Tributes
Ken Young: Wakefield's Last Miller
The Low Down to Hull and Back News, October 2, 1986
Ken Young knows more about the Wakefield Grist Mill than anyone else, largely because he and his late brother, Ernie, ran the place for nearly 30 years. But that's getting ahead of the story.
Ken was born in 1910 at Navan, Ontario. His father, Hiram, took the family west when Ken was still a babe-in-arms. But Hiram was soon to return and settle his family at Rupert, Quebec, for many years. Ken said, "My father fired boilers for Sam Gibson who had a sawmill up there. He had a natural gift for machinery and whenever anything went wrong with a steam plant, they'd call for Hiram."
Around 1918 the Young family moved to Farm Point, where his father worked as a planer in Freeman Cross's big sawmill. He wasn't firing boilers for Cross because everything was water powered from Meech Creek. Ken remembers that his father made clapboard on the planer for the cottages that Freeman built around Farm Point. Speaking of his first job, he said, "I remember when I was about eight years old my brother and I worked on the slab-chain, making sure the slabwood went into the boxcars."
Ken also worked in the Farm Point toy factory, cleaning floors. It was here that they made broom and mop handles, as well as toys from white birch. His father died when Ken was ten years old and he has worked ever since, skipping very much formal education.
Like many lads of that generation, Ken had a stint at the harvest excursions that took farm workers to the western grain fields for the wheat harvest in the fall. He said, "It cost $20 to take the train out. I went in 1927, and in 1928 and 1929. We left from Montreal. It was pretty quiet going out, but coming back we had some good parties."
Having inherited his father's gift for machinery, and generally being able to fix anything, Ken was never short of work. He remembers helping to build the Manor House for Jim Smith in 1940, who was the manager of the MacLaren store at the time. Smith eventually sold the Manor House building to Dr. Harold Geggie and it is now part of the Wakefield Hospital. Ken also helped to build the Wakefield school in 1942, on land that had belonged to the Wakefield Community Club.
Ken recalls that there was a group of men from Ottawa who had a hardball league and played on the fields at the top of the hill. There was also a clubhouse there. In 1938 a group of 12 local men purchased the Club House and property. Ken and Reg Clarke are the only surviving members of this group. Anyway, the Wakefield Community Club was a great success with a regular Saturday night dance that on occasions attracted 400 people from all over the countryside. The Egan Brothers five-piece orchestra provided the music. The brothers were four, with their father making up the fifth member of the band.
It seems to come to my mind that Billy Wilson of Tip Top fame rented the Club House on occasion to stage boxing matches, followed by dances. A combined ticket was 35 cents.
As noted above, the Wakefield school was built in 1942 on property that was sold to the school for $600. Ken said, "We really gave the school board the property, but charged them the $600 for it, so they could get a higher grant from the provincial government. When they got the grant, we gave them back the $600."
Ken recalls that in 1941 the MacLaren Store burned to the ground, and this apparently started the decline of the MacLaren empire in Wakefield. The store where you could buy anything held many fond memories for Ken. He told me that there were benches around the veranda of the store and that on warm summer nights there would be eight or nine men gathered around, swapping stories. He also remembers there was a livery stable at the back of what is now the Chateau Pearson hotel. He said, "There were stalls for eight or ten teams." He remembers, too, that the hotel was built in 1927.
Ken mentioned that one of the things that struck him about the village of Wakefield today, as opposed to the 1920s and 1930s, is the fact there are only three houses that haven't changed hands. He named Vera Nesbitt, Viola Cross and Fred Hamilton, as being there in the old days when he was a boy!
In case you needed a haircut, Wakefield was well served by no less than three barber shops. These barbers were Elzear Vaillancourt, Harry Dougherty and Fred Parent. The stores were MacLaren's, as previously noted, Patterson's which became the K.I. Cross store, and the Morrison family ran the place where Keith Nesbitt is today at the Wakefield General Store.
A favourite spot for the people of Wakefield to congregate was Elmer Wells' ice cream parlour, where the Bank National is located today. Elmer even had an illegal slot machine for the lads to play.
Ken had worked at the grist mill off and on over the years, but did not get seriously involved until about 1941 when J.P. Henderson and Hiram Crane from Ottawa bought the mill for $9,000 from Toronto Trust, the firm that sold off the Maclaren holdings. It seems that Hiram Crane had a factory in the west end of Ottawa to make compasses for the navy during wartime, and he planned to move the factory to the mill building in Wakefield. This scheme came to a grinding halt when the men who were the compassmakers refused to come all the way up to Wakefield! Crane then sold out his interest to J.P. Henderson.
Henderson sold off some of the flour-making machinery, and using Ken's carpentry skills, he converted part of the Mill into seven bachelor apartments. The apartments were very popular. People from the city could easily take a train up at night and one down in the morning. All this lasted until around 1947 when problems with the lack of a septic system prevented the rest of the Mill being converted to apartments, as Henderson had originally planned.
Of course, part of the Mill was still run to grind grain, but only on Saturday. Ken said, "A few farmers would bring in their grain and we'd turn it into grist for them. Pretty soon we had to operate on Friday too, and soon it became a full-time operation. Ernie and I leased the building from Henderson. We would grind to the Maple Leaf Mills feed formula for cattle and pigs. We also sold tractors and combines. Of course, my brother Ernie and I were pretty good with machinery, so we could fix anything that went wrong with hay-balers or the other machinery we sold," he said.
As Ken recalls, it was sometime in the early 1950s that J.P. Henderson sold the mill to the National Capital Commission (NCC) for $20,000. He also mentioned that Henderson had bought all of the MacLaren water rights on Wilson Lake, now Lac La Peche, when he purchased the mill from Toronto Trust. Henderson only sold the water rights on the lake on the condition that the NCC take the mill off his hands at the same time.
The Young brothers then leased the mill from NCC and continued their prosperous grain and farm machinery business until 1980, when the NCC decided to renovate the mill and turn it into a tourist attraction.
Ken is very pleased with the work that the NCC has done in restoring his beloved mill, especially the new windows which were installed last year. He is, however, a little disappointed that the wooden siding added a few years ago covered up the big sign on the side of the building that proclaimed MacLaren Mill. He has, however, heard rumours that this siding may be removed to expose the old sign.
Incidentally, the NCC wanted to hire Ken to act as a guide at the mill, but he refused their offer. Instead, he has cheerfully told the NCC student guides all about the mill and given them instructions on how the place operated when it was a real grist mill. He says that he likes his freedom too much to get tied down to a regular job.
Ken bought the neat white miller's house at the bridge from the MacLaren estate, through Toronto Trust. He told me that it dates back to the building of the mill itself in 1838 - which makes the house 148 years old. He thinks it may have been used as a storehouse when they were working on the mill. Apparently, it was relocated back from the creek to its present location in 1905. The dam was also moved from its original location near the corner of the mill at this time. The cement for the bridge was mixed by hand by eight men and wheel-harrowed into the forms for the dam.
Ken got his information about this from Henry Brown who was a driver for the MacLarens. Brown used a team and wagon to draw grain from the station up to the mill for grinding. That was when the mill was in its heyday, before the turn of the century.
Ken hasn't lost any of his skill with tools, and as a hobby, he fixes chainsaws and even some of the lawnmowers that he sold thirty years ago. Ken also carves axe handles for the fun of it. He told me, "When it's too wet to get out in the garden" he picks a straightgrained piece of ash and works away to his heart's content. Ken also does a lot of hunting and fishing. He told me that he caught a five-pound bass in the La Peche Creek. "There were lots of trout there 25 years ago, but a farmer up in Masham had a dragline in the water to straighten out the creek through his property, and there haven't been any good fish since," he said. Ken also has a trapline with Lawrence Pearson, another hobby to keep him in the great outdoors.
It was a delight to talk to Ken about the old days around Wakefield. Maybe he should write a book!