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C.
J.
Disney
I am
writing this in the first person – in that way I hope to be briefer.
My
four
grandparents were young men and women born in Ireland of
well-established families. They brought to Canada in the second
quarter of the 19th century many of the highest virtues of the real
Irish – their charm, their love of poetry and fantasy and music, their
religious fervour, their love of animals – especially horses. At
what a cost their young people must have left their families and
comfortable homes for the stormy Atlantic and the woods of southwestern
Ontario! All were Protestants and settled in Huron County.
The
Disneys, the Cookes and the Rudds of South Ireland, the Armstrongs of
North Ireland. These were my grandparents.
The
Disneys left Normandy and their home town of Isigni with William of
Normandy and were given lands around the village of Morton-Disney,
County Lincolnshire, where they lived for 600 years. With the
rise of Oliver Cromwell, the head of the family sold Morton-Disney and
went to Ireland where they were given lands in Leath and in
Kilkenny. They anglicized the name in both England and
Ireland. It was in Clone House, Clone County of beautiful
Kilkenny that my grandfather Robert and his three brothers were born
and lived until around 1836 when they moved to Canada via New York. The
two younger brothers, Keppel and Henry (the name Keppel is to be found
in every Disney family I know of) remained in New York, while Robert
and Elias went on to Huron Country and settled in Holmesville – about
eight miles east of Goderich on Lake Huron. These men knew so
little about physical work, and they were never more in need of their
motto (he conquers who endures) then in their early Canadian
days. Elias appears to have had a couple of sawmills on the
Maitland River but left soon for Bluevale and farming. His oldest
son Keppel – grandfather of Walt Disney of movie fame – returned to the
Goderich area as an industrialist. My grandfather Robert and his
wife Jane, the former a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, the latter
privately tutored, raised a large family of which my father was second
youngest. They died and were buried in Goderich cemetery with
many other Disneys.
My
father was left with heavy responsibilities of family and farm.
At 16, he married my mother, Alice Armstrong, a girl of 17, oldest
daughter of John Armstrong of the nearby area. Four years later,
John Armstrong left with all his family, save Alice, for Manitoba and
finally settled outside the village of Holmfield.
The
Holmesville district as I remember it was an almost Irish settlement
with many of the families inter-related. My father’s
property was triangular-shaped with the point in the village.
Following his father’s death, he built a large home for his mother,
brothers, and his bride to be. It was here that we four sisters
were born – Rachel, Ethel, Emily and Myrtle. It was a most
beautiful house in which to play – long curving banister on which to
ride and lots of places to hide. Between the house and the point
there were three magnificent beechnut trees and orchards of every kind
of luscious fruit. In 1891 father decided to move west to
Manitoba, where mother would be near her own people, so Ethel and I
left our little school with its interesting Ontario readers, our little
Sunday school class and our friends, and our parents chose carefully
what furnishings to take with them and father bravely set out as his
own father had done for a strange land. Mother had twice been
west. They were welcomed in Winnipeg by two of mother’s sister –
Emily and Florence Armstrong, and at Holmfield by Aunt Annie
(Armstrong) and Uncle Reuben Cross, and later at the grandparents’
farm. Father soon found a farm for rent where he lived for two or
three years before buying his Sweethill Farm, section 4-2-16. It
was a beautiful farm with the main east-west highway cutting the
property in half between Townships 1 and 2. It was here that
father and mother were really in their element. Such
opportunities opened up slowly and well they built and expanded and
beautified what was their very own – and it was here that the Irish
qualities of their parents really became evident.
They
built on the north side of the road, the house a short block from the
main road. It was comfortably large – five bedrooms, a bathroom
space that was never a completed bathroom, an open stairway from the
front hall, also from the kitchen, a summer kitchen and wash-up room
with washing machine, etc., heated by hot air furnace. In the
basement were two very large tanks for rainwater and a pump in the
kitchen. It was pleasantly furnished – its many windows on east,
west and south curtained, its floors carpeted,
its furniture modern with antique pieces, first its little old organ
and later a piano. Its antique pieces, very old, had belonged to
the Disney grandparents. Lots of pictures, amongst them a
coloured etching of an Irish scene that had come out from Ireland with
the grandparents. Always light and warmth, and pots of tea.
Mother was a wonderful woman of many parts – a real hostess, and
excellent cook (as attested to by all who tried “to make the Disney’s
for meal time”), a real homemaker, a gardener, well read on history and
current events, as well as a good conversationalist and she and father
saw to it that their daughters were both educated and knew how to
behave as “young ladies”. The expanding went on outside too – a
big barn dominating a hilly slope north of the house. Its massive
stone foundation and giant hay loft, etc. were later added to by a
smaller wing to house calves, pigs, chickens, and turkeys. The whole
building was painted red, and could be seen for miles around. The
granary, etc., sat midway between house and barn. Separating the
latter too was a fence with tall cottonwood trees along its
length. Every year great bundles of young trees were shipped to
us from the Experimental Farm (Morden, I think), and all hands had a
day of planting. I have no idea how many acres of trees of many
varieties my father had – but would think it might have been some six
or eight. There were some fruit trees – crab applies, plums and
swarms of birds. A kingfisher owned the best willow tree for the
summer. There was a large vegetable plot sheltered on all sides
by trees and the planting of this was a full day’s work for the
men. We had lawns and strange flowers coaxed by mother. We
had two wells – one at the house area and the other near the
barns. The house pump had a pump house with gasoline pump.
The water was also piped to the aforementioned fence, where a large
trough also supplied water for the stock. As time went on
father converted the farm more and more to a stock farm where he raised
both pure-bred and grade horses and cattle. He dearly loved his
animals. The young stock had all to be taken yearly for pasture
someplace almost directly east about five miles. That was a day
for men and animals and again on return in the fall. But one red
cow seemed to always have been around. She had a passion for
clothing and thereby hang a few tales. My two small sons loved
the red cow and her desire to scrounge every car or buggy parked
outside the aforementioned fence. On day Mrs. Gus Taylor sat
having tea when the red cow managed to swallow her lap rug. Just
a tiny corner was showing when mother and the boys tugged the rug
back. Mother had to rinse it out and hang it in the sun and the
two boys raced to tell Mrs. Taylor with mother after them. Mrs.
Taylor left with her rug – unaware of its adventures. Another day
it was the preacher’s Bible. There were absolutely no dull
moments on our farm.
When
father came to the Enterprize district, schooling for his four girls
was a very real problem but fortunately for us mother’s then married
sisters had no girls and wanted to borrow us. At the same time
father had arranged to have two acres at the corner of the farm set
aside for the new Enterpize School. My three sisters each spent a
time there. Ethel left to attend Collegiate School in Winnipeg
and on to Wesley College for two years. Ethel’s education did not
end there but went on for years along with her teaching in the Selkirk
High School, Wpg., at the same time Winnipeg her ATCM for Toronto
Conservatory as well as Trinity College in London. Emily spent
some years at school in Killarney studying music with Miss Sergeant and
Mr. Briggs, then on to Winnipeg, while Myrtle and I were there at
Wesley College. During this period and afterwards we taught,
leaving no one at home with our parents save hired help.
The
school became a centre for concerts, picnics, church services and
meetings, and followed the educational pattern of most country schools,
save that it was kept open year around teaching all grades.
As
I
remember clothing was home-made from materials bought in the town, but
Eaton’s catalogue soon became popular and set the fashions of the area.
The
churches – Methodist, Presbyterian and Anglican – all at different
times sent their clergy from Cartwright or Killarney to homes or
schools for service until such time as churches were built in
Holmsfield and then the little country services were held more
regularly. The clergy, using horses and buggies, left for country
meetings on Saturday night and brightened many a home with an evening
discussion – especially so when two or three happened to meet at the
same home. Equal loyalty was given to all clergy – no matter what
the denomination of clergy or people.
Farming
was a serious business, a major factor being the weather, but there
were many other factors – the advent of the great farm machines with
their speed and need for fewer men, more diversification away from the
purely grain farm, the lack of workers where the need for haste was
greatest, not to mention the need for education of and in farming, and
irrigation and electricity.
My
story would be incomplete if I were to omit the comfort of good
neighbours. We were always very fortunate – in the early days
were the Spaffords and the Fosters on the west, the Cockerills on the
north, the Dixons and O’Briens on the east and the Cullens and Nicholls
on the south. Later the John McLean’s replaced the Spaffords, and
the Brown brothers the Fosters. At all times they were wonderful
people and we were always pleased to welcome them as one of the
family. Further away but still much part of the community they
were just the same good neighbours forming a lovely friendly
community. Visiting on Sundays, church service, and getting
acquainted with oneself and belongings, and over the dinner table
always discussion of the current events and of the political
problems. Our pride was in Senator Young of Killarney and Andy
Foster nearer home.
Perhaps
one of the hardships our parents had to experience personally was that
from their early teens their daughters all left for schooling, mostly
in Winnipeg, thus leaving the parents alone, with no one to turn the
grind stone, run errands, etc. Following my husband’s death in
1915, I returned to the farm for the next six years with my two infant
children – Russel and Jack Shaneman. These were wonderful years,
when I really learned what farming meant, what it was to have the right
weather at the right time, to have efficient help, to have good
neighbours, and generous, open-hearted parents and home. We
travelled through the country by Model T Ford in summer and behind
spanking light-weight Clydesdales in winter. But how could one
see father and a helper leave home at three o’clock in the morning with
the sleighs and teams to cut wood in Turtle Mountain and then drive
home those weary cold miles to find mother pacing the floor with worry
, the dog doing the same outside – that was the cruellest day of the
year. But we must have fuel to start the coal fires.
When
my
younger son reached school age, my parents, sons and I moved to
Vancouver. Every one of us was sad to leave but father’s health
was none too good and help was almost impossible to get at the
time. I think maybe it’s impossible for a farmer ever to retire
or relax. Father returned to Holmfield and Enterprize once, but
health failed him and death came in 1925. Mother spent the next
twelve years between Vancouver and Winnipeg, and grew prettier with the
years. She died in Winnipeg in 1937 and is buried in Vancouver
beside father. Myrtle loved life but death claimed her in
1958. The other three sisters live in Vancouver,
It fell
to my mom to uphold the family in a military way. Both had been
active in Officers’ Training at the University of B.C. and in the
militia and joined the army the day war was proclaimed in 1939.
Russell in RCASC in many areas – the Aleutians, England, Europe and
Viet Nam. He remained in the Army, and is now living as a retired
Colonel in Vancouver. Jack with the former training same as
Russell’s in Seaforth Cadets and CTC at USB served with Canadian Coast
Defence from the outbreak of war to the summer of 1942 when he went
overseas an RCA Major where he was attached to the British Army.
He retired at the end of the war and died in 1957 of a heart attack.
And
it
now remains for my four Shaneman grandchildren – John, Brian, Roger and
Mark – to carry on the Anglo-Norman-Irish-Canadian heritage of Charles
and Alice Disney but enriched by many fine strains of their
grandparents and parents.
Isobel
Disney Shaneman Smelts
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