This is a photo from above, of what is left of Ocean Falls today.
It was a thrill to be back in civilisation, although it took some getting used to. A few days after our flight home, our 35 boxes of belongings arrived via Northland Shipping Co. and we farmed it out to our parents basements until we could find a place to live. Our first priority was to purchase a new car and do some travelling. It was the reason we did not stay 'till the end. We were not home one week and we heard the shocking news. Ocean Falls was to get a reprieve. We could have stayed there and continued to work, but by the sound of things, the decision to keep the mill going was just another postponement of the inevitable. I felt sorry for those who had already packed their belongings and had secured jobs in other towns. Now they had to make a decision. The two newsprint paper machines had been mothballed and only the two specialty machines were now running. The price of newsprint was falling and the cost of producing paper in the old mill was increasing.
We did our travelling across Canada that summer and had a great time. But even as we came back home to settle in, we had an ever watchful eye on the newspapers and kept in contact with a few people in Ocean Falls to hear what the eventual fate of the town would be. We continued to wonder what would have happened to us had we decided to stay a few more weeks. And then the big announcement came, ten months later, on March 16, 1973. There was a buyer!
2 comments:
Terry, I finally had the time to catch up on your postings and was so pleased to see that you have written about Ocean Falls and your beginnings. I actually read them aloud to Wayne and we enjoyed hearing and seeing all about the little town that I visited when I was only 14. Thanks for the entertainment!
Your third sister.
Thank-you, 'three of four'. When I said in the post that only two sisters came to visit us, one of mine and one of Lis's, I meant that only those two came to see us when we were married and living there. Of course, you came in late summer of '70 and stayed with 'one of four' where I was also living at the time. You helped me clean up the apartment that I had rented so Lis and I had a place to live in when we got back from our honeymoon. As I recall, we did a lot of floor and tile scrubbing. It was shining by the time we were done. A belated thanks. :)
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