Remembering Trout River, transcribed by Robert Sellar

 

Robert Sellar, 1841 - 1919

Located in south-western Quebec, just south of Huntingdon, Trout River crosses the border from New York State to Quebec next to the border crossing on Route 138. It is an historical river, the place where the first settlers built their homes and began farming around 1820. In 1870 Fenians invaded Canada at this border crossing, but they were defeated and fled back to Malone, NY. The following is excerpted from Robert Sellar's history of this area, published in 1888, in it he transcribes an early settler's memories of first arriving at Trout River: 

The road was good until I got to Trout River Lines, where I rested at John O'Reilly's. My feet were sore by this time, and O'Reilly told me to pull my boots off, and bringing a tumbler of spirits, with part he rubbed my feet, and made me drink the rest.  It was the Fourth of July, and the Americans were celebrating it. Lumbering was actively pushed along the river, and all the pine, and most of the oak had gone before the Old Countrymen came in. Shaw took out most on the north bank and Barlow on the south.

The road along Trout River was very bad, fit only for oxen, and I met two of the Elder boys working on it. There were quite a number of small clearances. Towards evening I reached John Wallis's, where I went in to rest and ask my way. There I found James Biggar, who told me he was a neighbor to my cousins, and I went with him. The road from Wallis's to the Ridge was merely a blazed track. I stayed all night at Biggar's, and started next morning for my cousins. I soon came on their clearing, and there I found the three brothers at work in their shirts only, for the day was oppressively hot, logging. John was the first to recognize me, and rushing towards me, he flung his arms around my neck, knocking me down, and rolling over me in ecstasy of joy. I agreed to work with them, and stayed altogether settlers' toils. They were living on lot 21, in a shanty 10 x 14, and as they had only been there since the spring had little done.

The first sawmill after Davis's was one built by an American, Colonel Allen, on lot 54, nearly behind where the custom-house now is, and engaged David Smith, who long after lived on the road to New Ireland, to run it. He sold out to Col. Pettis. The great want of the settlement was a gristmill, and it was not until 1829 it was supplied. In the preceding year Andw. Anderson, who was acquainted with mill-work, and Archd. Henderson bought the privilege at Kensington, and built a small mill on the Elgin side, with 3 run of stones, operated by a large board wheel, so high that the machinery had to be on the second story. The first miller was a Canadian, who spoke English fluently, Julien, followed by Peter Taylor, and in 1836 by Robert Clark, who gave the mill a wide reputation. During the July freshet of 1831, part of the dam was swept away, and, in rebuilding the opportunity was taken to erect a sawmill on the Godmanchester bank. It is unnecessary to say that this mill was a great boon to the settlement, though the Scotch deplored its inability, for many years, to make oatmeal, and when McArthur started his horse-mill, not a few travelled down to it for a bagful.

The first store at Trout River lines was opened by an American, James Y. Dickie, about 1823, and soon after Squire Stearns, also an American, opened one at Helena, and subsequently added an ashery and pearling-oven, but did not succeed, owing to his habits. About 1820, Dr Taylor, spoken of in Mrs Cooper's narrative, came and began to practice. He was an uneducated man, with a taste for medicine, who had received some training under a physician. His success as an accoucheur aided him, but after all he made a poor living, and was wont to go on his visits on foot, carrying in a pair of saddlebags slung over his arm his medicines and instruments. That section of Godmanchester called the Beaver was late in being brought under cultivation owing to its wetness.

Barlow got a small contract on the first Lachine canal and returned in the winter (probably that of 1821) with 3 old horses and as many tombreau. These were the first and only horses from the Lines to the Meadows, and he hired them out, with a boy, at $2 a day to take grist to mill. A long bag was chosen, in which a bushel of corn or wheat was put in each end, and then, tied in the centre, was slung across the horse, the boy riding. $2 was a big sum to the settlers, but they could not better themselves, for carrying a bag on their shoulders or taking a canoe to go down to Huntingdon was exhausting and involved much loss of time. By-and-by the road got better cut out, and in winter ox-teams got along with ease, but it was not until near 1830 that there was a decent road for wheeled vehicles to the Fort. The first school was opened in a shanty by the riverside at Kensington by Mrs Hezekiah Barter, an American, and the second was taught by Daniel Sutton, who was lame, and member of a numerous family who were American squatters. He taught in a shanty on the river-bank near Tully's bridge. He was a fair scholar and something of an artist, for at the examinations he held, his prizes were colored drawings from his own pencil, and which were greatly prized by his scholars.

 

Note: excerpted from The history of the county of Huntingdon and of the seigniories of Chateaugay and Beauharnois, from their settlement to the year 1838 (Huntingdon, The Canadian Gleaner, 1888) by Robert Sellar.

by

 

Sellar, Robert

 

Lines on Trout River in Public Reverie magazine

Some of the poems in Lines on Trout River have now been published in Public Reverie; thank you, Theresa Smalec! A chapbook containing the complete series of poems can be ordered from https://turrethousepress.ca/ Here is the first poem in the chapbook.

                    This is not yet the sea, it is the river.

             —Louis Dudek, Europe

  

It’s nice being alone
in old age, sitting
on the side of the bed
with the radio on,
classical music
on the CBC, and
a book I’m reading,
The Epic of Gilgamesh,
reading
by the light
of a lamp
bought at
an auction
thirty years ago,
and the lamp
even then was old,
made in the 1930s;
it was the MSO
playing Mahler’s
4th movement
of Symphony # 5,
and outside the insects
sing what my English
ancestors called “the
Canadian Symphony”
after they moved
to Ontario from Blackburn
in the north of England,
the least fashionable part of the UK,
they were builders, plasterers,
painters, carpenters,
workers in the mills,
carters, and landlords
renting flats they constructed, 
a distant cousin collecting rents,
and one was a publican
and farmer, at the Yew Tree
Inn—oh tree of death—and the sounds 
are Canadian sounds
on a fall night,
in the darkness,
before sleep.

Lines on Trout River by Stephen Morrissey

             

Lines on Trout River has just been published by Jame Hawes at Turret House Press; this chapbook (booklet) is made up of thirteen poems that refer to the Trout River and the archetype of rivers, time, old age, and the relentless changes in life that we all experience. I lived beside the Trout River from 1979 to 1997 and it was the river that I liked most about living in southwestern Quebec. I think this is the best work I've written in many years; it's different than previous poems I've written but I think it's my authentic voice at this time of my life.   

Copies can be purchased from www.turrethousepress.ca

In Lines on Trout River, Stephen Morrissey draws together influences as diverse as The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Mahler, Nelligan, and Wordsworth, yet the poem remains unmistakably rooted in the particular history and geography of rural Quebec. The landscape becomes a “thin place,” where the visible and invisible worlds meet, and where poetry itself becomes an act of spiritual witness. Meditative, unsentimental, and deeply humane, The Lines on Trout River is both elegy and testimony: a powerful reflection on the passage of time and the persistence of the soul through memory and art.

                the Lines separating
                youth from old age,
                and writing poems;
                fields bordered
                by drainage ditches
                and the Morrison Side Road  

Mouse Eggs, "A Short History of Six Miles of the Trout River"

Here is a link to excerpts from a long poem, "A Short History of Six Miles of the Trout River", I've worked on for forty years, on and off, with year long periods of being off. I think now would be a good time to finally complete the poem: 

https://www.vehiculepoets.com/_files/ugd/d19e1a_fba77a2c22484f0792f9917be468c1d9.pdf

The second item is an essay, "Starting our from Vehicule Art", I wrote last fall. It's been published in a few places, including my book, The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry (Ekstasis Editions, 2022). Here is the link to the essay:

https://www.vehiculepoets.com/_files/ugd/d19e1a_37d527b4e9ed4a63b16f34c76ab41332.pdf