5894 Highway 201: the Silas Lantz House

Architecture Style: Greek Revival

Built: c. 1865

We think of Paradise as the village “buried in orchards”. But it was also part of Nova Scotia’s massive logging industry. After the first farming grantees came in the 1760s, the second wave of settlement was all about lumber. With wars to be fought, ships to be built, a new country to build, the first growth forests were rapidly and aggressively cut down. This house, a lumber merchant’s pride, was built by Silas Lantz and later owned by Henry and Amanda Mack and Joseph and Agnes [Durling] Worthylake, all connected with logging.  Silas owned a big mill on the Paradise Brook but came home to this jewel of a house – Greek Revival in structure, Gothic in exuberant,  picturesque features.

The Macks of Mill Village, Queens Co., were planters from Lyme, Connecticut (1764) who made their fortune in Nova Scotian timber. In 1880 their family operation cut 13,000,000 feet of lumber! Mack bought up the southern woodlots on Leonard and Morse lands, from the Roxbury road west. One deed includes eleven separate woodlot or milling purchases.  There seemed no end to the forests. Every day, ox teams hauled wagonloads of lumber to the railway station in Paradise. When the first growth forests were gone, and a fire raged through, Roxbury died. The settlers moved “out” to Paradise to farm.

Freelove Hinds married Joseph Gillis, who had managed the cookhouse and lodging at the Woodlands camp. With her son Archibald and her daughter Mary Jane, she moved into the lumber merchant’s home in July 1895. Archibald and Maude [Wambolt]’s children grew up here: Doris (Curry), Fran (Blynn), Ivan, and Don. Flying Officer Ivan Gillis was killed in 1941on a search and rescue mission off Sable Island and was deeply mourned. “Arch” was a much-respected man in Paradise,  a good Presbyterian who managed the important Star Fruit apple warehouse and packing plant at the Paradise Railway Station.

Archibald’s grandson Bruce was the last Gillis to live here. Bruce and Debbie [Smith], Paul, Robbie, and Kendra enjoyed their family home. Bruce recalls the painted wall in the front hall, a dark marbleized faux finish – the very highest Victorian fashion in homes. It was still there, the last trace of the “lumber barons” who prospered in Nova Scotia in days gone by. The house has since belonged to others who have equally treasured it, lately Darrin and Deborah Rice, of Rice’s glass in West Paradise, also a well-kept property.