Places & Visiting

Names of the road

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.

A road to the working shore

Factory Road preserves the memory of a North Shore cannery landscape. Historical photographs show large wooden industrial buildings, a horse-drawn carriage, shoreline structures and people at the water’s edge. The dates, operators and exact building locations in these views remain unidentified.

Earlier mapping shows a trail or portage toward a cannery, but it does not establish that the modern road follows every part of the same alignment or carried its present name in the nineteenth century.

New Factory Road and New Factory Cove

Ron remembers the road and cove by their New Factory names. Local knowledge places the cove at marker 12 on the PIHS map, separate from John Dans Cove; the marker does not show an exact factory footprint.

The names preserve memories of the factory shore, although the operator of each building is not known.

Factories around the Island

The 1895 federal table lists McClure Bros. at West End and North Side, D. McKenzie at North Side, and James Hogg at East End. The entries show factories in several parts of the Island, but do not locate either North Side operator at this road or at New Factory Cove.

Federal returns record three Pictou Island canneries in each of 1903, 1906 and 1907. The number of canneries changed over time; the returns do not establish that the same buildings operated throughout.

Reading the photographs

Ray Hayman’s collection preserves a horse-drawn carriage among substantial industrial buildings and children beside shoreline buildings and wharf structures. These images show the character of factory life. Their exact dates, operators and building locations remain unidentified.

The cove and its historical name

John Dans Cove is the official geographic name; John Dan’s Cove is a local spelling. MacKay’s 1891 account records “Lobster Factory Cove,” describing a white sandy cove receiving two small brooks near a lobster factory. Ron MacDonald identifies that historic name with today’s John Dans Cove.

The cove is named for John Dan MacLeod, a Prince Edward Islander associated with its factory. Brenda Spence MacLeod records that he and a group of Prince Edward Island fishermen opened a factory there when the place was known as Factory Cove. A Prince Edward Island legislative biography also identifies John Dan as Norman MacLeod’s brother and cannery partner. The factory’s dates, legal ownership and later operators remain uncertain.

John MacLeod in the documentary record

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.

A working North Shore

More than one cannery operated along the North Shore. Federal records list McClure Bros. and D. McKenzie at North Side in 1895, and McLeod & Stewart of High Banks, Prince Edward Island, at Pictou Island in 1905. The records do not place each operation at John Dans Cove.

Local accounts remember a factory at the cove, though the dates, owners and positions of individual buildings remain uncertain. The cannery symbol on the map is an illustration informed by Ray Hayman photographs and historical maps; it does not show an exact building footprint or a particular year.

John Dan’s Way and Campbell Lane

A 2023 community-map reference records the name John Dan’s Way. Local knowledge identifies the same route toward the cove as Campbell Lane, also written Campbell’s Lane. The sequence and dates of these names have not been established.

The lane is remembered as wide enough for horses and buggies travelling to the factory area. Its exact age and original course are uncertain.

Campbell Lane lies east of Sutherland Memorial Church, more directly behind the schoolhouse. The dotted line shows the remembered route approximately. The newer, private Josh & Julia Way runs roughly parallel; the map does not establish public access along the older route.

Photographs and the changing shore

Kenneth MacCallum’s history includes a photograph captioned “John Dan’s Cove on the north shore of Pictou Island.” A separate photograph shows a North Shore lobster factory; it is not known whether that photograph shows this cove.

Brenda Spence MacLeod recalls Hurricane Fiona exposing traces of factories at John Dan’s Cove and the New Factory site before the sand covered them again. Others remember brickwork at the cove; the age and identity of the individual remains are uncertain.

Roger Point appears on nineteenth-century navigational mapping and was firmly established as a maritime place name by the later 1800s. Sailing directions published in 1891 described the point as sandy and identified it as the best landing for boats on Pictou Island. In an era before dependable wharves, regular ferries and modern roads, a sheltered or workable landing place could be an important part of everyday Island life.

The point later became associated with another kind of connection across the Strait. Federal Public Works records show that in July 1921 the government cableship C.G.S. Tyrian laid a new submarine telephone cable between Pictou and Pictou Island. The Public Works report records repairs to the Pictou Island cable on 23–26 May 1923. Later Canadian Sailing Directions identify the submarine-cable route specifically as running between Roger Point on Pictou Island and Widow Point on the mainland.

A later cable linked Roger Point and Widow Point. Whether the first cable in 1921 used the same landings is uncertain. Telephone service gave Islanders a new way to speak directly with the mainland, alongside older forms of signalling and travel.

Mid-twentieth-century aerial photographs show open fields, farmsteads and roads around central Pictou Island, with a shoreline less wooded than it is today. They offer a glimpse of the farming and maritime landscape around Roger Point.

Roger Point is the official geographic name; some Islanders also say Roger’s Point. Rogers families lived on Pictou Island, but it is not known how the point got its name.

From a landmark and boat landing to a link in the Island’s telephone connection, Roger Point is one of the places where Islanders met the Strait and the mainland beyond.

A long fishing history

A lobster factory is documented at the East End by the 1890s. The federal fisheries record for 1895 lists an East End establishment under Jas. Hogg. Factory work formed one part of a wider shore economy that included catching lobster, landing supplies, handling boats and maintaining fishing gear.

Fishing and shore work continued after local canning ended. The shanties tell part of that longer story.

Staying for the season

In an oral history recorded for the Pictou–Antigonish Regional Library’s lobster project in 2000, Lorraine MacMillan recalled mainland fishermen coming to the Island for the lobster season and staying in small East End fish shanties. She also remembered seasonal accommodation for cannery workers who lived too far away to walk to work.

The shanties provided seasonal accommodation and space for fishing work, with traps, boats and gear nearby. Kenneth MacCallum’s history reproduces a photograph of Clarence and Judson Nicolle, fishermen from Prince Edward Island, at an East End shanty in the 1990s. Its caption also identifies a newer shanty in the background—a reminder that the buildings changed over time.

The shore in photographs

Photographs clearly document the shanty landscape by the 1950s. A 1959 view reproduced by MacCallum shows the buildings from Lauchie Dan MacCallum’s house; its caption identifies a long, narrow boathouse. Later photographs show shanties and traps in August 1980, the Nicolles in the 1990s, and the shoreline from the air in August 2005.

Together, the photographs show the shore at different times. The boathouse is identified in the 1959 view; the histories of individual buildings visible today are not all known.

The cannery and the shanties

The former lobster factory and the surviving shanties tell different parts of the East End story. Some of today’s shanties may have been built after the cannery years.

MacCallum suggested where the factories may have stood, though their exact locations are unknown. The map marks the shanty area.

Still part of Island life

The shanties remain on the shoreline and are still used today, part of a working fishing community.

A reef with more than one possible name

East End Reef lies near the northern end of the Island. A place-name atlas suggests it may be the historic Seal Rock, although that connection remains uncertain. Seal Rock was the name of a rock or reef; Seal Point was a name for the East End point. Asadalia Reef is a separate feature southwest of the East End breakwater.

Navigation and local knowledge

The reef is part of waters familiar to Island boaters. The map shows its approximate location near the northern shore, not the reef’s surveyed extent or a precise wreck position.

A 1908 casualty record places the Calluna at Seal Rock in the Pictou Island area, but does not give a precise wreck position.

A harbour structure

The East End Breakwater sheltered boats and the people who worked along the shore. Nearby stood fish shanties and the historic cannery.

The breakwater over time

A registry plan dates from 1938, and a breakwater is shown by 1954. Later harbour records distinguish the East and West Breakwaters. Its original construction date and the full history of repairs and replacement are not yet known.

A photograph catalogue describes fishing shanties beside a cove sheltered by a breakwater outside the picture.

Life along the shore

With shelter from the breakwater, fishermen could handle boats, move traps and gear, and carry on seasonal work along the East End shore.

A factory on the shore

An 1895 federal fisheries record lists an East End factory under Jas. Hogg. It does not identify a surviving building as that factory.

Where were the factories?

In a caption to his August 2005 aerial photograph, Kenneth MacCallum suggested where the Shedd & Knox and Magee factories may have stood, using the park, brook, shanties and beach roads as guides. Their exact footprints are unknown.

On the map, a numbered label sits offshore for clarity and a dotted line points toward the general factory area on shore.

Separate from the fish shanties

The former factories and the fish shanties tell different parts of the East End story. The shanties remain in use, but not all necessarily date from the cannery years, and none has been identified as a former factory building.

Asadalia — 5 November 1827

Asadalia is the earliest documented shipwreck in this exhibit. On 10 December 1827, The Standard of London printed a short notice in ‘Ship News — By This Day’s Post’ on page 3:

‘The Asadalia, from Liverpool, was lost on Pictou Island, on the 5th ult.’

‘Ult.’ means the previous month: the notice reports a loss on 5 November 1827. The notice says the vessel came from Liverpool and was lost on Pictou Island.

Local fishermen associate the wreck with Asadalia Reef southwest of the East End breakwater. The newspaper records the Island loss; the reef’s name and more specific location are preserved through local knowledge.

Known from shore and water

Asadalia Reef lies southwest of the East End breakwater. Islanders describe a reef visible from shore and familiar to people who travel these waters by boat. Fishermen know to keep clear of it, particularly at low tide.

The reef’s name lives on in local knowledge of the shore and sea. It is separate from East End Reef and the Seal Rock locality beyond the Island’s northern tip.

The remembered shipwreck

Local accounts associate Asadalia Reef with a shipwreck remembered as Asadalia. The reef and the wreck story remain familiar to former Island fishermen, connecting maritime history with a hazard that people still recognize today.

Local accounts recorded in September 2026 include recollections from former fishermen Ron MacDonald, Darrell Rankin and Almer MacDonald. Darrell described the reef and its wreck association; the other accounts corroborated familiarity with both. A local account identified the locality as southwest of the breakwater.

These local accounts connect the reef with the shipwreck. The newspaper notice records Asadalia’s loss at Pictou Island in 1827.

A name carried forward

According to Darrell Rankin, his son, Jason Rankin, named Asadalia Fisheries in honour of the reef and shipwreck’s history. The name carries that maritime memory into a later generation of the fishing family.

A 2021 Fisheries and Aquaculture Loan Board profile identifies Jason with Asadalia Fisheries Ltd. and shows Jason and his father, Darrell, fishing together off Pictou Island’s East End. The explanation of the company’s name is attributed to Darrell’s account.

Locating the reef

The map marks the reef’s approximate location southwest of the breakwater. It does not show the reef’s surveyed extent, the wreck’s position on the seabed or a safe passage. No particular wreck remains have been identified here.

Remembering the location

Ron MacDonald, son of the West End lightkeeper, remembered the cannery in this area above the beach. The map marks the general location, not the outlines of its buildings or property.

This West End site is separate from John Dans Cove, once known as Lobster Factory Cove, and from Factory Road on the North Shore.

Factories around the Island

An 1895 federal table lists McClure Bros. at West End, along with factories at North Side and East End. The record does not establish who operated the cannery remembered here or exactly where it stood.

Explore seasonal fishing and factory work in The Lobster Island exhibit.

A glimpse of cannery life

A Ray Hayman photograph shows a horse-drawn carriage among large wooden factory buildings. It gives a sense of Island cannery life, although the site has not been identified as West End. The map illustration is also representative rather than a reconstruction of these particular buildings.