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Digitized by tine Internet Archive

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University of Toronto

http://www.archive.org/details/reminiscencesofnOOross

This book is dedicated to its real authors — to my

Mentors who furnished the materials

for the narrative and thereby

made its publication

possible.

REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

A RETROSPECTIVE SKETCH OF THE

VILLAGES OF LEITH AND ANNAN,

GREY COUNTY, ONTARIO

BY ^^o-^"^

RICHARDSON. BOND & WRIGHT. Limited

OWEN SOUND, ONT.

19 2 4

ill

/:\

THE PASSING OF THE PIONEER

Down the last of the trails they are bearing,

In a solemn and glorious line,

Through the valley of death they are faring.

With a soul unafraid and divine —

With that soul that was ever divine —

The pioneer fathers are passing,

And this thing ye shall take for a sign.

For with every white head that is sinking For with every aged heart that is dead. Ye are losing gold threads in the linking jf traditional days that are sped, The epic dumb eternally sped — With the gift of their stern tribulation Which now carpets the path that ye tread.

There is never a zephyr soft-sighing,

Where whe primeval forest once lay,

There is never a patriarch dying, ^

But a story is pa-ssing away — ,v

And a glory is passing away —

Of the humble who founded a nation

In the travail and stress of the day.

Though the shanty that crouched in the clearing Ls a ghost in the wrack of the past. Though your pioneer fathers are nearing The dark trail that is blazoned the last — Though they pass down this trail that is last — Yet their spirits will hover above ye, In the wind and the stars they will love ye. For the fight thoy will strengthen and prove ye. Till tii<y mould ye the pioneer cast.

CAMKRON KESTEU.

IV

ERRATA
Page IV; second stanza,	5th
line should read, "The dumb	epic
eternally sped".
Page 57; line 7, read	■but-
terfly valve."
Page 136; last line.	read
"185.5" for "1853."

INDEX

Page

Foreword _ _ - — 1

I — What it Looked Like — ^ _ 5

II_What Was Going On _ _ _ 22

III — Building and Clearing _ _ _ _ 29

IV— The First Settlement 43

V — No, 3 Company, 31st Regiment 72

VI — Development and Decay _ 86

VII— The Churches _ 110

VIII— The Schools -:» 136

IX— The Public Libraries -.... 155

X — Societies and Social Amusements _ 165

XI — A Meritorious Record •* 189

XII— A Few of the First 194

XIII— Conclusion _....„ 237

ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate I. — 1. Rev. Robert Dewar. 2. Rev. Alexander Hunter. 3. Robert Grierson. 4. William P. Telford. 5. Thomas Lunn. 6. Thomas Rutherford.

Plate IJ.— 1. James S. Ross. 2. Dr. William Lang. 3. William Brown. 4. Robert Elliot. 5. David Armstrong. 6. Gideon Harkness.

Plate III.— 1. Andrew Sibbald. 2. Walter Aitken. 3. William Johnstone. 4. James Gibson. 5. Hugh Reid. 6. John Couper.

V

FOREWORD

History is a fable agreed upon, said Napoleon. Thei^ could be no more cynical comment upon the reliability of histor>', yet the truth of it is largely borne out by what historians have had to say about the man himself who made it. Hardly two of them have agreed in their estimate of his chai'acter. History is bunk, says America's wealthiest auto- mobile manufacturer and we might be surprised if we knew the number of wise men who agree with him, to a certain extent at least, when they look around and see the evil ways of men and how they so wantonly have disregarded its plain teachings.

The task of the historian, as one of the greatest of them has pointed out, is traditionally a thankless one. Not for him are the sweets of popular applause, the emoluments of office, the decorations awarded the soldier or the diplomat. Unseen and alone he assumes his voluntary label's. Then commence long toilsome years of the most arduous and ex- acting reseai'ch and when this is completed there still re- mains the tedious routine of arrangement and compilation. At length the result of his labors is given to the world and then he samples the first bitter taste of ingratitude. His facts as he has found them are assailed as distorted and mis- leading, if not openly mendacious. When he ventures upon the field of deduction from these facts however, where he is a lawful subject for criticism, he finds that there are not two, but twenty sides to every question, and he finds a critic for every side of it ready and anxious to fall upon him and tear to shreds the issue of years of painful effort.

This little volume, however, does not rise to the dignity of history. The author fortunately knows his limitations ; aside from this he has neither the time, the patience or the

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

money to treat the subject as it deserves. It is an attempt to portray the first settlement of the Leith and Annan dis- trict in the township of Sydenham, the general appearance of the country when the first settlers arrived, the institu- tions they founded, secular and religious, the privations in- evitable in the lot of pioneers they endured, their social amusements an'd the work they undertook and acomplished. It is, in short, a retrospective sketch of the first twenty-five years in the life of the community, which, as in the life of an individual, are often the most important. There will also be brief biographical sketches of a number of the most repre- sentative men who took an active and leading part in the general affairs of the district and guided its destinies at that time. The importance of the beginnings of things in the lives of men and communities is seldom over estimated.

Men with the true instinct of the artist, with an eye to see and a heart to feel the joys and the tragedies of life have gone into just such country places and, with the materials found there, have woven stories that have stirred the hearts of their fellows to their innermost depths.

Yet even a sketch as limited in scope as the present one will be open to criticism. Anachronisms will be discovered. Errors in time and place will be pointed out. It will suffice to say that the facts as stated therein are as nearly authen- tic as it has been humanly possible to ascertain them.

It will also be subject to another form of criticism. *'What, in the name of common sense," some will say "is the use of raking up and reviving these memories of seventy and eighty years ago I We are living in the present, not the past. Let us act in the living present then, and leave the dead past to bury its dead. Surely it is vanity and vexation of spirit to indulge something which at the best is only sick- ly sentimentality, in whicli there is neither use or profit."

The best answer to this is that, aside from the interest many good people feel in the lives of their forebears, the

9

FOREWORD

generation that has no respect for the memory of its pre- decessors and feels no pride in their achievements will hardly be accorded any respect by those that follow it. Posterity has always had its rights, even if they have not arrived upon the scene and in turn it will have its duties to perform, altho it may be remai'ked here that helping to pay the debt incurred in the greatest of all wai's does not seem to us as being among those duties. When President Roose- velt first enunciated his far reaching policy for the conser- vation of national resources as a duty the American people owed to their posterity, he was frequently met with the brutal enquiry from many so-called captains of industry who were exploiting, or rather wasting, the nation's natural wealth, "What has posterity ever done for us" ? It is a bad thing for both men and nations when they begin to live in and for the present moment only. Their finish is not far distant for in the chain of responsibility that links up the past with the future we owe a duty to both and we will dis- regard that debt at our peril.

It was once said of a great Englishman by one of his countrymen, that it was not so much what he did as what he was that made him great. The pioneers of Sydenham per- formed a great work, but after all it was not so much what they did as what they were that constitutes their claim to the gratitude of those of us who have come after them. It will always be so as long as example is more powerful than precept.

Leith,

March 24th. 1924.

—3-

CHAPTER I. WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE

Had an inhabitant of the planet IMars, supposing Mai'S to be inhabited, visited that section of Grey County now known as Sydenham township in the year 1830, and after a careful survey have formed an ineffaceable impression of its general appearance and, after returning to Mars had visited us again eighty years later, there are several strik- ing changes he would have noticed at once. Time has wrought these changes so gradually that it is almost im- possible for the younger generation to visualize a correct mental picture of the country as it appeared at that time.

First he would have noticed the disappearance of the forest in large part and the evidences of civilization in the shape of bams, houses, outbuildings, fences, roads and all other public and private improvements that follow the work of man's hands. Then, in all probability he would have noticed the lowering of the lake level, for this has been so pronounced it could hardly have escaped his attention. Then he would have noticed the complete disappearance of many of the smaller streams an*d the dried up aspect of the larger ones. Then, if he had stayed long enough in the first place and had been of an acutely observant nature he would have noticed that the climate was slightly warmer. The average temperature on this North American continent always rises about five degrees after the forest has been cleared, for obvious reasons.

These are the greatest physical changes that have fol- lowed the advent of civilization here as in all parts of the country lying adjacent to the Great Lakes. They have not added to the beauty of the region but they were inevitable.

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAJVI

We cannot have the wild beauty of the wilderness and the comforts of civilization at the same time. One of the oldest settlers on the Lake Shore Line who came to it in childhood has said it was the newness and wildness of the country that made the first few yeai's he spent there the most en- joyable of his life. It was Nature at its best, because unadorned.

The streams were always full. There were no spring floods, because the snow melted slowly in the forest shades, the frost left the ground just as slowly and even in mid- summer the heat of the sun's rays was lost in the thick foliage that shaded the ground everywhere. The smaller streams were ai'ched overhead by spreading branches of the trees on their banks and their courses were often choked with a mass of tree trunks in all the stages of decay. As they became completely rotted, they were torn away by the current. There is a passage in a poem by Bryant, in which the noble red men eloquently kiescribes the rivers of the wilderness, before they had shrunken at the destruction wrought by the inroads of the white man's civilization.

Before these fields were shorn and tilled,

Full to the brim our rivers flowed ;

The melody of waters filled

The fresh and boundless wood ;

And torrents dashed and rivulets played,

And fountains spouted in the shade.

All these have passed, and with them have passed the numerous saw and grist mills, erected by the early settlers. They served well in the day of small things, but they have given way to the gigantic electric plants which have dammed our greatest rivers in the quest of power.

The steadily lowering water level on the Great Lakes is so alarming that it is engaging the attention of our most eminent engineers, as well as the United States and Can-

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WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE

adian Governments. Just how much the level of Georgian Bay has fallen since the general settlement on its shores nobody seems to know exactly. But it has been consider- able. Along the western shore of the lower peninsula of Michigan where authentic records have been kept, the level of Lake Michigan has fallen eight feet since 1837. There are reasons for believing it has fallen as much or more in Owen Sound. The oldest settlers pointed out high water marks of the fifties and sixties of last century that seem almost incredible. About the only people who have bene- fitted by the change are the dredging contractors. It has ruined the appeai-ance of the foreshore along the waterfront of Sydenham, where the lake shallows so gradually in approaching the shore, and from present indications its old beauty will never be restored. It has destroyed many small hai'bors, Lunn's Landing, Coffin and Johnston Harbors among them, where the largest fish- ing boats could once find good anchorage. First they became marshes, then as the water steadily receded they took on the appearance of pasture patches. In the olden days it was impossible for the foot traveler to make his way along the beach without resorting to wading at many pxjints, or making a detour into the adjoining swamp. But "the lonely shore" of that time had a beauty all its own that compen- sated for all such inconveniences, a beauty we have lost for- ever in the steady march of modern progress.

From all accounts that have been handed down to us, it appears the country lying between Owen Sound and Cape Rich was practically a vast unbroken bush. There is men- tion in some early documents of patches of prairie, but they must have been exceeding rare. Bush fires must have been also of the rarest occurance for many years before the first settlers came, or, if there were such bush fires, they were insignificant and destroyed little of the standing timber. They were numei'ous enough after the pioneers came.

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

Many of them did positive good, others a great deal of damage. The swamps were in many places simply impass- able, rendered so by a tangled mass of fallen tree trunks lying in every direction, evergreens broken off many feet from the ground, and a general confusion that defies des- cription. Fire was the settler's most valuable ally in clear- ing out such places ; otherwise the labor involved in clearing them would have been unprofitable. But even in the higher land where the hardwood was found, the underbrush was thick almost everywhere. There were no open ai'ches of the forest over which poets have raved. An old record shows that two homesteaders spent the whole summer of 1845, in underbrushing, just south of Annan, and this in the midst of heavy hardwood timber. So practically every foot of the : land had to be cleared and the first task that confronted the pioneer after he had built his little shanty "in the heart of the forest primeval" seemed an appalling one. Yet under the terms of the land settlement acts of those days, one third of the homestead that had been allotted him must be clear- ed and under crop before he could be granted a patent for his land by the Crown.

There was a wide variety of hardwood timber, the maple prevailing in most places. Beech, birch and ash were found in various states of profusion according to the locality. The rock elm grew to a considerable height and as it can-ied that height so well, and dressed so easily it was in great de- mand for bai'n timber. In the swamps could be found almost every variety of evergreen that flourishes in these latitudes, spruce, cedar, tamarac, balsam, to mention a num- ber of them, with a few pine. The hemlock was found on both high and low lying land. This timber was all rather an unusual size, in fact the Annan district was noted as having some of the finest in the County of Waterloo, as it was then known. But the soft elm easily overtopped them all. It grew to a remarkable size in places and they

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WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE

were quite numerous also, as many as four or five being found in a single acre, and of the largest kind. In the winter of 1847-48 one was cut down about two miles south of Annan, which measured seven feet in diameter on the stump, and fully eight feet at the ground. Its height was estimated at about ninety feet. Four expert choppei*s com- menced work on it one morning just after a winter's break- fast, and shortly after high noon it came to earth. Three of the c hoppers had been at work on it for half an hour the previous evening. The butt was gnarled and fifteen feet were cut off, then four rail cuts each twelve feet long, the first one of which made one hundred and five rails, were saved, the top being left to rot. Another large elm, about the same size in diameter, but shorter, was in later years cut down on a farm about three miles northwest of Leith. With four choppers at work, it took five hours to fell. An- other tall elm which stood "like a city on an hill which can- not be hid" about the same distance from Annan as the first one, could be seen from a point fifty miles distant on Georgian Bay, the late Captain John MacNab being the authority for the statement. These were the largest trees ever found in Sydenham.

How old were these monarchs of the forest ? Nobody knows, or at least there is no record of anyone attempting to number their years. The age of trees is a subject on which there will always be more or less conjecture. Some oaks in England are said to have been standing at the time of the Norman Conquest. The author read recently an ac- count of a tree chopped down in central New York State in 1854. About half way from the circumference to the centre t)ie choppers came upon a gash made by an axe and counted one hundred and seventeen rings outside of it. The axe had been driven into the tree in or about 1737, and the tree had, it was estimated, been growing one hundred years earlier than that. There are good grounds for believing these elms

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

on the Lake Shore line were fully as old. It takes a lot of yearly growths to make a diameter of seven feet, even if the elm is a fast growing tree. It may be accepted that these trees had passed the sapling stage in the days of Cromwell and of England's great Civil War. They had looked down upon two centuries of solitude, yet they were destroyed in the course of a few hours.

It may be well to step aside a moment and comi>are these trees with the largest found in the world. Such a comparison makes them look like a lot of pygmies. Just how great the disparity was, may be worth a considerable digression here.

In the year 1850, a party of hunters were pushing theii* way through the then unexplored wilderness of what after- wards became Calaveras County, in California. One of them who had gotten considerably in advance of his companions, suddenly broke into a valley, about one hundred and sixty acres in extent, rather it might be styled an ampitheatre. He was the fii-st man to see what became famous as the "Big Trees of Calaveras County." At least if white men had ever gazed on them before, the record has not survived. The group were solitary specimens of their race. By actual count there were about ninety-two of them, and they grew in a small valley of little more than one hundred and fifty acres, as noted, and within two hundred arwi forty miles of San Francisco. Their discovery was a little more than a year later than the chopping down of the famous elm in Sydenham ; some of them, alas ! soon shared a like fate.

Their colossal proportions and the impressive silence of the surrounding woods created a feeling of awe among the hunters ; they walked around the huge trunks and gazed reverently at tlicir magnificant proportions, then retunied to the nearest settlements with stories of what they had just seen. These stories, however, were laughed at as incred- ible until they were confiiTned by actual measurement.

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PLATE I.

1. Rev. Robert Dewar. 2. Rev. Alexander Hunter. 3. Robert (Irier.son.

4. William P. Telford. 5. Thomas Lunn. 6. Thomas Rutherford.

WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE

The trees were immediateb^ named Washingtonians, though some of the savants of San Fi'ancisco endeavered to change this to Wellingtonians, because some patriotic British bot- anist availing himself of the discovery hastened to appro- priate the name for the conqueror at Waterloo. The basin or valley in which they stood was damp, with here and there pools of water, into which some of the largest trees extended their roots. These gigantic conifers were of the species known by naturalists as the sequoia. A town called Murphy was in those days the end of the stage coach lines and from here to the "Mammoth Tree Hotel", erected to accomodate the visitors to the newly discovered world's wonders, was a distance of only fifteen miles.

Adjoining the hotel stood the stump of the "Big Tree", whicli v*'as cut down in 1853. It measured ninety-six feet in circumference, showing a smooth surface and seventy-five feet solid circumference of timber on the stump, on which tliere VN-as ample space for thirty-two dancers, for it was often used for that pui*pose. Theatrical performances were also given upon it, the Chapman Family and Robinson P'amily, well known entertainers of the time, giving them there in 1855. This monster was cut down by boring with long and powerful augurs and sawing the spaces between — -an act of vandalism as ingenious as the Chinese I'efine- ment in cruelty in pulling the nails of criminals witli pin- cers. It required the labor of five men twenty-five days to effect its fall, the tree standing so nearly perpendi- cular tfiat the aid of v/edges was invoke/d to complete the destruction. But even then the immense mass resisted all efforts to overthrow it, until in the blackness of a tempest- uous night it began to groan and sway in the stonn like an expiring giant. It succumbed at last to the elements whkh alone could complete from above what the human ants had commenced below, and great was the fall thereof. Its fall was heard at Murphy, fifteen miles distant and was like an

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

earthquake's shock. When the great trunk went down it buried itself twelve feet in the mire of a creek hard by, with its two thousand cords of wood. Not far from where it stood were two giant members of this family known as "The Guardsmen;" the mud splashed nearly a hundred feet high on their trunks. As it lay on the ground it measured three hundred and two feet clear of the stump and broken top. I.arge trees had been snapped like pipe stems in its fall, and the woods around were filled with splinters and debris. On its levelled surface were afterwards built the barroom and bowlinn" alley of the hotel.

One of the most interesting of the group was called the "Mother of the Forest". It was the loftiest of the grove, rising to the height of three hundred and twenty-seven feet* straight and beautifully proportioned, and in 1860 supposed to be the largest tree in the world. It was ninety feet in circumference and into its trunk could be cut an apartment as large as a common sized parlor and as high as the archi- tect chose to make it, witliout endangering the tree or dam- aging- its outward appearance. A scaffolding was built around this tree, for the purpose of stripping its bark for exhibition abroad. With damnable industry this was at last accomplislied for a distance of over one hundred feet from the ground, and it was effected with as mucli neatness as a troop of jackals display in cleaning the bones of a dead lion. Such was its vitality however tliat it continued annu- ally for about five years to put forth green leaves, when the blanched and withered limbs showed that nature had done its best but was exhausted.

The largest of the whole gi'oup paled, iiowever, before a prostrate giant known as the "Monarch of the Forest." This monster ha'd long before bowed his head in the dust, but v/hat magnificence in ruin was his ! He measured one hun- dred and twelve feet in circumference at the base ar.d forty- two feet in circumference at a distance of three hundred

—12—-

WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE

feet from t!ie roots, where it was broken off short in its fall. The upper portion was greatly decayed, beyond this break, but judging from the average height of the others, this tree must have towered toward the heavens to at least four hun- dred and fifty feet. A chamber, or burned cavity, extended through the trunk two hundred feet, broad and high enough for a person to ride through on horseback ; a pond deep enough to float a river steamboat stood in this great exca- vation during the rainy season. The mind can scarcely con- ceive its astonishing dimensions ; language fails to give an adequate idea of it. It was, when standing, a pillar of timber that overtopped all other trees on the globe. "To simply read of a tree, four hundred and fifty feet high" observes a contemporary, "we are struck with large figures, but we hardly appreciate the height without some compar- ison. Such a one as this would stretch across a field twentj'- seven rods wide. If standing in the Niagara chasm at Sus- pension Bridge, it would tower two hundred feet above the top of the bridge, and would be ninety feet above the cross of St. Paul's, and two hundred and thirty feet above the Monument. If cut up for fuel, it would yield three thousand cords, or as much as would be yielded by sixty acres of good wood-land. If sawed into two-inch boards, it would yield about two million feet, and furnish enough three inch plank for thirty miles of plank road. This will do for the product of one little seed, less in size than a grain of wheat."

Many of our readers will doubtless smile at the above, and mentally note it kiown as a piece of the grossest Ameri- can exaggeration. They are mistaken. Out of many descrip- tions the author has read of these mam.moth trees, all of them which coincide remarkably as to their size, he has quot- ed from one which appeared in Cassell's Family i\Iagazine for 1860, and a British magazine of such standing as Cassell's could be relied upon to give its readers nothing but the cold facts. It was estimated by scientists who were authorities

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REMINISCEXCES OF NORTH SYDENHA.AI

on the subject that the prostrate giant known as the ''Mon- arch of the Forest" had been standing four thousand years ago. Perhaps it had. It is dangerous to deny sucli things for there are stranger things in this world than iu"e dreamed of in our philosophy. As far as actual bulk was concerned these trees were in all probability the largest ever seen in the world. But were they the highest ? Cheer up, gentle reader, for the worst is yet to come.

Late in 1884, James Anthony Froude, the eminent English historian and litterateur, left London on a trip round the world, going by way of the Cape to Australia and New Zealand. He has left us a splendid naiTative of the journey, which was made in a leisurely manner and with r.mpb lime for observation, in a volume called "Oceana". Like many another valuable volume, it must have had a small svAe, as copies of it are rather rare. While in Australia he visited all the large cities ; Melbourne was then the largest. VVliile there he heard tales from enthusiastic ]>,Ielbournians of a wondrous sight to be seen not far from the city, and, as the city's guest of honor, he was pressed to go and see it. He consented. Conveyances were secured after the journey by rail had ended by the party that had accompanied him, and after a journey of about ten miles during which the scenery had grown wilder and wilder, imd the trees steadily taller, at a point near the sources of the River Yarra and about ninety miles from Melbourne, the distinguished Englishman wa''. sliov.n trees standing in n valley which he says aver- aged from three hundred and fifty to four hundred feet higli.

Tlicse trees could not be counted in the course of a few minuL's like those in California. They were there in regi- men*.-: ;vnd brigades, towering w) in the shelter of a moun- tain like "the tall masts of some great Amiral." In fact Fioude attributed their great height to their sheltered

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WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE

position aiid the ricli nature of the soil. The hand of the destroyer had been busy and several of the largest levelled, but the government of Victoria had intervened, not alto- gether effectually however. These trees were of the gum- wood species, or the far-famed Australian eucalyptus, Con- sideiing their height, their girth was not remarkable ; the visitor spanned the circumference of one with his arms, but the result by a lapse of memory is forgotten. It is certain however, they were not nearly so bulky as the Calaveras County trees. But there were a few among them that ran up to four hundred and twenty and thirty feet, and Froude was assured that one had been felled that measured four hundred and sixty feet. There was no supposition about the height of this one, as in the case of the long-fallen tree in California ; it had actually been measured, and, as far as is known, it had been the highest tree in the world. It was but natural that a man of Froude's mentality should have been profoundly impressed by such a sight. There are some poor unfortunates among us who, like the author, have never seen the Woolworth building, but as between seeing it and one of these mighty gum-trees, our choice would at once fall to the latter. How long had their towering tops waved in the gales of the passing centuries and "held their dark communion with the cloud ?" Froude does not even ven- ture to guess, but as geologists assure us that Australia's surface is probably the oldest land on the face of the globe, forming as it did part of a long-lost Antartic continent, their birth may have reached back into the remotest ages of antiquity. Ancient empires had risen, flourished and de- cayed, civilizations had waxed and waned while they were adding cubits to their statue. At last, after Tasman, came the adventurous Captain Cook, and after him came the white man with his genius for destruction. It was nothing- short of a crime against man's better nature that even one of such trees should have been destroyed. They must have

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

whispered to the beholder, like Addison's stars of the firma- ment,

"The Hand that made us is divine."

So if we were to take one of these huge elms in Sydenham, and piled on top of it in their natural position three others of like size, the height of the topmost one would still have fallen below the crests of some of the sequoias of California or the gum-trees of Australia. Had they been standing alongside them, they would have looked like saplings. Sir Walter Scott once saw a vessel unloading squared timber from America, at Leith ; he gazed long and earnestly at the sight and remarked to a companion that it must be a great privilege to live in a country where timber grew to such dimensions. What he would have said had he seen the Cali- fornian trees standing on their native heath we can only surmise, but his incomparable genius in poetic description would doubtless have risen to the event.

But the trees in S.\^^denham were large enough and num- erous enough in all conscience, for the men who were clear- ing the land, a process that will be described at length in a later chapter. In a very literal sense one could not see the forest for the trees. In their wild fastnesses, more parti- cularly on a cloudy day, it was the easiest matter in the world to become hopelessly lost. This was the unfortunate predicament in which two young fellows, James Ross and Henry Taylor, the latter eleven years old, found them- selves while hunting cattle one afternoon, as late as May, 1846. They spent the night in the woods and the alarm of their relatives is easily imagined. The blowing of horns and ringing of cowbells echoed along the Lake Shore, yet tliese lads were within from two to three miles of their homes. Trails to the various shanties from the roads were marked by blazes on the trees and had to be carefully followed. The trackless wilderness of the North American forests has

—16—

WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE

never before or since been so accurately and vividly des- cribed as it was by Fenimore Cooper in his Leather-stocking- (Tales. In this respect, liowever, he has no inconsiderable •rival in Francis Parkman, the historian of Canada under the French, and our readers are urged to consult both if they wish to form any adequate picture of the wilds of North Sydenham, as they met the eye before the coming of the first pioneers.

Into this unbroken wilderness came the vanguard of the stream of settlers, along about 1840, like a band of destroy- ing angels. After erecting their first rude shanties, the newcomers turned upon the trees as they would have upon natural enemies. The forest had to be cleared and convert- ed into fai'ms if they wished to live long upon the land. The process would have been viewed with the most mournful feelings by the lumbei-men of this day and age, had the}^ been able to witness it. One by one these upstanding giants and their smaller brethren down to the tiniest sapling dis- appeared, as acie after aci"e was cleared. They were cut into convenient log lengths, piled up in huge heaps and, after a season, the fire brand was applied. It seems like criminal waste to us now that the finest hardwood timber, often three and four feet in diameter, should meet such a fate. But had we been in their position would we have done diflferently ? The pity is that it had to be. Tliese men could not foresee the days of coal strikes and fuel famines. They never dreamed that maple flooring would one day sell at one hundred and ten dollars a thousand. Probably they knew nothing of the economist's theory of the value of utility and even if they had it would not have made an iota's difference to them. Ila'd tliey been men of wealtli and leisure, they might have looked into the future and seen the day when such standing timber would be worth countless wealth, but men of wealth and leisure do not move into the back- woods. So the indiscriminate slaughter went on. On some

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

fai'ms ten acres were cleared in a single season, altho such cases were rai"e. It was sinful waste to clear some of the land, even in that day and time, because it has been fit for nothing since. Afforestation has as yet never been seriously attempted in Sydenham, but the time is coming when men will be found disinterested enough to replant to trees, some at least of the land that never should have been cleared, and leave it to their children to reap where they have sown.

Probably there were men among the pioneers who felt some stirrings of contrition when they saw these splendid trees, many of them their Creator's finest masterpieces in their class, go crashing to earth. But the same devastation was proceeding wherever the pioneer found a foothold, and in some places with far less justification. In that "far- flung" (to adopt a Kiplingesque word that has been worked to death) outpost of empire, New Zealand, the destroyer has been at work in the vast forests that cover portions of the North Island. The insatiate greed of commercialism and the destruction its wanton vandalism has wrought in these same forests, possibly as fine as will be found anywhere, has stirred the indignation of an Auckland poet.

Gone are the forest tracks, where oft we rode,

Under the silver fern-fronds, climbing slow, In cool, green tunnels, though fierce noontide glowed

And glittered on the treetops far below. There, 'mid the stillness of the mountain road,

We just could hear the valley river flow, Whose voice through many a windless summer day

Haunted the silent woods now passed away. Aye, but scan

The ruined beauty, wasted in a night, The blackened wonder God alone could plan,

And builds not twice ! A bitter price to pay Is this for progress — beauty swept away. —18-^

WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE

Another matter should be touched upon briefly l^efore closing this chapter. There is a popular impression that in the earliest years of settlement, the woods fairly swarmed with game and Lake Manitou, the euphonious name given to the noble sheet of water by the redman, and now known un- der the rather insipid one of Georgian Bay, just as freely swarmed with salmon trout. This is hardly correct.

Game was much more plentiful then than now, of course. But the fur bearing animals of the forest, it should always be remembered, followed the law of the sui'vival of the most fit. They preyed upon one another and thus kept down the natural increase. No doubt there were unusually hard wintei's, when many of them must have died of actual starvation. For many years after the first settlers came the game seemed to run in cycles, like the seasons. Thus there is mention in some early memoirs of how the black squirrels were on two occasions so numerous as to be a nuisance. They were much prized for making pies. A Leith I'esident killed four with a rifle, in walking from the dock to the village. Again, there were years when the red squirrel came in myriads. There is mention of one hundred and thirty being killed in one day with stones. Like King David, the man who wrought such execution must have been a great shot with a pebble. On another occasion, a party coming from Owen Sound by boat, passed through an im- mense swarm of red squirrels, at Squaw Point, swimming from the west to the east shore of the bay. There were a few deer and an occasional bear, but they were soon driven out as settlement progressed. The partridge was plentiful at first, and was almost a daily item in the bill of fare in manj'- a shanty. It was roasted before an open fire on a spit that revolved slowly, being basted meanwhile. The first settlers used in after years to tell stories of the flights of the wild, or blue pigeon, that stagger the imagination, but

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

as all these stories agreed they must have been true. They darkened the face of the sun and broke down the limbs of trees when they alighted for the night. It is now, to all intents and purposes, as extinct as the dodo.

The same story applies to the fisherman's sport, in fish- ing from the steams or on the bay alike. Every stream seems to have been a trout stream, wherever the trout came from. They were certainly not stocked. But the trout was a much sought after delicacy and in the first twenty-five years it was largely fished out, altho good catches were made at later dates. The gradual drying up of the smaller streams in many cases completed what the angler had begun. In some cases, such as at Shepherd's Lake, other fish like the perch were stocked and they played havoc with the trout. As to the shoal fishing on the bay, the earliest accounts are rather confusing and contradictory. For one thing the trolling tackle used was of the crudest description and would be laughed at now. Some large hauls were undoubtedly made and the trouble must have been to find a market for the salmon trout, the fish found by far the most frequently on the shoals. The writer remembers a conversation he had with a member of the Desjardine family, famous fishermen of the earliest times, in 1896. He said that one of his uncles had set a gang of nets at Johnston's Harbor one night late in the fall, just twenty-five years previously, which would be about 1871, and that he lifted next morning for not a single fish. It is our own conclusion that there was as good fishing around Vail's Point thirty-five j'ears ago as at any previous time. This is a peridd that comes within our own recollection. In the fall of 1887, we saw any quantity of sal- mon trout, large and small, thrown on the fishing tugs at eight and nine cents each. The shoals swarmed with them. On one point, however, all the earlier accounts agree. The average size of the salmon trout was much larger then than now.

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WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE

The largest single catch of which the author knows and of which there is authentic record, was made by the late John Gibson of Leith, with two or three companions, in a heavy yawl which was familiarly known on the shoals from Vail's Point westward, forty and fifty yeai"s ago. This catch was made along about 1884 or 1885. Mr, Gibson and his crew were enjoying fair fishing when the wind and the sea began gradually rising, and, as was quite usual in such a change of weather, the fish kept biting better and better. They saw at last a chance of making the century mark and resolved to play the game until driven ashore by the weather. When they reached the boathouse that night, after a stiff battle with the elements, one hundred and one fish were thrown ashore. Without doubt there were larger catches than this one made, at one time or another, but there is positive and authenticated record of it, whereas many of the large catches boasted of are the figments of a feverish imagination.

Such was Sydenham eighty-four years ago. The picture is imperfect, of course, but it will give the reader some idea of the task that awaited those who invaded this unbroken wilderness, in the hope of making homes for themselves.

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CHAPTER II. WHAT WAS GOING ON

At the opening of each successive session of the United States Congress, the President sends to both the House of Representatives and the Senate, what is known as his Mess- age to Congress. In this he passes in review the foreign and domestic pohcy of the nation, its relation with foreign powers and recommends such legislation as he deems advis- able. More particularly, however, he deals with the state of the country and what is going on there at the time. These messages are of course regarded as highly important historical documents, and a history of the United States since the Revolution could be written from them alone, as the custom is as old as the Constitution itself.

Following such an illustrious example, it will be well before proceeding with this narrative to take a look around us and observe what was going on, not only in Canada, but in the world at large, in and immediately preceding the fourtli decade of the nineteenth century, when what we now call Grey County was settled. Coming events are said to cast their shadows before. Contemporary events, however, act and react upon one another and their influence in affect- ing decisions in the affairs of men is often not clearly re- cognized at the time they happen. As an instance, some of the events happening at this time were instrumental in bringing many immigrants from the Old Land to Canada.

To begin with, then, in 1840 was solemnized the mar- riage of Queen Victoria, of gracious memory, to Albert, Prince of Saxe, Coburg-Gotha. England engaged in the Opium War, — a moral mistake, as every one now admits. This year also saw the adoption of penny postage in England,

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WHAT WAS GOING ON

<me of the victories of peace. The following year was not- able for the revolt in Afghanistan and the destruction of the British forces during the retreat. In 1842, China was thrown open to foreign trade with the world. The Boer Kepublic of Natal was seized by the British and Sinde was annexed to India. Quite a year of expansion for those times. In 1845, Sir John Franklin sailed on his last search of the Northwest Passage, the fate of his voyage remaining for years in doubt. England and France made war on the Argentine in this year. Next year the Oregon boundry dis- pute with the United States was happily settled by treaty and another war thereby avoided. This year will always be remembered by reason of the potato rot and its concom- mitants, famine an'd disease, which devastated Ireland and the flood of Irish emigration to the United States, altho Canada got its share. It was marked, too, by intense agit- ation for the repeal of the Corn Laws, and on May 15th of that year, the bill providing for their gradual abolition, spon- sored by Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, passed the House of Commons by a majority of ninety-eight. It was the beginning of the down-fall of protection in England, and the adoption of that policy of free trade, which has been so consistently followed since and which was so strikingly vindicated last year. With the possible exception of the Reform Bill, it was by far the most important event in England's domestic policy in last century, its effects being unforseen even by the most astute economists of the time. In 1847 the Irish emigration to Canada reached its height. It was left to the individual greed of ship-owners ; the United States maintained sanitary regulations, which were to a certain extent effectual, but in Canada there was no such safe-guards. Some of the ships, says an eye-witness, looked like the Black Hole of Calcutta and the poor emigrants carrying with them from Ireland the seeds of disease, died

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

like flies. They continued to die and to scattei- an infection which meant almost sure death, after they had landed in the country. At Montreal eight hundred emigi'ants died in nine weeks and nine hundred died of 'diseases caught from emigrants. There are few blacker chapters in Britain's history than that of the famine in Ireland, and those who prattle the pleasing platitude, that you cannot change human nature, should ask themselves if we would tolerate such a chapter being written again in this day and age. No preparation was made for the reception or employment of the emigrants, as they landed here. In six months the deaths of the new arrivals was in excess of three thousand. Yet even while they were leaving Ireland, grain was being- exported from that country. The London Times pronounced the neglect of Government to be an eternal stigma on the British name. The Chief Secretary for Ireland was able to inform the House of Commons, that of a hundred thousand Irishmen that fled to Canada in a year, six thousand, one hundred died on the voyage, four thousand, one hundred on arrival, five thousand, two hundred in hospitals and one thousand nine hundred in towns to whicli they had gone. In a previous chapter, we have deplored tlie waste of trees in our land when it was new, but here was a waste of human life ten thousand times more deplorable. Some of these emigrants came to the Irish Block of Sydenham, and a finer class of settlers in a new land never left their native shores. Thus was life wasted, not in a day of war, but of profound peace. The Emigrant Society of Montreal, paints the result as follows :

"From Grosse Island up to Port Sarnia, along the bor- ders of our great river, up the shores of Lake Ontario and Erie, wherever the tide of emigration has extended, are to Le found one unbroken chain of graves where rcpo;^e fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers in a commingled heap —

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WHAT WAS GOING ON

no stone marking the spot. Twentj' thousand and upward have gone down to their fate."

Is it possible to imagine a harder fate than that of tliese poor emigrants, dying in poverty, far from their native land and among strangers, and hastily buried in an unknown grave ?

In 1848 the English crowded back the Boers in South Africa, who emigrated and formed the Transvaal Republic. And in 1849 the v/ondei-f ul story of Livingstone's discoveries in Africa became known.

Turning to France we find in 1841, Louis Napoleon attempting another revolution in his own favor. The re- mains of Bonaparte, the Man of Destiny, left the lonely rock of St. Helena, were borne to France and laid to rest in Paris, amid scenes as solemn as they were impressive. Guizot, whose historical works are his best monument, was Minister of Foreign Affairs. This decade was, everything considerc'd, rather an uneventful one in Finance. In 1843, as noted, she joined England in war on the Argintine and in 1847 finally subjugated Morocco. In February of 1848 began the work- ingmen's revolution and a workingmen's con\ention gather- ed in Paris. It was followed by a bloody communist out- break, and still later in the year Louis Napoleon was elected President of France.

This period has ever since been known in America as "the roaring forties". They roared all right. Steamboat boilers were bursting on the Mississippi and land booms were bursting everywhere. It was an era of intense land speculation. The country was growing and, generally speak- ing, prosperous. It was also an era of execrably bad manners among the people, if v»'e may believe Charles Dickens and his "American Notes". It started in 1840 with the election of William Henry Harrison as President ; he died a month after his inauguration and Vice-President Tyler served out his term as I'^i-eaidcnt. In 1812 the Seminole War ended and

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENH.-UI

Fremont began his explorations of the Rocky Mountains. James K. Polk was elected President in 1844, and in 1845 came the invention of the telegraph. The Slave Power which had dominated national affairs for twenty-five yeai's was at the apex of its authority, and this yeai" Florida and Texas were admitted as slave states. In 1846 as a result of its sinister machinations, began the Mexican War, "the most indefensible war ever waged on a weaker nation" as it was described by General Grant, who fought through it as a second lieutenant. Elias Howe patented the sewing machine at this time. In the following year the wai' was brought to a "triumphal" conclusion, when the American army entered Mexico City. In 1848 a huge piece of JMexican territory was ceded to the United States as a result of it. The Mormons settled Utah, and gold was discovered in Cali- fornia. Hoary headed men among us remember this event and the rush to the coast that followed it, in which several Sydenham people joined. Zachary Taylor, who had served under General Scott in Mexico was inaugurated President in 1849.

In Germany the greatest event in these ten years was the Revolution of 1848. Russia had her greedy eyes fixed on India and was spreading her tentacles everywhere in that direction.

Here in the homeland we were pretty well recovered from the shock of the MacKenzie rebellion and the hard times following it. It was a wretched affair and reflected no credit on either party, but perhaps a worse share on the loyalists. Lount and Matthews, whose heroism ill deserved the fate they suffered, have since been canonized by the Re- form party, but they were misguided men, caught in the nets of "circumstance, that unspiritual god" as Byron has l^hrased it. But the uprising had a powerfu- anid unfavor- able effect upon the settlement of Owen Sound and Syden- ham township. They would have been settled foiu- yeai-s

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WHAT WAS GOING ON

earlier but for its intervention. Mr. Charles Rankin, Pro- vincial Land Surveyor, had received instructions in 1836 to run the line now known as the Garafraxa Road, but Upper Canada was thrown into such an uproar by the events of 1837, the proposed survey was abandoned until 1839. In 1838 Lord Durham, an able Liberal statesman, was com- missioned to go to Canada and report upon the state of the colony ; he was also appointed to the office of Governor General, vacant at that time. On his return, the report he submitted was made the basis of the union of Upper and Lower Canada, the union being bitterly opposed by the Family Compact, to whose various iniquities, which need not be recounted here, the MacKenzie Rebellion was largely due. The Family Compact was of course hostile to the proposed union, as it foresaw the end of its reign of graft and misrule. The Hon. John Beverly Robinson went to England and pub- lished a counterblast to Lord Durham's report ; he was the adviser, philosopher and friend of the dominant faction, but he might as well have argued against the law of gravitation, more especially when it was remembered that sixteen years earlier he had strongly advocated the very union he now so strongly opposed. In the session of 1839 a bill reuniting the Canadas was introduced in the Imperial Parliament, by Lord John Russell, which afterwards became law. Charles Poulett Thomson was sent to Canada the following year, arriving in October. He had been appointed Governor General in suc- cession to Lord Durham and enjoyed that gentleman's con- fidence thoroughly. He was a well informed man in mer- cantile matters, having been bred to commercial pursuits and was an ardent free trader. While neither a thorough or profound statesman, he was a clever diplomat and politician and had held the office of president of the board of trade in the Russell administration. No better man could have been entrusted with the task of steering the two provinces into the bonds of union. His middle name was afterwards be-

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REmNISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

stowed upon what in time became the chief business throughfare of Owen Sound. The new task taxed all his finesse and political agility. The difficulties he encountered and surmounted need not be narrated here ; it will suffice that he landed the ship of state entrusted to his cai'e safely in port, and for his indefatigable and arduous services was in August, 1840, raised to the peerage, with the title of Baron Sydenham, of Sydenham in Kent and Toronto in Canada. His labors had weakened his physical powers as he was not a robust man, but he was ambitious and not dis- posed to brood over his maladies. What was afterwards Owen Sound took its first name from him, and it was only natural that a township which was always so strongly liberal in politics as Sydenham, should adopt the name in its turn.

The MacKenzie rebellion and the union of the two Can- adas were the most important events of that period, the second foreshadowing the greater event of Confederation, which was to come sixteen years later.

These are a few of the principal events in the world, that were transpiring in the fourth decade of last century and which agitated men's minds at the time. It was a stormy time in Canada's political history ; the first election after the union of Upper and Lower Canada was attended by scenes of violence such as have never been seen before or since on such occasions. The reins of power were slipping from the grasp of the Family Compact, the very name of which became an odious memory. About the only merit of the MacKenzie rebellion was that it drew the attention of the Imperial Parliment to the intolerable abuses that had grown up under their despotic rule. Lord Durham should be counted among the chief benefactors of our native country, which from such unpromising beginnings has grown, under wise statemanship, to be one of the strongest props of empire.

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CHAPTER III. BUILDING AND CLEARING

It is our intention at this point of our story, to devote a chapter to an attempted description of how the earhest settlers set about building their first log houses after their arrival and, when that task was completed, engaged in the more arduous one of clearing up the land. These tasks were gone about in a very crude manner when compared with our modern methods. It was, as has been observe'd elsewhere, the day of small things, but these things had to be before they gave way to our larger ones. Our factory system with its minute division of labor and immense production of com- modities at reduced costs, has gradually developed from simple methods and small beginnings, and even farming has in the same fashion become a specialized business in which the farmer more and more attempts to raise but one crop and that with the least possible exertion of effort promising the greatest returns. From the standpoint of economy and conservation of energy this is a prudent policy, but it is to be doubted if it has had a beneficial effect upon those who do the actual manual labor, in the production of wealth in its various forms. The human mind becomes too mucli like a machine. Each man knows his task thoroughly, but that task becomes more and more circumscribed as new inven- tions and new processes displace hand labor with the machine. P^actory life becomes a daily round of sameness and deadly monotony, and life on the fai*m will in due time inevitably follow it. There was no such monotony in the life of the pioneers when every man had to be his own mechanic, to a veiy considerable extent.

The basis of this description has been found in some personal recollections committed to paper by a former resi-

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

dent of the Lake Shore Line who came there as a boy of thu'teen, in the spring of 1844, with his father and a large family. We may be sure his experience tallied pretty closely with that of his neighbors, who at that time were like the proverbial hen's teeth, few and far between.

The first job tackled by the homesteader or the man who bought his land outright from the Crown was the build- ing of his house. Until that was accomplished, he usually boarded with some neighbor who was kind enough to take him in. When he had felled the trees that were cut up into logs for the purpose, a bee was held among the surrounding settlers and a log house of the size wanted, went up, fre- quently in the most rapid manner, the walls being erected in a single day. No architect's plans were required, nor was any attempt made at ornament. Sometimes an elm or a maple, from two to three feet in diameter was felled and the butt cut, lying just as it had fallen, was used as the foundation log for the front of the house. In the exact centre, a cut about twelve inches deep and a convenient width was made. This made a fine doorstep and marked the location of the front door. There was also one window in each of the side walls and a door in the back led into a lean- to. The walls were of various heights, but mostly of one storey of from ten to twelve feet. A pitched roof on these walls covered what in these effete days we call an attic, but was then known as either the upstairs or loft. Access to it was gained by a perpendicular ladder.

In building these houses the most experienced woods- men were usually assigned to the corners, of which there were of course four. It was their part to mortise the log so that it lay in its place securely and with as little open space as possible between it and the log next lower. It was taken as a mild form of disgrace if one of these four failed to hold up his corner and kept the other three waiting, in fact these

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BUILDING AND CLEARING

raising bees were a test of axemanship and speed which often developed into a race. Sometimes the logs were hewed square on the outside wall after the building' was finished but this was uncommon. Had the windows not been neces- sary, the houses, when the chinks were properly plastered on both the out and in sides, would have been practically airtight. When carefully built, they were warm and dry but hardly sanitary. They frequently became infested by cockroaches and it was almost impossible to get rid of them.

Sometimes, too, such a habitation was directly con- nected with the log barns of the period, by a covered passage leaiding from the back door outward to the latter. Mr. Thomas Lunn, later mayor of Owen Sound, built and occupied such a house on his farm, a mile northeast of Leith. These passages must have been a comfortable convenience on a cold w'inter moraing.

The interior arrangements were as simple as the out- side. Sometimes there were no partitions at all, and one big room served for kitchen, dining room, parlor or sitting room, and bedrooms all in one. In other cases a carpet was stretched on a pole through the centre of the house, doing duty as a partition. Every inch of space was utilized and if the family was sometimes cramped for it, they could always look forward to the building of the new house as soon as funds were available. The beds were often constructed so that one could be stowed away under another in the day time. Everything was primitive in the extreme. In one case a settler on the Lake Shore felled a tree, levelled the top surface of the stump carefully and then built his shanty around it. The stump served as a table.

The fire place was usually built into the back wall. The back of it was built up for three or four feet with stones. Logs three and four feet long and from one to one-and-one- half feet in diameter were used as back logs, and smaller ones placed on top when the family retired for the night.

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REr.ilNISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

Such a fire lasted all night. In the morning- the remains of the back log were drawn forward and more fuel piled on top. Seldom was a really well built house ever cold. Two chains were hung above the fireplace for holding pots and kettles.

A Dutch oven was often used for baking bread and roasting meat. Cookstoves were still in the hazy future. Another utensil used was a bake kettle, about fourteen inches in diameter and six inches deep, with an ordinary pot handle and standing on four short feet. After a good bed of coals had been pulled to the front of the fire and dough placed in this pot it was put on the fire, the lid was applied, and also covered with coals and the whole left standing until the bread was baked. The Dutch oven was a heavy sheet iron affair, about two feet long, fourteen inches wide and sixteen inches high, with open sides. It was placed on the open fire and the heat circulated through the open sides, cooking all kinds of pastry and meat. These are now relics of an almost-forgotten age, but in their time some splendid meals were cooked in them.

We had almost forgotten a highly important part of the house, the roof. It was in most cases made of small bass- wood logs, split exactly through the centre. Each half was hollowed out from end to end, leaving a thickness on the circumference of about six inches. This was done with the axe, the log being scored down its whole length on the fiat side and then chipped out, much as an Indian hollows a canoe. A row of them was placed on the roof, hollowed side up and running lengthwise from the eaves to the gable. Another row was placed on these with the hollowed sides down, the hollows of the second fitting over the joints in the first row. Such a roof shed the elements splendidly for a few years, but the bass wood logs were apt to crack and warp in time.

Such a house met the first requisition of the settler — it was cheap. An axe, a saw and a hammer were about all the

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BUILDING AND CLEARING

tools used in erecting it. About the only sawn timber re- quired was that used in the doors an'd window sash, the floor generally being of cedar poles hewed down to one half their diameter and laid down with the hewn side uppermost. The close of a raising bee was almost always signalized by a jollification in the new house if the weather permitted, and at a neighbor's house if it did not. Some lone survivors of these earthly habitations whose walls once echoed to the mirth or sorrow of their inmates of long ago, are still to be seen standing in delapidation and forloni loneliness in the more remote districts, but their number is steadily decreas- ing and soon the last of them will be swept away. It would be well if these survivors could be removed bodily and one of them placed in each of our cities where all could see, as an example to the rising generation of jazz of the houses their grandfathers were satisfied to live in. It might give some of them a thoughtful hour.

His house finished, the settler turned his attention to cutting, logging and burning the solid bush that surrounded the tiny clearing made by the building of his home. The ordinary layman may consider this as a task requiring a maximum of muscle and a minimum of brains only. He is profoundly mistaken. It was the Scottish economist, Adam Smith, who first reminded his readers, about one hundred and fifty years ago, that a certain amount of brain exercise is required at the most menial tasks of manual labor and that a college professor may make the sorriest kind of a ditch digger, until he has mastered the know-how of such work. A mechanic starting with nothing but a blue print and the materials to construct a piece of machinery he never saw before, is surely not only a brain worker but a manual worker as well. White collared office men too often forget this fact. Be that as it may, it still remains that a great deal of headwork and handskill were called into play in the clearing of bushland, at the time we speak of. In time it

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

developed a fine type of wood craftsmen on the Lake Shore. The labor was some times excitingly dangerous as well. The chopper had to cultivate the art of concentration and have his wits constantly about him.

Where the land was level and unbroken by any natural obstacle, it was cleared in strips about forty rods long and sixteen or more feet wide. An acre a day was a good day's work for a yoke of oxen and five or six men, but it was seldom even a man with a family could muster such a force. Hilly land had one advantage, the log heaps were obviously easfer to collect and pile. The larger logs were laid at the bottom and smaller ones skidded on top of them. About six or eight months afterwards, when they were dry enough the whole was burned. Would that we had some of that precious fuel now, when roots, rotten logs and limbs are carefully piled and dried for the stove or furnace ! There was considerable knack in hitching the chain to a log to be pulled by the oxen to the heap. If the chain M'ere hitched directly on top it meant a dead straight away pull, but if it was made at the ground and to one side, and the oxen started in a crosswise direction and away from the hitch, the log rolled and of course this slight momentum gave it a good start. Logs that could not be budged on a straight pull were easily started this way. Some logs were hard to burn i-egardless of how dry they were. The butternut was the worst. The remains of a butternut log, partially burned, were frequently dragged around to three and four subse- quent fires before it was entirely consumed.

In chopping standing timber, the choppers after cal- culating the proximity and relative distances between a number of trees, sometimes started what they called a wind- row. First one tree was cut about half through ; then an- other standing at the right distance from it was cut through in about the same manner, and so on back to the number of six, eight or even ten trees. The trees were so chopped that

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BUILDING AND CLEARING

in falling all would press to the same centre. Then, as last tree, a big maple or elm was selected and chopped entirely through. It fell upon the one nearest it, breaking it at the stump ; this in turn fell upon the one next to it and so on down the line, until the whole row of trees came down in a promiscuous heap. When the operation was carried out successfully a great deal of labor was saved. First, the work of chopping the first six or eight trees was cut in half, then the weight and momentum of the fall broke up the branches and made the brushing up anid piling of them easier. It was a moment of glorious excitement for the choppers too, when eight or ten trees came to earth with a crash like thunder.

In felling large trees singly it was a common practise to have them fall over a stump, distant about half the height of the tree chopped down from the same. Sometimes this was so successful that the tree broke in three places — where it struck the stump, once beyond that point and the top and once again between the same point and where the chopper had cut it through. Again this saved labor in cutting into log lengths for piling and burning. It required nice judge- ment and there was always the pleasurable anticipation of the results of the fall, not always realized however. Deep snow was a constant source of danger to the choppers in the winter time. They had to arrange matters so that they could make a quick getaway from a falling tree and when the snow was unusually deep, paths away from the stump had to be tramped in several directions, for it was not always a certainty which way it would fall. Sometimes a falling tree would lodge among its neighbors, hang there a few minutes and then suddenly fall to the ground. Where the timber was thick, in starting to fall it would break the branches of those around it or its own and these branches falling from a great height were another menace to the fel- lers. At other times the tree, lodging in one close by, jump-

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ed back from its own stump and the chopper had to jump, too, if it came in his direction and he valued his life. Again, the butt would fly up and fall to either right or left of its own stump, and again the chopper had to get in the clear. When a gang of men were chopping together, constant watch had to be kept for trees that swerved in falling, and sometimes caught the unwary in the sweep of their branches. Old settlers tell of running along tree trunks to escape such traps or, if driven to it by immediate dangei', jumping far out into tlie deep snow. Sometimes when they had just escaped being caught, they were buried in the snow thrown up by the falling trunk.

The reader will have gathered from the foregoing, some of the perils of the first clearing of the land. It will also strike him, if he is of a thoughtful nature, what an indis- pensable tool the lowly axe was. In a land where there was nothing but raw timber its uses were manifold ; it was seldom for any length of time out of the hands of the pioneer. In time this developed a fine race of axe men. The middle aged settlers who came direct from the old land, never became unusually expert in its use. Thej^ were two accustomed to the stift' blow from the shoulder they had acquired in many cases from using the pick, back in the land of their nativity. But they brought young sons with them or raised others after getting here, who reduced the use of the axe until it was almost a science. It is a pleasure to watch any man at work, when he is thorough master of the tool he uses, and this was so of the early axe men at Leith and on the Lake Shore Line.

There was an old saying, current in tliese localities at the time, that if you heaved a rock out of a window in Leith it would strike a Day-if not a Day a Cameron. The saying was probably refurbished to do local duty from one that origin- ated in Washington during the Civil War, that if you heaved a rock out of a window it would strike a brigadier general.

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From this humorous exaggeration it will naturally be in- ferred that the progeny of these two old and honorable families, who played such an active and useful part in the early upbuilding of the community, were numerous in the land. While this is undoubtedly true, the chief claim to distinction won bj^ the first comers bearing the names, from the heavily timbered country of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and all the sons they raised, was that almost without one exception they were known far and wide as mighty men of valor with the axe. In their hands it became a thing of beauty — a beauty of accuracy and speed in chop- ping and hewing. They knew just where to place the stroke and every stroke told. This was a gift in the days when cross-cut saws were scarce, or crude V toothed affairs when one had them. The lance toothed cross-cut still belonged to the future. But give one of these men his favorite axe and he would cut his way through anything.

There were many tricks with the axe. Sometimes two choppers would start felling a tree, one upon each side of it. When they had chopped as wide a scarf as the diameter of the tree demanded, instead of continuing on around the stump and starting another cut, they would simply turn in their tracks and the new cut was begun. This necessitated right-and-left-hand chopping, a gift far harder to acquire than one would naturally suppose. A right-and-left-hand boilermaker who, before the days of organized labor and uni- form wage scales, used to draw more money than his less fortunate mates, would appreciate the destinction.

There was another family on the Lake Shore which acquired considerable celebrity in its use. Four of the sons, all natives of Scotland who had left it at an early age, would surround a huge maple witli their axes, forming a square. The first blows were struck and as all had a good sense of rythm, in the course of a minute or two a regular tempo was caught, about one hundred and twenty to the minute, the

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strokes synchronizing as regularly as the drumbeats in a march played by a concert band. No tree stood up long under such an assault, sometimes continued regularly for a quarter of an hour when the choppers had gained their stride. Soon there came the first ominous crack, then a few more strokes and then some more clear sunlight was let into the forest. The scarves on such a stump after the tree had fallen, would be as smooth as though jack planed. One day in early times one of these choppers drove his axe into the gash in a log one hundred times, striking the same spot every time without the variation of one sixty-fourth of an inch. Such men naturally prized a good axe. In the severe frosts of winter it was apt to break when the wood was frozen hard and the axe itself was chilled through. A hem- lock knot was also destruction to the keen edge under such circumstances. So the axe was ground shai-per in the sum- mer and with a blunter edge in the winter.

The land was generally prepared for seed the first sea- son after it was cleared. The surface was a rich vegetable mould which the falling leaves of centuries had steadily rotted upon and fertilized. It was not an inexhaustible fertility however, altho some great crops were raised in the early years. On the farm of Mr. Lunn, mentioned above, about 1858 when the farm was leased by the Henry family, then well known in the district, ten acres were cleared in one season and this was sowed to wheat. This threshed forty bushel to the acre which is a remarkable yield when one considers the area of the clearing that must have been covered by stumps. The hardwood stumps rotted slowly, the basswood and elm stumps disintegrating in a few years. Frequently the labor involved in clearing the land stirred up the surface so that it needed no cultivation for the first crop. At any rate turnips and wheat were frequently sown upon such a surface and flourished "like a green bay tree". The soil along the Lake Shore, however, never had the depth or

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such a favorable subsoil as that lying along the shore on Concession A northeast of Leith and in latter times has needed more fertilizing. After about thirty-five years of cropping the first signs of exhaustion appeared and large yields of wheat became a thing of the past. Will the same be true of our Western Provinces ? The writer read an account last winter of land at Brandon, Manitoba, which had been under crop continuously since 1881 and was still going strong and raising as large crops as it did in that year. In many parts of the west as we learned from personal obser- vation the farmers let the barnyard manure go to waste, fhey assign two reasons for this: First, they dread the seed- ing of the land in weeds; second, where manure is used in many cases the rank growth of straw breaks >down and the grain lodges. But surely such a pace of cropping cannot be maintained indefinitely.

The first crops raised in Sydenham were bountiful and there was plenty for man and beast in all her borders. There was only one period when there was a scarcity of provisions in the new settlement. This was in July, 1844, when, owing to the non arrival of a schooner at Owen Sound, a pinch was felt for about three or four weeks. Several Lake Shore Line people returned to Gait whence they had come and worked at the harvest until it was over. Flour was so scarce that more fortunate neighbors had to divide up with their fellows. It was made into a mixture called pap, a word which later gained an unenviable notority when used in the sense of political patronage. Pap was made by stimng flour with water in a cup ; this in turn was poured into scalding milk and when thickened to the proper consistency and cooled, was eaten with milk. What was used at one meal was al- ways prepared about one meal-time before. In time the overdue schooner arrived with provisions, the use of pap was discontinued and borrowed flour was returned. It had been so scarce people had not dared to make bread.

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The first crops were harvested with the sickle, as in the days of Ruth and Boaz. They were so small in acreage and stumps in the new clearings were so thick that in all proba- bility it was the most economical way of cutting the grain. In a few years the grain cradle came into use. It was fol- lowed by the reaper and along about 1884 or 1885 the first self binder was started in Sydenham. People gathered from all over the township to see that binder start, ourselves among them. What if an aeroplane had sailed overhead that day ! The ensuing scene can hardly be imagined.

The grain was drawn to the rude log barns and thresh- ed, mostly in the winter. Before the advent of the first threshing machine the common method was to lay the sheaves in two rows along the floor of the barn and drive a team of horses or oxen over them and thus tramp out the grain. During this process the sheaves were tui-ned over repeatedly so as to thoroughly separate the wheat from the chaff. In 1848 a threshing machine came into the Owen Sound district. It was a small affair about six feet long and five feet wide, little bigger than the ordinary fanning mill. It was as simple as it was small, the principal parts being a cylinder antd feeding board. The straw was taken away from the cylinder by a man using a rake for the pur- pose, and by him passed to another who threw it out of the barn or into a mow. Two hundred sheaves were threshed at a time. Then the machine was stopped so that the grain accumulating behind the machine might be pulled back. Two hundred bushels were considered good threshing for ten hours. There were usually two men and as many teams with the machine and the price paid the whole outfit for its use was four dollars a day. From such a type the present large threshers of the Western Provinces that have threshed as high as three thousand bushel a day have evolved. However, only oats, peas and barley could be threshed in

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the manner first described. Wheat was always threshed with the flail.

All the farm implements were primitive in the extreme. As far as possible they were made on the farm itself. Har- rows were made from crotches cut from a hardwood tree. These were trimmed down to the required size, the top side flattened off and long* spikes driven through the A shapeid frame to act as teeth. The first seeding after clearing was as often as not harrowed in by cedar brush drawn over the seeded soil by hand. Nature did the rest. Oxen were the only beasts of draught and burden at first. Horses were un- known on some farms on Concession A as late as 1875. There is an item in the recollections referred to at the begin- ning of this chapter of a horse bought from Mr. Robert Crichton, who lived on the 10th Line. The purchaser, who bought it about 1848, agreed to cut and clear ten acres of land, two acres to be done in the first ten months after the sale was made, four acres the next year and the remaining four the following year as payment, the seller to furnish board for the choppers while they were on the job. The price paid for the horse in labor performed was afterwards estimated at fifty two dollars. This gives one some idea of the scarcity of horses and the high estimation in which they were held.

The contract for the first flour mill in the vicinity, built lat Leith, w-as let in 1846 ; before this the settlers had taken 'their wheat to be ground at Inglis' Mill near Owen Sound, built some years earlier. When built, this mill was the only I one of its kind north of Fergus. Its patronage was good; the settlers from within a radius of foity and fifty miles came to it to have their grists ground. Sometimes they waited four and five days before this could be done; their oxen meanwhile being tied to trees in the bush about the mill. This mill had one pair of stones and a large bolt, but there was no screening, or fanning mill, and there was con-

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siderable pollution of the flour from various causes, especial- ly hens. The miller's toll was six pounds in the bushel. In the winter it was customary for the Lake Shore Line set- tlers to take their grists there one week, return home and go back for the flour the next. The bottoms of two bags were sewed together and a bushel of wheat was put in each bag. The load was then slung across the back of an ox and taken to the mill. A great deal of thieving went on among those who gathered and waited for their grists. Axes, ropes and other articles disappeared mysteriously; it maybe the mill's patrons considered the miller's toll excessive and squared the account in this manner. The Leith mill, the machinery for which, while there is no positive recor^d to that effect, there are strong grounds for believing was shipped from England, was a great convenience to the settlers of the district and was a success from the first.

By 1852 practically every farm on the Lake Shore had been cleared to some extent. John Telfer had used a nice discrimination in allotting the lands to the three races (if that be the proper word) represented in the pioneers. The Lowland Scottish were given the land along the Lake Shore Line nearest town, and for about five miles below Annan. The Scottish Highlanders were settled farther down the line and around the future village of Balaklava, which was given that name during the Crimean War. The Irish were sent to the Irish Block where they secured some splendild farms.

CHAPTER IV. THE FIRST SETTLEMENT

When our memories turn backward and pass in silent review the events of the last eighty-five years we find it at times almost impossible to conceive of the changes that have in that time occurred in Grey County. It seems hard to credit the fact that in the year Queen Victoria ascended the throne, not a tree, so far as is known, had been felled in Sydenham township. Eighty-five years, while a long life is not an extraordinarily long one. Yet such a life would cover in its span all the changes we have seen and heard of and known in the history of Sydenham.

Of course our expansion, owing to our geographical position, has not been remarkable. Chicago, which was then to all intents a frontier town of about thirty-five hundred souls, was in 1837 incorporated as a city. It is now mount- ing steadily to the three million mark. Sydney and Buenos Ayres, the largest modern cities under the Southern Cross, have become so in the last fifty years. But we do not live in Chicago and are only mildly interested in Sydney and Buenos Ayres. It is the changes in our immediate surround- ings and with which we daily come in contact, that grip our attention. Distance does not lend enchantment to the view, in this respect at least.

It was in 1840 that John Telfer, an extraordinary and even remarkable man, was authorized by W. B. Sullivan, of the Crown Lands Department in Montreal, to proceed to the head of Owen Sound (which is properly speaking not a sound and should never have been named so) via the line of the Garafraxa road and there assume the duties of Crown Lands Agent, for the district about to be throwTi ©pen for

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settlement. The letter in which Mr. Telfer is apprised of his appointment and given instructions as to his duties is a for- midable looking document, bears the seals of the Depart- ment and is bound in colored ribbon. The margins are al- most as large as the space given to writing, almost every sentence is paragraphed by itself and the lines are fully one half inch apart. The time is coming when it will be regarki- ed as an important historical paper in the annals of Grey County, if it is not so already. As it outlines clearly the plan upon which the whole country contiguous to Owen Sound was settled and the duties imposed upon homestead- ers, beside throwing many interesting side-lights upon the coming of the first white settler, and as the Garafraxa was the road by which practically all the first pioneers came to North Sydenham, it has been deemed appropriate to append it in full. The communication follows :

Crown Lands Office, Montreal

Sept. 25th, 1840 To Mr. John Telfer

Sir :

I have the honor to inform you, that His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor has been pleased to 'direct the opening of a main road from the Township of Garafraxa to the head of Owen Sound, upon Lake Huron.

It is proposed by the Goverment to place an agent at the Settlement at the northern end of the road and one at the southern end near the Township of Garafraxa.

You have been selected for the superintendence of the northern settlement, and as I have signified this to you per- sonally and have received your verbal acceptance of the office, it becomes my duty to detail to you the views of the Government and the 'duties you will be expected to perform.

In the first place I have to refer you to an extract of a —44—

THE FIRST SETTLEMENT

report made by Mr. H. I. Jones in an inspection of the Port- age road from Coldwater to Machadach Bay, an'd I would observe that as the northern end of the main road about to be opened can at present be approached by settlers only from the water, it is of consequence that the portage road should be placed in a state of repair as far as the season of the 3^ear and the limited means at my disposal will permit. You will therefore peruse the report of Mr. Jones and con- tract with some person or persons near the road to do such part of the work as can be accomplished this year, report- ing to me immediately the particulars of the contract for my approval and sanction.

The contract price will be paid by me upon your re- quisition and certificate that you have inspected the work and that it has been performed according to the contract and I would have you keep within tlie expenditure recom- mended by Mr .Jones.

When you have placed the work on the portage roa'd in progress you will proceed forthwith to the head of Owen Sound, when you will meet with Deputy Provincial Surveyor Rankin, at present employed in surveying land along the line of road and who is authorized to make out the plan of a town-plot at the head of the Bay. You will select a place for a building for a place in which you will reside and immedi- ately cause the same to be erecte^d. It should be large en- ough for your residence, for stores of supplies and a tem- porary shelter to settlers and workmen until they shall have erected shanties for themselves which you will of course see done as soon as possible.

It has been suggested to me that the most comfortable and convenient shape for the log building you are required to erect will be two apartments of twenty feet square and placed within about ten feet of one another. The space between being covered and the doors opening into the pas- sage thus formed, which passage will answer as a place of

REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

storage for many articles not liable to be made away with.

If the building should be found too small it will be easy to a'dd to it by the erection of more apartments upon the same plan, having a continuation of the passage between them.

I have further to inform you that it is the intention of the Government to open the road along the line surveyed by D'y Provincial Surveyor Rankin, whom you will find on the ground and who will give you any information as to the direction of the road.

The kind of road to be laid out may be described as follows :

That is to say it will be 66 feet in width.

The trees in the centre to the width of 22 feet to be chopped level with the ground.

At the sides, 22 feet in width each, the trees to be cut at the ordinary height.

The trees not to be felled out of the road, or if so felled, to be drawn in.

The trees cut down to be logged and burned in the sides of the road.

The price to be paid for opening the road, under ordin- ary circumstances, when on the one hand there is no natural prairie or lightly timbered land and on the other when no causewaying or bridging or levelling is required will be at the rate of thirty-two pounds ten shillings per mile.

The parts of the road which form exceptions to this rule you will make special contracts for, reporting the same to me.

Money will be paid to contractoi-s at this office upon your transmission of the contracts with your certificate that the work has been inspected by you and found to be duly performed according to contract.

During the winter you will get out timber for a saw- mill and gristmill to be erected in such a position near the

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THE FIRST SETTLEMENT

head of the Sounid as may be selected for the pui-pose by Mr. Rankin. As it is not improbable but that some private individual may choose to erect mills at his own expense and as I am desirous to economize the funds placed in my hands to the extent of my power I am desirous to postpone this wish until as late a period as will be consistent with proceed- ing with the erection of the mills in the spring.

I am further to infoiTn you that it is the intention of 'the Government to locate upon free grants of land to the ex- tent of fifty acres each such heads of families or single men, who have heretofore received no grants of land from the Government as may be willing to accept the same upon the strict terms proposed and who may appear capable of under- taking the settlement antd of carrying it through success- fully.

Man}" of the settlers will probably apply at this office for authority to be located. To those whom I shall approve of I shall give authority addressed to you and you will place them upon land as you shall be directed.

When any of them shall apply to you, you will enter the application in the form annexed to these instructions, showing the age of the applicant, his place of birth, his length of residence, the number of his family and his pecuniary means if he has any. You will keep an entry in a book of such applications and transmit to me slips copied from the book, upon which you will receive authority for making the location.

You will particularly explain to the locators that they are not to expect assistance from the Government and recommend them not to locate unless they can from their own resources maintain themselves and their families until crops can be raised from the land.

Upon the approval of the survey to be made by Mr. Rankin I shall furnish you with maps an'd the lots reserved will be open for sale or location, you keeping in view that

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' closeness of settlement is the object of the Government and \ that detached locations cannot be allowed.

As regards sales of land I shall in due season furnish .\ou with separate instructions.

In contracting for the opening of the road you will pre- fer such persons as shall engage to take land in the whole or in part for the work to be performed, on condition of actual settlement.

You will furnish yourself with a supply of provisions, sulflcient for the winter. That is to say, one hundred baiTels of flour and fifty barrels of pork, also with axes, spades and other necessary implements. These you will dis- tribute in payment for work upon the roalds, or for money at such rates as will cover the cost, transport and wastage. You will make out a regulai* monthly report of your pro- ceedings and transmit the sums to me as opportunity shall offer, and when you are in doubt as to your proceedings you will apply to me for directions.

You will explain to all applicants for locations that if it shall be discovered that any person has before received a grant of land from the Crown his location shall be consid- ered void and that this point will be strictly investigated upon return of the locations.

The conditions upon which the applicants shall be lo- I cated will be as follows : 1st ; The locater is to reside upon his location ; 2nd, If he wishes to be absent for any time he is to apply to you stating his desire, the occasion and the intended length of his absence and you will give him leave if the occasion be legitimate and proper ; 3rd, If any locater shall abandon his lot without leave or shall fail to return to it in due season the lot is to be considered vacant ; 4th, No patent will be issued for any located lot until one third of the land shall be cleared anid under crop ; 5th, The time given for this clearing will be four years from the date of

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THE FIRST SETTLEMENT

the location after which time if the clearing be not made the location will be considered forfeited.

You will furnish strict accounts in duplicate with dup- licate vouchers for your expenditure, in money or otherwise, and you will furnish your requisitions, contracts and other documents in duplicate.

Your remuneration will be at the rate of ten shillings per diem while employed and j'ou will be allowed from the provisions in your custody two pounds of flour and two pounds of pork per diem.

In consequence of the road vaiying from a right line and of the base line being straight some of the first lots will slightly vary in quantity but locaters must understand that the lot granted is in satisfaction of a location more or less, and if you find lots greatly to exceed or be under the quantity of fifty acres you will resei've them for sale.

As the road is completed you will cause grass seed to be sown upon it and make a charge for the expenditure.

I have the honor to be, Sir Your most ob't Sei'vant

W. B. SULLIVAN.

The first thing that will strike the reader's mind will in all probability be that for a man who was paid the modest sum of ten shillings a day Mr. Telfer was given wide discre- tionary powers in his new office. He is ordered to report regularly to headquarters in certain matters. But in all minor questions, and some of them not so minor, his word was law among the homesteaders. He was never backward in enforcing his authority among them and the five or six years following his arrival at Owen Sound were about the most strenuous in his adventurous life. Vexatious discus- sion was constantly arising among settlers who thought they had not been given a square deal. Mr. Telfer was one of the

REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

most roundly abused men in Canada, but he was not a sens- itive man and rather enjoyed a fight. His battles with the world had taug-ht him a system of attack all his own and almost always he gave a little better than he got. With his activities at Owen Sound we are not concerned however. Six years after his arrival there, or in 1846, he moved down to Leith and with his coming commences the history of the village. It took its name, of course, from the seaport of Auld Reekie, from the vicinity of which many of the new settlers were coming, if not from Edinburgh itself. The name of the village and Mr. Telfer's intention of coming to it eventually seem to have been in the mind of that gentle- man from the time of his first arrival at Owen Sound. Had he had his way Owen Sound would have been given the name of Edinburgh, but local pride and the customs of a new land were too strong for him and his wishes were ig- nored. Had the Athens of the North found its original site at the very head of the Frith of Forth, the analogy in the sense of relative geographical position between the two Scottish cities and their would-be prototypes in Canada would have been striking and complete.

When Mr. Telfer moved in, the site of the village-to-be was still in its natural state. What induced him to come in is not clearly apparent. There was no natural harbor and it was not until thirteen or fourteen years later the first dock was built. But it is surprising, when looking through the newspapers an'd legal documents of the time, to notice the importance the early settlers attached to water power. There was little use of growing wheat unless they had mills to grind flour out of it. A harbor could not have been made at Leith without vast expenditures for dredging, docking and a breakwater, and the steady lowering of the lake levels since the early sixties wouM have made such expenditures endless. The first engines made in Gait were built in 1844 by the Crombie firm and these would have been available ;

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THE FIRST SETTLEMENT

seeing so much free fuel was to be had everywhere one sometimes wonders why they were not utilized but the pioneers never bought them when a stream could be dammed and the water power used instead. The stream at Leith was at that time a large one. It entered the bay at a point just south of where the dock was after- wards built and was known as the Water o' Leith. There was a good water privilege back from the bay a short dis- tance and here Mr. Telfer immediately erected a grist and flour mill. It was at first only about half its subsequent size, had two run of stones and was substantially built as one may see upon examination, for it is still standing. The dam, however, gave a great deal of trouble at first. It per- sisted in leaking, but this was in time overcome. A Mr. Fairbaim was given the contract of building it and many of the first settlers in the village found their first employ- ment there in its construction. No record of the price survives but it must have been insignificant when compared with buiMing costs to-day. It was a time when men did business on very little capital, — on a shoestring, as we say nowadays. Wages were low where they paid at all ; a man's stout arms and an ability and willingness to use them were his best assets.

What was known as the Mill House was shortly after- wards built, about twenty-five yards north of the mill. It is now the same as though it had never been, having been razed about fifty years ago. Here, about 1850, the first store keeper kept his stock in trade, — a gentleman named Wylie.

The town plot of Leith was surveyed in 1851 by William Smith, Deputy Provincial Surveyor. The old men were see- ing visions and the young men dreaming dreams of a future metropolis and the streets were given euphonius and his- toric names by Mr. Telfer. Those running northeast and southwest, commencing at the waterfront, were nameki res-

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pectively : Huron, Buchanan, Princes, Queen, John, and Brant. The Leith Walk ran southeast from the waterfront, starting from the future dock and merging into the road to Annan. The remaining streets running in the same direction and on the northeast side of the Walk were named ; Market, Wallace, Thistle, Bruce and Moore. Princes Street was named for the classic throughfare in Scotland's metro- polis, Wallace and Bruce streets for her national patriots, Thistle street for her national emblem, Moore street for the Irish poet. Brant for the great Indian chief of that name, and so on. A large space on the northwest side of Princes street and between Wallace and Thistle was reserv- ed for a market place but never functioned as such. Forty years ago it was a huge gravel pit and is now covered with the quick-growing cedar.

In 1853 Mr. Wylie erected a store at the corner of Princes street and Leith Walk, with a storehouse at the rear but separated from it by a short distance. The mtei'vening space was filled by a residence erected for him there in the early spring of 1854 by Messrs James and Allan Ross, both of whom had worked on the construction of the Owen Sound jail the previous year. These two also helped in the erec- tion of the Leith distillery, referred to later. Late in 1854 they also built a large two storey frame residence and store directly opposite Mr. Wylie's buildings for Peter Marshall. This latter site is now covered by the residence of Oliver Cameron. The Ross brothers also built frame houses for Robert Grierson, Henry Taylor and John Tumbull. The last named house went up in smoke one day a few years ago ; the Grierson residence was bricked over and is now occupied by Mr. Couper and Henry Taylor's house was sold soon after its erection to Peter Burr arid is still occupied by his son, W. N. Burr.

In May, 1855 James Ross, Sr., and his sons James and Allan formed a partnership under the firm name of James

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THE FIRST SETTLEMENT

Ross and Sons, and rented the Marshall store for two and one-half years. They carried on a general store business there until late in 1857, when they bought out Mi'. Wylie and moved across the street. Here they continued in bus- iness until 1875 and their trade must have been a consider- able one. In one year in the early seventies they sold over one thousand dollars' worth of tobacco and if they sold other goods in proportion, it is evident their turnover was considerable.

Both these store buildings were later destroyed by fire. The Marshall building made a merry blaze one night in the late summer of 1880, while it was standing empty. Some people were uncharitable enough to think it did not take fire accidentally. It was a large high building, big enough for a small boy to get lost in, as one of them who still survives can testify. The Wylie store and residence was burned one day in April, 1888, while occupied by David Ross, and with it were burned many records that would have been useful in such a work as the present one. Fortunately some of them were saved. Its site is now occupied by the place of v/orship of the Baptist congregation in Leith. i The first "institution" known as a tavern was erected about one hundred and fifty yards northeast of the mill, on the Leith Walk, on the left hand side of the road while go- ing to Annan. The exact date has been lost in the mists of time. It was a large building for the time and was built so well and withstood the ravages of the years so success- fully it is still standing. One of its early features was a large bar in the front facing the Leith Walk, with a storage room for beer. This bar sometimes presented scenes of the most animated activity, scenes that would have pained the heart of the prohibitionist, with men busy on both sides of it. The present occupant of this building is Mr. Charles Kemp, wiio came to the village in 1891 and assumed charge of the mill. He ground the last grist there in the late summer of

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1921 and the machinery that had rumbled for seventy-five years was at last silent. The building was dismantled, the machinery taken out and sold and the oM mill still stands as a relic to remind us of its former glory and the very earliest days of the village, when the hearts of the pioneers beat high with the hope it would yet be a city. Mr. Kemp's regime had extended a little over thirty years and a more faithful or trustworthy miller never served a community in such a capacity.

Just east of this, the first hotel in the village, and distant about thirty yards from it stood another large one storey log tavern, first built for and occupied by William Glen. It was a rambling affair but very commcdious. Mr. Glen was among the earliest settlers and while in middle life succeeded to a large estate in Dumfries-shire and the title of Glen-Airston. His heirs still own this site and a large lot adjoining, and from the manner real estate values have, since the outbreak of the Great War, been jumping in Leith it may yet be well worth owning. The hotel was torn down about forty years ago to provide fuel for a brick kiln. So was its large stable, also of homely log construction, which stood directly opposite it on Princes street, and for the same purpose. A few yards directly southwest on the same street stands a small log building, occupied until thirty- four years ago by the Misses Easton. It then stood empty for twenty-five years, when it was sold for seventy-five dollars and renovated into a summer cottage called Blarney Castle. It as built in 1857 from cedar logs cut on the lot on which it stands. Today it would probably bring twelve times seventy-five dollars. The destiny of this building and of the log one alongside it remind one of their counterpart in Scripture where two men reapdd in the same field. The one was taken and the other left. Want of fuel sacrificed one and high building costs saved the other.

Immediately adjoining the Water o' Leith on the op- —54—

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posite side from the Leith Walk and fronting on the Bay Shore Road is a large tract of land which was not included in the original town plot. The soil is almost pure sand and some large pines once grew here. Until about thirty-five years ago it was the scene of all the athletic sports of the village and w^as used frequently for a picnic ground. A prettier spot for such events couM hardly be found but latterly it has been turned into a golf course. Time out of mind it has been known as the Old Distillery Field ; it is probably about fifteen acres in extent. Here, in the seven- ties and eighties, were played all the cricket matches, when the game flourished in Leith. The annual excursions of Owen Sound's combined Sunday Schools were also accommo- dated within its bounds in monster picnics that were the big events of the year. The last one of these came in 1885. I In the south corner of this field, a distillery was built j in the early days," which will sound like a vaguely inkief- inite period. But the evidence as to the exact date of its erection has been so contradictory and confusing that no positive opinion on that point is ventured. As fai* as can be ascertained however, it was between 1854 and 1858. After our experience in trying to find out the exact time we are not surprised that two creditable witnesses will go into the witness box and each swear solemnly and con- scientiously to facts, as he believes them, that flatly contra- dict one another. With the strange perversity of human nature we pass up recent events as not woi*th remembering until they have conced€*d into the dim and misty past and then, when they are all but forgotten, we raise heaven and earth to find out what really happened at such and such a time. Nor does it appear who it was built for. William Wye Smith, an early historian of the county, says it was built for James Wilson of Gait, but this has been disproved. Nobody was keeping track of current events at the time, probably because they never imagined for a moment these

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local events would ever be of historical interest. They were all engrossed in the all-absorbing- task of making a living and getting ahead in the world, as we are today. We are not so very much ^different, in many respects, from the people of seventy years ago after all.

Sometimes great movements and great events have their origin in trifling incidents which everyone overlooks at the time these incidents happen. It is perhaps as well we are not eteraallj^ oppressed with a sense of responsibility for our slightest action.

Benjamin Franklin, while he was yet a printer and at some time before the American Revolution kept a small ledger of his personal expenses, which in some way became lost. He made diligent search for it himself and failed to find it. It was known after he died this book was lost, and search was made for it by relic hunters at different periods until last year, when by the merest chance it was discovered in a garret in Boston. It immediately sold for twelve thousand dollars.

Tlie two leading papers in Auckland, N. Z., now a city of one hundred and seventy thousand, in 1923 celebrated their sixtieth anniversaries, one within six weeks of the other. They published splendid anniversary numbers, both of which it was our good fortune to have mailed us. These are mainly historical retrospects of the city and environs, from its founding until the present day. When it came to a narration of events in the forties and fifties of last century, of buildings that were built only to be destroyed by various means and business men who flourished at that time, in short, events of purely local interest, these two gTcat papers had to depend almost entirely upon the memory of an aged lady, a Mrs. Hope, who still sui'vives there.

These two incidents are cited as a comment upon the mutability of human affairs and the difficulties encountered

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by the relic hunter and the historian when they start delv- ing into the past to unearth its secrets or treasures.

The main fact about this distillery then, was that it was built, even if the building date has been lost. It was a large two storey wooden building, on the Water o' Leith strangely enough, as an engine furnished the motive power, it vvas of the old vertical frame, butterfly value type, built by the Crombie firm in Gait. The new equipment was all first class for the time and the whiskey turned out by the new industry was also first class, if we may accept the testi- mony of people who should have been connoisseurs in that respect. Extensive cattle sheds and hog pens were added as outbuildings and here the mash, after it had been thoroughly drained, was used to fatten the stock. Some- times the head distiller, a man called Sibbald, had fits of aberration liowever, and it was fed to the steers and hogs with startling and spectaculai' results. A drunken hog, according to some of those who witnessed the consequences of these lapses of memory, is the most comical sight in the world, almost as comical as the sight of a human hog who deliberately drinks himself into a state of beastly insensi- bility is loathsome.

The second distiller was a Mr. Rochester, who was in charge several years. However, the distillery, which seems to have been the only one at the time in this part of Grey County, was short lived. According to W. W. Smith, it was closed in 1865 and had been for a year or so. It was de- ^molished shortly after that date and no sign of it remains. The whiskey manufactured there retailed at Leith and Owen Sound at from forty to sixty cents a gallon. Henry Baker had an agency in Owen Sound, where the demand for it was brisk. It was in great demand at bam raisings and other like events. The fanner who refused to furaish whiskey for his bara raising was esteemed a tightwad. A pailful was placed on a piece of squared timber at a raising and every

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one drank ad libitum. It must have been good liquor for one recoils at the thought of what woul'd happen were the same procedure followed today with the vile concoctions called whiskey.

As illustrating the quality of "pure Leith whiskey" the following true story was given us quite recently by an old lady, now in her eightieth 3'ear. When about fifteen years of age she was sent down from Annan, with a companion about the same age, by a farmer who was raising a bam, for a pail of stimulant for the occasion. The road from Leith to Annan was at that time only a path through the woods ; the day was rather warm and the shade pleasant. They reached the distillery, filled the pail and started home- wai"id. When about half way to Annan they bethought themselves of trying the liquor to see what it tasted like. They found the taste sharp, but not unpleasing and each took a little drink. This was followed a few minutes later by one a little larger. No more was partaken of but the young ladies experienced a delightful exhilaration, followed by a dreamy languor. A little later one of them suggested that they take a rest in the shade. They lay down and in a minute both were fast asleep. When they awakened they felt no bad effects of their nap and it was not until years later that the truth (dawned upon them, they had been hope- lessly drunk. Mrs. C told this story with a hearty

gusto as a joke on herself.

In 1858, Allan Ross built a mill for his father, James Ross, Sr., on what was known on the first maps as Reefer's Creek, half a mile northeast of Leith. This mill was built for a woolen mill but never operated as such. The machin- ery was bought from a mill on the same stream, about three quarters of a mile east of Annan and built for John Wilson. After installing this machinery, the owners changed their minds, bought five thousand logs in Sarawak and made

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plans to operate a saw mill. This idea was in turn abandon- ed and at last oatmeal machinery was set in place and the mill commenced grinding. Allan Ross, having built the mill, was made head miller by his father arid ground oatmeal successfully for eleven years. The frequent change in plans was due to faulty engineering in the dam. A huge overshot wheel was first put in position, but it was found to be so big there was almost no head of water on it. This was taken out and a pit dug at the foot of the flume, a turbine wheel was placed there and everything worked satisfac- torily. Oatmeal was shipped to all parts of Ontario, to New York, and some consignments were even sent to Edinburgh. This latter, however, seems like carrying coals to New- Castle. The stream commenced drying up in the summer months and in the early seventies the mill was shut down for good. The machinery was removed thirty-five ago and m 1902 the mill was torn down. Its site is now occupied by a honey extracting plant owned by I\Ir. Frank Showell.

There was no dock at Leith until shortly before 1860, but soon after Mr. Telfer came some piles were driven close to shore near the mouth of the Water o'Leith. A landing place was made on this and a large batteau built, which was rowed out to the small steamships that occasionally called and took off the passengers. The MacNeil family, coming in 1855 from the eastern end of Ontario, were landed in this manner. They came on the steamer Kaloolah. We were told by one of the sons in tliis family, tliat the first money he ever earned was in unloading lumber at Leith for James Ross, Sr. The schooner on which this lumber was loaded approached as near the shore as her draught would permit, there being no dock to tie up to, and the lumber was thrown overboard to float ashore. All trace of the piling which marked the site of the first landing place has completely disappeared, although diligent search lias been made for it in recent years.

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

One most unusual fact about the village may be noticed here. From the days when the first pioneers set foot in it until the present moment, there has not been a solitary case of drowning, either there or in the immediate vicinity. There have been narrow escapes but the victims aKvays managed to elu'de the jaws of the trap. Considering that it was bounded on one side by the bay and on the other by what was once a deep stream and mill dam, in both of which the oportunities were never wanting, the record seems re- markable indeed.

I By an oversight we have omitted mentioning in its j proper place the building of a large tannery on Reefer's 1 Creek, by James Ross, Sr., a few yards west of the oatmeal mill previously spoken of. He had designs of making a tanner of his son John, but that young man had plans of Ills own and, in 1867, he joined a large party of Canadian emigrants who set out from Gait, with New Zealand as their objective. His brother Andrew was also of this party, most of whom pioneered in the Waikaito district. North Island, and became prosperous farmers there. The new tannery was never operated and now not a trace of it remains.

Some years after the opening of the Ross store, on Princes Street, and the building of the first dock, this fiim built a large storehouse for grain just northeast of their place of business, on the site now covered by the large driv- ing shed owned by the Baptist congregation. A great deal of grain was handk^d here, the queue of wagons waiting to unload often extending far down the street, but about fifteen years after its erection the building was jacked up and moved down to the wateifront to a new site just east of the dock. Standing beside it, but nearer the dock was another smaller storehouse owned by Adam Ainslie. Both buildings had the hewed barn frame which was the vogue when they were built; The first was torn idown about thirty years ago and the second in 1915. Across the road from

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these on the Leith Walk was a large hay shed which has long disappeared also.

I From the above it will be inferred that the grain trade I at Leith must have reached considerable proportions. ' There was no port of call on the east shore nearer than Meaford, so the little village had a large territory to draw from in the shipment of grain. As many as three schooners lay at the dock at one time waiting for their grain cargoes. Much of this was taken in part or whole payment of farmers' store bills at the Leith and Annan stores of the Ross firm. No figures are available of the yearly shipments. Prices were low and currency scarce and this grain trade was virtually carrie<d on by barter.

The first hotel keeper in the village was James Burr, who was mine host in the public house built on the Leith Walk, referred to above. Mr. Burr came up from Elora shortly after Mr. Telfer came to his new possession, but soon changed his occupation to farming and settled on the farm on Concession A. later owned by Donald Cameron. The first white child born in Leith was of the feminine gender ; she still lives in Owen Sound, but infoiTnation on this point is so vague that nothing further in regard to it is ventured and the reader may take what has been given for what it is worth. Peter Burr came in 1855, and for a few months that year shared his house with the Reverend Robert Dewar. He erected a blacksmith shop beside his house an'd this building still stands. He was a first class blacksmith and soon gathered a flourishing trade.

The cooper's trade must have been a flourishing one also about this time and later, for in the early years of the village there were no less than three of them there. The first one, and one of the very first settlers in the village, was Robert Vail. The Vails can rightfully claim to be the oldest family in what are now St. Vincent and Sydenham townships. The head of the family came from Toronto, and

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re:miniscences of north Sydenham

was said to be a well educated man amd engaged in the newspaper business on the small scale then prevailing. He settled, or rather camped, at the point that yet bears his name and must have led what was truly a life in the wilder- ness, as there is evidence that he was in that neighborhood in 1825, or fifteen years before Owen Sound saw its first settler. He claimed that he had trapped up what was afterwards the Sydenham River as well as the Water o' Leith in the winter of 1825-26. This story has, of course, never been verified but that he followet-i trap lines through these then unbroken wilds nearly one hundred years ago seems to be an established fact. He seems to have been the type of man for whom the wilderness and its dangers had a sort of stern fascination and probably he en- joyed life as much or more than some of us who pride our- selves upon our ultra-refined civilization.

Another cooper was a Mr. S who was a good

mechanic and would have prospered, had not domestic infel- icity broken up his home. He built a roughcast house in the village and some time afterwards became hopelessly deranged. The house is still standing, but has long been deserted. Still another cooper was John Mitchell, whose business was much the largest of the three. These coopers catered to local custom only and made fish kegs, butter tubs,

barrels, in short anything with staves in it that the

farmers wanted. They were all-round mechanics and made the finished article from the trees felled, sawed into stave lengths and split by themselves. The factory operative of today would be as helpless as a baby were he confronted with such a job. "Min was min in thim days" as the Irish- man said.

All the houses built at that time had hand split lath and shingles. A man would go out into a promising tract of cedar in a swamp, run up a little shanty and start shingle making on his own. There was no question as to his getting

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all the patronag'e in the home market, because it was impos- sible to buy anywhere else. Our shippers complain loudly today of excessive freight rates. How \\ould they like it if the railroads were suddenly wiped out of existence ? Our freig-ht rates are, on the average, considerably lower than in the United States, but the cost of living is higher than

there in other words the purchasing power of the dollar

is lower. But if the railroads were destroyed to-morrow we would be in no worse plight than Canadians of 1850 were, when there were only sixty-six miles of track in the whole of Cana>da. And after the first shock of inconvenience had passed we would begin to learn the lesson that people can get along with little above the barest necessities when they are compelled to. Scripture to the contrary notwithstand- ing, we shall persist in the belief that a man's happiness consists in the abundance of goods he possesseth. Somehow we all have the secret belief that is is a mark of inferiority and degradation if we cannot "keep up with the Joneses."

It's no in titles nor in rank ;

It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank,

To purchase peace and rest ;

It's no in making muckle mair ;

It's no in books, it's no in leai-,

To mak us truly blest ;

If happiness hae not her seat

And centre in the breast

We may be wise, or rich, or great,

But never can be blest :

Nae treasurers nor pleasures

Could make us happy lang ;

The heart aye's the part aye

That makes us right or wrang.

This same spirit of keeping up with the Joneses has

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possibly caused more heart burning-, jealousy and misery of mind than all other human passions combined. It per- vades all classes of society from the highest to the lowest and the few that are exempt from it are of all men to be most envied. Perhaps it is part of the price we pay for what we call modern progress. For all the comforts, con- veniences, inventions and discoveries that have made pre- sent-day life so seemingly easy we may be sure that Nature, if not one way then in another, exacts her price. We have it on a very high authority, the Declaration of Independence of the American Colonies no less, that the pursuit of hap- piness is among- the inalienable rights of man. The pursuit,

mark you not the gaining of it, for it is to be doubted if

any man w^as ever truly and entirely happy, at least for any length of time. It was never intended, in the divine sclieme of things, that one generation of men should be happier than another and they never are. These people who flour- ished in Sydenham sixty and seventy years ago, for one thing, knew nothing- of what we call the spirit of unrest then. There is a good deal of truth in the homels' old saying that wiiat we do not know will never hurt us. If they lacked the one thousand conveniences and comforts that modern progress has bestowed upon us, they also lacked many ills of flesh and of the mind these same tilings have brought in their train. One hundred yeai*s from now the people will wonder how we ever managed to exist on the earth, just as we wonder how the people of eighty years ago ever got along. They managed to get along all right and to extract as much happiness from life as was possible under the circumstances. Are we doing any more ? And in some respects their civilization was more advanced than ours. When their armies went to war they fought with some show at least of chivalry. They did not kill their enemies wholesale by means of poison gas, or starve whole populations by means of an infamous blockade. They did not

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THE FIRST SETTLE:\IENT

gather in the great cities by tens of thousands and pay five hundred thousand dollars to two lov»' browed human brutes for pounding one another into insensibility, or at least attempting to. Maybe you will say they did not do these things because they did not know how. Well, we have learned how and are we any the happier for it ? "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." Tlie question as to whether the pioneers in their day were happier than we are now has always seemed to us a useless and meaningless one. If the debit and credit sides were struck and an aver- age taken it would be found they were as happy as we are, but no more so. The secret of happiness lies in every- man's own heart if he only knows how to hunt for and find it.

One of the early shingle makers was a character known as Doctor Scott. He came into the settlement with the first pioneers and it was at once recognized that his early training and education had been of the highest order. No- body knew if he had ever held a doctor's degree ; he certain- ly never practiseid medicine in the neighborhood. He was a "down and outer" and owed his descent to liquor. When sober he had the easy, genial courtesy and well bred dignity of a gentleman to the manor born. When drunk he was a raging fiend who would even descend to wife beating, and as he was a large powerful man nobody cared to cross him while in his cups. When he first came to the locality he made shingles 'down near Squaw Point and back from the bay a short distance. The shingles he carried down to the landing at Butchart's sawmill, on his back. As he was chronically destitute, Thomas Rutherford gave him space at the back of his farm on which to build a shack, and by many other acts of kindness strove to wean him from his evil ways. It was no use, however. He suffered a par- alytic stroke as the result of a violent debauch and was found by Mrs. Rutherford lying across the floor of his shack all alone, his wife having left him. He die^d a few days later.

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It was such cases that gave a great impetus to the move- ment for temperance reform.

The above mentioned sawmill was built by David Butchart just east of Squaw Point, some time in the eai-ly fifties, possibly even earlier. An engine supplied the powder. The logs all came in by water and the lumber left the same way as there were no land roads to the mill. Mr. Butchart was a man of considerable enterprise as he also conducted a cheese factory on his farm. Both buildings have long since been torn down, although the ruins of the sawmill's foun- dation ai^e still visible. Mr. Butchart had fourteen of a family ; they moved to Manitoba in 1879 when the west was beginning to open up.

Another character in the village's early history was

an Englishman called William S . William was a large

man with a large family and he haid an appetite that gained for him a sort of gentle notoriety. It could not justly be described as fairy-like. He seemed to be very susceptible to changes in temperature and on a cold winter morning when going out to cut wood was wont to don about four or five shirts to stave off the momentary discomfort of the frosty air. As the forenoon progressed and the fires of in- ternal combustion steadily mounted under the stress of ex- ercise, these shirts were one by one discarded, until at last only an undershirt covered his torso and the space immedi- ately surrounding him looked like a IMonday morning's washing.

One Easter Sunday, William attended Divine Service, just after having partaken more generously than wisely of a homely food which from time immemorial has been popu- lar at Eastertide. He was observed to be in a somnolent state even before the opening psalm. Five minutes after the service started he had the Seven Sleepers backed off the boards and was a thousand miles deep in a sea of slumber. Luckily he did not snore. Everyone looked for him to waken

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at the end of the sermon. Not so, however. A prayer followed the sermon, the closing psalm was sung, with some extra volume thrown in for the benefit of the sleeper who by this time was the cynosure of all eyes, and the bene- diction Vr'as pronounced. The soporific still had him in its power and it was only when Walter MacNeil walked over and shook him violently by the shoulder that reason as- cended again her sleep-siiattered throne and the dreamer swam slow^Iy back fnto consciousness.

"It was the eggs," said William, and everybody be- lieved him. It is curious how such little incidents stick in the minds of people who witness them, trivial though they may be, and the amusement they get out of them in after years.

Turning now to Annan we find that in 1850 the only building then standing there was the log schoolhouse, to which extended reference has been made elsewhere. It stood on the southwest corner of the school lot and has been described by an old pupil as a large log building which in winter time seemeid impossible to keep warm for some reason or another. There are no dates available in connec- tion with the buildings that were afterwards erected. The generation of men in the building trades who built them have passed on and those who remember their building- could almost be counted on one's ten fingers and thumbs and their memory is the only guide to be relied upon in the matter. The secontd building, accepting this as an authority, that rose in the clearing at "the Comer" was a large two storey rough cast double house that stood directly opposite the school on the road leading to Leith but facing on the Lake Shore Line. It had the hewed barn frame common to the period and was substantial!} built. Two gentlemen, Vanwyck and McKinnon, here kept the first store in Annan, handling everything that could

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be exchanged in the neighborhood for money or some of the Hghter kinds of the farmer's produce. In that part of the house next the road to Leith Mr. Vanwyck first kept hotel in the village. The next storekeepers in the same building were Messrs Rixon and Lemon, who did business for only a few years. As head clerk and general factotum they had a gentleman named McGillivray, who seems to have been "the life of the business." William Speedie was next in succession as a general storekeeper in the same location ; he afterwards built a store and residence for himself farther down the street on the Lake Shore Line and moved into it. Here the Annan post office was kept for many years ; just how many is uncertain. A newspaper clipping of May 24th, 1899, states that Mr. and Mrs. Speedie had dispensed the post there for thirty- six years, which would fix the date on which they took charge as 1863 and as the said statement appears in an address accompanying a presentation to Mrs. Speedie and is signed by four old citizens of the neighborhood, one one would suppose it to be reliable. William W. Smith, on the other hand, says in his gazetteer published in 1865 that Leith was then the post town for the village, which was known as Leith Corner, and Mr. Smith is generally reliable too. Such discrepancies will help the reader to take a tolerant view of such little inaccuracies as appear in a work like the present one. Mr. Speedie, who was the second school teacher at Annan, kept a general stock of merchan'idise and gave excellent service as a postmaster. On the lot between the post office and the schoolground James Davidson built a stone cottage, which has in later years been enlarged and is now occupied by Robert Day. On the next lot north-east Doctor Allan Sloane, who gradu- ated from Toronto University in 1865 and immediately came to Annan to establish a practise, built a brick resi- dence and dispensary which was in the middle nineties

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destroyed by fire. He then replaced it with a larger one which is still stankiing-.

The second place of business at Annan was a (for the time) large frame two storey building built directly op- opposite Vanwyck's Hotel and on the Lake Shore Line. Thomas Vickers here kept a store of the usual type found in the country villages and ran it in connection witli a cheese factory, also his own. It was afterwards used for a great variety of purposes until one Sunday a few years ago, when it furnished an hour's sensation by making a merry bonfire. Across the street from it on tlie Leith road a frame store building was built by the Telford brothers, James and William, and rented by the Ross brothers, David and Hugh C, who hatd previously kept store in the Vanwyck building. They moved into it and here James Ross and Sons, which firm succeeded the Ross Brothers, did business until 1888. It has had a long list of proprietors since and is at present the repository of His Majesty's mails for the village. Fifty years ago it was the general trading place for the news and views of half the township. Everybody knew the proprietors and they knew everybody. In fact the average country store was at that time as interesting a place as one would care to visit. A conversation casually started wouM end up in some strange and fearsome subjects sometimes, but generally on the comparative merits of the Honorable George Brown as exemplified in the Toronto Globe and that wily old leader of the grand old Consei'vative party, Sir John A MacDonald. Those were days when a man was either straight Grit or Tory and noses could be counted at the polling booths as confidently as a farmer now counts cattle in a barayard. There v.ere no third parties to confuse calculation or be- cloud the issues and the man wlio professed complete in- dependence in political thought and in the marking of iiis

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ballot was regarded by his neighbors with suspicion, as not being quite right above the neckband.

( Shortly after the first settlement a mill was built on

Reefer's creek, about three quarters of a mile east of the

, village. The exact date of its erection it has been found

I impossible to determine but it was sometime between 1846 and 1849. The builder and proprietor was John Wilson, an engineer who came up from Kingston with his family, one of whom, James, afterwards became its head miller. John Wilson seems to have been a man of considerable informa- tion on many subjects besi'de milling. There was a fine

I head of water at Wilson's Falls, the name given the site of the mills, for there was more than one of them, a saw-

, mill being built after the flour mill, on the opposite side of the stream from it. Woolen mill machinery was installed

I in the upper storey of the flour mill and for several years a carding trade was carried on. The sawmill disappeared long years ago although there are several old barns still standing on the Lake Shore Line the lumber for which was sawn there. The flour mill is still standing, though con- siderably reduced in size. Wilson's Falls was the scene of two drowning accidents in the earliest days, one of them of a girl who was dragged into the fall while attempting to fill a pail of water.

The flow of water in this stream was always a source of mystery to all who knew it. It was a stream which did not grow larger as it approached its mouth and the Wilson mills continued running long years after the oatmeal mill neai Leith, which has been referred to, had closed its doors for lack of motive power. It was noticed by the earliest settlers that shortly after the surrounding country was cleared up the lower end frequently dried up in the summer months, when other streams were running full. There are crevasses along its bank for a considerable distance below the falls and possibly much of the water escap^

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THE FIRST SETTLEMENT

into these to find its way by some underground passage to the bay. The first pioneers found it a fine trout stream and up until about forty-five years ago its mouth was the scene every spring of a large Indian encampment, when the sucker season was at its height. The trout long ago suc- cumbed to the ravages of the angler, the Indian encamp- ments are rapidly becoming only a memory and even the sucker seems to be deserting it.

We are told that the historian Gibbon took thirteen years to write his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. There is no positive data on the subject, but possibly H. G. Wells took thirteen months to write his Outline of History. The story of the gradual decline in the fortunes of a country village couM probably be compressed into thirteen minutes. A brief period of prosperity still awaits the village of Leith however, and to this an equally brief

chapter will be devoted later on. After that well, as

Lockhart says, "the muffled drum is in prospect."

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CHAPTER V. NO. THREE COMPANY, 31st REGIMENT

In the year 1861 the British steamship Trent was proceeding from Nassau to London, having on board as passengers two gentlemen, Mr. Sliddel and Mr. Mason, commissioners from the Confederate Government at Rich- mond to France and England. The Southern Confederacy was at that time 'desperately anxious to secure recognition from the various European powers, even more so than the Soviet government at Moscow has been in recent months, but with this difference that they were everywhere unsuc- cessful. The Trent was boarded shortly after leaving the port of her departure by the United States crusier San Jacinto, Captain Charles Walker commanding, and search for and seizure was made of Messrs Mason and Sliddel, after some violent personal resistance on their part. The Trent proceeded on her way, arrived in England, the Captain told his story to the authorities and things began to happen. The fighting spirit of Englan'd rose at once. She demanded an apology of the United States government, instant restoration of the two commissioners and immedi- ately began her preparations for war.

In the United States the incident had been hailed with noisy satisfaction. The men of the North felt that they had slipped one over on both the Confederacy and England. When the demand for an apology arrived in due time, however, the aspect of affairs changed. They realized there was trouble ahead. The great mass of the people were for instant acceptance of war. They were fighting one half of their own country already ; why not take on an outsider as well while they were at it ? But the occu-

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NO. THREE COMPANY, 31st REGIMENT

pant of the White House at that time, a long lean man from Illinois with an uncanny gift of seeing far into the future, saw things in a different light. He reminded his councillors that they had committed the very offence for which the United States had made war on Britain in 1812. He overlooked those violations of neutrality England ha)d already committed, which she continued throughout the Civil War and afterwards paid so dearly for in the court of arbitration which decided the Alabama claims. "One war at a time," said Lincoln. "Let us first subdue the South and then, when peace has come, deal with Britain." So the apology demanded was made, the two commissioners were given their liberty and another senseless war was happily averted, largely due to the hard common sense of one man. Would that there were more statesmen like him.

The reader will naturally ask what all this had to do with a township in Grey County. It may be answered that the event had its reactions even there. Throughout Canada the Trent affair, as it was subsequently called, roused an intense flame of patriotism. Mars became the populai* deity. Volunteer companies and regiments were raised and recruited everywhere, independent of the government. There was no pay ; no arms, no accoutre- ments either. In an intense wave of loyalty the people recognized that something must be done, and at once. An average of six or seven companies were formed in every county in Ontario. Among them was enrolled the Leith Company, Provisional Rifles, which was aftenvai'ds gazetted as Number Three Company, Thirty First Battalion of Grey County.

This was in 1862 and before the excitement caused by the Trent affair had subsided. The men were enrolled that year and at the first meeting of the new company Mr. Jas. Cannon, who had been active in the work of organ- ization and recruiting, was unanimously elected Captain.

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

The company's establishment consisted of three com- missioned officers and fifty-four non-commissioned officers and men. Their names as they appear on the muster rolls of the year 1866 were as follows :

Toronto, June 3rd, 1866.

Muster roll, number tliree company, First Provisional Battalion Rifles : —

Captain — James Cannon, Sr ;

Lieutenant — James Pattison Telford ;

Ensign — Robert Vanwyck ;

Sergeants —

J. S. Wilson ; James Cannon, Jr ; Wm. Armstrong ; Malcolm MacNeil ;

Corporals —

John Turnbull ; James Grady ; Wm. Armstrong ; William Cannon ;

Lance Corporals —

Gilbert MacKay ; Neil MacNeil ;

Bugler — Donald MacKay ;

Privates — John Armstrong, Andrew Biggar, Thomas Brown, William Buzza, John Cathrae, George A. Cameron, Andrew Cameron, Thomas Cameron, Benjamin Cameron, Thomas Campbell, John Campbell, Rowland Campbell, Colin Campbell, Patrick Downie, Thomas Dennison, Leslie Dixon, Hugh Elliot, John Ead, John Grady, John Hogg, James Hogg, Charles Lemon, John I^fler, Ronald Livingstone, John Lemon, William

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NO. THREE COMPANY, 31st REGIMENT

MacKay, John MacKay, Donald Mac Kay, James MacDowall, Duncan McTavish, Henry Moore, William Mathieson, Andrew MacLean, Duncan Morrison, William Nesbit, Daniel North, Charles Noble, John Piatt, George Riddell, John Wilson, William Wilson.

The names of these men should be perpetuated in grateful remembrance bj^ the people of Sydenham, for they were the first in the history of the township to offer their services to their country, the occasion being the P'enian raid of 1866, when this muster roll was compiled.

A cui'sory glance over the roll would at first lead the reader to believe the men had been recruited in a parish of the Highlands of Scotland. Cut the Camerons, the Campbells, the MacKays, the MacNeils and various other Macs out of it and little is left. They were a brawny lot of young Celts too, these Highlanders from the Lake Shore Line. From the very beginning the Company was famous for the physique of its men ; the sons of Anak had nothing on them for size. For many years afterwards Number Three could be picked out in a brigade by reason of the great average height of its rank and file and they all had physical strength proportionate to their height. "As fine a body of men as I have ever seen in Canada," said Lieut- Colonel Dennison, in speaking of them on their arrival in Toionto during the Fenian invasion, "but the oflficers are not worth a damn !" It is gratifying to know the Colonel subsequently changed his opinion as to the oflficers.

After its first organization the company met for di'ill once a week at Dunedin, as Annan was then called. The drill hall, still standing, was erected there but has long since lost its martial uses. The equipment was furnished in part by the Imperial Government arid there was reason to believe, from some of the markings on the overcoats and other accoutrements, they had seen sei*vice at Sebastopol, in the Crimea. The first instructors were Captain, after-

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wai'ds Col. Brodie, and his son Vivian Brodie. Captain Chas. Noble, an old veteran who had seen active service in Spain and whose fine soldierly appearance is still remembered by old residents, also acted as instructor, drilling the company in his usual thorough manner. At a later date two in- structors from the regular forces, Sergeants Kelly and Wai^d, were sent by the goverament to assist in instruction. The latter was a non-commissioned officer from the Grenadier Guards and the company rapidly grew proficient in drill.

This continued until 1866 when the company was regularly gazetted, and as we are only concerned with the beginning of things this notice will not extend beyond that year. From its unique circumstances however, the Fenian Raid of that year and the services rendered by Number Three Company in repelling it should be briefly touched upon.

The Fenian invasion, or rather the motives that prompted it, and the passive attitude assumed toward it by the United States government will always remain more or less a mystery. It was a notoriously-known fact in the winter of 1865-1866 that over one thousand Fenians were assembled at Buffalo and drilling in anticipation of some f.ort of trouble, but the United States authorities were asleep, and they did nothing about it. The country was recovering from the turmoils of civil war for one thing ; for another they had the poorest excuse of a man for president that ever held such a high office. It is difficult to see how Andrew Johnston was even elected vice- president. With the assassination of Lincoln he became president and the best chief executive the Republic haid over known until that time was succeeded by the woist. He was drunk when he took the oath of office and acted more like a charlatan than a sober statesman for all the time lie filled it. Its high dignity was cheapened and de-

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NO. THREE COMPANY, 31st REGIMENT

graded in a manner that has made every honest American blush for shame since. It is certain, too, that the United States had no reason to be other than grateful for the part Canada had played in the war. The Honorable George Brown had invoked his splendid eloquence in the cause of freedom and against "the peculiar institution" of the South. Forty-two thousand Canadians had crossed the border, en- listed under the banners of the North and fought for the slave's emancipation. One of the MacNeil brothers of Leith was of them. Whether it was the antagonism aroused over the Trent affair or the depre'dations of South- em cruisers built in British yards in violation of the laws of neutrality, the fact remains that there was a strong hostile feeling toward Britain and all things British in the United States for years after the war. Some American historians, with amusing effrontery, have attempted to show that the invasion would have been successful and Toronto captured and burned but for the sudden activity of the American government, when it was discovered what was going on.

But such airy persiflage does not alter the facts. On the morning of June 1st about fifteen huridred Fenians, staiting from Buffalo and crossing the border, landed at Fort Erie and the invasion was on. Had it not been that many of them vvere drunk that morning and rem.ained so during their hectic stay in Canada until their hurried de- parture, the consequences might have been more serious than they were. These Irish Americans were the scum and offscouring, the riff-raff of the armies. North and South. But the Great War taught us the old lesson anew that a bad man may be a very brave one and that depraved criminals sometimes make excellent soldiers, just as paci- fists are often the most useful citizens in times of peace.

The dangers or extent of the invasion seem to have been matters in which most Canadians were utterly in the

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dark. Rumors, magnified until they became preposterous, were rife everywhere. Probably this was because the telegraph system was still so limited in scope. These rumors spread to Grey County and on the morning of May Sth, while the Reverend Alexander Hunter was conducting a service in the Leith church, a new fledged one spread something like a panic in his congregation that must have seemed amusing to many of them when the facts were known. In the mi^dst of the discourse the door opened and Mr. Leslie Dixon walked rapidly to the pulpit, where he whispered a message in the ear of a member of the Session. He heard it with the most admirable composure and after the messenger had departed announced to the people that there was reason to believe a large party of Fenians was coming up the bay in an armed flotilla. The assembly im- mediately dispersed with far more haste than dignity. The strange part of it seems to be that even the minister be- lieved the report. The incredibility of Fenians making their appearance in such an out-of-the-way spot never crossed the min'ds of the watchers on the beach, to whom the advance of these strange craft must have appeai'ed pretty much like the approach of the Spanish Armada on the coasts of England did to the lighters of the beacon fires of warning, in the reign of good Queen Bess. However, the mirage, or whatever it was that caused the optical illusion, lifted, and the threatened cloud of invasion turned out to be a number of canoes coming from Cape Croker laden with Indians, who doubtless would have been diverted had they known the sensation they had stirred up. This is only a solitary instance of the alarms, many of them even more ridiculous, that filled the country.

On the morning of June 2nd, Mr. Joseph Parker, having ridden all night, arrived at Dunedin from Colling- wood bearing a telegram which, by a misunderstanding too lengthy to explain here, had been interpeted as orders

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NO. THREE COMPANY, 31st REGIMENT

for number three company to proceed to the front. The company mustered in full force at Leith, hurried good-byes were paid to relatives and they embarked on the steamer Clifton for Collingwood. There was no telegraphic com- munication between Owen Sound and that town at the time, else a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding might have been averted. Number Two company of Owen Sound had gone to the frontier at Sarnia. After the company had embarked on the Clifton, the officers found aboard ship Major George Gordon to whom the telegram brought by Mr. Parker to Dunedin from Collingwood was addressed, and, after a vexatious tangle was unravelled, it was discovered the Leith company were proceeding to Toronto without orders. But British soldiers are not in the habit of turning back ankJ after a momentary consulta- tion among the officers it was decided to go on.

The Fenians, as has been stated, were an unknown quantity and the men of Number Three Company might have had a long and bloody campaign ahead of them for all they knew. But certain it is that never did soldiers march away to war with such gay abandon as these men from Leith and the Lake Shore Line. Certain it is, too, that when the Clifton cast off her lines at Leith dock she left sad and anxious hearts behind. The horrors of war were fresh in the min'ds of the older people at least. Little more than a year before Lee and his legions had surrend- ered to Grant at Appotmattox Court House, and the most sanguinary and costly war in all history up to that date had ended at last. The bloody battles of the early years of the Civil War, Shiloh, Manassas, Fredricksburg, Chic- kamauga, Chancellorsville, Malvern Hill, Vicksburg, Gettys- burg and Antietam, just to mention a few among many, and the desperate fighting around Richmond in the summer of 1864 when Grant inexorably hammered the life out of Lee, were recent remembrances that must have caused

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many a sleepless night in Sydenham. Let no man cherish the fond delusion that Americans, of that day at least, were too proud or afraid to fight. The casualties in many of these battles per man engaged were higher than in the Peninsular War, the Waterloo campaign, the Crimean or Franco-Prussion wars or even the Great War itself. How- many sad homes would there be in Sydenham should her boys engage in battles where the casualty lists were even a hundred fold less ? We sometimes smile at the Raid now but the danger then seemed imminent and real.

Aboai^d the Clifton however there were no signs of depression. Far from it. The stalwart six-footers of Number Three were in the highest spirits and when they debarked at Collingwood and were joined by the company from that town for the journey by rail to Toronto the proceedings grew hilarious. The coaches were badly crowded and many of the Collingwood men crawled out on the roofs, claiming they needed m.ore air. The late Mr. Neil MacNeil of Leith once told the author that the trip Toronto-ward was the noisiest one he ever made in his life. What added to the general excitement were the wild re- ports, met with at every station as they stopped at it, of an engagement at that moment raging between the Fenians and the forces that had been hurridly concentrated to repel the invasion. The company "pote," as Mr. Dooley has called him, had suddenly found his voice and he improvised war songs and parodies upon the spot suitable to the cir- cumstances. The Civil War had been prolific in war songs and some of these were pressed into service. George Root's stirring war ode, "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp the boys go marching" was a favorite and was parodied by one of the aforesaid "potes" about as follows :

Tramp, Tramp, Tramp the boys go marching. Cheer up ! let the Fenians come,

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I

NO. THREE CO:iIPANY, 31st REGIMENT

Foi beneath the Union Jack v/e will drive the back

And we'll fight for our dear old Canadian home.

Impromptu concerts were organized and the same kind of orations delivered. In the m.idst of such unwarlike scenes the train arrived at Toronto, about midnight of the same day on which they ha'd left Leith. Here they found a number of dead and wounded from the engagement being brought into Toronto and some Fenian prisoners also.

The company marched to the large drill hall and here found a scene of excitement beyond anything they had ever witnessed. Companies were being drilled by their officers, civilians were singing patriotic songs, arms and accoutrements and ball ammunition were being serve'd out while a continuous roar like reverberating thunder shook the building. "It was magnificent but it was not war" as a military observer said of the charge of the Six Hundred. The men of Number Three with their officers then started a long hunt for something to eat and finally bagged a meal in a small bakery, the commissary depart- ment having collapsed.

Two days later they were formed, with six other com- panies, into a provisional battalion under the command of Col. A. M. Smith, President of the Royal Canadian Bank of Toronto ; the battalion imme*diately boarded a train for Kingston and patrolled the roads between that city and Toronto for three days. They were afterwards billeted in Kmgston for ten days, when they were moved to Coburg. Here they remained until June 21st when orders were received for them to return home. This they did and within thirty days from the tdate of embarkation at Leith all had returned to their usual occupations. The invasion had passed into history.

Thus ended the campaign of the Fenian Raid. Theo- dore Roosevelt once said of the Spanish American war

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that the great trouble was there was not enough wai' to go ai'ound for the boys who went to Cuba. The same might be said of the Fenian invasion. It was as indefensible as Germany's invasion of Belguim but had these cutthroat scoundrels been allowed to wreak their own sweet will upon us our plight might even have been worse than that of the Belgians. A m^al and a grant of land in Northera Ontario were, about 1900, made to each veteran who had served in the Raid, by the Ontario government.

An incident in the history of the Company that excited great local interest at the time, was the presentation of a beautiful set of colors to the officers and men, by the ladies of the neighborhood. During the winter of 1868-67 while the Raid was still fresh in their minds, the ladies busied themselves in spare moments in making a large blue silk flag, which from the accounts that have come down to us must have been the most gorgeous thing of its kind. March 22nd, 1867 was the (date set for the presentation ceremony, which was held in the open air and on the green in front of the Annan schoolhouse. It was a chilly season of the year for an open air event but the fires of patrotism were burning brightly enough at the time to ward off any physical discomfort. The Company being drawn at Atten- tion with the officers in their respective stations, the presentation address was read by Mrs. Peter Taylor and a suitable reply was made by Captain Telford. Our regret is that their considerable length makes the insertion of these respective addresses impossible as they throw a valuable light upon the general feeling excited by the Raid. Miss Campbell then formally presented the colors to the keeping of the Company and the Rev. Robert Dewar offered up a short but appropriate prayer.

On such an occasion it was inevitable that the poetic muse should seek expression in some shape. It has been said that every man is at some time in his life obsessed

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NO. THREE COMPANY, 31st REGIMENT

with the idea he is a born poet. Some survive the notion ; others persist in it until the end of their days. The passion for versification seems to have run rife at the time and a most warlike ode had been prepared for the event by a local poet whose two sons ha'd gone to Toronto in the previous yeai' with the confident expectation of getting to grips with the Fenians. At this point in the ceremony it was read by Hugh Reid, and for the edification of our readers it is appended in full below. The author evidently took great advantage of what is called poetic license but the martial ardor it inspired must have more than compensated for any deficiency in poetic m.erit found in its lines.

Ye stalwart sons of patriots true, Accept from us these colors blue, Let deeds of yours ne'er stain the hue That leads you in the fight.

On Scotia's hills, with heather red — On Emerald Isle, by Shannon fed — On Huron's shores your sons were bred — Banded to guard the right.

Come Saxons ! trusty as your steel, From Merry England, true and leal — Let Dougald's stirring pibroch peal Along the martial line.

Let not fell discord wreck your band, Your honor guard with heart and hand. As brothers live — as brothers stand — When called to face the foe.

Let not the foreign despot's call To arms your heats of oak appal ; For freedom stand — for freedom fall — And lay the miscreant low. —83—

REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAM

Boast not of deeds as yet unborn, The shock of war you've yet to learn ; Let glorious Bruce and Bannockburn Your watchword ever be.

For Queen and Country draw your blades, Your homes — your friends — your blooming maids ; Then trust in Heaven, which ever aids The valiant and the free.

When the shrill bugle sounds alarni Join rank to rank and arm to arm. The patriot's zeal your breasts shall warm — Strike ! Strike for Liberty !

This gift of the muse, evidently written in imitation of the Scottish national anthem, was received with loud applause by the whole assemblage. The wrappings that con- fined the flag were then removed and as the glorious stand- ard of old England unfolded to the breeze the stirring asso- ciations of a thousand years that have enshrined the cross of St. George in the heails of millions of her subjects in every quarter of the globe swept through the gathering and found vent in a spontaneous cheer, repeated time and again. It was a convincing testimonial on the part of the stout hearted men of Sj^denham, soldiers and civilians alike, of their attachment to monarchial institutions and the British Crown. The outburst having subsided, three cheers for Hei Most Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria, were called for and were given with rousing fervor. This marked the con- clusion of the ceremony. What seems to have been an indispensable part of such occasions at tliat time followed at VanWyck's Hotel the same evening, \yhen the officers and men of No. 3 Company with their invited guests to the number of ninety sat down to a sumptuous repast prepared by the genial proprietor, Robert VanWyck himself, to which

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NO. THPwEE COMPANY, 31st REGIMENT

we may be sure substantial justice was done. The whole event passeid off in the happiest possible manner and with- out the slig-htest untoward occurrence to mar its harmony.

Of the officers of Number Three who served, Lieuten- ant Telford, afterwards Colonel of the Thirty First Bat- talion, and now in his eighty-sixth year alone survives. Of the non-commissioned officers and privates it is impos- sible to speak with like certainty, but by far the greater number have crossed the silent river and, let us hope, have found eternal peace.

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat

The soldier's last tattoo ;

No more on Life's paralde shall meet

That brave and gallant few.

On Fame's eternal camping ground

Their silent tents are spread ;

And Glory guards, with solemn round,

The bivouac of the dead.

Glancing briefly at the subsequent history of the company we find Lieutenant Telford raised to the captaincy, shortly after the Raid, Captain Cannon having become Major of the Battalion. In 1888 Captain Telford received another promotion and William Ross of Leith was given the rank of Captain, which he held until 1891, resigning in that year. He was succeded by Robert McKnight of Owen Sound and a year or so later the headquarters of the Com- pany were moved to Owen Sound and Number Three Com- pany of Leith, as such, was numbered among the things that were. Leith had been, until that time, the only rural community in Grey from which a company had been re- cruited for the 31st Regiment.

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DEVELOPMENT AND DECAY

CHAPTER VI

In 1854, James Wilson, of Gait, came up to Leith and, after a survey of the village, bought out Mr. Telfer's in- terest in it, lock, stock and barrel. The townplot at this time comprised four hundred and sixty acres, although only a minor portion had been surveyed into building lots. The consideration is said to have been sixteen hundred pounds, or nearly eight thousand dollars, and if this was the price actually paid, Mr. Wilson's proper vocation should have been that of a real estate dealer, as we shall see a little further on. He was what might have been called an absentee landlord, as he returned to Gait and never looked near his purchase again until after he had sold it three years later.

Mr. Wilson was a native of Ayr —

"Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses. For honest men and bonny lasses."

and in his youthful years had gone to school there with William Veitch, who, at the time the former came to Leith, was following his trade of cabinet making in the new Ayr that had been founded in Ontario. Mr. Veitch came up to Leith with his old schoolmate, and while there bought the faiTn on Concession A about two miles below the village, then owned by Robert Grierson, and now by his son Walter. He then went back to Waterloo County and worked at his trade, until he had accumulated enough money to pay for it in full, in the interim renting the farm to Duncan Morrison. He returned to Leith in 1862, and took

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DEVELOPMENT AND DECAY

possession. He had been successful as a tradesman and was fully as successful as a farmer. Well versed in mechanics, he was an advanced mathematician who thoroughly understood the two-foot, or carpenter's square, and could work out many intricate problems upon it.

Mr. Wilson seems to have taken little interest in Leith, and to have effected little improvement there. After selling- the townplot three years later, or in 1857, he ma'de a trip back to Scotland, and must have lived in regal style while away. He bought a costly gold watch while in the Old Land, and was wont to show it to friends after his return to Canada, with the remark that it was all that was left of his interest in Leith. In 1862 he came at last to Owen Sound, and was for several years in the hotel business there. Some old residents of the City still remember him.

In 1857 Adam Ainslie, then an attorney of Gait, became interested in the Sydenham village and its possibilities. With his cousin, George Ainslie, who had arrived in Gait from Edinburgh, he formed a partnership, and bought it just as Mr. Wilson bought it, with the difference that he had never seen it when he paid the purchase price. Mr. Wilson sold out for twenty thousand dollars, and as the whole amount was at once placed in his hands, it becomes apparent that his trip to Scotland must have been one of voluptuous and sensational luxury, for those days at least. Mr, Ainslie came to Leith in 1857, looked over the property, and returne^d to Gait. He moved up with his wife, a family of three, and all household effects, in the following year, but shortly afterward his relative, for some reason, dis- solved the partnership, and Mr. Ainslie took over his share. He moved into the Mill House referred to in a previous chapter, and lived there several years. Then another move was made to a house on the opposite bank of the Water o' Leith, and in this house he lived until he left the village in 1888.

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REMINISCENCES OF NORTH SYDENHAIVI

These are the facts in connection with the two sales of Leith in the fifties, as far as it has been possible to ascertain them from a number of authorities who were not always in agreement upon a few minor details, but whose accounts of the transactions, taken in a general sense, agree pretty closely. The amount paid by Mr. Ainslie was paid down, as stated above, and there may have been further payments, but if there were nobody knows of them. It will be acknowledged, however, that the man who can more than double his money, in a deal of this kind, inside of three years, is born for some other profession besides hotel keeping. However, the times were in Mr. Wilson's favor. We sometimes talk of good times now, as though in the past they never had anything but hard times. The truth is that the ten years following 1855 were, for Canada, the most prosperous she ever enjoyed. The general flow of population was not then, as now, from the rural districts to the towns, but precisely in the opposite direction. The wilderness an'd the solitary places were being made glad by men from the towns and cities, who were moving out to the new settlements and taking up the new vocation of farming. Practically the whole Lake Shore Line was settled by men who left the towns and cities of Scotland to come to Canada and make new homes in the bush. They were doing the same thing in many Canadian cities too, though on a smaller scale, and it was what might be called a healthy movement of population. We can hardly conceive of such a movement at the present time, and we can imagine the roar of indignation that would go up from our cities which are striving might and main, by Chambers of Commerce and Boai^ds of Trade, to increase their various populations if such a movement ever started. What will be the end of the present migration from the country to the cities, Heaven alone knows. Sydney now has a popu- lation of one million, or one fifth that of Australia. Buenos

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develop:ment and decay

Ayres has two millions, or about the same proportion of the Argentine. The census of 1920, in the United States, showed fifty-three per cent of the population to be living in cities or towns of over two thousand five hundred, and a town that size can hardly be called a rural community. We find farmers of little more than middle age retiring to the cities, to settle down and enjoy life. Perhaps they do, after a fashion. But they could live much more cheaply — and securely — in the country, and find there the life most worth living if they only had the mental capacity to appreciate it. The old saying still holds good, that man made the town but God made the country, and we are speaking from a long experience in city life and the artificial pleasures and fleeting joys to be found there. There is a restlessness and craving for excitement in the young people of our cities that bodes ill for the future of the countr}'. They value an eklucation, but they value it only for the chances it aflfords them of entering some profession, where they will escape the — to them — degradation of having to soil their hands in the occupation of the mechanic or the farmer. This restlessness they naturally communicate to the young people of the country, and in consequence we find our universities crowded with young men and women who have no conception whatever of the true value of higher education, but who do have an unworthy and ill-concealed contempt for all forms of manual labor. They are loud in their denunciations of the exorbitant demands of the labor unions, yet many of them are satisfied to accept half the money earaed by a mechanic in the buiMing trades if only they are spared the indignity of honest labor with their hands. It is not a healthy symptom in the body politic, and thoughtful men are everywhere growing alarmed over it.

TuiTiing again to the decade ending in the year 1866, it is not hard to trace the prosperity of those years in

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Canada, or the activity in the agricultural industry which was naturally reflected in such villages as Leith. In 1855 a reciprocity treaty was entei'ed into between Canada and the United States, which inclu'ded in its provisions practically all products of the farm, and a list of manufac- tured articles as well. It was of immense benefit to both countries, but particularly so to Canada. Those were the days when farms were paid off and mortgages raised in Sydenham, and the country in general prospered as never before. The Civil War of the sixties swelled trade to enormous proportions, but it was indirectly the cause of the abrogation of the treaty, in 1866. The feeling in the United States toward Britain, in that year, was a sore one, and prompted their statesmen in refusing to renew it for another ten years. This was, we believe, a mistake on their part, but it is a mistake that has since been copied, and with far less reason, by our own statesmen and people. In spite of all efforts to the contrary, on both sides of the line we have since had a bariier of customs duties between the two countries, just as senseless and irritating as would be a line of forts garrisoned by regiments of soldiers along the boundai'y from one ocean to the other. It is a constant source of vexation and heartburning to the people on each side of it. On one side the wall will be raised temporarily, to prevent the people on that side from buying where they can buy to the greatest advantage, as though this were a sin, and something to be shunned. On the other side, the wall is raised in places still higher in reprisal, and thus the game goes on, with the few in both countries encouraging it, and fattening at the expense of the many. The men of 1855 were wiser in their day and generation than we have ever been since, for a,t least they could see no sense in cut- ting off the nose to spite the face.

But to our story. Once fairly settled, Mr. Ainslie took a good look around him, and decided on a number of in-

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vestments in his new possession wliich seemed to him as promising of profit. Before following him in these, it will be well to take a good look at the man himself. One is naturally interested in the man who, in 1857, risked twenty thousand kiollars — equal to at least forty-five or fifty thousand dollars sixty-five years later — on a property he had never seen. Such a man would have made a heavy plunger in the Wall Street of our own times.

He was bom on the 13th of April, 1807, at Begbie, in Haddington-shire, Begbie being the estate owned by Archibald Ainslie, his father, who was a gentleman famier. Ainslie the elder was a man who could give his son every advantage, and the young Adam was sent to the Hadding- ton Grammar School. Haddington is the county seat in the shii'e of the same name, and is only fifteen miles from Edinburgh. Here he had, for a school-mate, the future wife of the Sage of Ecclefechan, Thomas Carlyle, in the person of Jennie Welch. Of his personal opinion of that young lady we are left in ignorance, but it is well known that her married life with the cranky Thomas was not of the happiest description. When fourteen years of age he graduated from this school, and in November, 1821, he went up to London and was indentured in the study of law, with Weir & Smith, the foiTner gentlemen being his uncle. The law course covered five years, and at its conclusion Mr. Ainslie, then a full-fledged barrister, went to Gibralter. Here he practised law for eight years very successfully, but a violent outbreak of yellow fever, of which he was one of the victims who happily recovered, led to his decision to quit the Rock and emigrate to Canada. He left in 1834, taking passage in the brig Williams, Captain Lamson, master. The voyage took nearly five weeks, and Mr. Ainslie paid one hundred dollars for his fare, which seems a large amount for passage on a sailing vessel. At last he arrived, and decided upon coming to Gait, which was then an active

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village of two hun'dred and fifty inhabitants. It did not have so large a population at the end of 1834, for in the sum- mer of that year a travelling menagerie brought the cholera to the village, and in the week that followed nearly one fifth of the inhabitants fell victims to the scourge it left behind. The outbreak was long remembered as one of the worst of its kind that ever visited Canada. A history of the eai'ly days of Dumfries township and the town of Gait, written by the Hon, James Young and published in 1880, teems with references to Adam Ainslie, in that portion of the narrative covering the years 1834 to 1857, the latter being the year he first came up to Leith. Mr. Ainslie arrived in November, several months after the visitation, and one of the first difficulties he encountered was the fact that, under the laws of Upper Canada, he would not be allowed to practise his profession. This seemed a serious obstacle for a time, but the disability was removed by a special Act of Parliament, and the new shingle was soon hung out. In 1837 the MacKenzie rebellion happened along to add to the gaiety of nations, and Mr. Ainslie, always an intense loyalist, figured in it as a captain in the 11th Gore Militia. The rebellion roused intense excitement around Gait, as it was supposed that the unfortunate Lount and Matthews were conceale^d in a house there for a time, but this turned out to be incorrect.

Municipal honors came in due time to Mr. Ainslie. Gait was incorporated as a village in 1850, with a little over two thousand inhabitants, and he was elected to the Council several times. In 1856 he was elected Reeve, and in the fol- lowing year, Gait having in the interim been incorp- orated as a town, he was offered the mayoralty but declined, as his intention was then fixed to come to Leith. In 1837 the macdamizing of the Dundas and Waterloo road was commenced by the Provincial Government, anid he was ap- pointed as one of the commissioners to carry it out. He

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served twelve years on this commission, and was for some years its chairman.

It was shortly before his fortieth year before he

decided that it is not good for a man to be alone, and took unto himself a wife. The lady in the case was Isabella Miller, also of Gait. She was a daughter of John Miller, who, before coming to America, had owned an estate near Hawick, that city in Roxburghshire which has figured so largely in our naiTative. The Millers came first to the State of New Jersey, but later moved to Gait. Mrs. Ainslie, about the time of her marriage, is said to have borne a remark- able resemblance to Queen Victoria. The union was a happy one and three children were born to it.

Despite his many activities there, Mr. Ainslie's law practise in Gait seems to have been an extensive one from the very beginning. In 1837 he was engaged as counsel for one of the parties thereto in litigation over a disputed title, the details of which are too lengthy for recital here. This lawsuit, which attracted a great deal of interest throughout Upper Canada, gave rise to an incident hap- pening during the proceedings which illustrates the joviality of his disposition, and his love of always mixing pleasure with business when it was possible to do so without neglect- ing the interests of his clients. The Hon. James Young refers to it in considerable length in the history of Gait, referred to above, so it should be worthy of recounting here. At a certain stage in the lawsuit, Mr. Ainslie found it advis- able to go to Elora in company with two other gentlemen, Messrs. Shade an!d Chapman, in an effort to get confirma- tion of his client's title. The three arranged to drive to Elora, and then, when the business had been transacted, build a raft and fish down the Grand River home again. It may be added that their mission was successful, and that for a consideration of $150 the Elora man they had gone to

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interview promised to come down to Mi-. Ainslie's office and confirm the title of his client, a gentleman named MacKenzie.

However, it is with their journey back to Gait by raft we are concerned nov/. This was described many years later in a letter from Mr, Ainslie to Mr. Young-, from whose history it is copied ad verbatim.

"We constructed a raft about four miles below Elora. A large stone tied to a rope served as an anchor, and we used it at the foot of the rapids. We were most successful in fishing. The dry cedar logs of the raft having become water-logged, and the raft inconveniently low, ]Mr. Shade determined to replenish it with an additional supply of logs from a large collection of drift stuff at the head o* a /apid we were nearing. When we arrived at it he called on nie to jump off, wliich I at once did, with my coat over my arm, a bottle of whiskey in my left hand, and my fishing- rod in my right. At the same instant Chapman threw the stone on the bank, but the current being very strong pulled it off, and before I could turn around Shade in a loud voice oi^dered me to jump on again but —

"Time and tide for no man bide."

I fully realized on this occasion the truth of this adage. Suddenly wheeling to the right about face, I saw the raft rapidly receding from the shore. I made a desperate spring to regain it, but alas ! merely touched it with my foot, and was then and there bodily immersed in the rapidly flowing fluid !

When I regained my feet my fellow voyagers were a long way down the rapid. On arriving at still water they came to anchor, and had their risible faculties intensely ex- cited by seeing me wading to my middle down the rapids to I'ejoin them. I still, however, held onto my coat, the rod,

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Hnd the bottle of whiskey, and I found the last most accept- able when I regained the raft. I thought I had been ill-used, and had a right to complain of somebody, but the more I complained the more they laughed, and replied to all my remonstrances by recommending me to take another pull at the bottle I We took up our quarters that night at old William Davidson's, in Woolwich, where I got my clothes dried at the kitchen fire. The next afternoon we reached home."

"This brings to my mind another acquatic occurrence. Many years ago New Hope (now Hespeler) was a favorite place of resort to fish for trout. One day I was one of a party to go there. My companions were the three Messrs. Dickson. After fishing some time the Hon. Robert Dickson, in crossing the stream, slipped off a plank into the pond of Aberholtzer's saw-mill. After scrambling out to the bank he deliberately divested himself of his clothing, which he hung up on stumps to 'dry. He then improvised a sort of Zulu costume, and with the utmost sang froid continued to pull the trout from the stream until his clothing was fit to put on again ! Those were jolly days and they seem now to have passed all too quickly."

From the tenor of this letter from the Gait attorney to the author of its history, it will be inferred that the former gentleman was a keen sportsman, as well as an ex- cellent lawyer, and this inference is correct. Like father, like son. In later years, at Leith, his son John became one of the keenest sportsmen as well as one of the best all round athletes in Sydenham township.

One little detail of the history of the Waterloo County village will be of interest at this point. In 1838 William Dickson, who had founded it, disposed of two hundred acres of lan'd covering what is now the best portion of Gait, on the west side of the Grand River, and an additional hundred

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acres in Dumfries township, with liis entire interest in Dumfries Mills, to Absalom Shade, the consideration as stated in the deed amounting to two thousand five hundred pounds, or about $12,225.00. In deeding the aforesaid two thousand acres to Mr. Shade, among the reservations made by Mr. Dickson was one lot for Adam Ainslie, north of Main and east of Ainslie Street. Mr. Dickson and the jovial attorney were evidently on intimate and friendly teiTns when the former not only reserved from the sale a lot for the latter's benefit, but also honored him by naming what is now one of Gait's leading throughfares after him. Gait must have had at this time between four and five hundred inhabitants, as the village was growing rapidly, having entirely recovered from the cholera scai'e. Yet Mr. Dickson disposed of the larger part of his interests there for about $8,000. less than Mr. Ainslie paid for a far smaller interest in the village of Leith, twenty years later, when the latter place had a population of about one hundred. Putting two and two together it becomes plain that in 1860 the prospects for future prosperity in Leith were pretty I'osy.

In reference to what may seem rather an extended notice of Gait, it may be explained that from 1840 until 1860, and even later, that town occupied by far a larger place in the thoughts and interests of our first pioneers than it has since 'done in those of their children. Many of the first arrivals in Owen Sound came from there, and even in greater measure they came to the Lake Shore Line and vicinity of Leith. Not that they were encouraged to come by Galtonians, liowever. Those who remained behind had the most harrowing stories to tell the dear departing ones of the hardships and positive dangers that awaited them up in the region of Georgian Bay. The winters were pictured as being six months long and incredibly severe ; their only neighbors would be roving bands of redskins. The Queen's

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Bush was filled with wild animals of the fiercest description, and if they escaped starving to death these savage beasts would keep them in a constant dread worse than death itself. This stoiy is not overdrawn. It is what many of the inhabitants of Gait in that day actually believed. Many of those who left did so with the pleasing assurance ringing in their ears that it would not be a year until they were back again. They themselves had some fearful and wonder- ful notions of the new home they were coming to. They never dreamed that, as an instance, fruit trees could be raised here at all. Those who made the first experiments in fruit growing were openly scoffeid at. All this seems strange to us now, but 'twas ever thus. The stay-at-homes will always find some reason for continuing to stay there, and the adventurer who fares forth in quest of fresh fields to conquer, while he may not always succeed, at least should be given credit for being willing to take his chance.

What do we find now ? We find, for one thing, that we can raise as fine apples, plums and pears as are grown anywhere in the Dominion, in point of flavor at least. We find Owen Sound, in spite of its comparative isolation a larger city than Gait, although founded twenty-four years later. When compared with some of its sister cities having greater natural advantages, Owen Sound has m^de truly wonderful progress.

But to return to Mr. Ainslie. For many years after his coming to Gait in 1834 he had little competition in his practice of law. There was but one other barrister in the village, a gentleman named John Miller. As men in that day were just as fond of litigation as they are at present, and from all accounts even more so, and as, owing to land speculation, there was a vast amount of conveyanc- ing, etc., fortune seems to have smiled upon him. He was in great demand at social events and as he had a keen

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appreciation of forensic talent was often heard in the de- bates of the villag'e. In 1841 the theatrical fever struck Gait, with as much violence as the cholera had a few years earliei', and a dramatic society was organized. The first plays were presented in the Township Hall of Dumfries, a building no sooner finished than it began to assume an air of antiquity, and which was, in its last days, known as "Noah's Ark." The opening performance was the well known Rob Roy; Mr. Ainslie acted as prompter, and wrote and delivered a clever prologue the night it was presented. He also composed a chorus, "Hurrah for the village of Gait, boys," which described in glowing detail what a great place the village already was, and prophesied even greater and grander things to come. Those who remember the fine old Scottish gentleman himself can easily imagine how he must have enjoyed himself that night ! He wielded at all times a trenchant and eloquent pen, and it has sometimes been a matter for surprise that he never adopted letters as a profession. In politics he was from the very time of his first landing in the country strongly conservative, and a strong admirer of Sir John A. MacDonald. There are not now many men in North Grey who attended the great Liberal meeting in Owen Sound in 1878, when the Hon. Alexander MacKenzie addressed the gathering in defence of his four years' administration and asked for a further lease of power, and possibly some even of these have for- gotten how, when Mr. MacKenzie had concluded his address, Ml. Ainslie rose from his seat in the audience and, with the utmost decorum, propounded a few questions to the Liberal Chieftan, which were received with the most respectful attention and given an equally respectful answer. The Honorable Alexander MacKenzie would have been honor- able in any station in life ; whatever his deficiencies were, he was nothing if not a gentleman.

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Until the day of his death Mr. Ainshe always mani- fested the warmest interest in, and affection for, Gait. He spent twenty-eight years there, certainly the most prosperous, and possibly the happiest years of his life. When he came to Leith his attention was called to the need of a dock, and the building of this was his first under- taking. It was built straight out into the bay, on the , north side of the Water o' Leith, in 1861. There was a depth of ten feet at the outer end, which was ample for the light draught of the small steamers and sailing craft of that period. It was cribbed all the way out, the cribs being filled with stone found in the neighborhood. The farmers of Leith and vicinity had then never heard of such a thing as a booster, but they showed a most booster- like spirit when the dock was built. Realizing that the dock would be of great value to the village, they organized a few bees and Mr. Ainslie thus had his stone drawn for nothing. The oak snubbing posts were works of art. They were nicely beveled on top, and rounded to a smaller diameter at the floor of the dock than at the head. Leith was at once made a fueling station for the wood-burning steam- ers, and many thousands of cords passed over the dock in the years that followed, to be fed to their furnaces.

An addition was built to the mill and here, shortly j afterwards, the first telegraph office was opened, in a small building at the east end of it. Mr. Ainslie commenced grain buying, using part of the mill for storage, but it was found too damp for that puipose and he soon desisted. The mill pond was enlarged and the dam strengthened, all these improvements on that building being effected at considerable expense. The distillery was running at full capacity at this time and the head distiller, a Mr. Rochester, previously mentioned, had made several improvements over the lax methods of his predecessor. There was no more free whiskey for all who cared to come

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and take a dipperful from the vats at their pleasure. A small storehouse for Mr. Rochester's product was built down at the waterfront, just beside the dock. There is an old, but true story, that one of the villagers stole a whole barrel of booze from this building by going down every morning before daylight, gaining access to the in- side by some means known only to himself, filling his pail, and scurrying furtively home with it. In time he was suspected, caught with the goods on him, and was made to pay for the whole barrel. At the prevailing price of whiskey he would not have to pay so much, after all. And if stolen fruit is always sweetest, think of how he must have enjoyed licking up that stolen liquor !

Mr. Ainslie had different gangs of men working on his various enterprises, and when he found they could not get free liquor themselves by going to the distillery it was his fashion to fill a quart bottle and start making the rounds, giving each man a small "snort." Such an employer should not have had much difficulty in hiring men.

/ The distillery ceased operations some time in 1864.

The reason for such cessation Avas said to be the heavy I excise duty levied by the Upper Canada authorities about ! that time on hard liquors. It is positive that it was not

due to any slackening in the demand for its product.

The new proprietor of the village and its fortunes used to have some funny experiences with his tenants and would-be tenants. Among these latter was an old character who answered to the homely name of Tommy Jones. Tommy was a bachelor, probably for the good and sufficient reason that no woman would consent to have him, and like most bachelors his affections were centred on very few objects in life. In fact, they narrowed themselves down to one. That was whiskey, for which he had a tender and loving regard indeed. He persuaded Mr. Ainslie into

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permission to start a garden on some vacant land adjacent to Reefer's Creek, on the north side. Here he planted some Indian cora and a variety of garden truck, which was all very well. But the homing instinct seems to have struck him, for he suddenly began operations in the con- struction of a house and had made the excavation for a cellar before Mr. Ainslie appeared on the scene to put a crimp in his activities. He was ordered off the land bag and baggage, but a huge hole in the ground remained for many years as a monument to his blasted hopes. The building of a row of summer cottages is at present pro- jected, within two hundred j^ards of the spot. After that Tommy made his home as previously, wherever the night chanced to find him. A huge hogshead back of Glen's tavern was one of his places of nightly repose. How he came to his end nobody knows, but his dead body was found in tlie bush back of the village, and where he is buried everyone seems to have forgotten.

The list of inhabitants of the village, with their several occupations, is given by W. W. Smith in his gaz- etteer, published in 1865, and is as follows :

Adam Ainslie, proprietor of Leith Mills ; Richard Alexander, laborer ; Peter Burr, blacksmith, Thomas Brown, carpenter ; Arthur B. Cameron, carpenter ; George Cameron, carpenter; Peter Cameron, carpenter; James Clark, carpenter ; Michael Duffy, laborer ; Robert Grierson ; John Lenfesty, miller, Leith INIills ; Charles Lemon, boot and shoemaker ; Royal Moulton, inn-keeper, "Leith Hotel ;" Henry Moore, teacher, boards at A. Ainslie's ; Anthony Marshall, laborer ; Neil McNeil, laborer ; Malcolm McNeil, laborer ; William McKeen, farmer ; Daniel North, laborer ; Henry Rixon, boards at A. Ainslie's ; James Ross, post- master ; John Ross, assistant ; James Ross, Jr.

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The population of the village is given by the same authority as being one hundred and ten, on the above date. This may be so, but there are a few old people still living in the neighborhood who are ready to testify that the list of inhabitants as given by Mr. Smith is incomplete, and that he also under estimated its population. The last sur- vivor of those in the list passed away recently at Moosomin, Sask, in the person of Malcolm McNeil ; he was at the same time the last survivor of the old and highly respected family of that name. He moved to Manitoba in 1882, and prospered as a farmer. About a year or two after Mr. Ainslie's coming to Leith and while his improvements were under way Mr. McNeil was selected to take a census of the village, floating population and all ; he found nearly three hundred people there, and so reported. As an old timer once regretfully said to us — "Leith was a-boomin' in them days."

Mr. Smith also says that the draught of water at the end of the old dock, built in 1861, was eight and one half feet. This also may be true, but an old and excellent authority is positive it was ten feet. However, it was in the first half of the sixties the gradual subsiding of the lake level first became apparent.

The steady advance in the clearing of the forests on the shores of our inland seas was beginning to get in its deadly work. Mr. Ainslie determined on a further ex- tension out into the bay, and this was carried out, although nobody can be found who can fix the exact year in which it commenced. It was probably in 1870 — possibly a little later, as men fifty eight and sixty yeai's of age can remember seeing the pile driver at work on the ice. The piles were driven in the winter, holes through the ice being cut for the purpose, and when finished the dock showed a depth of thirteen feet of water at the end. Had

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the old style construction been followed — cribbing filled with stone — the dock would in all probability have stood much longer than it did. An ell was built at the end, running- at a right angle to the main dock and in a north-easterly direction. On this cattle and wood sheds were erected, the wood being hauled in the winter by the surrounding farmers and stored there for the purpose previously mentioned. If recollections sei-ves aright, the wood shed was about fifteen or eighteen feet high. It was from the roof of this building the young swimmers of the village — and some of them not so young — were wont to dive into the waters of the bay, when taking their swim after a hard day's v/ork. As the planking on the surface of the dock was fully six feet above that of the water, it can be readily seen that this was no baby's dive. The bathing suits worn by the strong swimmers of Leith in that day were all of an exact likeness, both as to color and pattern. They were of a style that was fashionable in the Garden of Eden, before the serpent beguiled Eve. A man wearing the same suit at the same place would in our day be subject to arrest — but times change.

A list of steamboats and sailing craft calling at this dock and its predecessor, in the ten or twelve years follow- ing 1870, would include nearly all the same craft plying to Owen Sound at that time. For many years the mails came from Owen Sound by steamboat, the Frances Smith being the last one utilized in this service. It was coming- bi-weekly in 1865 ; nobody seems to remember when the daily mail by land was established. The mails were dis- tributed from the office in the store of Ross Brothers until 1875, and on their removal to Annan Arthur B. Cameron became postmaster. At the time of his death, about thirty-seven years ago, the office continued to be held by members of his family and still remains there, to the eminent satisfaction of all who make Leith their post

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office. The general store in connection with it was opened in 1864, or sixty years ago, by the late Mr. Cameron, and is still conducted by his eldest son, M}-. Arthur Cameron. It is the solitary place of business in Leith that has survived in the gradual decay of the village, but its record is a unique one and it is to be doubted if it can be duplicated in Grey County. "A Cameron never can yield."

The new dock was a source of endless expense from the very beginning. It was exposed to the north and north-easterly gales, the worst that sweep the bay. The heavy seas raised by a storm from these directions, rushing under its unprotected sides, tore up the plank flooring, necessitating constant repairs. Had a breakwater a few hundred yards long been built from the mouth of Reefer's Creek out into the bay in a westerly direction, it would have obviated all this, but the expense would have been considerable, and the day of harbor grants and legislative subsidies for such pui*poses was not yet, for Leith at any rate. The place had no natural harbor advantages, and with the steady lowering of the water levels it is easily seen now that money so spent would have been thrown away.

There were many mishaps during these periods of heavy weather, one of which had rather an amusing sequel. The schooner Maple Leaf, loaded with wheat, was caught in one of them while moored to the dock, and threatened to pound it to pieces. The stoiTn rose a little after sunset, and a steamboat captain in Owen Sound was wired to, with the request that he bring his boat down and endeavor to tow the schooner out to deep water, where she could get canvas on herself without danger of being driven ashore. He put in an appearance in answer to the call, but the night was such a wild one that in the pitch darkness pre- vailing he thought it safest not to go near the dock at all,

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so the Maple Leaf was left to ride out the storm. She did so, but the resultant damage to the dock was dis- heartening- to look at, when the gale had subsided. Mr. Ainslie promptly entered an action for damages against her owners, employing counsel. He was awarded them in the paltry sum of one hundred dollars. He then went to pay his lawyer. That gentleman had evidently made up his mind to charge all the traffic would bear. He informed his client in an apologetic tone, as though ashamed of his own modesty, that "he guessed his bill would be about ninety-five dollars."

"Take it all while you're at it" said Mr. Ainslie, throwing him the hundred across the table.

On another occasion, in the spring of 1880, the schooner Restless, also loaded with wheat, was torn loose from the dock in a gale of wind, and driven over on the shore on the south side. She was lightered of almost lier whole cargo, the farmers for miles around getting all the seed wheat they wanted for little or nothing, and a small tug tried to pull her off. The attempt was unsuccess- ful, but later the Mary Ann, a heavier tug from CoUing- wood, managed to float her.

Other sailing vessels calling at Leith, beside the two luckless ones already mentioned, and falling within our own recollection were : The Mountaineer, Lady MacDonald and Lily Hamilton, all owned by the late James Sutherland of Owen Sound ; the Phoebe Catherine, Prince Edward, Annie Foster, Belle MacPhee and Ariel. Of these the Lily Hamilton and Lady MacDonald, each having a capacity of about twenty thousand bushels of wheat, and being of the three-masted type, were the largest. It was generally estimated that their construction cost one thousand dollars for every thousand bushel of grain they would carry, in

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vessels of their design. The Lily Hamilton was lost on Lake Ontario.

The first steamboat of which there is any record as calling at Leith was the Kaloolah. She was calling there regularly many years before the building of the first dock. Other early steamboats were the Ploughboy, Canadian, Clifton, Silver Spray, City of London, Algoma and Cumber- land. Coming down to comparatively recent years, the list includes the Frances Smith, City of Owen Sound, Magnet, Spartan, Africa, Persia (occasionally) City of Winnipeg, Josephine Kidd, Northern Belle, Northern Queen, Alderson. Manitoulm and Emerald. The list is made from memory only, and is probably incomplete. Many of these steam- boats, particularly the early ones, had wood burning furnaces and sometimes merely called to "wood up." The one-day steainboat excursions, once so popular in Owen Sound, but which have fallen into innocuous desuetude, called regularly at Leith in the sixties, seventies and the early eighties, after which the dock began to grow unsafe, for larger vessels at least. Some of these excursions were higlily enjoyable events, and it is to be hoped the custom will yet be revived.

The wharf, as it was generally called, was thus not only a great commercial convenience but a source of pleasure to young and old, and many of the fondest recollections of old Leithonians still centre round it. It is now as unsightly a ruin as will be seen anywhere on Georgian Bay, and about as ugly as the receding waters have