Going, going, gone

BY NADINE ARMSTRONG

The Hants Journal

NovaNewsNow.com

One of Windsor’s most prominent landmarks has been torn down. As of April 22, the 125-year-old smokestack, which marked the site of the former Nova Scotia Textiles Mill, is no longer standing.

Mill Island Developers Terry Hines, Kevin Keefe and project manager Cathy Cox looked on as the original brick chimney came crashing down. Known as Windsor’s own “Leaning Tower of Pisa”, the historical chimney had dominated the town’s skyline until the upper portion was replaced with a steel smokestack. Although the stack was considerably less attractive, it continued serve as a visual gateway to the town until now.

The original plan by Mill Island developers was to preserve the stack as a functioning piece of the new brewery, but once engineers took a closer look they deemed the structure unsafe for use.

Keefe, owner of Granite Brewery in Halifax, plans to construct a similar brewhouse on the site and said he had hoped to replace the stack with a similar leaning chimney as a tribute to its history. “We’ve tried to figure out how we could make a galvanized stack that would lean, but we couldn’t find anything that would work,” he said.

Taken apart in two sections

The 88-foot, three-ton steel stack was taken apart in two sections and lowered to the ground by Keddy’s Crane Rentals Ltd., which conducted the entire demolition. “I’m glad they know what they’re doing,” Hines said.

He said they did everything they could to save the stack, but it had become increasingly unstable as construction at the site progressed.

All the same, Cox couldn’t help but feel sentimental as she watched the stack being dismantled. “I remember it as a kid; you always saw it coming into town.” But once it’s gone, it’s gone forever, she said.

The Windsor Cotton Mill, later Nova Scotia Textiles, was built between 1881 and 1883. In 1915, the Eureka Woolen Manufacturing Company relocated to the Nesbitt St. location when their original site was destroyed by fire. The company was contracted to supply underwear for the troops in Europe during World War One.

In 1920, J.E. Mortimer came to Windsor from England to restructure the company and in 1922 Nova Scotia Textiles Limited was incorporated as primarily a long underwear manufacturer. The company was taken over by his grandson, J. Edward Macdonald, in 1956 and he continued to run the company until the plant closed in 2006.

Nova Scotia Textiles and was one the area’s largest employers, manufacturing sweat wear, T-shirts and winter underwear, exporting to regions throughout Japan and the United States. Mill Island Limited purchased the building in 2006 to create a high-end retail and condominium development.