Antigonish Heritage Museum

Angus Breac MacDonald was a native of Cloverville who worked as a lineman in the Boston area. His life is chronicled in the manuscript The Spirit of Service- Angus MacDonald by a niece Eleanor J MacDonald in 1988. An excerpt reads… ‘On April 13, 1884, I left my home in Antigonish intending to go to New York City to seek employment…this was my first experience with railroad travel. Everything about traveling was so new to me that every inconsequential activity aboard the train and every changing scene through which we passed engraved itself upon my mind. The coming and going of passengers at the different stations along the route was particularly exciting. There was only one train a day going through these communities and it seemed as though everyone in every town came down to the station to exchange news with the passengers and the train crew, or to welcome an occasional returning son or give another a send off. After the first fifteen or twenty such stops the novelty of them began to wear off and we joined the other passengers on the train in complaining about the length of time that these stops took and the delay that they caused us in reaching our destination.’

Date: 1882

Reference:  Antigonish Heritage Museum 2006.008.001

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