Back Aa

Upper Canada Sketches

<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2> <div class="blockquot">Capture of York—Immigration increasing—David Annis—Niagara—Prosperous lumber business—Ship-building—High freight rates—Salmon spearing—Meteoric showers—An affrighted clergyman—Cold winters—A tragedy of the clearings. </div> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> “Peculiar both! Our soil’s strong growth, And our bold native’s hardy mind; Sure heaven bespoke Our hearts of oak To give a master to mankind.” </div> </div></div> ON April 27th, 1813, upon the taking of York by Chauncey and his fleet, orders were given by the officer left in command of the British militia when General Sheaffe retreated to blow up the fort. The boom of the explosion was distinctly heard by my grandsire, Thomas Conant, at his home thirty-five miles distant. With the exception of this incident no records connected with the events from that time until the close of the war in 1814 have been preserved among the reminiscences of the family. The supplies needed for the soldiers had encour{52}aged agriculture in the back townships and brought money into circulation in the country. At the close of the war immigration increased, sturdy settlers coming into the country both from the British Isles and the United States. The settlement of the wild lands, the clearing of the forests and the building of roads went on apace; an era of prosperity and wealth succeeded as peace became assured. The most thriving industry was that of the lumberman, awaiting whose axe lay the magnificent forests of timber which covered so large a portion of Upper Canada. My father embarked in this trade. His mother’s decease induced his relative, David Annis, a bachelor, to ask for and adopt him as his heir. David Annis was a descendant of the Charles Annis mentioned in the quit-rent deed given on page 29. Though unlettered and untaught, even unable to write his own name, David was possessed of excellent business ability and an untiring body; a man of fine heart, a friend to the poor, and hospitable to all. It is said of him that no Indian or white ever went from his door hungry. Together he and Daniel Conant built what was probably the first lumber mill erected in the Home District. Its capacity was seven thousand feet of lumber per day only. At page 135 a picture of this mill is given. All that lumber (generally pine) would have been <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/ill_011.jpg" height-obs="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /> <div class="caption">DAVID ANNIS. THE AUTHOR’S UNCLE. </div> </div> {53} valueless when manufactured unless means had been provided to take it to market by schooner. Niagara, at the mouth of the Niagara River, was, even as late as 1835, one of the largest towns in Upper Canada. Thither the lumber must be taken to find a market. No wharves had then been built upon the north shore of Lake Ontario, and lumber must be floated down the stream from the mill in rafts to the lake, and so placed on board the waiting schooners. Three vessels were built by ship carpenters (many of whom came from the United States) of the lumber sawn at the mill. They were built on fine lines and had excellent sailing properties, their owners boasting they could sail them “as close to the wind’s eye as any craft that ever floated.” Pine lumber brought at that day (1835) $7 per thousand feet in cash at Niagara; therefore the lumber mill paid $49 per day of twenty-four hours during the season of sawing. To supply the demands of this trade vessel after vessel was built, and soon return freights began to be offered, such as salt from Sodus, N.Y., and flour in barrels, to be carried to Kingston, until the business of lumber manufacturing and vessel freighting was, at that early period in the history of Upper Canada, as productive as the output of a paying gold mine. The author’s father served on many of his schooners as captain and super{54}cargo as well, and never lost his love of the water and its attendant adventure. One of the most important occurrences of the time, and one from which many reckoned their local history, was a remarkable display of falling meteors. The following account is taken from memoranda left by my mother, and as told by my father: On the night of the 12th of November, 1833, my father, then a young man, was salmon-spearing in a boat in the creek, at its outlet into Lake Ontario, now Port Oshawa. One of his hired men sat in the stern and paddled, while he stood close beside the light-jack of blazing pine knots, in order to see the salmon in the water. He, in common with the inhabitants generally, was laying in a stock of salmon to be salted down for the year’s use, until the salmon “run” again the following fall. At or about ten o’clock of this evening, as nearly as he could judge, from out of an intensely dark November night, globes of fire as big as goose eggs began falling all around his boat. These balls continued to fall until my father, becoming frightened, went home,—not forgetting, he quaintly added, to bring with him the salmon already caught. On reaching home, Lot 6, B. F. East Whitby, the whole household was aroused, and frightened too; but the fires ceasing{55} they went to bed, to pass a restless night after the awe-inspiring scene they had witnessed. Getting up before daybreak next morning, my father raked over the embers of the buried back log of the big fire-place and quickly had a blaze. Happening to glance out of the window, to his intense amazement he saw, as he said, “the whole sky filled with shooting stars.” Quickly he called to the men, his hired help in the lumbering business, to come down stairs. They needed not a second invitation, and among them was one Shields, who, on reaching the door, dropped in a twinkling upon his knees and began to pray. The balls of fire continuing, his prayers grew more earnest, if vigor of voice could be any index to his religious fervor. Of the grandeur of the unparalleled scene my father said almost nothing, for I am led to think they were all too thoroughly frightened to think of beauty, that being a side issue entirely. The fiery shower growing more dense, my father went out of doors and found the fire-balls did not burn or hurt. Then he went to a neighbor’s—a preacher of renown in the locality—having to pass through woods, and even in the darkness, he affirms, the fire-balls lighted his way quite distinctly. The preacher, already awake, was seated at the table beside a tallow dip reading his Bible, with two other neighbors listening and too fright{56}ened, he said, to even bid him good morning. He sat and listened to verse after verse, and still the stars fell. The preacher gave no explanation or sign, but read on. Looking eastward, at last my father saw a faint glimmer of breaking day. Once more he came out into the fire and made his way homeward. Before he reached there daylight broke. Gradually the fire-balls grew less and less, and, with the day, ceased altogether. To find a sign of them he hunted closely upon the ground, but not a trace was left of anything. Nor was any damage done. What became of the stars that fell he could not conjecture. Realize that in 1833 astronomers had not taught Upper Canadians in regard to meteoric showers, as we know to-day, and we do not marvel at their consternation and fright. Such was the greatest meteoric shower the world probably has ever known. Its greatest density was said to be attained in this section of the continent. A bit of doggerel went the rounds at that time. It was made, I believe, by one Horace Hutchinson, a sailor whom my father had on one of his schooners. Here is the first verse: <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> “I well remembered what I see In eighteen hundred and thirty-three, When from the affrighted place I stood The stars forsook their fixed abode.” {57}</div> </div></div> A better sailor he was than a poet, and yet, bad as the verses were, they were very popular in the thirties in a large section of the Home District, of which this is a part. E. S. Shrapnel, the artist, paints the picture (page 144) from an actual photograph of the house, he obviously supplying the kneeling man. Shields, who made so great a fuss, was employed by one of my father’s foremen at the lumbering, and the picture and its story are true in every essential particular. Upper and Lower Canada were thought by many to have extremely severe winters. It is probable the belief was well founded, but the climate of Upper Canada has undergone a very material change since that period (1835). To-day Upper Canada is pre-eminently a fruit-growing country. Apples, pears, peaches and grapes are staples in this favored land. <h3>COLD WINTERS OF YORE.</h3> Old men tell us that our winters are less severe now than they were fifty or sixty years ago. The long unbroken spells of extreme cold which they used to experience in the early days of our history, are not known now. It is true we do get a cold spell during the winter, now and again, and sometimes deep snow; but these cold spells soon break, and the{58} deep snows do not remain all winter. Not long since I was talking with one of the Grand Trunk Railway conductors, who had been on the line for over twenty years. He said that when he first came on the line it was not at all unusual to have the snow even with the car steps for miles. At other places, he said, they would for long distances pass through tunnels of snow piled or drifted as high as the car tops, whereas now the railway company seldom send out their snow-plough at all, nor does the snow seriously hinder the running of the trains. It may be that the snow does not now lie as deep as it did before the land was cleared, but is more drifted. This no doubt is true, in a measure, but then if we got as much snow as our fathers used to, and this drifted, the consequences would be most disastrous, and would be an effectual bar to locomotion. The winter’s cold of former years can be best illustrated by the relation of an anecdote. An old gentleman, still alive and approaching his fourscore years says he was one day driving through a seventeen-mile belt of woods, in this province, with one horse drawing a jumper. The jumpers of those days were made by using two green saplings for runners, bending them up for the crooks. Beams and uprights were made of green saplings, like the runners. An axe and an auger were the only tools used in their construction, and{59} generally there was not a particle of iron in any shape. Rude as they were, they served their purpose admirably, and lasted well enough through one winter. The day was intensely cold, so cold that it was dangerous to leave any part of the body exposed for a moment. He saw a man sitting bolt upright in the snow on the path before him. His first thought was “What will this man be doing here alone, sitting down in this awful cold.” Coming up to him, he reined up his horse, and called to the man; receiving no answer, he tapped him with his whip, and, to his astonishment, the blow resounded as if he were striking a piece of marble. The poor fellow was frozen solid through and through. He was a settler, who lived some thirty miles farther on, and who had set out to go to some settlement, but becoming exhausted by the long weary tramp in the snow, sat down for a few moments’ rest, became drowsy from the soporific effects of the cold, and froze as he sat. To convey to the younger generation of Upper Canadians an idea of some of the difficulties which our forefathers encountered in subduing the dense forests of our Province, I will relate a true instance of an occurrence about sixty years ago: A man and his wife, with two children, moved into the Township of Ops, into a dense forest, eight miles{60} from the nearest settler. For months he chopped away at the forest trees, all alone, and succeeded at length in making a clearing in the forest, and erecting a log-house for himself and his family. The logs were peeled and notched at the ends, and laid up squarely, each tier making the house the diameter of a log higher. A hole was cut through for a doorway, and another for a window. To form a door he split some thin slabs from a straight-grained cedar, and pinned them with wooden pins to cross slats. The most ingenious parts of the construction, however, were the hinges. Iron hinges he had not, and could not get. With the auger he bored a hole through the end of a square piece of wood, and, sharpening the other end with his axe, he then bored a hole into one of the logs of the house, constituting in part a door-jamb, and drove the piece of wood into this hole. This formed the top part of the hinge, and the bottom part was fashioned in exactly the same way. Now to the door, in like manner, he fastened two pegs of wood with holes bored through their ends. Placing the ends of the hinges above one another they presented the four ends with holes leading through them, the one above the other. Next he made a long pin with his handy jacknife, leaving a run at one end of it, and making it long enough to reach from the top{61} to the lower hinge. Through the holes at the ends of the hinge this long pin was placed, and thus the door was hung. The roof of the log-house was perhaps the greatest curiosity. Hollow basswood (linden) trees were generally used. These were first cut the length required, then split through the centre, each half forming a trough. A layer of these troughs was laid lengthwise from the ridge-pole to the eaves, all over the house-top, upon their backs, the bark side down. Over these was laid a second layer, reversed, or bark side up, and the edges of the upper layer fitted into the hollows of the lower one. In this way the settler made a roof for his house quickly and easily. Such a roof shed water tolerably well, too, until the logs began to rot. This primitive house built, the settler put in a small crop in the tiny clearing. At this period in the country’s history the virgin soil produced bountifully, and the crops once put in were almost sure to give fair returns. When autumn came with its gorgeous colors—the leaves of the forest in the north temperate zone rivalling in beauty anything the tropics can show us—the settler’s crop was a good one. Unfortunately, however, he was confined to his rude bed, too ill to gather in his harvest. Eight miles{62} away his nearest neighbors followed the “blazes”[A] on the trees through the woods and came and secured the settler’s crop for him, then departed, leaving him and his household all alone in the deep, silent forest. Days and weeks rolled along and no one came again, while the poor man got perceptibly worse. Winter at last set in with the severe cold of those days. Snow, deep and lasting, soon fell, and covered all things animate and inanimate with a pure white mantle. To have a huge pile of logs at the door was the custom of those days, to supply the winter fire in the great capacious open fire-place. Our settler had not neglected to secure the traditional and useful pile of logs before his illness. Many dreary days passed over this little snowed-in household, the husband and mainstay still sick, and gradually growing weaker. Wolves howled around the door nightly. Seeing no one out of doors, they gradually became bolder and would approach to the very door of the cabin. <div class="footnote">[A] Marks on the trees made by the axe to indicate a path or way from one spot to another in the woods. </div> To the poor disconsolate wife’s inexpressible grief, the husband died and left her alone in her solitary loneliness with her two children, the eldest of whom was only eight years of age, and the second one just able to walk. What dreadful isolation this, with no one nearer than eight miles to help her perform{63} the sacred rites of sepulture! Among the tools in the house was an old mattock, used in grubbing up the forest roots in the clearing. With this she attempted to dig a grave. Unfortunately for her, however, the snow had fallen later than usual in the autumn, after the ground had become frozen quite hard. All her efforts failed to penetrate through the deeply frozen crust, and she almost feared she could not bury her husband at all. To place the body out of doors she dare not, for it would only become food for the prowling wolves, and the idea was so revolting to her that she could not entertain it. Some solution, however, must be sought for the difficult problem, and this clever, self-reliant woman finally solved it. Remembering that the pile of logs at the door beside the house had been put there before the frost came, with the aid of a hand-spike she rolled one back away from the side of the house. It was a large log from which one above it had been removed for the daily burning on the hearth. To her joy, under this log the ground was scarcely frozen, being under the pile and sheltered by the side of the log cabin. There with the mattock she dug a grave, dragged her husband’s body to it, rolled it gently in, and covered it over with the soil she had taken out. Then back again over the grave she rolled the log, to{64} protect it and prevent the wolves disinterring the body. She then went to the settlement, leading her youngest child by the hand, the other following in the track made in the deep snow. A harrowing tale is this, but it is a true one. It was by just such people that the Province of Upper Canada was made what it is, and by their sufferings, buffetings and privations we enjoy the privileges which we have to-day. Let us drop a kindly tear to the memory of this brave woman, and look back with fond remembrance to our pioneer ancestors who, although often unlettered and uncultured, did so much for us. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/ill_012.jpg" width-obs="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /> <div class="caption">ROGER CONANT TRADING WITH THE INDIANS FOR FURS. BARCLAY, CLARK & CO. LITHO. TORONTO </div> </div> {65} <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.