8 Hughie MacPherson The MacPhersons have been millers for generations. Hughie's father, Malcolm "Klondike," was a miller; his three brothers were millers; and a nephew is still a miller. Hughie and his wife Fanny Smith raised their eight children in the family home adjacent to MacPherson s Mill, inher¬ ited from his father. Hughie loved the work; he also loved the camaraderie which came to be an integral part of that work. In the last years of his life, the mill operation was past its heyday, but it was still the gathering place for the area men to pass the time with boyhood memories and the latest political scuttlebutt. Iwas a sawyer most of the time. My father wasn't very well, you know, and I started sawing when I was 12 years old. I sawed in Melville there till 1916. We had the mill rented from Angus Murdoch Beaton . And then in the meantime we bought the farm down here [in Flat River ] and we built the home. Then the two [older] boys were overseas in the First World War and when they came home they worked in the mill with me for a year and a half more. My brother Bert, he got a farm in Roseberry there and he went to Roseberry to farm. And [as for] Dan — Dixon's Mill [in Belfast ] was for sale and they went down and they bought that. That left I and my father here alone again. Well, I'll tell you, it was a heavy life but it was a good life. You didn't make too much money but you had everything of your own to eat. I had about 18 customers from Murray Harbour , all captains for boats.... Then I had how many fishermen down here? Thirty-two in Belle River and Pinette and Point Prim . I had to get all the stuff.1 1. Materials used to make lobster traps. Hughie MacPherson 71