Hidden Ontario (12 page)

The winter of 1852–53 dragged on, and the health of the crew declined further; two crew members went insane and howled all night. By the end of January, a clerk, Joseph Paine, and one of the mates, John Boyle, had died of scurvy. A day later Lieutenant Pim of the
Resolute
found the
Investigator.
On April 15th the remaining crew of the
Investigator
set off by sled for two vessels moored off Melville Island. It was a ghastly journey — half the men were lame from scurvy, unable to stand, shrunken, hollow-eyed, and slightly crazed.

By the September 25, 1854, Gauen and what others remained of the
Investigator
's crew had arrived home in England. They were presented with 10,000 pounds, 80 pounds of which was Gauen's share. He was also presented with a silver medal embossed with a sailing ship, specially cast for Arctic explorers. He subsequently married an English woman and came to live in the hamlet of Ivanhoe.

As for Franklin, it was later discovered that he and his two crews had indeed perished over a period of time. Several factors contributed to this loss of life, one being the harsh environment. Another factor leading to the death of some crew members was discovered to be lead poisoning. It has been calculated that each crew member would have been allotted about .25 kilograms (.5 pounds) of tinned food every second day — a regular ingestion of lead from the lead-tin solder used to seal the tins. Furthermore, it was later found that the side seams on some of the tins were incomplete and the food had spoiled, a recipe for botulism. Exact details will remain a secret, lost to history.

Mr. Henry Gauen died in July 1889 at the age of 77. He was buried just north of Ivanhoe, on the west side of the road, on the land that he had settled. Over the years his gravesite became overgrown and lost from view. However, the people of Ivanhoe have since cleared the grave site, erected a fence, and placed a tombstone in his honour, just one example of their pride in the community.

The citizens of Ivanhoe have chosen to remember and be grateful to the man who helped establish a cheese company for the community, and I am grateful to them. Henry Gauen was my great-great grandfather.

The majority of folks say Ka'puskasing

But if we had a chat

They'd say Kapuss'kasing
'

And say it, just like that

And if they went to live and sing

They'd soon be saying Kap!

So I guess it doesn't matter much

But I like Kapuss'kasing
'

This Native place by the river's bend

Needs a different ring!

 

— Allanah Douglas

The region that we know as Kapuskasing today was primarily used by fur traders. The Hudson's Bay Company and the Old Northwest Traders both set up operations in the area. In the early 1900s, the National Transcontinental Railway (now CN) pushed through this wilderness and a station was built where the railway crossed the river. It was first known as McPherson and was in 1917 changed to Kapuskasing, a Cree word meaning “the place where the river bends.”

Back in 1914, the Canadian government decided to purchase 1,280 acres of land west of the Kapuskasing River and south of the Transcontinental Railway tracks. Their objective was to establish an experimental farm. They chose this area because it was part of the fertile Great Clay Belt region of Northern Ontario. Scientists believed they could develop hardier varieties of crops that would be able to withstand the harsh climate of the north.

Kapuskasing circa 1914. First built as a prisoner of war camp and subsequently used to house potential war veterans in an attempt to settle the area.

Archives of Ontario

The station was, however, converted that same year into an internment camp for illegal immigrants and prisoners of war. These internees built a barracks, hospital, canteen, YMCA, post office, bakery, and a supply depot. They also managed to clear 100 acres of land that first year. By the end of 1915, the camp had 1,200 internees and 250 soldiers to supervise and operate the complex. Incredible as it may sound, these internees had cleared another 500 acres of land by the end of that year. By 1917 most of the internees had been paroled due to labour shortages, and 400 prisoners of war replaced them. The camp remained open until 1920, when the last prisoner of war was repatriated. Thirty-two German prisoners died while at the camp and were buried across from the present-day public cemetery.

The Canadian government then embarked on a new land settlement scheme for returned soldiers. Government officials managed to route 101 settlers to Kapuskasing. Each soldier was assigned a 100-acre lot. A training school for these new pioneers was built at Monteith and dormitories were built to provide housing until the settlers could erect their own homes. The government also provided farm implements, stock, and seed at very low cost to the settlers.

Determined to make this work, the government built a sawmill, a planing mill, a blacksmith shop, a steam laundry, a store, and a school on the east bank of the Kapuskasing River. The settlers were subsequently organized into groups, and each party was supervised by a government foreman. The goal was to clear the land for farming.

It wasn't long before these settlers had had enough. They felt like little more than work gangs, there to satisfy some government idea of settling the north. Just back from fighting a war, this scheme seemed as much like a POW camp as it did a place to get a fresh start. It was all about control. The men were unhappy with the arrangements and the majority of them abandoned the entire project. Out of 101 settlers, nine remained. They were Mair, McCall, Yorke, Wing, MacMinn, Grant, Le Marrier, Gough, and Poolton.

Things began to look up for Kapuskasing in 1922, when the Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company built a pulp and paper mill. Several years later a newsprint mill was constructed to produce paper for the
New York Times
. Both mills received their power from a new hydro development 80 kilometres (50 miles) to the north.

It was the mill workers and the original settlers of 1920 that really put Kapuskasing on the map. They planned their business section as a circle, with five streets radiating outward. Still influenced heavily by their government-sponsored origins, they named the streets after the premier of Ontario (E.C. Drury) and his members of cabinet.

Kapuskasing was incorporated in 1921, with the motto
Oppidum ex Silvis
meaning “Town out of the Forest.”

A new paper mill with a daily capacity of 64 tonnes of cellulose started production in 1945 at the Spruce Falls company site.

 

 

Have you ever travelled somewhere and suddenly felt you were in the presence of something sacred, something special, and had some sense of having been there before?

This indeed was my experience when, about 20 years ago, I ventured to the community of Keene. Somehow I found myself in a place that challenged my memory. Why was it so familiar? What was I sensing? This is my story. I ventured out that day to visit Keene and the sacred burial mounds, and to learn the history.

Keene itself is located on the banks of the Indian River, just before it flows into Rice Lake. The countryside, made up of rolling hills, was at one time heavily wooded. The sparkling waters and the islands of Rice Lake create a perfect picture-postcard. It is truly a place of divine creation. It was here the Natives lived, hunted, fought, and died long before Thomas and Andres Carr arrived in 1820. Their presence was but a mere dot on the timeline of this rolling land. John Gilchrist, the first doctor in Ontario to be granted a licence to practice “Physic Surgery and Midwifery,” has been credited with the initial development of the community.

The good doctor was quite an entrepreneur. He built a gristmill and a sawmill on the Indian River, not to mention a distillery and houses for the workmen. In a short time, he became a lumber baron and ran a flourishing export business. By 1850, Keene's population had risen to 400 people.

Water transportation played a key role in the early development of this community. In 1882, however, the mainline of the Canadian Northern Railway from Toronto to Belleville was laid down about 2 kilometres (1.5 miles) north of Keene, and the importance of water transport declined. Keene's industries declined as well.

David Boyle, the teacher and archeologist, was ultimately responsible for the discovery and preservation of Serpent Mounds at Keene.

Archives of Ontario

There was, nevertheless, always something of greater importance located in the landscape near Keene that had somehow gone unnoticed. It was a sacred place to those who knew of such things; it was a site near water, a site where a marvelous grove of oak trees grew. What was it? Why had such a special place been abandoned, neglected, and ignored by those around it? Who changed all of that? David Boyle!

David Boyle was a gifted man of great insight and intuition. He was born the son of a blacksmith in Greenock, Scotland, on May 1, 1842, and immigrated to Ontario in 1856. When Boyle was only 14, he apprenticed to a blacksmith in Eden Mills, Wellington County, Ontario. He was a self-taught individual who rejected the materialistic values of the day. He pursued instead the ideal of self-culture and acquired and imparted knowledge to any who would listen. This quest for knowledge took him to the classroom. During this career his caring and patience led him to teach a deaf-mute girl how to read and write. This was a great accomplishment and amazed many people at the time. Boyle then followed a brief career as a textbook promoter and proprietor of Ye Olde Booke Shoppe and Natural Science Exchange in Toronto. His next career was the field of archaeology.

His first major archaeological excavation began on October 5, 1885, when he investigated the historic Neutral Dwyer ossuaries northwest of Hamilton. He obtained enough artifacts to establish an exhibit in the front window of his bookstore. Boyle dearly wanted to educate people about the importance of the preservation of history. In his opinion enough damage had already been done by early settlers who had desecrated Native gravesites and spread ancient earthen walls over their newly-developed fields. Numerous artifacts were discovered and discarded or destroyed during the 17th and 18th centuries in Ontario. Few people recognized the historic value or the sacredness of such sites (skeletons stored in museums, as well as sacred objects, such as medicine bundles and masks, are being returned to Natives today).

In 1884, Boyle became the curator-archaeologist of the Canadian Institute Museum (1884–1896) and later the Ontario Provincial Museum (1896–1911). It was Boyle who, in 1887, established the Annual Archaeological Reports for Ontario. This was the first periodical published in Canada that was devoted primarily to archaeology. He continued this work until 1908.

During the first week of September 1896, Boyle ventured forth into the field for what was about to become the most thrilling four weeks of discovery in Keene — The Serpent Mounds.

On his arrival, Boyle sought out the property owned by his friend H.T. Strickland of Peterborough. There, on the crest of a hill near the mouth of the Indian River, Boyle first observed the mounds and quickly noted evidence of early relic hunters. Stepping back a distance, he walked to a ridge about 15 metres (50 feet) to the west. It occurred to him, at that point, that the end of the embankment was tapered. He hastened to the other extremity of the structure and saw how it rose abruptly to a height of 1.3 metres (four feet). He knew it right there and then. What he was looking at was a great “serpent mound” like the one discovered in Adam County, Ohio. Boyle walked back and forth, keenly assessing the mound from every direction. No matter what his vantage point, he could still see the head of a serpent at the eastern end of the mound, a tapering tail to the west, and three well-marked convolutions. Boyle measured the structure and realized that each zig-zag section was roughly 13 metres (40 feet) long. He knew the builders intended the structure to be serpentine. The position of the oval mound, accurately in line with the head and neck portion of the long structure, suggested “the ancient combination of serpent and egg.” There, in front of him, was a burial effigy mound, and it is still the only example of its kind in Ontario.