By Keith Roulston
Looking out the kitchen window at a field that’s planted in soybeans for almost as far as the eye can see, I got thinking of a book I read recently on early pioneer life — and of how far we’ve progressed.
I’d recently taken the old book (well 1989 is old these days) off the shelf and was reading it for the first time, to the best of my knowledge. We used to get catalogues back then from book sellers selling unsold books from publishers like Stoddart press who published When the Work’s All Done in the Fall by Dave McIntosh.
McIntosh must have spent many hours looking through archives to find the excerpts from dozens of early commentators on Canadians’ farms in all provinces. Many of the writers were visitors from England and to say they were pessimistic is an understatement.
It was all news to me. I’ve always been impressed with the work of the pioneers. The farm we live on was pioneered, along with most of the farms on our concession, by brothers from one Scottish family who took up 1,000 acres of land that became known as the McGowan settlement.
The McGowans were tireless workers, taking up the bush-covered land northwest of Blyth in the 1850s and working to clear it. Each year they’d chop and burn the trees on a few acres of land, until I can look out and see hardly any trees to the west or east of our house that weren’t planted on purpose to protect the house (there is bush behind us in a swampy area and along Blyth Creek).
The McGowans were rewarded for their hard work. While many rural areas have hardly a house left today, there are substantial brick or stone houses on most of what would have been the McGowan homesteads. There are, unfortunately, no McGowans left in the area,
They would have farmed among the stumps of the trees they cut for the first few years, unable to use any mechanized equipment. As the stumps rotted, they could be pulled and larger equipment, pulled by horses or oxen, made farming easier and profitable. Then came threshing machines and steam engines. When we moved here 49 years ago, our neighbour spent days working and planting the land. Recently, the cashcropper who rents the land planted the entire 250 acres in a little more than a day, pulling his no-till equipment behind a massive tractor.
My great-grandfather took up land about the same time at the northern edge of the township (and county). He was just 17 when he took up 200 acres in West Wawanosh with his father. My great-great-uncle came to visit and said he would stay if he could have the farm my great-grandfather had taken up. Being young and optimistic, my great-grandfather moved north, across the border into Bruce County, and started over on land that contained a lake named for him, Purves Lake (now known more as Paradise Lake and home to several expensive homes but still called by my grandfather’s name if you look it up on Google).
Like the McGowans, my great-grandfather prospered. He bought more land, spreading along the lake, He ran for township council, became reeve and then Warden of Bruce County from 1880 to 1882.
Despite the pessimistic early visitors from England, quoted in When the Work’s All Done in the Fall today’s Canadian farms have prospered, at least as far as farms have been allowed to prosper. Many children grew up on those farms, became educated, and chose urban jobs, but their brothers and sisters stayed on the land and kept their supermarket shelves full of nutritious food — and affordable despite the complaints.
Now and then as we grouch about expensive taxes or whether or not we have good cable television, we need to stop and think about what this land was like when the pioneers came here and how blessed we are.◊