Tributes
Homer: The Oldest Living Cross
The Low Down to Hull and Back News, January 24, 1985
Homer Cross has been here in the Gatineau hills for well over seventy-five years. In fact, he's the only, and at age 76, the oldest member of the family still living on land near where the Cross dynasty all began. In the 1820s, his great grandfather, William, founded what was to become known as the Cross settlement in the Meech Creek valley.
As a boy, Homer went to school in an old log building at Farm Point, just about where the depanneur is today. When the teacher wasn't available for one reason or another, Homer's father, Jack, made sure the kids hiked up the road to the brick schoolhouse in Cascades.
In those days, school went to the sixth grade. Few farmers could afford to send their offspring to Ottawa for high school, so they began to work at an early age. In winter, Homer says, they toiled in the bush, cutting and hauling logs. A man and a team was paid $2 per day. In the summer, he and his brother worked for their uncle, Freeman Cross, in his sawmill at Farm Point.
One of the tough jobs that fell to the young lads - brothers and cousins - included driving the cattle bought by Harry Hillard or other drovers to the rail yard at Wakefield, or sometimes down to Chelsea. When asked if the cows were hauled down by wagon, Homer said, "You wouldn't haul them. You damn well chased them! That was the lads' job, for a quarter. I've helped chase them down to Chelsea. Down around the old boom house, there were no fences or anything and the cattle always wanted to get back home. Instead of ten miles to Chelsea, we ran thirty miles herding them along. But, mostly we went to Wakefield," he said.
While on the subject of cattle drives, Homer related one very funny tale about how an airedale dog, belonging to an old widow, ended up in a cattle car. When the door was opened in Montreal, the dog flew out onto St. Catherine Street.
In those early days, the railway played a very large part in the lives of the residents of the Gatineau. Everything that was needed came in by freight, and farmers shipped their cattle, lumber and, until the train stopped its regular runs, all their milk and cream went south by CPR. Homer remembers Mr. Bell, who was the conductor on the regular passenger train. One of the favourite tricks the lads liked to play on him was to sneak rides down the line, especially from Farm Point to the dance hall in Kirk's Ferry on a summer Saturday night. "Of course, you had to walk back after the dance," said Homer.
There was a station at almost every little community along the tracks. The Sunday night entertainment was for the young folk along the line to go down to the stations and watch the trains come and go. Homer fondly remembers the first train up the line in 1918, the day the war ended. "It was all dressed up with flags," he said.
Even before the river was flooded in 1927 and the tracks relocated, cottagers and skiers all flocked up the valley on the train. Just to remind Homer of those early days, he bought the old Cascades station, and has it stashed away behind his barn!
According to Homer, most of the farms in the Meech Creek valley were around 100 acres, some were 200. They averaged 20 head of cattle, with at least 25 sheep, and everybody had horses. Mixed crops were usual. Threshing mills were towed behind wagons and made the rounds of the farms in the fall. They were powered by the farm horses, as were the hay presses that turned out 200 round bales.
The sheep flocks were often attacked by stray dogs, or sometimes by bears. These flocks got smaller and smaller as the farmers increased their dairy herds. The pasture land just couldn't feed both sheep and cows.
In the winter of 1925, Homer was 16 and drawing logs out of the bush with a team of Percherons. As he tells it, "That winter was good logging right up to Christmas. They didn't intend to haul logs down the creek to the mill at Farm Point until after Christmas. We had two teams shod and ready to start up after New Year's, but a big break (thaw) came and not an inch of snow was left. The horses stayed in the stable until the fourth of February, but then winter lasted until April, so what we lost at the one end we gained at the other."
In the spring, Homer went to work at the sawmill in Farm Point where Freeman Cross produced railway ties and board lumber. Homer recalls, "Another chap and I loaded a freight car a day with railroad ties. We worked for twenty-five cents an hour for a ten-hour day. That was $2.50, no coffee breaks, just old pails of water sitting around in different places, half full of sawdust. That was your coffee break!" he said.
Aside from the sawmill at Farm Point, Homer's Uncle Freeman ran an electric generator from the power of Meech Creek, which was dammed up above Farm Point. There was quite a number of houses between Chelsea and Alcove that bought power from this private power company - until one day the dam broke and washed away the generator and the sawmill too. Homer mentioned that there was a toy factory associated with the mill, but it wasn't around for very long.
Homer reflects on the 1975 expropriation of the Meech Creek Valley with some sadness, as it killed the area farming. He said, "We never dreamed that this whole settlement would be taken over by the government. Everybody got their registered letter. It said, "as of today we own your property. You may not sell, buy, tear down, etc." "It was supposed to be for a zoo, but there'll never be a zoo here," he said. A number of farmers in the Valley decided to go to court over the expropriation, but Homer said he settled because he got a fair price - for some land anyway.
After he lost some additional property to the proposed extension of Highway A5, he decided to quit farming because the land he had left was across the highway and he didn't see how he could get cattle back and forth across the busy road. Homer subdivided this property into acre lots just prior to all land being rezoned as agricultural. He figures he was very lucky on that one!
But he says that he still lives on a piece of Cross land and he is very proud to be the only and oldest Cross west of the Meech Creek.
