Tributes
Stan Healey’s Recollections
Up the Gatineau!, Volume 30, 2004
(In the 1860s Edward and Bridget Healey arrived in Eardley, Quebec. Their farm homestead, close to Chelsea’s municipal line, is now within Gatineau Park. Stan Healey is a grandson of this couple; he was interviewed for this story in 1985. —ed.)
Stan Healey played a part in Canadian history, and he didn’t even believe it! Starting with R.B. Bennett in 1930, various prime ministers knew Stan as their trusted fishing guide, who helped them seek out the elusive trout and bass in Gatineau Valley streams. His guiding efforts for R.B. grew into a more than twenty-year stint when he was employed as caretaker at the prime minister’s summer residence at Harrington Lake. This life allowed him to live in the secluded area where he grew up, but certainly put him near some of the great and powerful people of his day. Maureen McTeer’s book Residences: Homes of Canada’s Leaders mentions Stan several times.
The background that set the scene for Stan’s life at Harrington began with the development of the Gatineau Park and the evolution of a millionaire’s cottage into an “official residence.”
The Healey farm, where Stan grew up, was smack in the middle of the timber limits owned by Ottawa lumber baron W.C. Edwards. In the early 1900s, logging around Harrington Lake was big business, and the Edwards spread covered over 5,000 acres, with a great sawmill at the site of what is now the prime minister’s summer residence. Many smaller operators logged around the Edwards limits, or perhaps sub-leased from the main holdings.
According to Stan, it was around 1920 that Col. Cameron Macpherson Edwards, a nephew of W.C., came on the scene. “He was a military man, strict bearing, who demanded perfection. If you walked the straight and narrow, he used you well,” Stan said. The Colonel had a partner, Major W.D. Herridge, also a former military type and an Ottawa lawyer. Stan seems to remember that there were some financial highjinks before the Colonel got control of the Edwards holdings. At last, in 1924, he acquired the timber limits and promptly tore the mill down. On its site he built himself a grand summer cottage. It cost about $25,000, a tidy sum back in the 1920s.
For Herridge’s part, he had a cottage further up the lake, but he wanted a winter chalet too. He bought the Cafferty farm and turned it into a lodge, with some 25 acres kept clear and tidy for his enjoyment. “It was fixed up very cosy,” Stan said. He was employed for a time by Herridge at the grand sum of $125 a month, which meant he had call on Stan’s services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When Herridge stayed at the lodge in winter, he wanted his fires lit by 5 a.m. “So many’s a morning I'd walk the quarter mile across the field from our farm, at 30 below zero, my teeth chattering by the time I got there... .”
And, Stan remembers the days when Herridge would be picked up by cutter and taken to the cottage, about two miles over roads that even the horses found difficult to break out, because of the deep snow. Then old Herridge would spend the weekend going all over on skis. Stan’s father could never figure out why he didn’t just ski there in the first place!
The chalet was sold to the National Capital Commission in 1951, and Herridge died in 1961. Cross-country skiers are well-served today by the building, as the NCC fixed it up a few years ago as one of the lodges on the NCC ski trail network. Young Stan Healey first rubbed shoulders with official greatness when R.B. Bennnett, prime minister from 1930-1935, came up to Harrington Lake. He was Herridge’s brother-inlaw, and Stan would row him around the lake while he did a spot of fishing. Stan remembers him as “a real capitalist, but he was nice to us young lads.” Stan’s photo collection had some fantastic pictures of R.B.s expensive car, a beautiful Pierce-Arrow.
An aside to Stan’s story needs inclusion at this point. In the best tradition of political patronage, was the appointment of W.D. Herridge as Ambassador to the United States (1931-1936) by brother-in-law Bennett. Herridge took two of Stan’s older brothers along with him to work on his staff. The boys remained in the US after Herridge’s term expired and, according to Stan, did very well for themselves.
Stan Healey’s recollections of the history of the area were formidable, in spite of his lack of much formal education. He remembered that Colonel Edwards had a big fox farm on the old Dean property. Skiers on their way to Herridge Lodge may well reflect on the four- to five-hundred foxes that were once penned up in long sheds close to the old pioneer trail that joined up with the road to Meech and Harrington lakes. John Doraty and his family managed the fox farm, but moved away when the bottom dropped out of the fox fur business in the 1950s.
Stan recalled that Edwards had his last fling at lumbering back in 1928, when the company made a cut above Farm Point. Apparently the Colonel lost money on that one, and Freeman Cross bailed him out of a financial disaster. Stan remembered Freeman as a good businessman and a real straight fellow. “He drove a hard bargain, but I always figured you had the right to say no if you didn’t like it.”
Stan remarked ruefully that in 1939 the Federal District Commission, the forerunner of the NCC, started to buy up land cheaply, and “we never gave it much thought and figured it would just fade away.” He continued, “They bought land on the mountain that was hard to get at, for $4 or $5 an acre, and all the heavy pine on it had been harvested, with only hardwood left.” So much for the early purchases of land that was destined to be part of the great 88,000-acre park.
Stan was able to explain to me the real purpose of a mysterious steel structure that appears at first glance to be a great rocket ship ready to launch into space. Located a little off the trail between Herridge Lodge and Lac Philippe, this odd object was thought by some to be a relic left from a secret wartime project, while others suggested it had been a defence rocket of some kind, designed to protect the nearby Prime Minister’s summer hideaway from enemy attack. “No,” Stan said, “it was a charcoal burner, built in 1937-1938 by a charcoal maker named Gosselin.” It was designed to use the birch slabwood from a nearby sawmill. Stan doesn’t recall that it ever produced any charcoal. The timing for that venture was probably too late.
Logging around Meech and Harrington lakes and Lac Philippe pretty well wound down just before World War II. Stan remembered that in the winter of 1937-1938 a logger was using trucks in the bush. “The roads were shovelled out and the trucks had a lot of trouble getting up the hills. We were glad to see all the activity that helped pass the long winter.” That winter was a lot different from the ones when loggers who spent the winter in their camps would come down to the Healey farmhouse to pass a long winter evening, playing cards or square dancing to the tunes of the Healeys’ fiddle. By 1939 the road to Lac Philippe was passable for cars, and there were cottagers. The war years put a stop to that, and as the lumber camps were gone, the roads were not maintained. Many log bridges washed out, leaving the Healey famiy in virtual isolation.
Dorothy, Stan’s charming and lively sister, suggested that it would be pretty hard to be lonely at Harrington: “It’s all so beautiful and the animals were always around the farm.” Her photo album had pictures of the herds of deer they used to feed.
In the early 1950s the NCC bought the great old Edwards cottage, which had become pretty run down and somewhat of a white elephant. In 1951, Prime Minister St. Laurent had a look at the place, but nothing came of it, as he had his own cottage in the Laurentians. Then the Morgan family, of department store fame, rented the place for a couple of years.
Stan became caretaker of the Edwards cottage in 1955, but it wasn’t until 1958 that the place saw much action. That was the year when Stan got a request from the NCC to take Prime Minister Diefenbaker fishing, and the place took on new life as the prime minister’s official summer residence. Stan became a great favourite of Dief because he knew where the fish were — or at least that’s what Dief thought.
Stan told it this way. “Up at a certain creek that runs off the mountain, the suckers go in the spring to spawn, and when they move out the trout go in to eat their eggs. At least, this is what I was told, so, sure enough, I took Mr. Diefenbaker up there for trout fishing and it worked! He caught three beauties.” When he repeated to me what the former PM said, Stan did a great Diefenbaker imitation: “This is the place.” From then on, Stan was the old Chief’s fishing guide.
Stan found a great contrast between the more formal R.B. and Dief. He says that Mr. Diefenbaker was a man’s man, who would always talk to the working men on their terms. He loved to go down to a nearby bridge where the local folk fished, on Sunday afternoons.
Stan found that Prime Minister Pearson was also very easy to please. He stuck to bass fishing and enjoyed being out in the country. In fact, he had owned a cottage up the Gatineau for many years, so he was very familiar with the area.
It was in the Pearson years that security staff began to have a very definite presence at Harrington. The access road was closed, and the RCMP manned guard posts at both ends of the road. Precautions were perhaps all the more necessary when Harrington Lake became a favourite place to take visiting heads of state, or royalty, to relax in a safe, yet cosy, country setting.
Stan rubbed shoulders with many a Commonwealth prime minister who went fishing on the lake. Getting the place spruced up for Princess Margaret’s visit in 1958, and having a second flagpole installed to fly the American flag for Lyndon Johnson’s visit in 1967, were all delightful memories for Stan and his sister, Dorothy.
Stan had open-heart surgery in 1977. After that he developed his woodworking hobby into a business. He had started as a small boy with his father’s jack knife, “whittling little men,” as he described it. By the age of 12 he had made his first violin. His father was his best teacher, Stan says. Stan played fiddle for the square dances that were the entertainment of the day in the Cross settlement. In the 1980s he still made violins from local woods, and was busy with antique restoration, working for a couple of dealers in Ottawa who valued his knowledge of wood.
Stan was indeed a very humble fellow. In spite of, or more likely because of, his close and intimate contacts with the leaders of this country, he retained his own style and was truly his own man. Stan Healey died in 1989.
