Low Down Articles
Houses of the Gatineau Hills
Low Down Articles
Houses of the Gatineau Hills
Article 55 of 74
This article first appeared in the "Houses of the Gatineau Hills" column in the January 21, 2009 issue of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
o o o
A hotel of one's own in Brennan's Hill
By Cynthia Vukets
When Mona Monette first started working at the Brennan's Hill Hotel she was the only woman who dared set foot in the place.
That was in 1947, she was 21, newly married, and hotels just weren't acceptable places for ladies.
In fact, over the years some of her friends would refuse to call on her for fear they'd be seen going into a hotel, and be judged by nosy neighbours. Her generation thought of hotels as places for men only.
Monette's father-in-law, J.P., owned the Brennan's Hill Hotel, built around 1910. It was natural for her and her husband, Francois, to roll up their sleeves and pitch in after they married.
"Saturday nights we would get the locals come up from the bush and want to fight," recalls the petite woman, a brunette who is now silver-haired. "It's a wonder nobody got hurt."
She says the men in those days would fight just to show their strength. They'd get thrown out of the bar on Saturday night and be hunting together by Sunday. She says Francois didn't allow arm wrestling in the hotel, so men had no other way to act out their aggression.
Monette says she was probably too young to be nervous at the time, even though she was the only woman present.
She and Francois worked from 8:00 a.m. until the bar closed up, sometimes as late as 3:00 in the morning. "We had no life, but I loved it," she says. "I love people."
The couple met at a dance. Monette says she didn't like Francois at first. "He was so short!" she laughs. But they married less than a year after their first dance and had seven children.
They lived in the hotel for the first few years, and Monette raised the first of her kids there. Finally, they bought a place of their own.
"We bought a little house down in Mushrat [Creek]. No running water, but I loved it," she says.
In 1948, the Brennan's Hill Hotel was part of a turning point in history.
"I was in the hotel when the hydro line was brought up [to Low]," says Monette. The hotel was one of the first places to have a telephone.
"At first you'd pick up a phone and everybody would listen in," she says of the party lines. She remembers men would come running out of the bush in the middle of the night, their pregnant wives about to give birth, and yell to Monette to phone Dr. Geggie, founder of the Wakefield hospital.
After Francois passed away at the age of 45, Mona was left to run the hotel and look alter their children. They moved to a house right beside the hotel. Mona says she'd get to the hotel early in the morning, leaving her older children responsible for getting everyone up and ready for school. They were supposed to get up and wash, then come dovm to the hotel for breakfast before heading off to school.
It didn't always happen. After all, you can't trust children to make sure they get to school on time. "There were some funny times," she says..
She recalls learning to do the bank deposits on her own. Although as a young woman she had worked for the Bank of Canada - for $129 a month - she just wasn't used to dealing with money. But she managed, on her own. Her two oldest children - Guy and Maxine - both helped out a lot, she says. In fact, both quit school to work at the hotel and take care of the younger children.
Now 82, Monette still lives in the same Brennan's Hill house beside the hotel. Now it's a restaurant, run by her son Billy. "We are the only hotel on the Gatineau in the original family," she says.