The Old Canaan Road from Zoe D'Amato on Vimeo.
I was busy building the dome when Andrea and my nephew Michael galloped their horses into the yard. They were excited and bursting to tell me about a beautiful property they had discovered further up the mountain. “It’s perfect and I am going to buy it!” Andrea exclaimed.“Settle down. What the hell are you talking about? I’m a little busy here. We just got this place. I haven’t even really got started making this place livable and you want to move.” I shot back. “I don’t want to move I just want to have that place as well.,” she countered. I was kind of busy and I think my lack of enthusiasm was showing.
“Just come and look at it,” she pleaded “You won’t be sorry.” “Oh well, what the hell do I have to lose. Michael, you saddle up Beau for me while I change.”
A short time later the three of us were mounted up and on our way, headed south up the Crocker Road beyond the hamlet of Harmony. I was just keeping peace in the family. I had no intention of buying more land. But when we reached the road’s end at the top of the mountain, and the property loomed into view, I had a change of attitude.
It was everything she had described and more. A majestic old barn sat centered in a fenced in pasture in front of an expanse of mature spruce trees. A small brook wound its way through the pasture and exited through a gap in a large granite stone wall. Close to the barn a team of dapple-grey horses stood grooming each other in the shade of an enormous oak tree. It was a scene that needed to be painted. More importantly, from Andrea’s point of view, needed to be possessed.
Okay she had me, but there was a problem; the place was not for sale and we didn’t even know who owned it. After we returned home Andrea got on the case and she wasn’t long finding out. To our surprise, the owner was willing, almost anxious, to part with the place. We agreed on a price and shook hands with a codicil that we would bring him the payment in full after we made a quick trip up to Ontario.
When we returned a week later it turned out that the man was not as good as his word. He had already sold “our land” to Murray Ruggles, an independent logger. We were heartbroken but it helped a little and took the sting away when a neighbour sold us the two hundred acres adjacent to the lot that we had wanted. Then a year later, the fates intervened and we were able to buy that original property of our dreams, sans most of the marketable logs, for a reasonable price.
We called the pair of properties the Upper Farm, and as time went on we discovered the fascinating history of those old farms on the mountain.
The area south of The Canaan Road was known locally as the “Cole Settlement” but to us it was our Brigadoon. We discovered the remains of five old homesteads on our property and as we explored the ruins it was impossible not to be conscious of a strange presence and feel for the people who had cleared the land, built the beautiful houses and barns and painstakingly constructed miles of granite stone walls.
Incredibly, most of the houses had been moved off the mountain and are still standing further down in the valley today. When I asked Gram Whynott, one of the few people still alive who had lived way up there on the mountain, why the people had abandoned their homes, she said simply, “The life was just too hard up there.” And I suppose it was. Endless hours of drudgery in the fields and the woods, months of isolation in the winter, poor crops and the constant threat of forest fires.
Over time we have come to know the names and histories of those people and that just makes their ghostly presence more palpable to us. When I first saw the place I commented that it was a scene that needed to be painted. Lacking the skills for that, instead, I have penned a poem and the following song.
