Fairwood in the Making

In the Making Fairwood In the Making Tam Fairlie Duxpress 2017 1 Fairwood www.duxpress.com 2 In the Making A Brief History of Fairwood page 5 Some Fairlie Family History page 12 Alternative Facts page 56 The Fraser / Home / Hardy Connections page 60 A History of the Seafaring Woods page 75 The Patriotic Company page 100 Brigs, Brigantines, Schooners and Sloops page 116 Wood Properties and Landmarks page 119 The Shaws of Bermuda and Philadelphia page 128 Richard Shaw-Wood page 138 Woodholm page 145 The Pointe au Baril Story page 174 The Early Fairwood Years page 187 The Samuel de Champlain expedition of 1616 page 212 Historical Artefacts in the Curiosity Box page 222 The Fairwood Woodlands Plan page 224 3 Fairwood for Isabel Shaw-Wood Fairlie June 20, 2017 Heraclitus: Sow a character and reap a destiny 4 In the Making A Brief History of Fairwood Five generations of descendants of Mary Shaw-Wood have known Fairwood as their summer home. Between 1902 and 1905, Mary visited Pointe au Baril and in the summer of 1906 built a cottage on Push-Wah Island, for her three children, Isabel, Richard and Joe. Other properties were purchased speculatively in the names of each of the children. Richard who died on his Sopwith Machine in 1917 was given Olive Island in Shawanaga Bay. Joe owned Hopewell Island in Shawanaga Bay, named after Captain Thomas Wood’s ship which had brought early Adventurers to the New World in the 1630’s. Isabel was given OK Point on Richmond Island and Champlain Point on Monument Island. Push-Wah circa 1906 In 1908 Thomas Urquhart Fairlie was a young engineer in charge of construction of the Sucker Creek Bridge in Pointe au Baril. On August 5th at a dance at the Ojibway Hotel his diary tersely records ‘met Isabel’. They married in 1910. In 1922 Thomas Urquhart built the main cottage on Richmond Island, designed with an engineer’s clarity oriented to the compass and enjoying a long view down the point into Ojibway Bay. 5 Fairwood Fairwood - The Original cottage in 1922 Richmond Island had been split into many separate parcels which were held by early speculative investors who had come to the area when the Ojibway Hotel was opened by Hamilton Davis in 1906. Between 1924 and 1936 Urquhart bought the nine other properties including Crown Lands and undertook the clearing of the island renaming it Fairwood to combine the Fairlie and Shaw-Wood names. Woodfair was considered but ruled out as sounding derivative of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbank’s estate Pickfair in Hollywood. The island had been logged entirely in the 1880’s and burnt over shortly after. The interior was left strewn with charred, overturned stumps. Clearing the island and creating the extensive path system occupied Urquhart and his sons John and Wood many years. In the 1930’s the tennis court was set up on one of the level cleared rocks. The granite bounce was lively. A badminton court which enjoyed violent west crosswinds, greatly enhanced the challenges of the sport. 6 In the Making Thomas Urquhart Fairlie was a conservationist. In 1926 he set up the Fairwood Island Game Preserve and imported pheasant and grouse. As chairman of the Georgian Bay Association he worked to establish early fish sanctuaries throughout the Bay. During the 1930s twenty-five thousand trees were planted, mainly red and white pine, larch, spruce and willow. Further reforestation was undertaken in 1962, some 600 white pine and 300 red pine seedlings. Urquhart was also a keen horticulturist and had experimented with hydroponic tomato farming in Florida. On Fairwood, vegetable gardens were created with reclaimed soil. His sons were left with lists of tasks to complete, paths to clear, gardens to tend while he was working in the city. He would return on the weekends and invariably decry the neglect. Urquhart was also deeply interested in local history and certain that Champlain must have passed through the Ojibway Bay in his explorations. In 1948, for the Champlain Society, he organised the six Champlain Crosses, including the ones in Ojibway Bay, Orillia and Bala to commemorate the early adventurers. Isabel donated Monument Point to this project. John and Wood returned from the War and were married soon after, Wood to Marnie Cox and John to Anne Saegert (Fyshe). During the 1950’s the more senior members of the family would stay at the Ojibway. One of the more daunting aspects of the hotel was the little box of coiled rope positioned beside every bedroom window. A small sheet of typed instructions explained how in the event of of fire to suspend this from the window and let yourself down to the rock far below. It was tantalising to imagine Aunt Annie Fairlie, with her tiny silver cane, or Daddygrand, Max Fyshe, undertaking this mission of self-preservation. John took great pride in his knowledge of the Bay, of treacherous 7 Fairwood shoals and the alignments and beacons to steer between them. His early canoe trips ‘up the Magnetewan and down the Naiscoot were recalled with great relish. John and Jack McCuaig constructed and painted many of the existing channel markers. 1964 was the year of the Mandarin Duck, a Chinese junk, loaned by Tuzo Wilson. Expeditions around the Bay in the junk, and in particular up to Manitoulin drew on all of John’s navigational skills and his family’s powers of endurance. Wood and Marnie became avid sailors; Wood built a Y-Flyer and then rapidly progressed to Shark, ‘Dolly’ and then ‘Tigger’, an Arlberg 37 in which he planned to circumnavigate the globe. John bought a Y-Flyer as well which brought out some of the latent authoritative instincts of ancestral Wood captains and dampened his descendants’ delight in the sound of flapping canvas. After John’s death in 1966, Anne’s brother Taffy Fyshe and his children became regular summer visitors. Taffy was an exuberant fisherman and woodsman and helped to create one of the most impressive woodpiles in the area. Wood continued to build. Causeways were constructed of gigantic boulders manoeuvred into position using ancient Egyptian principles. In the 1960’s he excavated ‘Cleopatra’s Bathtub’, one of the larger potholes at the east end. Four feet in diameter, it proved to be 14 feet deep with a perfectly rounded bottom. With immense attention to detail and many sticks of dynamite Wood also built his own cottage on Empress Channel, quite the most solid structure on Fairwood. During the late 1960’s the extended family of cousins constructed the tree-house on Archers Island in the middle of Fairwood, comprising double-decker platforms with tents, cedar pole walkways and a death- 8 In the Making defying pulley conveyance. Many survivors recall the parties of its heyday (a parental nadir). A Fairwood Woodlands Plan has been developed which involves a cooperative agreement among the families to sustain the unique beauty of the island, to create wildlife sanctuaries and replant native trees in key areas. A www.fairwood.ca website and facebook site have been set up to exchange information, monitor wildlife and share concerns about environmental change. After a century changes are barely perceptible. A new generation of great-great grandchildren has appeared. Fairlies, Soleckis, Schellenbergs, Saegerts and Fyshes all converge and enjoy the long history of Fairwood which remains deep in the hearts of the descendants of the Fairlie Shaw-Wood vision of a century ago. Fairwood Cottage in 1922 9 Fairwood Fairwood Channel circa 1922 - before building the Boathouse ‘Japanese’ Living Room and Fireplace circa 1924 10 In the Making Fairwood - What’s in a Name? The name Fairwood was chosen as a combination of two families’ names – Fairlie and Shaw-Wood. Previously the island was known as Richmond Island. These were two families that had a slightly different view on life, as perhaps underscored by their family mottoes. Paratus Sum which has been translated through generations of Fairlie scholarship as “Some Potatoes” Godulph which has been loosely translated by the same Fairlie Scholars as “God Help Us”. These family aspirations will be revealed to some extent in this ensuing history. 11 Fairwood Some Fairlie Family History Map of Ayrshire at the mouth of the Clyde, a fertile part of the Lowlands showing the towns of Fairlie, Mauchline, Fenwick, Stewarton, Dreghorn, and Fairliecrevoch Farm on the Langlands Estate, all long associated with Fairlies. The seat of Robert II was at Dundonald Castle The Fairlies came from Ayrshire coast of Scotland. The town of Fairlie is at the mouth of the River Clyde. Ayrshire was an area of religious ferment, one of the centres of the Covenanters who had taken a dim view of hierarchical, established religion. Many generations of Fairlies have been ministers or connected with the Presbyterian Kirk. 12 In the Making Fairlie Castle: Fairlie Castle is a ruined tower castle which commands a precipitous section of the Fairlie Glen and overlooks the town of Fairlie in the old Barony of Fairlie, Parish of Largs. The Scottish cartographer Timothy Pont (1565-1614) described Fairlie Castle as ‘a strong tower with orchards and gardens’. One source has it that Sir Robert Fairlie of that Ilk built the castle in 1521, the family having held the lands since the fourteenth century. In around 1656-1660 the last of this branch of the Fairlie family sold the castle and barony to David Boyle, first Earl of Glasgow. The Fairlies of that Ilk are said to have originated from the youngest son of the Ross family of Tarbert and upon being granted the lands took the name of the barony as their own.

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