04/21/2026
Backyard History books available at our table every Saturday at the Restigouche Farmers' Market Marché des Fermiers Restigouche !
✊ The Restigouche Riots happened in 1841, when three hundred lumberjacks armed themselves with guns and marched on two North Shore towns — looting shops, breaking prisoners out of jail, and beating up the High Sheriff.
The woodsmen had spent the whole winter in the logging camps, working from before dawn to after dusk, six days a week, felling trees in the frozen woods.
They slept in their clothes in cold cabins, rarely bathed, and were paid nothing until the season ended — surviving on credits deducted from their eventual lump-sum payday.
It was brutal work, and the one thing that made it bearable was the promise of that cheque at the end.
That year, their one payment didn't come.
The pro-industry Miramichi Gleaner newspaper made excuses for the big lumber bosses, arguing that the unusually cold winter had frozen the ports and delayed shipments. As a result, "many of the master lumberers [were] in arrears." That newspaper blamed the woodsmen for being "impatient and would not wait for any sort of settlement or arrangement whatever."
But a rival, more pro-worker, newspaper, The Sentinel, reported the situation was actually much worse: Arthur Richie had not yet fully paid the woodsmen for last year's work, either!
The year before, shops in Campbellton and Dalhousie extended credit to woodsmen until they got paid. Now that it had been more than a year without pay, the shops cut off the credit.
Suddenly, the woodsmen had no way to provide for their families.
So they decided to sack both towns.
Three hundred men gathered, armed themselves, and marched first on Campbellton, ransacking and looting the shops of the merchants who had denied them credit.
Then they marched on Dalhousie, attacked the jail, and freed the prisoners inside. The High Sheriff tried to intervene and was beaten up.
The ringleaders of the riot then fled to the Madawaska region.
(Though Madawaska was hardly far away geographically speaking, back then New Brunswick lawmen spoke of Madawaska in the same way a Sheriff in a Western movie talks about Mexico: if an outlaw made it there, they may as well be gone forever!)
The pro-merchant Gleaner howled that the British Battalion stationed just across the river at Cross Point should have opened fire on the rioters. The soldiers, however, never left their fort even though they surely would have seen and heard the riot across the river.
It seems the lumberjacks' pay never arrived late on the North Shore again.
📰 Read the full article here: backyardhistory.ca/articles/f/the-restigouche-riots-lumberjacks-dont-get-paid-sack-two-towns
📕 Find more forgotten stories from The Maritimes past in the four Backyard History books, signed copies of which are available at backyardhistory.ca/books
