If only these walls could talk
Old bootlegger house in Port Medway has plenty of stories to tell
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With a little imagination, you can picture the well-worn tire tracks of thirsty customers headed for the back door of this bootlegger house in Port Medway in the 1960s.
According to local lore, mostly spoken word and some documented, customers would drive around and stop at a crooked door at the back of the house to give homeowner and well-known local bootlegger Billy Wight their order. He’d be sitting in a chair by the door, likely with his shotgun not far away. He’d pass along the order to someone else in his operation who would open a secret door that led into the basement. That’s where they kept the stash of illegal liquor.
Locals say Wight’s wife, Minnie, was better known as Mechanical Min and was handy at fixing bicycles.
Many customers would sample the goods before driving away and sometimes they’d smash into the neighbour’s house on the way out. Stories say the neighbour had a deal with Wight: if Wight fixed the damage, he wouldn’t go to the police.
It was likely Port Medway’s first and most popular drivethrough.
Beth Bowers and Chris Dow have learned a lot since snapping up this old, abandoned house in 2019. Bowers grew up in Port Medway, (down the street) and her parents still live there. When she used to walk by it as a child, Bowers said she was sure the spooky house was haunted.
“I’m not convinced it’s not haunted, but we’re not scared anymore, so that’s fine,” she said.
“It was falling apart. Grey wood, the paint around the trim was all peeling off, the trees were grown up around it, it was really dark, and the windows were all smashed out. I had always wanted to sneak inside to check it out but I was always too scared.”
IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK
But if a house was destined to be haunted, it’s this one.
Built around 1790, it came to life when the town was bustling: When there were wharves across the road into
the waters of Medway River, when there were masts from boats going by, and construction noise from ships being built. The road in front of her house used to be called Chip Road, Bowers said, because of all the wood chips landing there from boatbuilding.
From Bowers’s research, one of the first residents of the house was the Morine family, who were shipbuilders.
“I’m just imagining the noise of building ships right there,” Bowers said, pointing across the street to the river.
Growing up, Port Medway was too small a town for her.
“When I left, I was 18 and I just high-tailed it out. I have to see the world, I can’t stay in this small town forever ... but I didn’t see the ocean, I didn’t appreciate the birds because I was feeling like I was missing out on the big city,” she said. “But I had no idea what that meant. I went out into the world and I started travelling a bunch and then I started realizing how good it felt to come home.”
Bowers and Dow were living in Toronto but were on a trip to Bowers’ home in 2019 when they learned the owner of the spooky house down the street was looking to sell. A Halifax architect bought the house decades before but never lived in it. He did some work over the years, including building a beautiful loft-style apartment at the back of the house (he removed the secret door to the basement). But after a time, the work stopped, and once again nature took over.
Bowers said except for someone living there for under six months, the house has been abandoned for about 40 years.
William “Billy” Wight (who died in 1978) and Mechanical Min (who was born Minnie May Rodenhiser and died in 1968) were really the last fulltime residents of the house.
“The floors had caved in and the only residents were probably squirrels and chipmunks. It was really bad,” Bowers said.
Woodpeckers had poked holes through the siding and roof, pulling out insulation to build nests.
“I think it had like one more year and then it was going to be done,” she said.
Bowers and Dow put in an offer near the end of 2019. Just as the pandemic got going the following year, they were living in the loft apartment, working from home, with the sound of construction and their two cats underfoot.
MORE ON BILLY WIGHT AND MECHANICAL MIN
“Everyone’s got a story to tell about this house,” said Dow.
People love to drop by, wander around the house, poke around inside, and share a story or two about attending a raucous party here, or playing the old organ which is still in the same spot.
“The locals say ‘if only the walls could talk.’ I really wish they would,” Bowers said.
According to stories they’ve been told, Wight’s son lived next door and they were fierce rivals in the bootlegging days.
“Nobody knows what really happened and we’ve heard different versions like ... one would always be out shooting their shotgun off. The other was one of them was sitting by the front door waiting for the other one to come in,” Dow said.
Bowers said the base of a fence is visible between the two properties because “they couldn’t stand each other,” and people just don’t have fences in Port Medway.
Bowers said she’s heard that if the pair got mad, they would just shoot in the direction of someone’s house.
“Because it just helped him let off steam,” she said. “And there were stories the gun was shot in the house, sometimes over people’s heads, just so that they would take them seriously.”
If father or son was getting mad, people would make a run for it, Bowers added.
“I would like to know what to believe,” Dow said. “It’s kind of fun that at this point, you’re never going to know. There’s no way of actually knowing the truth about those stories.”
Adding Bowers: “There are those bits we know to be true. Everyone knows he was a bootlegger, it’s written in local books, everyone will tell you.”
In a poem called Ode to Billy White (Wight) by Elinor Selig Roberts in 1996, she wrote that Wight sailed the world, was the lighthouse keeper for a time, bought the community hall and became a bootlegetter later in life. Roberts wrote that Wight stood 5’2” and loved his cigars and booze.
“So he became our local bootlegger, heck he was 70, not much to lose.”
AN OLD SYRINGE? A CRACKED EGG?
There’s no rhyme or reason to the collection of items in this cardboard box. It’s full of relics the former owner of the house discovered during construction.
There’s an old awl, a lawn bowls set with different sized wooden balls, an old syringe and an ink pot. Bowers said they almost threw out a “random piece of metal” but then realized it was a piece from the fireplace which was used as a handle for the cauldron over the fire.
Bowers and Dow named the house The Spooky Boot thanks to an ancient child’s shoe found in one of the walls.
And in a house with a legacy like this one, finding a hollowed-out book with the title Complete Opera Book with an inscription from 1936, it just makes sense.
“There was an unbroken egg, which just seemed like magic to me, we just broke it,” Bowers said. The couple had found a little egg inside a box. It was cracked and must have knocked against something in the box recently.
The couple love lawn bowls but have their own set and refuse to play with the set found in the house.
“I feel that that would just conjure ghosts for sure,” Bowers said.
Dow joked that he imagined the wrong two wooden balls would click together and a ghost would appear.
“Who would we get on our team and could we get them to go away again?” Bowers added.
CONSTRUCTION PROGRESS
When the entire house will be finished is difficult to say. Instead, the couple have their goals set on finishing it off one room at a time. The first big jobs were, of course, taking care of the structure and the roof. But the three bedrooms upstairs now are taking shape. They added massive sky windows that open to add light and bird song while also making the rooms seem bigger.
They made the decision early on not to borrow a huge sum of money to renovate, instead they decided to work at it over the long term.
It’s a big commitment for these first-time homeowners, but there are no regrets here.
“I love it so much,” Dow said. “Why be dull? Why be boring? I don’t understand condos at all. I don’t understand why anyone would buy anything like that when you could similarly buy something like this. It’s like a no-brainer to me.”