Transportation & Communication

Wharves and coastal service

Wharves were workplaces as well as places of arrival. People, fuel, food, mail and building supplies passed over them. Federal records show a West Wharf by 1880 and construction at the East Wharf in 1882–83. The East Wharf was damaged in 1906. Materials were obtained for a proposed rebuilding in 1908–09, but a later report described it as destroyed by 1910; it is unclear whether the rebuilding was completed. Its exact location on today’s shoreline remains uncertain.

Iceboats and winter isolation

When open-water travel failed, Islanders sometimes crossed the Strait by iceboat. The preserved boat and the stories attached to it show the skill and risk involved in moving through broken ice and open leads. Its builder, operator and twentieth-century mail service are explored in the iceboat article.

Mail and freight

Mail and freight tied Island households to services on the mainland. Community history places the beginning of air-mail service in the early 1940s, and a postal record documents an Air Stage flight to Pictou Island on 1 April 1949. Aircraft joined the boats and winter routes on which Islanders depended.

Telephone and submarine cable

A submarine telephone cable laid in July 1921 gave Pictou Island a new connection with the mainland. Repairs followed, and radio later provided another way to communicate when ice damaged the cable. The system was modernized by Maritime Tel & Tel in 1976; the exact landing points of the original 1921 cable remain unknown.

An office and the people who carried the mail

Library and Archives Canada’s postmaster-history transcription records the Pictou Island office as established on 1 August 1881. It lists Alex F. Campbell from that date, followed by Mrs A. Chas MacCallum from 1 October 1898, Howard Wallace MacLean from 17 May 1939 and Ernest R. Rankin from 10 November 1970. The list is an official transcription of postal-history cards, not the original appointment records.

Some details remain in conflict. The transcription gives Campbell’s vacancy by death in 1897, while the January 1898 postal guide still names him. Guides from 1899, 1900 and 1917 print Miss A. C. McCallum, differing from the card’s Mrs A. Chas MacCallum. The reasons for these differences are not yet known, and people with the same name cannot automatically be identified as the same person. Mail carriers, post-office staff and the buildings they used each have their own stories.

Ferries and modern connections

Photographs document ferry service by the 1920s, while older wharves and informal crossings reach further back. Later ferries and aircraft made travel more regular without making it independent of weather. The often-repeated date of 1910 for the start of organized ferry service has not been confirmed by a dated record.

Further documentary sources

LAC post-office and postmaster history, Pictou Island, item 26585

LAC explanation of the postal-history cards and transcription

Identifying the mail contractor

Federal accounts name C. D. Patterson as the contractor for the weekly Pictou–Pictou Island mail route in the 1898 reporting year. An independent West Wharf account names “Chas. D. Patterson” for wharf work. The 1891 marriage register records Charles D. Patterson marrying Agnes A. McCallum, and his 1947 death registration names Charles Dan Patterson, husband of Agnes and a retired lightkeeper. Together with the Island census and West End keeper records, these details strongly suggest the contractor was Charles “Charlie Dan” Patterson.

A mail contractor was not necessarily the postmaster, and the contract does not establish that Patterson personally made every crossing. Munro’s retrospective ferry account places Charles Dan and his brother Lauchie in the early service and says they held a mail contract; it does not give a firm date for the first ferry service or establish a separate federal payment to Lauchie.

Sources: 1898 postal account, printed p. 89; 1898 West Wharf account, Part Q-121; Charles D. Patterson and Agnes A. McCallum, 1891 marriage; Charles Dan Patterson, 1947 death registration.