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December 29, 2000
Christmases in the bush long ago
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Students in Fossmill enjoying the winter break in the 1940s.
Photo courtesy Bernadette Martin |
Everyone has memories of Christmases past including when it was more
“Christ” mass and less Xmas with its commercial focus. This week
I will look at a few perspectives on Christmas from the early years of
the century on the now abandoned CNR “Algonquin route” across the north-east
corner of Algonquin Park where isolation was a major factor.
I am familiar with Alderdale, Fossmill, Kiosk and Brent but any of the
other stops (Kilrush, Ascalon, Daventry, Acanthus, Radiant, Brawny, Achray,
Kathmore and Dahlia) on the line would be similar. There was little
money for the holiday season for the things we take for granted today.
Christmas trees were cut from the bush and decorations were handmade.
Gifts were often limited to candles, cookies, candies, fruit or the
odd handmade toy or knitted item. Turkeys, ducks or chickens were raised
in the backyard and fattened for the holiday.
With limited or no electricity homemade candles were an important part
of Christmas with some placed on the tree for brief and careful lighting.
There were various celebrations unique to each nationality and religion
but already Christmas was evolving to a common approach. The Irish
had a tradition of placing a candle on the windowsill to welcome Mary and
Joseph. Many Catholic families had a daughter Mary who got to blow
out the candle. (The two oldest children in my wife’s family were named
Mary and Joseph)
Schools, churches and homes often had nativity scenes and some families
with fireplaces cut an oak Yule log for the 12 days of Christmas.
In some families Christmas was very quiet with parties saved for New Years
when pots would be banged and guns discharged.
In logging communities along the CNR Christmas and New Year were special
because fathers and brothers came out of the bush camps until freeze up
of the logging roads was complete. If there was a sawmill it closed
for a few days. Single men partied or courted while married men got to
know their families again. Many families had additions in late September
or early October. Children tobogganed, skated, or otherwise enjoyed
the out of doors with their friends and family.
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Skating on the Wasi River during the Christmas break at
Fossmill in the 1930s. Raymond Donahue shows Claire Denis how to skate.
The Sawmill is in the background. Photo courtesy Claire Denis.
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In numerous interviews for our book The Fossmill Story the holidays
were recalled as happy times. The one room school house was the site
of annual school concerts. Since there wasn’t a school in Fossmill
at first the students traveled to the nearby Wasing school. Doreen
Smith (Litkee) who still lives nearby recalled a girl from Fossmill singing
in French “She had a beautiful voice … it was lovely. The whole place was
silent.”
Bernadette Martin recalled preparing a song and dance routine with Aunt
Maggie Donahue, the Post Mistress, who had the only piano in Fossmill Bernadette
recalled “Christmas would come together and it was like magic to us.” Parents
shopped from the Eaton’s catalogue and the children waited for the mail
train to catch glimpses of their presents before Maggie Donahue hid them
away. “Come Christmas day there would be hard candies by the bucket, ice
cream and lots of food. The snow was so deep and beautiful. I can remember
one Christmas, Stan Frederick dressing as Santa Claus and going to all
the houses. That just blew us kids away.”
Doreen Smith told the story of a visit from her farm to the Fossmill
company store to buy her mother a Christmas gift “We didn’t have much money.
I think I had 54 cents…everything was marked above what I had. Then I saw—oh!
It was very pretty—a little bowl for mustard with a spoon in it, painted
with a nice picture on it. Tom Robertson, the clerk, seeing my predicament
said ‘Well now, what you have there will pay for that,’ so I proudly went
home with that as a gift for my mother.”
Several people mentioned getting fruit for Christmas. Barbara Scott,
whose father had a steady job as Station Agent at Fossmill, recalled taking
a Christmas orange to school in 1935 and having the other students fight
over the peelings.
People in Kiosk remembered the concerts and the Santa Claus parades.
The people in Brent remembered the Christmas parties in the school railway
coach parked on a siding, before a permanent school was built
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Kiosk children play in the snow. Photo courtesy Robert Laferriere
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One of the stories that is a part of Fossmill folklore is about
the young man who was something of a Robin Hood. He apparently went into
Chisholm Township and “acquired” turkeys which he gave to various families
in need in Fossmill.
In 1931 the same young man, who was not a Catholic, responded to a group
of Catholic friends that wanted to go to midnight mass at the St. Louis
de France Church five miles away in Chiswick. He asked the Fossmill
stable boss if he could borrow a team of company horses and a sleigh but
was turned down. Later he returned with three buddies, broke in, and took
the group to Chiswick. A 1932 article in the North Bay Nugget says
that the young man got a month in the district jail and another man got
a year’s suspended sentence. Ten years later the young man that got the
suspended sentence went to Europe to fight in the army and did not return.
Another of the participants, who told me the story, worked for years in
the mills at Fossmill, Kiosk and Columbia Forest Products and died at age
86 two weeks ago in Mattawa.
As we end of this decade, century and millennium I hope your memories
of Christmas 2000 are happy ones.
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