Vol. 43, No. 2

“When i think about Birch Island, one of my thoughts is ice cream. I’m not sure how old i would have been, but i was old enough to think about making money, and opened a business. I was probably about fourteen years old. Decided one summer to buy a hand ice cream maker, that you put ice in and put salt on the ice and you make ice cream. I did that all summer…”-Hector Blake. Happy Valley Goose Bay,2012.

“It wasn’t a rich existence but we had a lot of fun growing up on Birch Island-at least i did. To me, money wasn’t really what made the fun. We didn’t look for things that cost a lot of money to have fun. We just played with each other and thought up games and all that stuff…”-Lillian Beehymer.”Mom Did Whatever She Could”,2017

“Jean Blake Crane said that when she was a young teenager, her father Bert Blake moved their family from the south side North West River (now known as Sheshatshui) to Birch Island. She said you could see the pile of logs with moss growing on them that the Dickie Lumber Company left around. She said that they would clean the moss off the ends of the logs to see who had owned the logs; they had the owners’ names branded on the ends of them with a hot iron…”-Max Blake. “Lake Melville People”,2018