Mahone Bay Old School_A Life and Times_Bob Sayer

Heather Anne Getson in the
new [2006] Bluenose: The Ocean
Knows Her Name [Nimbus,
2006] pays tribute, page 25…
‘…they [the masts and rigging
and sails] had to be “stepped
mathematically perfect”..’
From Fred Mosher’s 1993 letter to the Editor of the Progess/Bulletin
‘It was moved from the yard over to the street facing the pond, then out over the
edge of that cliff like hill, into space, supported by thousands of huge wooden
blocks…Mr. Mader would not permit us children to be closer than Dr. Brent’s
house, by the pond on old station road [Clairmont St., the corner house, now
no.35]…Well we could sneak over back....and watch this huge building in the sky.
When it was out clear of the hill, the men would jack the school up, remove
one layer of blocks and lower the school to the set below. Then they’d jack it up
again, remove another layer and drop the school another foot. That took all day
and by evening it was off the road, onto its present foundations.’
Freeman D.-“Tom”- Mader [decked out in his Orders regalia]
Freeman was the father of Ossie Mader [ builder, town policeman for a while
in the 1930s, and school board member and chair in the late 1940s and most
of the ‘50s], and the grandfather of Bobby Mader [long time postmaster,
school badminton coach and Mahone Bay Lions Club activist]. Bobby lives
in his grandfather’s house on School Street.
Photo on left: Courtesy Bobby
Mader
His name was known
outside the province. He was
called to Saint John N.B. to
demonstrate how ships could
be launched sideways [a common
practice in the shallow
waters of Mahone Bay] into
the narrow river. The Bluenose
rigging crew was mostly from
Mahone, and included master
sail maker and school ‘Founding
Father,’ Charlie Begin.
‘Tom’ was a master mover,
hoister, launcher and rigger. The picture on the next page shows a celebrated
incident in May 1920 that would have been the talk of the school and the
town.
Tom Mader was head of the team that transported the biggest yet ship’s diesel
engine to the McLean shipyard from the railway station. It was put on the
wharf where he had devised an “A” frame and two tackles, one for each mast,
to raise then lower the engine into its position. No small feat in itself, but it
also had to be arranged in accordance to the high and low tides. The engine
was installed in the schooner Cote Nord, soon to be a noted rum-runner.
48
Tom had a fine reputation. His main claim to fame was as chief of the crew that
set up the sails and rigging of the original Bluenose. The rigging, done under the
pressure of time in five days, was crucial to the Bluenose’s racing success.