Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 7.
"The Battle of Brennan's Hill"
Gunda Lambton
If the "Battle of Brennan's Hill" or, alternatively, the "Low Rebellion" of November 1895 was never clearly documented, not even by reporters of the three Ottawa papers — the Daily Free Press, the Ottawa Citizen and the Evening Journal — this was due to what we would now call a “total lack of communication" between the Irish settlers and the authorities who sent the militia to Low, up the Gatineau. The newspaper accounts, particularly of the first few days, under headlines like “Pay or Seizure" and "A Call to Arms", were as muddled as they were voluminous, and abounded with terms describing the settlers as “ruffians", "delinquents" and "filthy Stag Creek Kickers".
It is time that the settlers’ point of view should be examined. Their rich folklore, recently collected for the National Museums, would, in itself, form a lengthy chapter.1 Their courage and neighbourliness remain undisputed; they had hacked the land out of the bush, faced bitter winters, mud and flies in spring, hot, very short summers in which all worked together to save the harvest. The men worked in logging shanties during the winters to earn money for seed grain, window glass, stoves, cattle, etc. The first seed potatoes, as often as not, came from neighbours, the first log house was put up with their help. The little community of Brennan's Hill had close relationships with North Wakefield, where the first log church had been built in 1833 from loggers‘ subscriptions. By 1895 there was a church at Low, near Martindale; its priest was Father Blondin. But many "South Low" residents still went to the fine stone church, St. Camillus, in North Wakefield (now Farrellton). The priest there was Father Foley, who was greatly loved and respected.
In Low, the first thousand acres in the area had been bought in 1837 by Caleb Brooks, a nephew of the Wrights and like them from New England. The B rooks sons divided the good farm land, previously cleared of bush by two men, Hamilton & Low, and ran a stage-coach from Wakefield to their hotel in Low, until the railroad arrived in 1894.
Until 1843 the Wrights and certain others enjoyed the "Gatineau Privilege" which meant the cutting of timber on land owned by the Crown. When the Irish settlers came in the 1840's they bought land near the logging camps where they worked, and it was not always the best land. Many worked for the shanties; they knew that the Wrights occasionally cut timber illegally and that their rafts were sometimes confiscated by a justice of the peace.2 After 1843, the "Gatineau Privilege" was withdrawn but the former "Privilege" holders still tried to stop any one else from using the river. When an independent millwright, Nat Blasdell, opened the Chelsea mill, they tried to hound him out of the area; blocked his rafts, and laid booms across the mouth of the Gatineau. Blasdell obtained financial help from a Scottish lumber dealer, Gilmour, but when he could not pay back his loan, Gilmour took over the Chelsea Mill.3
In 1895 Gilmour abandoned the Chelsea mill and built a new mill in Hull, where the courthouse had just moved from Aylmer. The Gatineau settlers may well have known that the wealthy Gilmour, who like the Wrights, owed thousands to the bank, were "forgiven" fifteen years of paying tax by the town of Hull.4
Old people among the settlers also remembered the terrible times in Ireland, when they were tenants and the tax they paid was not for land they owned, but was part of all products of their labour, a part so large that they were forever doomed to poverty, and which went to feudal landlords. Now that they owned their land this would never happen again; they had developed pride and spirit. The word tax remained a bad word; schools, for instance, were built by "subscription". In 1895, when, by the last census, the Low inhabitants numbered 1399, they had nine Catholic and two Protestant schools.
It was well known that big sawmill owners like Ruggles Wright, whose family came from New England, were all for joining the USA then.5 The settlers were those who considered themselves Canadian patriots.
Then came Confederation and the settlers suddenly found themselves in Quebec, though still in Ottawa County. Ten years later the Township of Low was incorporated. In 1880 some tax bills were sent around, and again in 1884. There was no train then, the existing roads were mere logging trails, and the bailiff usually got no further than Brennan's Hill (South Low). The first bailiff sent from Aylmer, Flatters, was not a popular man; he was later shot dead near his own house, but the people of Brennan's Hill had nothing to do with that, though they had given him a rough welcome. One farmer had put him in a root cellar for 48 hours and after that the bailiff left quickly. The next tax bills were simply torn up. By 1895 about 200 property owners were in arrears.
On Wednesday evening of November 13th, 1895, Low settlers heard by the grapevine that a posse of eight provincial police from Quebec City was coming from Hull with the new bailiff, Mr. Groulx, the county treasurer, Mr. Desjardin, the county lawyer and some Hull constables. Low taxpayers were to pay expenses for all these men coming in two express wagons instead of by the regular train.
Most of the men were at the logging shanties; the women and boys, who were left to do the farm work, took the precaution of driving the cattle up into the bush in case they should be seized. This was as well, for the express wagons did not stay at Wakefield, where they had stopped for dinner, but drove on to George Brooks’ Hotel at Low late in the evening. They were joined by reporters from the three Ottawa newspapers, but only some of these got into the action of the first day; much of what they wrote being from hearsay only.
Thursday, November 14th: the posse set out from Brooks’ Hotel, driving south towards Brennan's Hill. There, the general meeting place was Carroll's saloon, later a "blind pig".
On the first six farms the posse did not find a thing. But when they came to John O'Rourke’s farm there was a big "hullabaloo". Old John had died; as on many other homesteads, only women were there, John's daughter and her aunt, an old woman who remembered the bad days in Ireland. The girl threatened to put a kettle of boiling water over anyone who would enter the house. When they came in anyway, she tried to hold those who made for the stairs, by their coat tails. Most loghouses had only a ladder to their lofts, trunks and valuables being often kept there. The girl then picked up a stick of firewood while the aunt waved her apron from the door to attract the attention of neighbours. "There'll be bad work before this ends" she shouted, "Bloodshed, as there was in Ireland."
They had the law on their side which required that a family be left with two pigs, two cows, two horses, a wagon and enough food. The police could not find more than that on this farm, so they moved on, but not before putting up a notice that the land would be seized.
They drew another blank at the next farm; its owner, the widow Driscoll, having moved away. When they came to Patrick O'Rourke's house there were six neighbours waiting with him. O'Rourke could not pay the $7.80 tax arrears, so the police were about to seize the extra team of horses; but young Danny O'Rourke swore that the team belonged to his brother who was in the shanties. A reporter who asked his name was given that of "Raine", a false one, since the real Raine was a foreman on the other side of the Gatineau. The man's words were carefully noted: "What benefit did we ever get from the Government that we should pay taxes?"
The road to the next farm, that of Stephen O'Rourke, was barricaded. The posse had to make a detour and when they reached it, found it was rented. Another blank. This was the last farm before reaching Brennan's Hill. There, at Carroll's saloon, they were stopped by men carrying clubs. Their spokesmen, Thomas Hayden, asked the officers why they had come to fight the settlers. The lawyer said no one would be troubled if the bailiff was not abused.
”If any bailiff has been badly used, let him speak up", Hayden said. Bailiff Groulx said that the last time he came, the tax notices had been torn up. Hayden did not consider that as abuse.
"You fellers stole a march on us", he said, "lf we'd known the day before you'd never have got here."
The posse was trying to find P. Driscoll's house but no one would tell them the way. They turned their horses into Dan Driscoll's by mistake and were met by a large crowd. Old Mrs. Driscoll threatened the police with an axe. The posse, however, heard someone say that it was not the right farm, so they moved on. lt was two o'clock and they were hungry. By the time they'd had their dinner it was three-thirty, not worth going out on a dark wet November night.
Towards dusk, about fifty local men walked past the hotel to the station. They met three other men who had come up on the evening train. A Free Press reporter described the three men as "the most rough looking specimens that can be imagined." Three of them drove past the hotel late that night, carrying guns, confirming the reporter's apprehensions.
Early on the morning of Friday, Nov. 15th, the police found all the nuts taken off their wagon axles. These express wagons had a size of nut that could not be matched in the neighbourhood. It was pouring rain and the roads were getting knee deep in mud, so the whole posse stayed at the hotel except for the lawyer and two constables, who went back to Hull on the train.
When the city papers came that night a crowd gathered at the station to hear the news. They were called "delinquents" in these papers and worse. A man named Wright, a colonel, was asked to get the militia together to assist the police in Low: 75 picked men from the 43rd Rifles; 23 from the Ottawa Field Battery, 20 from the Princess Louise Dragoons and so many horses that Ottawa livery stables stood empty.
Some older Low inhabitants, when they heard this, went to Brooks’ Hotel to ask the county treasurer if at least their back taxes could be wiped out. ln fifteen years some farms had changed hands and they'd be paying for people dead or gone. The treasurer could not promise anything.
The reporters meanwhile had found out that in 1894 sixty self-binding reapers had been sold in the community and concluded that the settlers were not really poor. They failed to see that most of these machines were owned by the wealthier farmers of North Low and in any case were the result of many years of work in the bush, or by the sale of precious grain and cattle. ln September, most men had to go back to the shanties. Reporters who went to Carroll's saloon, however, to talk to the nearly two hundred people gathered there gradually changed their tune and talked of the settlers as being "honest and square".
Saturday, Nov. 16th: Father Foley drove the 5 miles from St. Camillus Church to Brooks’ Hotel with William Farrell, a justice of the peace. The settlers were amazed when the police gave this well-loved priest a mounted escort to Father Blondin's house in Low. Somehow, after this, a feeling grew that decisions were, after all, in the hands of the local settlers: they called a taxpayers’ meeting for Monday, to give everybody a chance to pay up. Those who lived at some distance might wait until the snow was packed enough for sleighing.
In the end, it was good sense and reticence on both sides which averted tragedy.
A show was started with a parade of the soldiers on the Saturday night. On Sunday morning, two thousand people in Ottawa saw them off on a special train; there were four stock cars full of horses, two box cars of ammunition and three passenger cars for the militia. The train took three hours for the 35 miles to Low. There had been threats to blow up bridges, though these were not verified.
The train arrived at 11.45 when most local people were at mass. Father Blondin was preaching on the text, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" but did not mention taxes. Meanwhile, the militia, their trumpets shining, trotted their fine horses out of the stock cars and formed lines to march over to Oscar Brooks’ farm near the hotel. They even had cow-hands for cattle they might seize, and for which they rented a special barn. By the time people came out of church, they were putting up their tents, gathering wood for a camp-fire, and singing "My Bonnie lies over the Ocean". By 4 p.m., a big cook tent was up and another in which to eat. On one side of these were thirty tents for the soldiers and, on the other, two groups of a dozen tents — each for officers and staff. They were not unfriendly with people asking questions, though one is supposed to have answered a boy who asked him what he was digging a hole for" oh, that's for graves". The man digging a ditch and another soldier gathering wood were really aldermen doing their militia duty, and this impressed the settlers. But what worried them most was the expense of maintaining both militia and police. It might come to two or three hundred dollars a day. The sooner they were gone, the better.
On Monday, Nov. 18th, the treasurer set up a temporary office in the hotel and by noon his table was piled high with coins and paper money from both North and South Low. Meanwhile, the taxpayers held a long meeting. They sent a telegram to Quebec City, because, normally, there had to be a notice in the Official Gazette before a council could be elected. North Low farmers wanted to blame the extra expense on those of South Low, but Father Foley said they'd been hiding behind the people of Brennan's Hill.
By Tuesday, Nov. 19th a mayor and councillors had been elected.5 At three p.m. only two debts were still on the books: that of Patrick Kelly who was in the shanties, and that of Jim Willis of Brennan's Hill, who owed $1.30. For this, thirty men in two wagons set out that afternoon, a major and a lieutenant on horseback, a lawyer, a bailiff, the Hull constables and two of the provincial police.
Occasionally, the lieutenant, suspecting an ambush, rode his fine horse up a hill to look around. The view was lovely; mist rose from the hills after the rain. He caught sight of some local people hiding in the bush, but they ran off as he approached.
Willis' house was empty. Old Jim was a hermit, some said a crank, lived in a tittle hut way up in bush. When they couldn't find a thing worth taking, they put up a sign to say it was seized for taxes. The Ottawa Citizen later wrote about this trip to Willis' as ”Mountain and Mouse". It will long be talked about in the township as the finale of "the biggest and costliest show they called on to witness and pay for".
The wagons drove back to Low; the treasurer closed his books. The first snow settled as the soldiers pulled out on Wednesday, Nov. 20th. In spite of their costly maintenance, they were popular men. One can still find very fine guns, suspiciously like furnished to the Princess Louise Dragoons, in places in the valleys around Low, while the Dragons are supposed to have returned empty handed or with very old shotguns. Naturally, this does not appear on official documents but it might explain the local inhabitants felt friendly towards these soldiers.
Thomas Hayden became a councillor of Low and later wrote a ballad "The Battle of Brennan's Hill". When he died in 1933, 69 years old, his niece Noreen Hayden inherited the manuscript in his own handwriting. An extraordinary thing, this battle, in which no one died, no one was hit as hard as in a Saturday brawl at the saloon, but where soldiers sang and made tea by a camp fire.
Footnotes
- Folklore of the Farrellton-Venosta area collected by Laurel Doucette; the songs for the Nationl Museum of Man; the spoken records for the 'Oral Tradition' section of the Public Archives.
- ,3., 4.,5., Hurling Down the Pine by John W. Hughson and Courtney C.J. Bond, published by the Historical Society of the Gatineau, 1964
- Those elected were — Mayor; E. McSheffrey; Councillors, J.J. Sullivan, J. Smith, W. McCrank, Thos. McDonald, P. Gannon (Garmon) and J. Skillen.
This article, which has been condensed slightly, was researched and written by Gunda Lambton of Alcove, Que., who was a prize-winner in the ninth annual Essay Contest sponsored by The Historical Society of the Gatineau — 1980.