West Nipissing Ouest-Our History

A History of Sturgeon Falls, wnpl_00369_p4.jpg

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Construction of the railway was under the Public Works Act and no liquor was allowed in the area. Nontheless drunken fights occured and Worthington as Justice of the Peace had much to do. The first ship to make runs on the river was the "Inter-ocean", the remains of which lie off the Government dock. The Clarks (Charles, Joe and Fred) were soon building small ships here. They brought a ship, the "Empress", here in 1881, soon after they first came, and installed a steam-engine in it in that year. Their father, John Clark, died in 1881 and his burial was the first in the Anglican churchyard. In 1882 the Booth Lumber Company put up shanties for lumbering operations. The Jodoin family were building a big log house on Front Street at about that time. There were nine children but they gave shelter to many new arrivals and the older boys fiddled for weddings and parties. In 1883 the first passenger trains brought other Canadian families, the Parisiens, Lefroys and Serres. J. B. Serre started a blacksmith shop and lived to be a hundred. Some of the settlers moved into buildings abandoned by the railway workers as the gangs moved on. The first travelling priests soon visited the settlers here, among them Fathers Nolin, Côte and Specht. Father Specht held mass in a carpenter-shop at a C.P.R. camp of 3,000 workers east of the town a few miles.

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