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Local Sawmill 1895 (?) Collingwood Ontario
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Piles of lumber waiting to be shipped out from a local sawmill.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number X968.994.1
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Shipyard Employees 1890 (?) Collingwood Shipyards Huron Street Collingwood Ontario
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The shipwrights were vital to the work of shipbuilding. They were responsible for ensuring that the ship was built perfectly according to plan. This photograph was taken during the days of wooden ship building, before 1900.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number 995.2.1
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Archie McCall's Tools 1890 (?) Collingwood Museum
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One of the Morrill company's many ship's carpenters, Archie McCall owned these tools. More than half a century after McCall finished work on his last vessel, one of his descendants donated his full toolbox to the Collingwood Museum.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number 995.2.1
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Longshoremen 1890 Collingwood Ontario
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Collingwood also had a number of land lubbers involved in marine businesses. These fine gentlemen were the longshoremen who loaded and unloaded cargo from the sailing vessels that made their way into the port here. The flat shovel that many of them are holding in the photograph was the main tool of the trade.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number X974.19.1
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Northern Navigation Co. Officials March 1905 St. Paul Street Collingwood Ontario
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The Northern Navigation Company of Ontario provided passenger service between Great Lakes ports. This building later became the administration offices of the Collingwood Shipyard. Note the Bryan Manufacturing factory in the background.
Northern Navigation Co. Officials, At Collingwood, March 1905. Left to right - H. H. Gildersleeve, A. H. Phelps, John Bell, C. B. George, C. A. Macdonald, G. V Westcott, N. A. Rule, Robert Crawford, W. H.Smith, C. H. Nicholson, Harry Hurdon, boy Reginald Richmond.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number X972.134.1
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Mayor John Chamberlain 1930 (?) Collingwood Ontario
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Mayor John Chamberlain was instrumental in gaining Federal government awareness of Collingwood's importance. His campaign paid off in improvements to the harbour, and was likely one of the reasons that the second dry dock was built in 1903.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number X969.272.1
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1900 was a turning point in the Shipyard at Collingwood. It was decided by management to turn to brand new technology, as other shipyards had done, and begin building ships of steel. This had a huge impact not only on the workers at the "Yard," whose trades changed dramatically, but also on the entire community, as the Shipyard no longer needed local lumber mills and began to have steel brought in by rail. |
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Huronic 24 December 1939 Collingwood Harbour
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With the beginning of a new century came a different way of building ships. The first steel hull from the new technology was the Huronic. The change no doubt put good carpenters out of work, but the young workers were given new trades, working with steel.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number X968.758.1
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Second Dry Dock 1900 (?) Collingwood Shipyards Huron Street Collingwood Ontario
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To the left is the second dry dock, built 1903. The new dry dock allowed repair and refit work to be carried out while the launch basin and dry dock to the west was still in use.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number X971.845.1
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View of Shipyard 1900 (?) Collingwood Shipyards Huron Street Collingwood Ontario
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When it was operating at full capacity, the Collingwood shipyard employed more than 1,000 people in a town of less than 5,000. When the families of shipyard workers and the support businesses are factored in, an estimated one in every three people earned their living from the shipyard at the time.
For decades, the Chamber of Commerce held a ceremony with the captain of the first vessel into harbour in the spring. The lucky captain was given a top hat.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number 002.73.6
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Collingwood Shipyards 1910 (?) Collingwood Shipyards Huron Street Collingwood Ontario
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Bicycles formed the major part of the traffic heading to and from the Yard. At one time, a local business was known as the "Bicycle Hospital." Many local folks remember the floods of bicycles as workers left the Yard to head home at the end of the day.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number X974.816.1
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Collingwood Packing Company 1916 (?) Collingwood Ontario
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The Collingwood Packing Company was ideally situated with Collingwood as a base. Steamers and new steel vessels, larger than anyone in the British Empire had seen before, were built at the Shipyard during the time the meat packing company was in business. Their products could be sent all over the country with the close connections to the rail and water routes that Collingwood could offer.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number X971.774.1
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Collinwood Meat Packing Plant
1916 (?) Collingwood Ontario
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The importance of the Collingwood Meat Packing Co. was highlighted during the Second World War, when meat was packed and shipped overseas to help in the war effort.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number X971.774.1
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Globe Hotel, Currently Mt. View Hotel 1903 (?) Huron Street Collingwood Ontario
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The Globe Hotel, later the Mountain View Hotel, had a history of being a place of solace for local shipyard workers, even during Prohibition. Wives would often call up to find out if their husbands were still there after work.
Captain Alexander MacDougall, who owned shares in the shipyard in the early 1900s and was the inventor of the whaleback steamers, wrote in his diary that he often watched the workers in the "Yard" from his hotel room window to see who was slacking.
Photo credit: Collingwood Museum Collection Accession Number 997.3.6
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