Mill memoriesIn 1904, William McGillivray's father, Dougal McGillivray, came from Canada to work at the Bloedel Donovan Mill on Lake Whatcom. "There used to be a shack town for the millworkers right there at the mill," said the 94-year-old unofficial mayor of Silver Beach. "I had two sisters born over there."
McGillivray, "Mac" to his friends, sits in the house he built in 1931. Near the shores of Lake Whatcom, his home is half a mile away from Bloedel Donovan Park, former site of the mill. He points out the window to the house next door. "I was born right there in 1909," he said with a grin.
McGillivray finished eighth grade and became a shingle worker at Bloedel Donovan when he was 14. He shared the job with his younger brother, Ray.
"Flatcars would come in on the Milwaukee or the Northern Pacific line and take the shingles to the bay and they'd load 'em up," he said.
Mac can remember expansive log booms floating down the 12-mile lake to the mill.
"It would take the tugboat all day to get the booms to us."
He rifles through a near century of memories and comes up with an old one, when Academy Street was just a stand of trees.
"There was a log chute that went right up Toad Lake hill. It was made out of wood, and they would grease it and then send the logs down. We used to play on the chute when we was kids," he recalled, slapping the arm of his chair with a guffaw. "People don't remember that, but I do!"
Mac worked in the mill until 1957, when Bloedel Donovan closed its doors for good. The end of his career in the timber industry echoes the live of so many others.
"Well, you know, they cut all the timber off from around here," he said. "And when they got all through with the timber, they just shut down and that was it!"