9. Wild Bay was a Company Town All Right!

The papers had told Richard a great deal about the early history of Wild Bay but very little about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of John Jones and Emily Jeffrey.
He already knew that The Labrador Development Woods Company had driven through the road they were walking along sometime between 1934–1936.The road marked the north – west boundary of “Dog’s Town” as that area between the shoreline and the road had became known in its earliest days. All families had their own dog teams as their main form of transport as well as the boats they built for themselves.
One week after the arrival of James Owen Jeffrey and Kevin Quigley on August 4th 1934 a huge party was thrown aboard their ship the “SS Kellisle” to celebrate the start of operations and the naming of the site. It turned out to be the mother of all parties and quickly spilled over onto the shore. As well as the hundred or so men they had taken on in St.John’s, folk came in from far and wide. They were attracted by the possibility of permanent jobs. They came in their party clothes, young and old, men and women, boys and girls. Boxes and boxes of Magnetlite Ale were stacked up twenty feet high on the jetties. Canteen tents were erected; mountains of food laid out on trestle tables, buntings flapped noisily strung up on wires from poles and trees in the strong onshore breeze . Accordion players, mouth organists and percussion drums provided the Country & Western, Foot–Stomping music that carried far across The Bay. The swinging, swirling and tooing and froing of dancers all added to the wild-west pioneering atmosphere of the celebration. Whilst over at the far end of the ship the marvellously nimble male tap dancers from Harry’s Cove were concentrating on putting on their best ever show.