CHAPTER VIII.
FREE SPEECH Fifty years ago Blackwater town was a sawmill village on the Blackwater River which furnished the power for the first little sawmill set up by Grant Maitland's father.
Down the river came the sawlogs in the early spring when the water was high, to be caught and held by a "boom" in a pond from which they were hauled up a tramway to the saw.

A quarter of a mile up stream a mill race, tapping the river, led the water to an "overshot wheel" in the early days, later to a turbine, thus creating the power necessary to drive the mill machinery.

When the saw was still the water overflowed the "stop-logs" by the "spillway" into the pond below.
But that mill race furnished more than power to the mill.

It furnished besides much colourful romance to the life of the village youth of those early days.

For down the mill race they ran their racing craft, jostling and screaming, urging with long poles their laggard flotillas to victory.