(IN = CBC interviewer)

IN: Now, Mayor Cates, I see a picture here of a gentleman standing on a long raft of logs. Could you tell us something about that picture?

CC: Yes, that’s a picture (I was going to get a copy of it and give it to Mr. Harvey in the Archives) that’s a picture of my grandfather Andrew Jackson Cates. He was a State-of-Mainer, but he lived in Ragged Reef, Nova Scotia – that’s right up at the end of the bay, you know. And somewhere along in the early ‘eighties a man named Robertson built, or had this raft built, my grandfather was in charge of the building. They built it on the land and launched it like a ship and it was towed to New York – my grandfather took a crew and lived on her and went right down the coast to New York with ‘em and delivered it there.

IN: Have you any idea about how large that raft would be?

CC: I think it was about six hundred feet long, but Mr. Harvey’s got all the data about it in the Archives. I should have asked him.

IN: At least the length of two football fields. It certainly appears to be that from the picture.

CC: Do you notice that all the timber is cut with an axe? It’s before the days of saws.

IN: Yes – there’d be an awful lot of work putting together a raft like that, and I suppose when the raft reached New York that they sold the timber for different purposes.

CC: I presume so.