As we head to the polls with pride in our towns, municipalities, and county, we sometimes wonder why our ancestors would leave a settled country and good neighbours to take a dangerous trip across that Atlantic where icebergs, storms and high seas might destroy and sink that little wooden ship. They were also heading to a wilderness of endless forest and wild animals and no place to sleep except in a quickly constructed shack to keep out the snow and wild animals, and they hopefully found some fish in the rivers and lakes and some game to provide meat for those cold first winters. Often, some relatives and neighbours came with them to get away from skirmishes over religion or language, or a food shortage caused by drought or just poor crops on lands that the king or tax collectors would take a share of first before the farmers and poor people got enough to survive the winter.
Our ancestors had a dream of owning their own piece of land and taking charge of their own survival. Often, retired soldiers who had fought in European wars were chosen to survey and allot plots of land to new settlers. Those soldiers had seen firsthand how wars began and decided to allot different areas in our county to immigrants with similar religion and language. Scots who were English and Presbyterian were encouraged to settle in one area, English protestants in another, English Catholics, in another area, French Catholics in another, German or Prussian Lutherans in another, etc., with hopes that by the time they all got their lands cleared, a home built, some roads and bridges over creeks, and shelter for their animals, they would have learned how to depend on each other and be too tired to waste time fighting over little things like religion or what brogue they spoke.
After all, although there are many thousands of religions in the world, most people believe that if they are good to their fellow man, they will all get to the same reward “upstairs”.
So why did all our little villages get built in various places? Some (like Quyon, Campbells Bay, Fort-Coulonge) were built beside a river because the river was the way everything moved, including logs, furs that arrived by canoe, supplies that came by boat, square timber that was floated in giant rafts from up-river to seaports like Quebec City. Portage-du-Fort was built because there was a huge portage around the deadly rapids. Quyon also was just below a dangerous portage and there was even a horse-drawn railway constructed around the rapids to carry people and supplies safely around the rapids up to Pontiac Bay. Shawville (Clarendon Centre) was built close to a plentiful spring which has supplied the town with clear spring water for more than 200 years and it was the center of a thriving agricultural community. Ladysmith (Thorne Centre) was the centre of another farming-logging community where many residents spoke German.
Education was very important from the time the very first settlers arrived. First, schooling was done in the home of some very smart and compassionate residents. As time went on, small one-room schools were constructed every few miles because the children either walked or took the horse to get to school. The older children helped teach the younger kids. As the years passed, larger towns built academies, which were like our high schools, where some lucky children went to further education. Those children often boarded at houses in that town. That is how some of our very good doctors and lawyers got their education start.
There were little country stores about every five miles in all directions which kept your family fed until your mom and dad made a trip to town, and cheese factories and creameries near where the most dairy cattle were raised. Every town had two or more butcher shops and a bakery or two. Flour mills were farther apart but farmers would travel for miles to get their wheat milled by the best flour mill. Most towns had one or more lumber mills. Shawville once had two brickyards. Most towns also had a blacksmith to fix wagons and horse shoes, a harness maker to make harnesses for the drivers, and work horses and one or two shoe makers. Even though towns grew in population, many households kept a cow which the kids milked daily before and after school. The cows were pastured either in or near the town in a community pasture. When the pasture and the cow dried up in the fall, town residents bought milk delivered by one or two farmers close to town. My grandfather, Gordon Brownlee, had delivered milk in Shawville for several years before he brought the first horse-drawn milk wagon to Shawville in 1926. Grandpa and “Rock” the horse delivered milk for many years until the first drunk driver crashed into the milk wagon and demolished it. Campbells Bay was one of the first towns in the Pontiac to have electric power supplied by the Wilson generating station on a creek that was dammed up a few miles east of town. The county’s first politicians were chosen from the most successful farmers and businessmen in the area. Let’s choose our politicians just as carefully as our ancestors did so we can be proud of our Pontiac County for many generations to come.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
