Buried in the Woods: Sawmill Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia

Mike Parker has a passion for the history of his native province. Buried in the Woods: Sawmill Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia is his thirteenth book and another fine example of his devoted quest to rescue the easily overlooked and nearly forgotten records of day-to-day life in Nova Scotia’s past.  

 

In 1606 the first shipyard in North America was established in Port Royal and six years later the first sawmill. Over the ensuing centuries Nova Scotia became a major center for lumber and shipbuilding as well as the manufacture and export of every kind of wooden product from barrels and coffins to tables and bedroom furniture. The mid-nineteenth century saw a thousand sawmills in operation and by the time of Confederation Nova Scotia was the richest province.  

 

The coastal waters were teeming with ships, the woods resounded with the sound of axes and inland towns sprang up around sawmills. Yet, just a century later, this booming economy had ended and virtually no trace remained of the once thriving sawmill towns. 

 

Today, towns like Shulie, Eatonville and Roxbury have only the tumbled remains of a wall or a well left to mark their place. Even the busy hub of New France—known to the locals as Electric City because it had electricity thirty-one years before its nearest neighbour, Weymouth—would be forgotten now if not for the work of historians like Parker. But it is not just these ghost towns that Parker brings back to life for us; it is the people who lived and worked there, and their way of life. The photographs alone would make this book a page turner with its wonderfully stern-faced portraits, clear maps and, best of all, the many amateur snapshots of workers and their families, along with photos of hunting parties, weddings and community celebrations. Very striking is the placement of old photographs next to modern shots of the same place showing no evidence of the former towns.

 

Parker reminds us that human life is fragile—individually and collectively—and our memories too easily lost unless we place value on our history and heritage. —Ralph Higgins