Lumbering on the Nashwaak in the 1800’s and early 1900’s

Last Updat­ed on 2022-12-22

Lum­ber­ing on the Nash­waak in the 1800’s and ear­ly 1900’s

Excerpts (edit­ed) from “Lum­ber­ing on the Nash­waak”, by Mar­i­lyn J. Evans (self-pub­lished 1995?)

The Black Watch togeth­er with Loy­al­ists were like­ly the first Euro­peans to set­tle per­ma­nent­ly in num­bers along the Nash­waak. Although grant­ed land for farm­ing and lum­ber­ing, the set­tlers were pro­hib­it­ed from cut­ting the large pine which grew all along the Nash­waak. It was required for ships masts, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the British navy. Acts were passed in Eng­land for­bid­ding the cut­ting of pine trees 12 inch­es or more in diam­e­ter. These were thus reserved for the Crown. After the end of the war with Napoleon, demand for pine was reduced and the set­tlers were free to cut on their own land and bid for leas­es to cut on Crown land. The lum­ber indus­try became a key part of the Nash­waak econ­o­my.

Mon­ty Web­ster — ” Dur­ing the Napoleon­ic wars 1794–1814, tim­ber was in great demand for war­ships, and cities of indus­tri­al Britain were expand­ing rapid­ly cre­at­ing a fur­ther mar­ket for colo­nial pine for inte­ri­or dec­o­rat­ing. Eng­land’s pine lum­ber acts applied to all land grant­ed or ungrant­ed. “The King’s man” or sur­vey­or of woods, had the right to seize the pine from land own­ers, and it was not until 1817 that priv­i­leges for cut­ting on pri­vate lands was relaxed and restraints lift­ed enabling every­one to cut pine on their own land.”

The lum­ber­man knew how to make a prof­it. Know­ing how much lum­ber he want­ed to cut in the com­ing sea­son, he cal­cu­lates the num­ber of men he needs to get x num­ber of logs, and know­ing from expe­ri­ence how much food is required, pro­vid­ed accord­ing­ly. The lum­ber­man also cal­cu­lat­ed the length of the haul and pro­vid­ed the nec­es­sary num­ber of teams and pro­vi­sions for them as well. Dur­ing the lat­ter part of Octo­ber and after their fall home chores were cleaned up, the men went off to work in the woods, some not return­ing until March. For the young men, cut­ting tim­ber was more excit­ing than stay­ing at home with the women folk to car­ry on the farm chores. By the time the sons of the first pio­neers reached their ear­ly man­hood the lum­ber­ing indus­try was begin­ning to open up. Boys in their ear­ly teens with the down of youth start­ing on their faces marched off with their fathers for their first win­ter in the woods. They were appren­ticed to more mature men, some of them lit­tle old­er than them­selves. They took great delight in show­ing off their know-how, and abil­i­ty, by mak­ing ready sport of the new­com­er.

Archibald McLean and his sons hauled pine tim­bers from the Gains Riv­er coun­try to the Nash­waak with oxen, on a road below where Bill Wyton of Tay­mouth lives today. These pine tim­bers were required by the British Admi­ral­ty, and were vital to their navy. The tim­bers not used as ships masts were used as con­struc­tion tim­ber. It was hewed square with a broad-axe, or if the job was small an ordi­nary sin­gle or dou­ble bit­ted axe could be used.

Bill Wyton: The McLeans hauled logs 100 to 120 feet long and four feet across the butt; pine, that’s the kind of wood they had in those days. It was vir­gin, vir­gin coun­try and they were chopped down, cut down, and then a cross was put on them, by a man who came from the gov­ern­ment, the King’s Man they called him. He put a cross on the pine that he thought would be suit­able for ships’ masts”.

The old­er gen­er­a­tion was high­ly skilled with the axe, and it was one of their most prized pos­ses­sions. It was not until lat­er years ( around the 1880’s] that the cross­cut saw was used. The first men into the woods in the fall were the Cruis­ers; they would go into the woods before the snow began to fly to locate and arrange the camp and the winter’s scene of oper­a­tions. They took their kit bags or, as it was com­mon­ly called, their ” turkey “, which usu­al­ly con­tained an extra pair of pants, 2 or 3 pairs of socks, a ball of yarn, a darn­ing nee­dle, thread, but­tons, salve, home made cough med­i­cine, horse-hide shoe packs for cold weath­er, and cow-hide shoe packs for wet weath­er.

Mar­tin Cass: In the age of the ox and hors­es one lit­tle-heard of part of the lum­ber busi­ness was a small but impor­tant hand­ful of men: The Cruis­ers, who went into the unex­plored for­est and esti­mat­ed how much prime lum­ber could be har­vest­ed from a par­tic­u­lar lease, and with the cruis­er was a man who knew how to plan where the roads would be, how to avoid uphill grades and how to take advan­tage of every down hill. Some­times not the short­est route but the eas­i­est for the heav­i­ly loaded ani­mals. Today the mod­ern lum­ber machines make this less impor­tant. Two well known Cruis­ers were Tom Cass and long­time friend Dan Stew­art; these men were famous for their lum­ber­ing know-how.

When the Cruis­ers reached the area where they decid­ed to cut, they set up camp. Six or sev­en men from the lum­ber­ing par­ty (Chop­pers and Knot­ters) with axes, and who knew what they were doing, com­menced to clear­ing away a few of the trees, and began build­ing a log camp. They placed the logs one on top of the oth­er, and caulk­ing with sphag­num moss; the bark was left on, but the limbs were removed. Next they cut in the door, putting plank on the sides of the hole and a head­er at the top. Only after the camp was built, would they build a horse hov­el. The camps were built in two sep­a­rate log build­ings, in line with a cov­ered “din­gle” between. One sec­tion was the cook house and the oth­er the bunk house. The din­gle was a roofed over sec­tion. It was in this din­gle (shed) that bar­rels of salt pork, sides of beef, as well as quin­tals of Cod­fish were kept. A quin­tal was a 112 Ib. bun­dle of whole dried salt cod, with the skin on. These sides were called ” flakes”. Once the camp had been estab­lished the main road and branch roads were decid­ed upon and cleared of trees and logs. Skid sand levers were then pre­pared, and bank­ing places select­ed and cleared.

After 1850 the lum­ber camps had a cook­stove, and in some camps, two stoves hooked togeth­er, side by side , with a boil­er over top for heat­ing water. Here the cook was the final author­i­ty, sub­ject of course, to gen­er­al orders from the “Boss”. The cook had to keep the fires going all night, and he began his day at 3:00; at this time he would rise and begin prepar­ing break­fast, then at 4:00 either he or his “cook­ie” would go to the bunkhouse to shake the ” team­sters” awake. After he had fed the team­sters he would again go into the bunkhouse, this time to holler ” ROLL OUT ” thus start­ing the men’s day in the log­ging camp. The men would get dressed, and wash up, and then set down to a break­fast of oat­meal por­ridge, toast, sausage, pota­toes, bread, but­ter, sug­ar, molasses, tea, cof­fee, milk and cheese. No one lin­gered at the table; you ate, then left, head­ing for the woods to begin work.

It was bru­tal hard work, hour after hour, day after day, cut­ting trees by hand. Some axe han­dles would be stained red, after a man’s hands had bro­ken open. The lum­ber woods was no place for a weak­ling, and only the tough­est remained through the win­ter. First lunch would be around 9:00; it was tak­en to the men in the woods, usu­al­ly con­sist­ing of pork and beans, camp bread, but­ter, molasses cook­ies, molasses cake, tea, and cof­fee. Sec­ond lunch was at 2:00- if not pork and beans then it would be stew, dough boys, camp bread, but­ter, muffins or molasses cake. Then when their work day was done, they returned to camp, usu­al­ly around 7:30, and sup­per would be ready for them, a typ­i­cal meal would be: Pot roast, mashed pota­toes, camp bread, bis­cuits, apple pie, gin­ger cake, molasses cake, sug­ar, but­ter, gravy, tea, cof­fee, and milk. One of the best cooks on the Nash­waak was Richard (‘pick­le’) Evans. Richard would go and stay in the camp until Christ­mas. At that time he would come home to be with his fam­i­ly, then after Christ­mas return to camp until shut down. Mal­colm Evans, his son, start­ed work­ing with his father as cook­ie when he was 13 rears old, around the year 1922.

Nei­ther Richard Evans or his son Mal­colm used a recipe for camp bread, it was all done from mem­o­ry and feel. The dough which they called sponge bread, was set late in the after­noon, than heat­ed in a bar­rel with a lamp under it over night, they would let it rise until about 1:00 AM at which time they would get up and knead it. It would be ready to cook then serve at 4:00. Along with mak­ing bread, cakes, pies, and 4 meals a day the cook was respon­si­ble for the camp fires. Cooks on the Nash­waak: Richard ( Dickie)Evans, Mal­colm Evans, Lorne Bubar, Perce Gilmore, Ban Stew­art, Har­ry Hamil­ton, Edgar Wade, Hose Allen, Jim Urquhart, and Joe Berrio.

CHOPPERS and KNOTTERS — As men­tioned before some of the first men into the woods were the chop­pers and knot­ters. It was the chop­pers duty to fell the trees and chop them into 14 to 20 foot lengths with a diam­e­ter of 12″ at the top. The knot­ters duty was to cut off the limbs, and chop two holes, oppo­site each oth­er at the end of the log, so that grips could be insert­ed by the skid­ders who yard­ed them out to the main pile, with their hors­es. Now these holes were nat­u­ral­ly called grip holes. The young lad on his first day out, was usu­al­ly made the bunt of some joke, such as send­ing him forth, from one crew to anoth­er, to try to bor­row a set of grip holes. If the young man was wise, he would take all such jokes in good part; the young man who could­n’t take a joke was sure to be the recip­i­ent of many. After the trees were felled, and limbed, they were trekked to the main yard by a skid­ding gang. This gang worked a day behind the axe men. It could be dan­ger­ous to both horse and man if the skid­ding crew worked to close to the cut­ters. The skid­ding hors­es wore a har­ness of bells, so the cut­ters could hear them com­ing, and the cut­ters called a warn­ing ” Tim­ber” when their tree began to fall. The oth­er men who would have to hear these warn­ings were the swampers, the men clear­ing path­ways, so the skid­ding crew could get the logs out. The skid­ding crew would pile the lum­ber on skid­ways in the main yard to await the win­ter sleigh haul. It also made it handy for the scalers and the tal­ly man to do their jobs. They would come along and mark the ends of the logs. Each lum­ber com­pa­ny had their own dis­tin­guish­ing mark, be it one dot, or two dots, what­ev­er. No two com­pa­nies ever had the same mark, so every­one knew their logs. Samuel Craig of Zionville was a scaler for quite a num­ber of years for the Nash­waak area. He was a well liked and respect­ed man. As a scaler, he had to ensure that if he scaled a mil­lion feet in the woods they would get a mil­lion feet when they sawed it at the mill. And while some scalers were not very pop­u­lar with the lum­ber boss­es, because of fear they might be cut­ting down on their prof­its, Sam could be count­ed on to deliv­er a fair hon­est tal­ly. The marked logs after scal­ing would now sit in the yard until Jan­u­ary. Bob Craig and Angus Edney, were also scalers on the Nash­waak.

THE BOB SLED HAUL : Dur­ing the iron cold days of Jan­u­ary, the TEAMSTERS, began their haul to the frozen riv­er beds. Their loads would be hauled over ” ice roads.” These roads had a lev­el cen­tre sec­tion, with two deep troughs on either side so the sleigh would not slide off. At night time, there would be some man picked out of the crowd who had a good team; they would put him icing the roads. That was one of the most mis­er­able jobs ever invent­ed. He would get a set of bob-sleds, rig up a big box affair that would be 12 feet long, six feet high and eight feet wide. It was made of two inch thick tongue and groove plank. That box would be fas­tened to the bob-sled so it would not tip. Then line and tack­le, with a bar­rel, and hooked to a horse, were used to load the box full of brook water. At the end of the box (tub), they had a two inch auger hole with a wood­en peg insert­ed, so it would not loose water. The wood­en peg had a strap attached to it with a nail, and the oth­er end fas­tened to the box. This was so the plug would hang to the box, and not fall to the ground and get lost. The water came out with such a force some­times, that before the man could get away, he was sprayed from head to foot, and this would be in tem­per­a­tures of thir­ty to thir­ty five below zero. He would work all night, spray­ing the water into the tracks; it would freeze and by morn­ing you could skate on it.

The boss want­ed the roads icy so they could haul the heavy lum­ber loads; at times they would get 40 logs on a load, and those big loads would slide along with ease.” On steep hills and down — grades how­ev­er, the boss would send a man to sand, so that the tim­ber loads would not slide down­hill too fast and upset. ” Road Mon­keys” were the men who were hired to keep these roads free of limbs, bark , horse manure, any­thing that night effect the smooth icy sur­face.

In Jan­u­ary, the Team­sters began their long hauls; at 4:00 the cook would shake them awake, they would break­fast, then har­ness and feed their hors­es by lantern light. The hors­es would wear bells on their har­ness, and you could hear them jin­gle as the hors­es thun­dered down the icy road. Team­sters risked their lives going down those roads at thir­ty and forty minute inter­vals, only about a half hour behind their head team. The hors­es would be going full speed ahead, and the team­ster sit­ting on top his load, would be hop­ing the team ahead had stayed on the tracks, and not lost his load on the icy roads. Team­sters would load their bob-sleds,eight feet high by ten foot wide and trek along the roads to the frozen riv­er beds, where the logs were put on a ‘brow’ of a riv­er bank. Up to 10,000 pieces would be piled, stacked , on what they referred to as a “land­ing”, wait­ing for the spring thaw. The work day for the men in the lum­ber crews, began around 4:00 in the morning,and but for two lunch breaks remained steady until 7:30, when they would return­for sup­per. After sup­per the men would return to the bunkhouse.

THE BUNKHOUSE: Across this build­ing on two sides and at some camps across one end, were shelves made of poles. The bot­tom shelf two feet from the floor and the top shelf three feet above. These shelves were cov­ered with straw or fir boughs, and cov­ered with a blan­ket about thir­ty feet long, to form a long mat­tress. On this the men slept, feet out, with one, or some­times two, long blan­kets over them, run­ning the whole length of the­bunks, upper and low­er. With the excep­tion of moc­casins and mack­i­naws, most men slept in their clothes. Baths were not a com­mon occur­rence. One big stove, usu­al­ly tak­ing a four foot stick of hard­wood sup­plied heat. Along the front of the low­er bunk, a long seat made of hewed tim­ber ran the length of the bunks. It was known as the ” Dea­con Seat”. The boss would also keep in the camp what was known as a “wan­gan box”, this box con­tained: socks,mitts, humphrey pants, shoe packs, chew­ing tobac­co, scis­sors, thread, yarn, nee­dles, whet­stones, moc­casins, and but­tons. These items could be drawn by the men and charged against their pay. Most employ­ers made a good prof­it on the deal. After the camp had been occu­pied for a short time, you would notice the atmos­phere becom­ing rather thick, it was a com­bi­na­tion of body odours, wood and tobac­co smoke, pitch, as well as wet woollen cloth­ing that was hang­ing by the stove to dry. Mal­colm Evans said you would open the door and swim in, and after a while you would not even notice it. Every camp had a boss the ” fore­man” to tell the var­i­ous crews what to do. How­ev­er some peo­ple would say the cook was the most impor­tant per­son in the camp. If the cook was good, the work­ers were hap­py, and would work hard and do their job well. If the cook was poor, the crew would not be as hap­py and like as not, not work as well as they could.

The camps were in good con­di­tion, but each year, some­one would manage;-to bring lice to camp, and every­one became lousy. Ken Dun­phy men­tioned a pow­der he and some of the oth­er men took, to put on their blan­kets and cloths to ward of lice; he could­n’t remem­ber the name of the pow­der, but it could have been boric acid, as it was used in Eng­land for that pur­pose. It was cus­tom­ary, when the men came home in the spring, to strip in the out­side shed or just inside the door and pass all their cloth­ing in to be dropped into a boil­er of boil­ing water. After that a bath behind the kitchen stove. They were now fit to join their fam­i­ly. With the approach of night the woods became silent. The team­sters were always the last to enter the cab­in and could feel the wind as they attend­ed to their hors­es, before join­ing the oth­ers for sup­per. After sup­per each man did his last minute chores, darn­ing a sock, sharp­en­ing his axe if nec­es­sary then set­tled down for the evening’s enter­tain­ment. Enter­tain­ment con­sist­ed of arm wrestling, fid­dle music, camp songs, sto­ry­telling, and in one camp, the crew made a check­er board. They cut up a branch to make the check­ers, mark­ing one side, next they drew up the check­er board on the dea­cons bench. The boss would walk over to the lantern at 9:00, and turn it down. This was the sign for qui­et, and the camp would set­tle to sleep. The snor­ing was ter­ri­ble; with bunks all around the room, there was quite a sing song of snor­ing, and there always seemed to be some old fel­low who could­n’t sleep, and he would be up tramp­ing around the room. At the end of win­ter, the end of ” the lum­ber sea­son ” the teams and team­sters would depart for home; their job would start again in the fall. The men that were left would run the dri­ve.

RIVER DRIVE: There was usu­al­ly only five to six weeks between the end of the lum­ber sea­son and the log dri­ve. From the Nash­waak Lake to Stan­ley there were about eight dams built in the riv­er, plus one or two sluice-ways. When the water lev­el low­ered, these gates in the dams would be low­ered to retain the water. After rais­ing the water lev­el, the gates would then be raised and the water and logs would flow freely. Some refer to this as “dri­ve by flood”

LOGGING DAMS by Mar­tin Cass: “The num­ber of peo­ple who remem­ber the Log­ging meth­ods of our pio­neer lum­ber­man are get­ting less and less each year, espe­cial­ly those who remem­ber the use of “log­ging ” dams. If they think of them at all it is as good places for fish­ing dur­ing the sum­mer and to skate dur­ing the win­ter. Though most of the old dams are only mem­o­ries, there is usu­al­ly enough of the ponds left for this. Below the dam gates, where the water gushed through the gates or spill­ways, was always worn away by the force of the water to a depth of sev­er­al feet and is shad­ed by the floor of the spill­way, which is usu­al­ly the last to rot away, as the water pro­tects the wood. In most cas­es the pur­pose of the dam was to aid in the float­ing of the fall and win­ter cut lum­ber, after the spring runoff, when more water was need­ed. The dam gates were closed in the late after­noon as it would not effect the logs which were still float­ing a mile or more down stream. The rate of drop of each stream gov­erned the time it took for the water to reach where it was need­ed. In many cas­es there would be more than one dam on the riv­er or on oth­er streams emp­ty­ing into the main stream. The gates of these dams would be opened to keep the water lev­el up as the water from the main dam was get­ting low. At times there were sev­er­al dams sup­ply­ing water, the gate of each being opened at care­ful­ly arranged times to keep the day­time lev­el of the water float­ing the logs. It seems man select­ed his dam-sites much as did the beaver. They required a large, wide area of the val­ley, capa­ble of hold­ing a great deal of water, but with an area of high­er banks where the dam was built. It took sev­er­al hours for the water lev­el of a large dam to drop beyond being use­ful. When the water did reach that lev­el the dam was closed to catch a sup­ply for the next day. Then anoth­er dam was opened. From this devel­oped the say­ing “Putting on Steam” as is called the start­ing up of our mod­ern plants today. These fast rise and falls of water often caught peo­ple on the wrong side of a stream, with noth­ing they could do but wait or trav­el miles to get to the oth­er side. An exam­ple of this water con­trol can be seen by not­ing the place­ment of the dan on the upper McKen­zie and the upper and low­er dams on the Young’s Brook and the one near the Nash­waak at Nash­waak Bridge above the high­way road on the McCol­lum’s creek. There are oth­er dams fur­ther up the Nash­waak, one of them at the spill­way of a lake, which is capa­ble of stor­ing a great amount of water.”

THE WHITE WATER MEN: Around the last of April and the first of May, when the snow had gone from the ground, and the ice ran, the men pro­ceed­ed to walk up the shores of the Nash­waak. Their des­ti­na­tion, the head of the Riv­er, to begin the log dri­ve. There was com­pan­ion­ship, and cama­raderie among these men; the work was hard and wet, the pay was not good, and at times the job was dan­ger­ous. But they liked the chal­lenge of com­bat­ting the rocks, and the full roar­ing waters of the Nash­waak in spring, and with their courage and skill, their acquired art of stand­ing on, and rid­ing, a 14 to 20 foot length of log down her swift nar­row pas­sage ways. About 200 men would walk towards the head of the Nash­waak; 30 men would stop at the low­er Nash­waak Lake, 90 more at the Nar­rows, 30 more at Bark­ers Dam, 90 at the Sis­ters, and 30 at Gov­er­nors Brook. The rest would be at the Upper Lake. If the Upper Lake was still sol­id with ice, they would have to blow it with dyna­mite, and then start the logs down the Nash­waak. The Spring dri­ve has now begun.

Mar­tin Cass: Stream Dri­vers start­ed their dri­ves as soon as the streams were free of ice. Some­times build­ing float­ing booms to hold the logs from going over farm­land down riv­er, then turn­ing the logs loose as soon as the freshet low­ered. The ice in the lakes often had to be blown, near the gates the faster water was eas­i­ly cleared, then two men would take a small boat with caps and a sup­ply of dyna­mite of which one stick or even only 1/2 stick of explo­sives was used. This charge was pushed under the ice and upstream. The explo­sive was fused to give time to allow the plac­ing of the “shot”. Once Gor­don Cass and Ernie Gal­lagher had a “shot” come loose from the pole; it drift­ed back under the boat and explod­ed “mid­ship”, good­bye boat. Fel­low lum­ber­men came to the res­cue and pulled Gor­don and Ernie from the icy Nash­waak Riv­er.

There was a ” peck­ing order ” among the riv­er men:
I. White Water Men — The top head dri­vers, these men were skilled at rid­ing logs through rapids, or break­ing log jams; they had nat­ur­al bal­ance and agili­ty.
2. Good Dri­vers
3. Sack­ers — those who sacked the logs that lay on shore, to the edge of the riv­er.
4. Lunch Car­ri­ers — usu­al­ly a young lad in his teens, who car­ried the lunch­es from one crew to anoth­er, skirt­ing in and out, around the edges of the riv­er, often car­ry­ing great loads upon his back.

The White Water men: — To this day names of the top dri­vers can be heard, when­ev­er old timers get togeth­er. You’ll hear names like: Wild Bill McPher­son, some­times called Jesse James, Bun­ty Bill Stew­art, his son Bruce Stew­art, Frank Banks, Jim­my Pond, and Bill Whit­tler. These were the elite of the white water men. They could ride a log through the rough­est water, or leap from one log to anoth­er in mid stream, with­out los­ing their bal­ance, their peavys or cant-hooks. These were all Nash­waak Men.

If there was a log jam, it was a white water man who was cho­sen to go out and break it up. Say, for exam­ple, a log went cross ways ( a key log), oth­er logs would build up behind it, until they were built up like a dam of logs across the riv­er. The water behind would build up high­er, and high­er, and the water in front would be shal­low. So the best dri­vers, the White­wa­ter men, would be sent out there, because they would have a bet­ter chance of get­ting back to shore again alive.

The Death of John MacBean: John Robert MacBean (also known as John Angus MacBean) was a well-known log dri­ver and white water man. He was crushed to death in a lum­ber­ing acci­dent while dri­ving logs down the Nash­waak (April 1903). Accord­ing to press reports, he died ter­ri­bly. Over 100 logs rolled over his body before he could be pulled from the riv­er. Although most of his bones were crushed, he lived for sev­er­al hours after­wards. Mar­i­lyn J. Evans, in her book “Lum­ber­ing on the Nash­waak” (pri­vate­ly pub­lished about 1995), quotes Glenn E. Pond -

“the land­ing (the log jam) was straight up and down, a per­pen­dic­u­lar deal, and the men were afraid of it and would­n’t break it in. John Angus was fear­less and expect­ed the men to do as he told them. He was in a bad mood when he found the men all stand­ing around. He said “If none of you have got guts enough I’ll do it myself”. He jumped out on the logs and one man, Bun­ty Bill Stew­art, went out behind him. He said “John Angus if you’re on your way to Hell I’ll go with you. But it’s a piece of fool­ish­ness”. He jumped out on the land­ing with John Angus; they worked just two logs when it gave, and straight down they went to the bot­tom. The logs nail-kegged end over end; John Angus broke every bone in his body. Bun­ty Bill Stew­art went down through with him and nev­er got a scratch, no one knows how, but Bun­ty Bill escaped unharmed. That was one of the biggest funer­als held on the Nash­waak. Six­ty teams of hors­es came from all over, start­ed form­ing up in Low­er Durham, Upper Durham, every­where.”

As the riv­er widened, the log dri­ve con­tin­ued down the Nash­waak to the Saint John Riv­er.

From the Provin­cial Archives of New Brunswick