Tributes
Arthur Brown: Recollections
The Low Down to Hull and Back News, January 24, 1985
Arthur Brown's family goes back to the early days of settlement in the Meech Creek Valley, around 1820. His mother who was of the Sully clan, married Ernest Brown from the Cantley side in 1912. They went to British Columbia as early settlers, but returned to Meech Creek to take over the homestead around 1917. Arthur and his brother Andy were born at opposite ends of the same year in 1919.
It should be noted that the landscape in the Gatineau River Valley was much different in the years of Arthur's childhood than it is today, as evidenced by the picture of the Brown farm taken around 1924. The river was fast and narrow, with the road and railway following along its banks. In 1927 the new dam at Chelsea created a lake about seven miles in length, extending from the present day Chelsea to Cascades. The rich bottom-land was lost to the flood and the old farms and settlements on the river's edge were wiped out completely.
As Arthur remembers, "Many of the barns were either torn down, or often burned. The better houses were moved to higher ground, well back from the river. A large house being moved on a flat car fell off on a curve at Cascades and landed on its side in the river. I guess it took a crane to get it out," he said.
Arthur went to primary school at Cascades. It was on a bluff overlooking the river near the present day Pine and River roads. Built in 1919, it was torn down about forty years ago. But Arthur recalls, "We skied in winter from the Meech Creek through the heavy woods, protected from the winds; the roads, of course, were not plowed. The teachers always boarded at Maxwell's in Cascades and walked the rail tracks to school. In the winter the railway foreman made sure she had a smooth path by dragging a plank behind the handcar."
The first school picnic that Arthur could remember was held at Ramsay's. "I seemed to win a race of some sort and Tom Ramsay gave me five cents as first prize," he said. He thinks this was around 1925. In the same year, he and his friend, one of the Cross boys, got a penny a pail for picking potatoes for Jason Cross, in a field in front of the school.
After the primary grades at Cascades, the children of the area had to make their way to Wakefield for school. They either went by bicycle in good weather, or by buggy, or by cutter in the winter. Arthur said, "The horse was kept during the day at Chamberlin's store, where they stabled horses. I'd go down at lunch and give the horse some hay." This school was located below MacLaren's Mill on Mill Road.
Arthur remembers that life on the farm was great. "There was no electricity, just lamps and lanterns. We had chickens, lots of eggs and meat, potatoes and vegetables from the garden. Chamberlin's delivered a huge barrel of Spy apples in the late fall, which would last all winter," he said. His mother would occasionally go to the city and bring back an iceberg lettuce or some Macintosh apples as special treats.
He tells an interesting story about cutting ice on the Gatineau River in the mid-1930s. "Around Christmas we would go out on the river and clear off an area of ice to let it thicken up. Then we'd take a big ice saw and cut around a large chunk so it would float up. You had to be sure to cut it at a slant so it would rise. Then it would freeze there and when you would start cutting blocks you'd be higher and the water wouldn't come up around your feet."
The ice blocks were partly for their own use. Every farm had an icehouse, but his father had 15 or 20 cottagers as ice customers. Arthur said, "It was a big job. The summer residences all had their own icehouses. We'd spend about a month filling them up and covering the ice with sawdust. The summer supply would cost them about 10 or 12 dollars."
When the ice cutting was finished, they would go into the bush and cut firewood. A stove- or face-cord sold for about $5. Arthur recalls as a young boy his father leaving Meech Creek Valley at 3 a.m. to take a full sleigh of wood to the market in Ottawa. He said that during the Great Depression men from the villages along the river would cut wood in the Meech Valley with a buck saw for $1 per cord.
Arthur left the homestead in 1941 when his uncle, Ferguson Brown, needed him as a farm hand at $25 per month. He said, "I was in the bank in Hull the other week and a girl ahead of me cashed her government pay cheque for $700. When I got to the teller I couldn't resist telling her that it took me two years to earn that much money, in the good old days."
On the social side, the Tip Top recreation club at Cascades had a dance platform. And there was a softball league among the nearby villages, each having a team that competed for the championship on the Cascades Club ball field.
The train played a large part in the life of the valley. Arthur remembers loading eight-gallon cans of whole milk on the platform at the Cascades station. Cream was shipped in smaller five-gallon steel cans to dairies in either Hull or Ottawa. The Brown family seldom went to town, except perhaps to go to the dentist.
The villages to the north, along the railroad, were largely populated in the summer by cottagers. Arthur mentioned that in June many of the farm homes opened up as boarding houses. Room and board for the summer was around $50. His mother had regular boarders who came year after year.
Arthur was married in 1942 to Musie Ditchfield, a school romance come true. They had two children, Jim, a well-known area businessman and Shirley-Anne, an entrepreneur.
Arthur says that after he took over the farm from his uncle in the late 1950s, it became apparent that farming was no longer economical. The acreage was too spread out and the new highway made it dangerous to move cattle from one pasture to another. So he decided to go into the land development business.
"The Ridge Group" was one of his early successes. As there were no zoning restrictions, he worked out bylaws and established one-acre minimums for the owners' protection. Established building standards prevented substandard houses from being built on his land. He held to his prices of $4,000 an acre (in 1960). Although slow to catch on, the area progressed and eventually was nicely settled.
The Brown farmhouse and outbuildings, which has a foundation dating to 1826, is an artist's delight. Probably more art classes have painted the Brown's barn than any other in this region.