Hoist, soon a thing of the past.
The last hoist on James Street sits outside the Star Office but will soon be no more. While building a new sidewalk construction crews will cover the ancient hoist that first served as the building’s coal chute.
Cody Storm Cooper/Beacon Star
PARRY SOUND – For some, the old steel doors on the sidewalk in front of the Star Office on James Street are a historical part of Parry Sound. Soon those doors will be no more.
Part of the $4.8 million project to rebuild James, Mary and Seguin Streets includes sidewalks.
On Wednesday afternoon Triton Engineering Services Limited inspector Neil Kingston took a look at the ancient hoist and decided how it could be permanently covered up from the inside and outside.
“We’ve got to put a sidewalk across there and we can’t keep (the hoist) there,” Kingston said.
Starting yesterday crews are building a concrete wall on the inside where the door is in the North Star office’s basement.
“What’s going to happen is where the door is now, the main door that goes down, that’s going to become a concrete wall and then the hole will get filled with gravel and the sidewalk will be concrete and we’ll be done,” he said.
Former general manager/publisher Fred Heidman spent 47 years working at the North Star, first as a compositor, and remembers the hoist’s humble beginnings.
“Historically it was the coal chute, when the furnace was fired with coal,” said Heidman. “After that, it was used to lower rolls of newsprint into the basement where the presses were to have the North Star printed. We used to take, for example, huge rolls of newsprint that weighed approximately half a ton and lowered it down through that hole to go through the presses that were in the back.
“A couple of young, foolish guys would put a rope around it and lower it down that hole,” he said with a chuckle. “It was all man-powered; a set of ramps there and it rolled down the ramps to the basement.”
Around 1969 publisher Harvey Wing installed the first hoist just before the presses were removed from the basement.
“What it was, was a car hoist from a garage, it was oil driven, that’s how we lowered the papers down,” Heidman said. “Then when that gave up the ghost, that’s when we went to the electric one.
“I was thinking about this the other day, when Pollard’s (IDA) used to be across the road, and the Met, they used to have (a hoist) as well. All their supplies used to shoot down through that hoist into the basement area. Ours is the very last one on the street to go.”