The Heath Clan Saga
By Ruby Brown
The large family at The Birches on Heath Row and in many other cottages around Big Clear Lake can all be traced back to Valdora and Jacob Heath, who began spending summers in the Arden area in 1902.
Valdora Rice and Jacob Lincoln Heath were married in the vicinity of Simcoe, Ontario, in November 1886.1 Lincoln Heath was a travelling salesman and was sent with a line of merchandise to Buffalo where he and Valdora lived for several years. A baby boy was born but did not live. In a year or so Edna, the eldest daughter, was born. [Edna is my great-grandma - KMB] Soon after, Lincoln – Dad Heath – was sent back to Canada to London, Ont., where he and Mother raised a family of six: Edna, May, Faye, Frank, Ruby, and Jean.
In 1902, when Jean was five, Dad Heath secured a job with the Continental Costume Co. of Toronto, a manufacturer of ladies' suits and coats. His route was to travel from Toronto to the east coast (Prince Edward Island). On one business trip a fisherman friend told him about Arden with its twenty or more wonderful lakes in the vicinity teeming with fish. Dad stopped off on his way home to enquire and do a little fishing. When this proved very successful, he returned to London, thrilled with the news he had found this wonderful spot and a farm family that would take all eight of us! Board through the summer was $10 per week
On July 1st, after school was closed, we stored our furniture until fall and boarded the CPR train. When we landed at Arden Station, a large democrat drawn by two prancing horses took us to Henry Scott's farm at the head of Cross Lake. [Cross Lake is formally called Kennebec - KMB] There we spent a marvellous summer learning all about the farm garden, farm animals, and wild berries and, best of all, spending most of our time on and in the lake. Punts were supplied by the farmer, and we all learned to swim, row, pick berries and dig potatoes.
In August Mother and Dad decided that instead of returning to London we would rent a cottage in Arden village for a year. Dad would be closer to his territory and be able to return home more often. We lived in a little house opposite the United Church (then Methodist) for two of these years. At that time a very sad catastrophe occurred. Our brother, who was then ten years old, contracted appendicitis. Although he was rushed to Sick Children's Hospital in Toronto, he died the same night that Mother and Dad arrived with him by train. He is buried in Arden cemetery. Mother never got over the shock.
We lived in Arden for a number of years. Next we moved into the Pringle House, a large house on the hill, and kept a few boarders, mostly teachers, until Edna and May and Faye were ready for high school. Then we moved to Toronto, to 155 Davenport Road. Jean and I attended Jessie Ketchum Public and May and Faye went to Jarvis Collegiate. Edna was very clever and had won a medal for passing into high school with the highest marks in Ontario on her exams. She continued with her music, which she and May had begun in London.
After three or four years in Toronto, our parents were advised that we should return to Arden, as some of us were failing in health. We came back to Clear Lake to live at Edgewater Farm [where the public beach is today]. Winters were cold but interesting, with skating and snowshoeing on the lake. Dinners were wonderful. We had two horses, a cow, a pig, and chickens.
Edna received her ATCM [Associate, Toronto Conservatory of Music - KMB] at Albert College and carried on there to teach music in the college, which May, Faye, and Ruby also eventually attended. May then taught at the Union School on the Mountain Grove road, where her students included Cronks, Hawleys, and Thompsons. Later Edna taught at the Elm Tree School, and Faye taught at the Green School at the west end of Arden. May could walk to her school, but Edna and Faye had to go by horse and buggy. Faye drove every day with a horse from our little farm, but Edna boarded at a farmhouse through the week.
Many friends came to visit from the city and persuaded Mother and Dad to open their home for summer paying guests, which they did. But they found there were more visitors than they could handle at the farm, so in 1911 when the Birches tourist home on Big Clear Lake was for sale because of the failure of Mr and Mrs Hayes to succeed with it, Dad was able to purchase the property. The Bark Building was just a sleeping cabin until Mother and Dad later fixed it up for their living quarters, as it was getting crowded at the Birches.
After giving up Edgewater Farm, we were encouraged by Reverend Leveritt (?) to move to Tweed to live in and manage a temperance hotel. Dad was still travelling east, but he always had two months holidays. Poor Mother had the responsibility year round to handle staff, accommodate travelling salesmen, who were many, and feed any schoolteacher, lawyer, or paying individuals who wanted a convenient hotel to make their home.
We lived in Tweed for a number of years and all met our future husbands there. Edna met Clair Barnett in the Methodist Church young people's work where Clair was very active. With her keen knowledge and interest in every Christian and progressive endeavour and as an accomplished musician, Edna contributed to all the church activities as did Clair so they were attracted to each other from the start. Rev. Leveritt? loved to use them both in church activities. When their wedding was announced, he had been transferred to Stirling, so it was decided the wedding must take place there. This was certainly a great event: the eldest daughter of five sisters' wedding. Edna and May went to Toronto to shop for Edna's trousseau. We went to Stirling in our Ford and Maxwell cars for the ceremony, then on to Belleville to the Quinte Hotel for the wedding breakfast, a very elaborate occasion in that day and age, especially for us. I think for their honeymoon Edna and Clair visited some of our relatives around Simcoe and Bookton and Delhi and of course Niagara Falls. A reception and shower was held in the rooms of the church in Tweed when they returned. They had a lovely little bungalow where Clint, Linc, and Ruby were born. [Valdora came later - KMB]
May, the next eldest after Edna, finished her high school at Albert College and continued with music, receiving honours and the highest marks in Ontario for her final exam in vocal music. She was our singer and formed glee clubs (especially in Tweed) where she chose really good music, giving young people advantages they would otherwise never have. Edna was always her accompanist. While at Albert College, May met Jack McPhee who was going to be a doctor but when WW1 came he enlisted as an assistant in Hospitals overseas. May attended normal school and taught at the Union School near Arden. When Jack returned gassed from overseas, they were married from our home in Tweed. They immediately went to live in Sulphide, a chemical mining town, where jack worked in the lab (Nichols? Chemical Co) and their eldest son, Jack Jr., was born.
Faye met Bill McCallum in Tweed where his family had the Tweed Marble Works. They were married in Tweed in 1916 but soon moved to Kingston along with Bill's parents and the business.
Jean met Cleworth Foster, who lived on a farm in the little village of Moira near Tweed. Clew later came to Toronto and he and Jean were married in 1922 in Toronto at Howard Park United Church, with the reception at 121 Edna Ave. Edna played the large organ in the church for both Jean and Ruby's weddings. May sang "O Promise Me" at Jean's wedding, and Jean sang "O Promise Me" at Ruby's wedding.
Ruby met Redvers Brown, the Methodist minister's son in Tweed. Redvers attended Victoria College in Toronto and became a minister, and they eventually were married in 1926.
Mother and Dad and Ruby and Jean had moved from Tweed to Toronto about 1917, but we still spent every summer at Arden. First we came back for three or four months of the year, and then, after there were children at school, for two months. The Barnetts, Browns, and Fosters stayed for a time in the Birches with Dad and Mother. There always seemed to be room for us there. When I (Ruby) was married and Fred was born, we had a little tent down by the water. Faye was in Kingston but she and Don would spend summers with us at Arden, and Bill was able to commute easily. They lived in a larger tent, then built a little kitchen, until in a few years they built the cottage which, with a few additions, is still standing. The McPhees built their cottage about the same time.
The land extended from where the Bootes have their cottage now to the point beyond the Yules. Dad sold off small tracts of it to the Bootes , Bowerys, Codes, Gardners and Yules, and here we are now crowded in on a small part of the land. Dad and Mother never imagined we would grow to the large Clan. The Gardners owned from below the hill to the point out to the bay and they built a lovely cottage on the hill. When Mr Gardner died, Cleworth and Jean bought the cottage, but Jean was never happy up there away from the clan, so Mother and Dad exchanged the Bark Cottage with them and went up there to live. Dad had a big garden below the hill. However, he was troubled with arthritis in the knees and found it difficult climbing up and down the hill so he sold the property to the Yules from Tweed and he and Mother moved back into the Birches with the Barnetts; the Fosters and Browns stayed in the Bark Cottage. The cottage on the hill burned down but the Yules rebuilt it bigger and better immediately. They have lived there ever since, improving it every year.
Our homes were never without music. Both Mother and Dad were singers, and Mother could play anything on the piano, mostly by ear. She played the organ in the Arden Church when needed, and always the family gathered for sing-songs around the piano. Edna took over accompanying us when she was still a teenager.
Mother and Dad Heath always observed Sundays as sacred, and at Arden they planned that every Sunday during the summer we would get together outside if the weather was fine to sing a few favourite hymns. Someone gave an inspirational reading or talk of some kind, and a collection was taken to help some needy cause. There were two local families (very poor), and one had a little girl who could not hear or speak, and the other had a blind child, so it was decided the collections would go to help them get a boarding school where they would be helped with their handicap. One went to Brantford (Blind) the other went to Belleville (School for the Deaf). Both children did well and returned to live fairly normal lives. They each married and had families. Mother spent many hours picking out clothes and things for them to use at school. The blind girl learned to play the organ, and one was purchased for her when she graduated. After both girls had graduated and funds were no longer needed for them, the money collected was divided and given to local churches and some other good charities.
On Sunday mornings there was a certain excitement in the air. The clan looked forward to this gathering, coming dressed or casual as they wished. Candy was always served at the end of the service, with one of the children of the family who had planned the service giving out the treat. This custom of each family being responsible for a Sunday service developed through the years after Mother and Dad Heath had died.
Every summer Mother and Dad Heath moved to Arden and then returned to Toronto for the winter. In the late 1930s they went to Madoc where the Fosters had bought a beautiful home. It was old but lovely and the Fosters had it all renovated. We were all invited to spend Christmas there. We spent our last Christmas there with Dad Heath in 1939. He died the next spring just after arriving in Arden on May 24th, 1940. He had a stroke and lived only a couple of days. Ruby, Fred and Johanne stayed at the cottage in Arden with Mother that summer after Dad Heath's death, the Fosters visiting often from Madoc. The Barnett and McPhee families also spent the summer in the cottages where they could be with Mother Heath every day.
During all these wanderings back and forth from London, Tweed, and Toronto, we always came back to Arden, to this "Heaven on Earth," as Dad Heath called it. [Mother died in 1952, Faye in 1960.] Edna died shortly after her 102nd birthday on September 30, 1990, but she has left members of the family who are following in her footsteps as nearly as possible and contributing greatly to the Heath clan with music, art, and love. [Ruby Brown, the author of this memoir, died in June 1995, a week short of her hundredth birthday.]
1: Actually they were married in Toronto on November 17, 1886, at the home of their cousin O.F. Rice, who was a successful businessman by that time (BLB).