The long death of Sackville's Enterprise Foundry

Sackville is loud for a quiet little town.

With a population of about 5,000, it's situated at the edge of the windswept Tantramar Marshes, which are named for an old Acadian word referring to the noisy flocks of birds passing through.

Until the end of the last century, sounds of not only waterfowl but industry reverberated across the wetlands from Sackville's crown jewel, the Enterprise Foundry.

A Canadian leader in manufacturing cast iron stoves and then electric appliances, the factory employed 400 local people at its peak, breathing economic life into the region.

Eighty-nine-year-old Lewis Estabrooks smiled as his gentle voice recalled 30 years working at the foundry.

Workers were not paid by the hour but instead by how many stoves they produced, "and that was always a thing to watch because the hammers were flying and everything, every machine was making noises, so it was a busy, busy spot," Estabrooks said.

"There was always noise, noise all the time at the foundry. You could walk through it, and you got all kinds of different things going on as you walked through the plants."

Today, the foundry property is bustling in a different way.

Dump trucks clatter as they make trips back and forth down a dusty, potholed road carrying away loads of rubble.

Brick walls vibrate the ground as they tumble at the hand of heavy equipment, and massive metal roofing beams let out final, loud groans that tear across the marsh as excavators rip them out.

The Enterprise Foundry is being demolished.

At its height, the foundry consisted of about 30 buildings on the southern outskirts of town by the train station. 

Originally known as the Dominion Foundry Company in 1872, it was renamed Enterprise Foundry Company in 1888 and operated continuously until its bankruptcy in the 1980s. 

The buildings were sold and became the Enterprise Fawcett Foundry, which dwindled over the next few decades, despite efforts by new owners to revitalize it.