes.

Peter Handley:
What would most of them be doing, and again, tie it down for a time period that you're talking about.

Mac Masson:
Mostly in the logging area, and transporting freight, and bringing the loggers into the calves, and towing logs. That's primarily what they were all for.

Peter Handley:
Are you talking about the 20s?

Mac Masson:
Yes, we're talking the 20s and early 30s, and mid-30s. Because things started to break up in the 20s, but prior to that, now were talking that say between the 1900s, somewhere around there, when there were a lot of steam vessels but then the mills started to disappear. Like Boo's for example, I think in 1906, then there was a Canadian timber company. They went out to here, their mill burnt down in 33 I think it was. The Piet Lumber Company, which started at the far end of the bay. There's burnt down in 1935 or somewhere around there. And of course, Boo's was gone by this time. McBirdies Mill. They just went out of business, prior to the 30s. Darling's Mill, it was done by the by the war time, by the First World War.

Peter Handley:
Why the decline? Why did these companies all fade away? Was there some economic change or did they move in the system of logging differently?

Mac Masson:
Well the little fellow couldn't compete against the big guys. So they sort of just petered out. The last one to last was JB Smith. They were here till 1968. The end of the era.

Peter Handley:
You mentioned fire. So many of the boats mentioned in in this history either burned in the offseason, burned at dock, and then the John B. Fraser, of course, burned right on the lake.

Mac Masson:
She was on her way. She was on her way to Frank Bay with a big supply of horses, and hay, supplies, a few passengers as well as the crew—like loggers .Then she took fire.

Peter Handley:
The idea seems to be now that had the crew been bit more experienced that everybody might have gotten off without any deaths.

Mac Masson:
Yeah, that's true. A situation like that, it’s not that the weather was against them because it was fairly calm that morning. It wasn't the captain apparently; it was a wheel for them. That gave him a stop bell. And then they started to get off the boat, they had a lifeboat off on the side that he gives the engineer a backup to bounce back up and the boat ended up underneath the paddle wheel. So they went into the lake, and you’re talking in November, and they're not in there very long. So then of course they had the scowl cable on. That hit the back of the boat with this momentum, and then of course the hay started on fire on a scowl. And the horses were on there, and the horses panicked. That was quite a, quite a disaster.

Peter Handley:
Just a bad sequence of events wasn't it? Just one thing after the other.

Mac Masson:
Yeah, it wouldn't be all day for these things to happen, you're talking to matter a minutes. Then it was quite a little while before anybody was able to come to the rescue. Mr. Green and Mr. Wellington agreed with whoever captained it on the lake. He didn't have a big sailboat. When they saw the smoke, he started-- like he didn't have much wind. It was fairly calm. So it took him a long time to get there. But he picked up the few that were saved off of that thing. The rest all died.

Peter Handley:
You mentioned paddle wheeler and you served as the skipper of the Alligator, a side Wheeler tug boat. Tell me what a warping tug is. So a steam driven alligator is this is a side Wheeler? With a paddle wheel on each side. It's not like a Mississippi.

Mac Masson:
No, not a sternwheeler.

Peter Handley:
Okay. And the one that you served on was the Woodchuck. Maybe you can describe exactly how the mechanism worked, and what that craft was suited to do.

Mac Masson:
For the tugboats that we're going to get the logs to break them to Callander could only bring them within about a half a mile at the mouth of the river. So this alligator had to work to tow the logs out to the tug. So he'd go out first put it in, put it in gear for the paddle wheels to work. Run out, he had 4000 feet of cable, run out to where he thought was far enough, then drop his anchor, then take it out of the wedge, or put the wedge in neutral, put the paddle wheels in the air, and then paddle this wheel back to the tow. And then he'd hook the stern cable on to the tow. And then take the paddle wheels out of gear. Put the woodshed gear and then start the warp. It would warp about half a mile an hour, as fast as it could tow the log, and he'd have to do that twice to get to where the boat was anchored, that was going to take the tow from him to bring it down the lake.

Peter Handley:
Now how would the logs be all together? Was there some sort of an enclosure that the logs were in.

Mac Masson:
Here I'll show you.

Peter Handley:
Okay. You've got a little diagram here. Actually, it's a little model with a small craft and a lot of logs, and they've got logs chained around the outside edge of that.

Mac Masson:
These were called pocket timbers and if one of those broke, you always had this big one. The boom timber average is around 60 to 80 inches in diameter and about 40 feet long.

Peter Handley:
And they made a pocket right? They were chained together to in a circle and we have three circles in one of these large.

Mac Masson:
On a total tow. That represented about ten thousand logs or a million feet of lumber.

Peter Handley:
And they would be used time and time again?

Mac Masson:
Oh yeah, the outside one. We'd put the tow way down here. We would bring this back up. With a towing season, at the last were 8 tows or representing about 10 million feet that's what they used to come.

Peter Handley:
When was the last tow on Lake Nipissing? Can you remember?

Mac Masson:
1961 was the last year we towed.

Peter Handley:
When that happened what how did you feel about it?

Mac Masson:
Pretty bad. That was my life. I enjoyed doing that. I'm happy doing that.

Peter Handley:
Now you mentioned that the Siskin is another one. The Siskin I guess is the last boat you captained?

Mac Masson:
The Siskin. When the old Woodchuck, like deteriorated, it had been re-hulled several times, but then the machinery was getting pretty well dilapidated. So they bought a new steel tug from the same company that built these: Western Pici. They also built the Bell Thompson, the Icebreaker.

Peter Handley:
So you served on the Mel Thompson as Captain as well. Now icebreakers on Lake Nipissing tell me the story of that.

Mac Masson:
The fall that they worked the bind, on the island: Beaucage Mine. The ONR did all the catching from North Bay dock with timber, fuel, etc. We made some trips with the chief, and they at least had a regular run with taking a crew. We'd go out in the morning, back out take it, and pick it up again at night. Then another crew could go back in operating but then of course the tide caved it. The ice took hold and they had this Bell Thompson on order but it was late coming. So the chief engineer off the Commanda and I, came down, and we took her off to transport here put her in the water. I brought her to North Bay in a snow storm, and we had to break ice getting out of the bay into the lake. We found no compass on it. Nothing was ready yet. And it’s snowing and blowing like hell. We just stuck our way up the shore and got to North Bay. So the next morning, then I had to take the men over to Divine. And when I came back, I was tasked with escorting the barge and the Allegiant to Callander so that it could be pulled out and stored away for the winter. And by this time the ice—The Lake is frozen right over—
so we just got basically underway and I didn't want to get too far ahead, but I wasn't breaking a path quite wide enough for the barge and the ice started to cut in on our sides. But the Allegiant, whatever broke off a field of ice. The ice starts to come together. Just cut the slides right out of the Allegiant, so she sank. Captain Lorney Role, was on there with the captain, or who became a captain later, Keets. They were on and I turned around and went back to get them and by the time I got by, she was taken down. There was just about half of her up out of the water. So they got on with me and we got a rope on her, and we're going to tow her back into the shallow water. But as soon as I started—I gave the ax to Lorney Role. And I said "Look. This starts to pull us down. You listen, you cut that rope." So, of course when I started ahead, God forbid the water rush to the Stern. So Lorney cut the rope so she sank there in about 12 feet of water. The following March, we put a buoy there. They raised her up the following February right across the ice to shore. Brought her down to the ONR shop, refitted her, and sent her up to Moosonee. She finished her days up there.

Peter Handley:
That’s a great story

Peter Handley:
This edition of our heritage diary voices from the past was originally recorded in 1995 with ship's captain Mack Mason, who spent many years sailing Lake Nipissing aboard various commercial crafts. Thank you for spending some time with us and listening to our stories. These productions are put together by the North Bay Municipal Heritage Committee, not only to retell old tales, but hopefully to kindle interest in area history. Local law is important to any community, and we shouldn't let it go unremarked and unremembered. Views expressed in this podcast are not necessarily those of the corporation of the City of North Bay, or its employees. Join us next time. When we flip another page of the diary of our shared past. You can reach us at Peter.Carello@cityofnorthbay.ca. Production – Casey Monkelbaan and Peter Carello. Pete Handley speaking.