Tributes
Reno Helped to Build First Tractor
The Low Down to Hull and Back News, May 2, 1986
Reno Ramsay's real, given name is Sereno - a hand-over from his Irish heritage.
Although no one is very definitive about it, this writer, being Irish of sorts, believes it's a very ancient name, probably dating from 1588 when the Spanish Armada was wrecked on the Irish Coast. Thus, its very lilting Spanish sound.
Of course, no one has ever called him Sereno. His grandfather, or so he remembers, actually called him "Same son," everyone else just Reno.
His grandfather was one of the true pioneers. He came over from the Old Sod in the middle of the nineteenth century and got as far as Wakefield by road, and finally by canoe to his homestead on the opposite shore about a mile north of Low. Reno's grandfather died in 1926 at the age of 90, but not before he had to tangle with the land agents of Gatineau Power. Swift work by a daughter was able to prevent the old fellow from being taken advantage of by the land grabbers. Apparently, they had offered only $2,000 for his 700-acre farm. There is a bit of irony to this because Reno did, in fact, go to work for Gatineau Power, first on the construction of the Paugan Dam, and after it was built as a mechanic for the company. He worked there for forty years.
As a boy, Reno grew up on his father's farm, which his grandfather had purchased, and traded a team of horses to his father for a piece of land to build his own house. In fact, Reno says that back in 1933 when he and his wife, Hester, were married, they didn't want to live in a rented house so he moved an old granary over to his lot and converted it to a neat and cosy home!
He recalls that his uncles farmed the original homestead across the river, and used a big scow to transport their sheep and cattle to the Low side. Reno said, "Every fall my father would put his team and wagon on the scow, row it to the other side and pick up a load of sheep. My uncles would bring another load of sheep over and take them to the railway station, where they would be bought by a fellow named Pritchard." Reno would also pick up his uncles' two cans of cream each week and deliver them to the station in time for the 9 a.m. train down to the city. It was a pretty sparse living.
Reno remembers that the farm on the other side of the Gatineau was not the best. "The land over there was not number one. There was a big field in front of the house; it was very light soil. They grew oats and hay. Thrashing was done with a tramper, or treadmill, and if they needed more power they'd put blocks under the front to increase the angle and make the horses work harder! The farmers took the threshed grain to MacLaren's mill in Wakefield to have it ground into flour.
"The first tractor in Low was built before 1920, just across the road. I used to hold the lantern for the inventor, Frank Burchard. He liked to work after the sun went down! The wheels were off a mowing machine. The engine was only one cylinder, four horsepower, with two flywheels. I think it was called a "Renfrew." Frank used it for threshing and sawing logs. It was self-propelled," Reno explained.
Reno tells an interesting story about how his grandfather's homestead floated down the river in 1928. "The house was bought by Gatineau Power and he was told to move all his stuff out. Well, when the river flooded, the house - guess it was a log cabin with clapboard - floated away. Ken Wilson rowed out in the river and took some of the clapboard off. It's on his house over on the other side of the river today."
Reno also recalls when he was a young boy, likely around 1912, that all his brothers and sisters came down with scarlet fever. "I wasn't too sick, and I remember, just as clear as yesterday, that Dr. Pritchard came to the house. I was standing in front of him as he was examining me. I said to Mommy that he'd fallen asleep." Apparently there was a serious epidemic that year and the good doctor was much overworked. "Afterwards they would burn sulphur in the house to kill all the germs," he said.
In 1926, when Reno was twenty years old, he was hired by Fraser-Brace Engineering, builders of the Paugan Dam, to work on levelling and hauling rock with his team of horses. Man and team were paid sixty cents an hour. Reno claimed that this was big money in those days.
And when it came to building the towers and putting up the power lines, Reno was there with his trusty team. The horses would pull the cable tight between towers, while the climbers would secure the lines to the insulators on the tower. Reno said, "It took a real good team; often we had to keep the cable tight for up to ten minutes while the climbers attached the cable. I learned how to climb the towers from a fellow who liked to drive horses. He wanted to drive my team all the time, so I sort of switched jobs with him. So that's how I learned riggin'," he added.
They never wore safety belts and Reno doesn't remember anyone falling, although there were some close calls. "One fellow was on a rope ladder up the tower, fastening the line on, when something happened and he flipped over the line, but he hung on and didn't fall off. He told me later that he was pretty scared."
When the Paugan Dam was completed and the land behind it flooded, Reno was kept on with his team and worked for many years doing heavy lifting and other jobs that needed horse-power! When the horses were phased out, Reno was hired on as a mechanic, keeping the machinery working. He had no formal engineering training, but somehow got along with machinery.
Partly as a sideline, and partly to help finances on the family farm, Reno used his talent with equipment to put together a machine-shop, and in later years, a planing mill. He said that he'd often take on a load of wood for planing, work until the small hours of the morning, and deliver it to the customer, all before starting his regular job on the dam. He used to charge $6 per thousand. It now costs close to $100 per one thousand board feet of planed lumber.
Hard work over the last sixty-five years has taken its toll on Reno's health. Although he felt pretty good for ten years after open-heart surgery, he's recently had a circulation problem that's slowed him down more than he likes. He is not very content to gaze across the road to his inactive planing and machinery shed, and is just itching to get out and at it, especially with the spring weather in sight.
It's pretty hard to convince Reno that he deserves the rest. After all, he did retire his beloved horses - and he should too!