Erica Clark Kenny's maternal grandmother was Dorothy Nichols (who married Thomas Evoy). She was a grandaughter of the original founder of Nicholsville (now incorporated into Deer Lake) - George Aaron Nichols Senior. Her father was William Holly Glover Nichols.

Deer Lake is located on the west coast of Newfoundland in the scenic Humber Valley. It is a small, quiet town with a population of approximately 5000. Its greatest assets are its beach, the lake, the forests surrounding the town and its location. Sites of interest include the Power House which supplies electricity to the paper mill in Corner Brook, Nicholsville bridge (soon to be replaced) which spans the Humber River and the canal which brings water from Grand Lake to the Power House. The canal is a man made one, built in the 1920's and dug out with the same equipment used to dig the Panama Canal. A new attraction, the Insectarium, is drawing tourists to the area. One of only two in Canada, it is a world class facility with a huge butterfly house and exhibits of insects, alive and mounted, from all over the world.

The Bay of Islands has a north and south shore filled with small communities such as Mount Moriah, Cox's Cove, Lark Harbour, Benoit's Cove and many others.

History of Deer Lake

The Town of Deer Lake derives its name from the lake, by which it is situated. The first Europeans who came here, not having seen caribou before, called them "deer". Caribou could be seen crossing the lake from north to south in great numbers; hence the name Deer Lake. As Mrs. Adella Boyle recalls, "When I came here in 1925, there were huge herds of caribou and deer. You could watch them cross the lake. As the first of the herd would reach the opposite bank, the last of the herd was just entering the water."

The Early Years

The first settlers to the area came in 1864 from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, under the leadership of George Aaron Nichols. At that time Newfoundland and Labrador was an independent country. They settled on the west bank of the Humber River, not far from where it flows into Deer Lake. They were loggers and trappers, who subsequently became farmers. Their community became known as Nicholsville and remained a separate community until 1994 when it and the adjoining village of Spillway became part of the Town of Deer Lake.

When the Newfoundland Railway was completed as far as Humbermouth (now Corner Brook) in 1895 it passed along the south shore of Deer Lake and was located at a place called Lakesiding. The only structures in what is now the town of Deer Lake were a way station, shed, and water tower for passing trains. Access to Nicholsville was by boat and canoe.

A Company Town

In 1922 the Newfoundland Power and Paper Co. Ltd. (N.P. & P.) made a decision to establish a pulp and paper mill on the west coast of the island. Originally, Deer Lake was to be the site for the proposed mill. However, due to advancements in technology making it more feasible to transmit electricity over long distances, and the mill site was changed to Corner Brook. The power plant would be built in Deer Lake.

Deer Lake itself was started as a construction camp, set up in 1922, for the building of the hydro electric power plant. The developer was the International Pulp and Paper Company. Concurrent with this project was the construction of the Main Dam at Junction Brook and the diversion of water from Grand Lake. Construction work began during the winter of 1922. First a crib dam was built across Junction Brook. This was a temporary measure to control the waters of Grand Lake prior to the construction of the Main Dam. Water was diverted from grand Lake to the power plant by digging a nine mile long canal from Grand Lake to a point just above Deer Lake. From the gatehouse at the hydro electric plant at the upper end of Deer Lake. This phase of construction took place between 1922 and 1925. In 1929 additional penstocks were constructed and the power house was enlarged.

The company built a hospital in 1922 for the care of its employees. The doctors were Dr. C.C. MacDonald, Dr. Harrington and Dr. Young. Some of the nurses were Belle Callahan, Augusta Shorter (Hinton), Mary Dalton (Hicks) and the two Scott sisters. The hospital eventually came to serve the people of the community, as well as the surrounding area, including Corner Brook. It was located on the site of the present-day Seniors Citizens Club.

By 1925 a townsite was constructed, together with a railroad terminal, freight sheds, maintenance depots, staff houses, churches, numerous businesses and a small hospital. Housing for company staff was electrically heated and serviced by water and sewer, as was the Amalgamated School and Roman Catholic School. From any point in Deer Lake there is a magnificent view of the lake, river and mountains.

It is estimated that some 3,000 men were employed by the N.P. & P. during the years 1923-25. The firm of W.I. Bishop built the Main Dam. Northern Construction Co. did the excavation for both the power house and the Humber Canal. They used huge steam-powered drag lines which had also been used to build the Panama Canal. These are said to have been the largest in the world at that time. Fraser-Brace Construction Co. built the power house and forebay works. The main contractors, the Armstrong-Whitworth Co. erected the transmission lines and installed the penstocks. The construction was completed and the power plant opened in 1925. Apart from a couple of machines, it was mostly manual labor that built this huge complex.

In order to construct this power plant, the town had to be built in a hurry. The company involved, N.P. & P., moved in and built a few houses to provide for their employees. Homes for those in management positions were built on what is now known as Nicholsville Road. One old fellow remarked, "This was called Millionaire Street. That's because the big shots lived there." Log cabins were also built for other employees along Chapel Hill and Middle Road. With the build up of Deer Lake, the train station phased out in Lake Siding and around 1923 was moved to a location on lower Main Street. For the people of Deer Lake, the arrival of the train was a cause for excitement. As Mr. Gus Bryant remembers, "She used to run three times a week with passengers. That's the only bit of excitement that was in Deer Lake then. People would be down to the train waiting for it to come, and when she'd come in, all hands would be lined up, waiting for the train to come to look and see who was aboard of her."

People moved in from all over Newfoundland to get work. As one person recollects, "All you could see were shacks. You know, tar-paper shacks." These were hastily constructed homes built by sticking up posts and covering them with what was then called ‘tarpaper'. There was even a temporary settlement of sorts set up at Power House Siding.

While some of the workers lived in Deer Lake, many decided to live where they were working. Thus, other small places sprang up. One such settlement was at Upper Canal, approximately five miles southeast of Deer Lake. There was a fifteen to twenty room hotel owned by Fraser-Brace Construction, and about twelve family homes. They had a boardwalk connecting these homes. It was 600 to 800 feet long and was about three feet above the ground. A train stop was also located there. People there were mostly employed with the company excavating the canal. They stayed until the work was completed and then moved into Deer Lake.

Another small settlement was established at the Forebay, also known as Aitken's Square. These people lived where they worked, due to the fact that, for the first few years of operation the forebay was operated manually. When automation was brought in, people moved into Deer Lake. This move was prompted by two things. One was that work for the area was completed. The other was an unfortunate accident.

In May of 1930, a three year old girl was playing near the Spillway after Sunday school. She fell in and no one was able to help due to the dangerous, high waters. This convinced the people of the Forebay to move to Deer Lake. The danger posed by flooding and the unpredictable waters near the penstocks, proved too high a risk to continue living there. The International Pulp and Paper Co. offered to buy the homes from the people, both as an encouragement to move, and also as an aid to the families during resettlement.

There were also a couple of houses built up around the Intake Dam, or ‘Intec' as it was more commonly known. These were built by the company for the men working there. After the work was completed, some of these houses were relocated to Deer Lake. The Main Dam had the same kind of set-up, and one of these houses stills remains there today.

After the completion of the power plant, the men had more time to set down permanent roots. The town began to spread out and new houses were built and Deer Lake became a logging town. The men would go into the woods camps and often stay for weeks on end. Conditions there were sometimes deplorable. Mr. Lon Ball, who worked at Glide Brook, described the floor of his father's camp, "I tell you what it was mats, hooked mats on the lumber floor, and you could peep down through the floor anytime in the day or night and you could see the rats moving around, some of them a foot long. But they never ever bothered us. Never bothered anyone. And a camp without rats at that particular time, for the next 20 years, wasn't a camp at all if there wasn't any rats there. They were our companions; that was the only friends we had."

Most men remember one of two things. It was either the hardship in the camps or the funny things that happened there. On the humorous side is a story by Mr. Warrick Dinney. He explained how there used to be a radio broadcast for the loggers. This was called the "Woodland Echo". Mr. Clayton Locklin was the announcer. The families of the loggers could send in requests for them on special occasions. This would be heard once a week on Friday nights. He mentioned one occasion when a lady sent in a request for her husband on their wedding anniversary. The request was for the song "Send me the Pillow That You Dream On". He had been using a junk of birch wood as a pillow because the pillows provided were very thin and they would use whatever they could get to provide extra elevation. The other men wanted to package it and send it to her.

Commerce

The first store in the area was a company store, but around 1925 private businesses began to develop. There were various stores, two bowling alleys and an ice cream parlor. There was even a tennis court set up on Nicholsville Road.

Mrs. Sadie Kirby reminisces, "I worked at Goodyear Humber Stores at Christmas time. At that time, the parents would come in and get their toys and all for their children, but it was never taken home. The majority of them left it at the store... About eleven o'clock in the night, Billy King would start loading up all the parcels in the stockroom...This was Christmas Eve night now, and he would take us all on a sleigh and he had bells on the horse and that used to make a lovely noise in the still of the night. And he would go around to all the houses that had a parcel and the bells ringing; you would think it was Santa Claus coming."

Religion

With the area developing so rapidly, the need for religious and educational facilities became necessary. With such a varied population, there were also varied denominations. At first, the different ministers would just visit but eventually the parishes were set up with ministers stationed to serve them. The Church of England and the Salvation Army were the first in 1924. The United Church was built in 1925, the Pentecostal Assemblies came in 1926 and the Roman Catholic in 1927. The Jehovah's Witnesses established themselves in the late 1930's.

Education

Schools were built in the outlying communities of St. Judes, Reidville and Junction Brook. With development in the area, these schools were either torn down, moved or decreased in enrollment, and the people in these communities began to use the Deer Lake school system. The schools changed from tar paper shacks to modern buildings. The first school was a one room tar paper shack near the power house, built in 1923, with an attendance of 18 for the year. The first teacher was a Mr. Jacobs. Due to the increase in population, it was decided to build a one-room school on the corner of Spruce and Crescent Streets. This later expanded to include a log cabin across the street. In 1929, this school burned. It was replaced by a four-room, two story building in 1932. This was the first electrically heated school in the province.

In 1932, the Salvation Army built a one-room school on Church Street. Mr. Len Burridge, who attended this school recalls, "One year there was a grand number of 120.. .It might be three o'clock in the evening before the teacher would get along to speak to you, poor girl." This school had one room and one teacher, who taught grades kindergarten to eleven.

In 1969, the Salvation Army, Anglican and United Churches formed the present day Integrated System which now boasts two elementary schools and one high school. The Roman Catholic School Board had a school which taught from kindergarten to grade twelve. It was officially opened on December 3, 1974. The Pentecostal School was officially opened in September, 1986. It's a far cry from when Mr. Albert Boulos attended school. He recalls, "I often boast about coming first in my class. However, I was the only student in grade eleven that year."

The community of Deer Lake continued to grow and was eventually connected to the rest of Newfoundland. According to the 1935 census, Deer Lake had a population of 1,753 and Lake Siding had forty-seven. As work was completed in Lake Siding, the residents began to move to Deer Lake and elsewhere to settle.

There were seventeen businesses in 1935. The International Pulp and Paper Company employed 300 loggers. The canal system aided in the transportation of pulpwood, causing an escalation of woods operations. The town became a divisional headquarters for woods operation for the Humber Valley and eventually for the whole of the Northern Peninsula.

The highway between Deer Lake and Corner Brook was completed in December 1967.

Incorporation

Deer Lake became an important maintenance center for Bonne Bay and the Northern Peninsula. areas. The town was incorporated in 1951, with Phil Hodder as its first mayor.

In 1955, a permanent airstrip was built near Deer Lake at Junction Brook, east of the town. The people of that area were resettled at Deer Lake. A site survey was done by the Department of Transport in 1953. Preliminary construction began in 1954. In the fall of 1955, a gravel strip 200 feet by 4000 feet was in use by small aircraft. In the beginning, it had flights to Buchans, Frenchman's Cove and St. John's, and was community owned. As Mr. Ross Anthony remembers: "The airport was there, it was very small. The terminal building wasn't as it is now. It was only a small place. The people had to stand outside to wait for the plane. It was just a little shelter, that's all, and nothing paved." The Department of Transport paved the runway and constructed a terminal in 1963. The airport is now owned and operated by the Federal Department of Transportation. Despite its small size, it is one of the towns largest employers, both directly and indirectly, and is a vital link to surrounding areas within the province and the rest of Canada.

Service Center

The logging industry has declined over the years, but various other industries have been developed to counteract this. In all, Deer Lake has grown and continues to grow. The town has changed from a resource center to a service center. Employment ranges from construction to service and sales. Since the amalgamation of Deer Lake, Nicholsville, and Spillway the population as of 1996 was 5,222 (Statistics Canada Census).

Mr. Arthur Green proudly stated, "I have no regrets, and as far as living here, I've been in just about every place around Newfoundland, I've been on the mainland, but I wouldn't take any of them for Deer Lake."

Celebrating 50 Years

In 2000 Deer Lake celebrated 50 years of incorporation. The celebration lasted from December of 1990 to December of 2000 with numerous events including, New Millennium Family Celebrations, Civic Dinner and Pride of the Town Awards, Come Home Week Celebrations, Wreath laying ceremony at Cenotaph, tree plating ceremony, Town Barbeque and numerous other services, festivals, sporting events and gatherings culminating in a closing Ceremony in December 2000.