On a working shoreline, lobster was never just the catch in a trap. It meant boats and bait, steam and boiling water, cans and packing tables, family labour and seasonal crews, shore roads, wharves and the trip to market. For a time, factories reshaped several parts of Pictou Island’s coast. Fishing continued long after the factory buildings were gone.
Follow the people behind the catch—from the crews who went out to sea to the women and young people whose work helped keep processing running. Historic photographs show buildings and gathering places; government returns and property records reveal the changing business beneath them. The name ‘The Lobster Island’ is a modern exhibition title, not a proven old geographic name.
Chapter 1
The sea becomes an industry
Pictou Island families fished before lobster factories lined the shore. By the later nineteenth century, however, processing linked the island to firms, outside buyers and seasonal labour.
Fishing and lobster canning shaped work and family life on Pictou Island for generations.
Heartz’s April 1907 account mentions a lobster factory as part of Island life. Heartz did not count the canneries or identify a particular site. Federal returns record three in each of 1903, 1906 and 1907.
Long before factories appeared, the waters around the Island provided food and a livelihood. Lobster was being processed on the Island in the 1870s, and commercial lobster fishing is documented by 1881. We do not know the date of the first Island sale.
Herring were also part of the Strait fishery. On 8 August 1903, a Georgetown fisheries correspondent reported fair herring catches off Pictou Island. Small boats were fishing for herring to be smoked. The report does not say where the crews lived or where the fish were smoked.
Lobster was central to Island life, but it was not the only resource from the sea. Federal records also mention mackerel, cod, salmon, herring and wild kelp; later accounts add rock crab and scallop work in the area. Local history recalls an early 1870s lobster factory on the south shore associated with the MacDonald family. Its exact location and opening year remain uncertain. Shedd & Knox operated at the East End in the 1870s.
Chapter 2
Factories on the shore
Geologist Alexander Howard MacKay saw several shore workings in 1890. Federal returns recorded four site and operator entries in 1895, and three canneries in each of 1903, 1906 and 1907.
Land records document the rights behind some shoreline operations. On 21 April 1883, Malcolm McDonald leased William F. Shedd a parcel on the south side of his farm for twenty-five years. The lease describes the public wharf, shore and access to the main road, with water privileges. Its one-dollar payment was acknowledged in full for the term, not as an annual rent. The lease was registered on 11 October 1887.
A separate deed of 16 September 1887 records Gould N. Brown, trustee of the late William F. Shedd’s estate, conveying interests to James Hogg, a Pictou Island lobster packer, for $485. It describes a freehold parcel with a cookhouse reference, the unexpired 1883 lease and two shanties at West End Cove, while reserving Hugh McLean’s right of way. These are separately described interests, not proof of one factory site, a first factory or a modern property boundary.
A. H. MacKay visited Pictou Island in August 1890 and published his account the following year. He described a lobster factory and wharf at a sandy cove on the south shore, and another factory at a white sandy cove on the north shore near Hugh McLean’s. His map shows the locations; they should not be combined into one present-day site.
An 1895 federal report names four sources of lobster eggs: McClure Bros. at the West End and North Side, D. McKenzie at the North Side, and Jas. Hogg at the East End. It is not a complete list of every Island factory. By 1901, packers were enlarging older factories and building new ones. Federal returns counted three Island canneries in each of 1903, 1906 and 1907.
The Bay View lobster hatchery was established in 1891. Later records show that it received eggs collected from Pictou Island canneries.
In 1895, hatchery operator Alfred Ogden reported hiring the steamer Caberfeidh for fourteen days to collect lobster eggs around Pictou Island. He reported hatching and releasing 165 million young lobsters across waters between Big Island, Merigomish and Tony River, as well as around Pictou Island. That total covered the wider region. The report does not say how many were released around the Island or survived.
An 1894 fisheries report includes accounts associated with McLure, Alexander Leslie and Hogg. McLure is described as an Island packer; Leslie’s account concerns Bay View and Cariboo; Hogg’s is dated at Pictou. The accounts connect them with the hatchery, but do not establish that all three operated Island factories.
In 1891, A. H. MacKay recorded the name “Lobster Factory Cove.” Ron MacDonald identifies it with the place now called John Dans Cove, also written John Dan’s Cove. Brenda Spence MacLeod connects a factory there with Prince Edward Islander John Dan MacLeod and other PEI fishermen. The account does not say who owned the land.
A 1905 federal schedule documents McLeod & Stewart as a Pictou Island lobster-packing firm. Reporting Alex Stewart’s drowning on 5 June 1914, the Charlottetown Guardian of 22 June named Norman and John D. McLeod as his partners and described Stewart’s work in the Island lobster business for more than ten years. Local knowledge identifies John D. as John Dan MacLeod, the man remembered in John Dan’s Cove. The firm’s exact factory location and legal title remain uncertain. In 1916, McLeod & Stewart appears separately from Fred Magee’s West End and East End establishments.
The marriage registration of 16 April 1912 records John Dan MacLeod, entered as John D. McLeod, as a lobster packer living on Pictou Island and born at High Bank, Prince Edward Island. His bride Ethel McKenzie was recorded as Island-born and resident there. Local identification links John D. with John Dan, read with the documentary occupation, residence and Norman MacLeod partnership. The ceremony took place in Pictou. The return does not identify a factory parcel or establish that Ethel worked in a cannery.
Roy MacCallum’s undated map, reproduced by Ruth Munro, marks former factory sites and operators. Munro also wrote that five factories operated at the same time. The map does not show that all five operated in 1908 or that Fred Magee owned three factories that year.
Shedd & Knox operated at the East End in the 1870s. In 1891, a Bay View hatchery report named Hogg, Craig & Co. and McClure among the Island packers supplying eggs. Hogg, Craig & Co. described its Island factory in an 1898 letter. These accounts come from different years.
A near-contemporary biography records John J. McPhee operating lobster factories on Pictou Island and at Little Sands, PEI, before leaving the trade in 1898. His Island factory’s precise location is unknown. Ruth Munro separately records a MacLeod Bros. north-shore operation and a Jordan factory whose recorded given name is disputed. The names do not establish that the businesses followed one another at a single property.
By 1916 Fred Magee had establishments at both ends of Pictou Island. Historian Bill Hamilton describes the larger company’s Mephisto brand, Port Elgin container-making and regional and overseas trade, including a mainland Pictou branch by 1906. The mainland branch’s opening does not date an Island factory, and no surviving Mephisto-labelled can has been confirmed as packed on the Island.
On 18 June 1885, the Eastern Chronicle reported that Hogg, Munro & Co. had packed more than 4,000 tins of lobster at its Pictou Island factory on one day during the previous week. This was a reported single day, not an annual production total; the notice does not identify the factory’s precise location or the individual partners.
In March 1887, the Eastern Chronicle described approximately 38 Island families and two lobster factories drawing workers during the summer. These are the newspaper’s contemporary descriptions, not a census of residents or proof of who owned either factory.
The Eastern Chronicle reported on 7 October 1886 that James W. Hogg’s East End lobster factory had burned, while the can shop and adjoining cookhouse were saved. It reported two boats destroyed, including a government life-saving boat, and described rebuilding as intended. The report does not establish whether rebuilding occurred or the factory’s exact modern location.
Chapter 3
Factory Road—a working landscape
Ron MacDonald remembered today’s Factory Road as New Factory Road, leading to New Factory Cove. His account separately identifies historic Lobster Factory Cove with today’s John Dan’s Cove.
On a map reproduced by Kenneth MacCallum, the road corresponding to today’s Factory Road is labelled ‘North Shore Road.’ Ron MacDonald remembered the road as ‘New Factory Road,’ leading to ‘New Factory Cove.’ The dates, overlap and sequence of these names have not yet been established.
Ron MacDonald remembers the present Factory Road as “New Factory Road,” leading toward a place known as “New Factory Cove” and the canneries there. This remembered factory landscape is separate from John Dans Cove, historically called Lobster Factory Cove. Local knowledge places New Factory Cove at the shoreline locality shown by marker 12 on the PIHS map. The marker shows the approximate place, not a surveyed boundary or the exact outline of a factory.
Campbell Lane is remembered as the older road to John Dans Cove, with the newer private Josh & Julia Way running parallel. Local accounts describe factory remnants, including brickwork, at the cove. The cove’s factories and the separate Factory Road landscape formed part of an industry spread around the Island’s shore.
Enlarge & zoomHorse-drawn carriage beside large industrial buildings
Chapter 4
Work behind the catch
A factory did not run on fishermen alone. Cooking lobster required heat and water; meat had to be cleaned, packed and sealed; supplies and empty tins arrived from outside.
The 1906 federal fisheries return counted 55 boats, 100 men in boats and three canneries in the Pictou Island district. It also recorded 110 barrels of salted herring, without identifying who produced them or where they were processed or sold.
The 1906 return valued the Island’s boats at $2,850 and its three canneries at $14,850. These values describe the boats and establishments, not wages or the value of the catch.
Regulation also brought an official role to the Island. Federal schedules list A. F. Campbell as a warden with a Pictou Island address in 1885, when the salary entry was $25. The 1887 return records $47.91 received for twenty-three months’ salary; the 1889 schedule specifically describes the Pictou Island lobster fishery. The records do not give an exact date when he began or left the position.
Regulation was part of life on the working shore. In a report dated 2 January 1899, fisheries inspector Robert Hockin relayed Overseer Pritchard’s difficulty enforcing lobster size and sex restrictions. Pritchard considered a resident fishery officer necessary to prevent small lobsters being packed on Pictou Island. His complaint illustrates how difficult the rules could be to enforce. It does not name a particular Island factory or show how widespread the practice was. Source: 1899 Fisheries report, published 1900, p. 50 (PDF p. 125)
A later report, dated 2 January 1902 and describing the 1901 fishing season, recorded a different set of observations. Pritchard reported smaller lobster catches, early-season storms that damaged fishing gear and generally favourable lobster sizes; he also reported that size-limit and berried-lobster regulations were being observed. The reports offer two views from different years. They do not tell us whether a resident officer was appointed or the earlier problems had ended. Source: 1902 Fisheries report, published 1903, p. 45 (PDF p. 127)
Island canneries supplied eggs to Bay View hatchery, but artificial hatching remained contested. After investigating the 1916 operations, biologist A. P. Knight questioned losses between egg collection and the return of living fry to the sea. A. B. Dawson’s 1917 work reported improvements while continuing to document handling, transport and hatching losses; neither report measured survival in Island waters.
In Parliament on 27 May 1919, Minister C. C. Ballantyne said Bay View and four other hatcheries would be kept for scientific investigation while others were sold or offered for sale. J. H. Sinclair questioned the policy. The debate does not tell us whether the releases increased lobster stocks around the Island.
In an interview recorded around 2000, Lorraine MacMillan remembered her mother’s work in the Island canneries. Lorraine said she had not worked in them herself. She recalled winter gatherings to knit trap heads and making a thousand with her mother in one February.
A lobster factory needed many hands. Workers cooked and cleaned the lobster, packed and sealed cans, and supplied fuel and water. The census recorded eleven factory workers in 1901, ten of them women, and seventeen in 1911. The figures do not tell the whole story. Seasonal workers and Islanders who supplied food, fuel, water and transport were not necessarily counted as factory employees.
Later recollections name cooks Janet Rankin, Lorraine MacMillan, Thelma MacDonald, Ona Glover, and Lois (MacCallum) MacLean. Andy Ward MacCallum hauled spring water to the East End cookhouse.
Enlarge & zoomPeople gathered at the Pictou Island wharf
Chapter 5
Factory communities
Factories created temporary communities as well as products. Some crews came from Prince Edward Island, mainland Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Seasonal workers from Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and mainland Nova Scotia joined island families. Cookhouses, bunkhouses, stores, wharves, trap buildings and homes created small working communities around the plants.
Surviving photographs show shoreline buildings, wharves, workers and children, offering glimpses of factory life. Many of the people, dates and exact locations are still unknown.
Enlarge & zoomTwo children on the rocky shore near large shoreline buildings
Chapter 6
Jack ‘Happy’ MacDonald: Factory work, fishing and the lighthouse
Jack Happy’s life makes the larger fishery more personal. Later accounts remember him entering work as a boy at Fred Magee’s East End factory, fishing with his own gear in youth and becoming a well-known West End fisherman and lighthouse keeper.
John Alexander MacDonald, remembered as Jack ‘Happy’ or ‘Happy Jack’, worked in the Island fishery and served as West Lighthouse keeper. Sources also record his name as John A. MacDonald and use both MacDonald and McDonald spellings.
Later accounts remember Jack working at Fred Magee’s East End lobster factory at thirteen and having fishing gear of his own by seventeen. He went on to fish lobster and served as West End lighthouse keeper from about 1933 until the light was reportedly automated in 1962.
The available accounts do not connect Jack with a historical place called “Lobster Island.” Biographical accounts say he fished about 460 traps and landed roughly 5,000 pounds in each of 1925 and 1926, with later annual catches reportedly reaching 15,000 pounds. These figures refer to Jack’s fishing, not the Island’s total catch.
Chapter 7
Boats, traps and fishing grounds
Fishing was a craft handed down through families: making traps, knitting and mending heads, judging grounds, maintaining boats and preparing for seasons. Lorraine MacMillan remembered a winter spent helping her mother knit a thousand trap heads.
The factory era ended, but fishing culture continued. MacCallum describes early shallow-water catching and two-person crews tending about 200 traps, followed by a system in which some canneries financed boats, gear and provisions. Families later made wooden traps and knitted or repaired trap heads; Lorraine MacMillan recalled helping her mother knit one thousand heads in a winter. Prince Edward Island fishermen stayed in East End shanties, while the offshore Eastern Banks later became the subject of a fishing-ground dispute in 1977.
Rules governing the fishery reach back into the nineteenth century. MacCallum records protective measures beginning in 1871 and a broader licensing proposal in 1892. Hogg, Craig & Co.’s response gives the perspective of packers and exporters.
Photographs labelled “1954 Boat Races – East End” and “‘Mary Mae’ 1954 Boat Races” show boats bringing people together for recreation after the factory era. The captions do not name every owner or crew member, or give the race results.
Fishing work included women, young people, wage workers and unpaid family workers. The 1931 census records women among the temporary fishing workers enumerated on the Island, alongside varied fishing occupations. These records describe work in its historical setting, not a single pattern shared by every Island household.
A Canadian Press report published on 24 June 1977 described a possible meeting between Murray Harbour and Pictou Island fishermen about lobster grounds near the Island’s eastern end. The report records a proposed discussion, not whether it took place or established a legal boundary.
Enlarge & zoomFishing boats beside the South Side Lighthouse
Chapter 8
When the factory era ended
The Island’s canneries did not all close at once. Surviving records suggest that the industry wound down between about 1923 and 1926; the last packing came after some factories had already closed.
By the early 1920s, two factories appear to have remained: Magee’s at the East End and another near the end of Factory Road. The operator at Factory Road and the exact sequence of closures are uncertain. Lobster canning appears to have ended between 1923 and 1926; Kenneth MacCallum separately recorded the last fish packing in 1926. The East End building was unused by the early 1930s and later dismantled as erosion threatened the site.
Chapter 9
A fishery after the factories
Once the canneries were gone, lobster was still central to many families’ livelihoods. Buying smacks, mainland processors, newer boats, licensing and changing markets altered the path from trap to buyer.
Fishing, buyers and island landing places continued after the canneries disappeared.
Islanders remember mainland smacks bringing bait and buying lobster. Around 2000, North Nova Seafoods listed Pictou Island East and West among its supply locations. Brenda Spence MacLeod recalls that the wharf smack stopped buying in 2024; her account of that change and changes among resident fishers in 2024–25 has not yet been checked against licence and buyer records.
Brenda also records that Hurricane Fiona temporarily exposed factory traces at John Dan’s Cove and the New Factory site before shifting sand covered them again.
The factories are gone, but their place in Island life remains in names such as Factory Road, in family memories and photographs, and in the stories people continue to share.
Chapter 10
A 1929 lobster report
In May 1929, The Casket reprinted a Pictou Advocate report describing good lobster catches along the coast. At Pictou Island’s East End and Little Sands, Prince Edward Island, it reported larger blue lobsters suited to live shipment to the Boston market. The report does not establish that a particular shipment was made or identify a buyer, exporter or factory.
Final chapter · chronology
Timeline
Explore key dates in this story and follow the links to read more. Approximate dates and uncertain identifications are noted.
Lobster fishing and processing take hold
Records show lobster processing on shore in the 1870s and commercial fishing by 1881. The date of the first Island sale is not known.
Bay View lobster hatchery is established
Federal evidence places the hatchery in 1891 and later records connect it with eggs collected from Island canneries.
A fisheries return lists Island lobster operations
The return lists factory sites and operators, but does not establish that four separate companies operated at the same time.
Lobster factories expand
Packers around Pictou Island enlarged older factories and built new ones; the report does not identify the packers or sites.
Federal returns record three Island canneries
Federal returns record three Island canneries in 1903, 1906 and 1907.
McLeod & Stewart pack lobster on the Island
A federal record names McLeod & Stewart as an Island lobster packer. The firm’s founding date and exact factory location are not known.
John MacLeod’s marriage records Island lobster-packing work
John MacLeod’s marriage to Ethel A. MacKenzie identifies him as a lobster packer resident on Pictou Island and born at High Bank, PEI. It records both parental pairs, without locating a factory or proving land ownership.
The shore-based cannery era winds down
The evidence places the end of lobster canning between 1923 and 1926; fishing continued after the factories declined.
Federal fisheries patrol is dispatched
The federal fisheries report dates a patrol near Pictou Island and adjacent waters to 8 October 1926. This dates the recorded patrol, without establishing the scale of illegal fishing or any individual offence.
Roy MacCallum’s lobster work
Ruth Munro records Roy weighing lobsters from 1935. His family history connects this working life to the Arthur Roy and Catherine memorial.
