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William
Yule
In 1888 William Yule, a conductor on the Canadian Pacific Railway at
Chapleau in Ontario, decided to become a farmer on the western
prairies. He filed on a homestead in the Wolseley area in the
North West Territories. He built a sod shack and used prairie
chickens for meat. However, he was unable to locate any suitable
drinking water so he gave up and used his railway pass to go East
again. He decided that his next farm would have visible water.
Hearing about a new town called Killarney in Manitoba that was located
at the end of a lake, he decided to check on it. One of the first
men he met was John Sidney O’Brien, a native of Killarney in Ireland,
who had named the lake after his old home. Mr. O’Brien had just
proved up on a homestead and pre-emption on the southwest side of the
lake, so the land had half a mile of frontage on this beautiful lake.
Mr. Yule promptly bought the property for $2,000 cash. There was
a storey-and-a-half house on the farm and forty acres broken. It
was four miles from town in the winter-time and eight in the
summer. In the winter it was possible to travel down the lake
whereas in the summer you had to travel around the west end of the
lake. The next year he moved his family, consisting of his wife, the
former Isabella McLean, and two small sons, Bobby and Stuart, out to
their new home.
They were shortly followed by a brother, David Yule, and his bride,
Robina McLean. A brother-in-law, John D. McLean, and a
sister-in-law, Jean McLean, followed soon after. In a short time,
Jean McLean married Alfred Brebner. They all came from Frontenac
County situated about half way between Kingston and Gananoque in
Ontario.
The first crop, due to a dry summer, was a failure, but the 1891 crop
was 40 bushels to the acre of No. 1 Hard, Red Fife wheat.
However, after the grain was stacked there was no threshing machine in
the area except a tread-mill one owned by Alex. David. To solve
the problem, William Yule, John D. McLean and William Keyes, purchased
for $600 a second-hand horse-power outfit at Wakopa. This was run
by four teams of horses driven by a man standing on a platform in the
centre. This man used a long whip to see that all the teams did
their share as they walked round and round in a small circle. The
winter proved to be a very cold one with an unusual amount of snow, and
it took all winter to thresh the crop. The next year Alf Brebner
bought an up-to-date steam outfit. This put the horse-power outfit out
of business. However, the horse-power part of it was used for
many years to run a grain crusher.
Mac, the fourth child, was born in the old O’Brien house in 1894 and
was possibly the only birth in it. The attending doctor was Dr.
Whyte who had the well-deserved reputation of driving the wildest team
of bronchos he could procure. The team he was driving that day was no
exception. This house was replaced in 1897 by one nearer the lake
and was built by John Barlow, a well-known builder at that time.
When the old house was demolished in 1910, the 2 x 4 timbers were found
to be 3 x 5, and the rest of the material, all poplar, was in the same
proportion. The original shingles were still water-proof.
William Yule died in 1899 in his early forties, leaving his widow with
five children, the oldest of which was twelve years. When Mrs.
Yule died in 1941, she was buried beside her husband in the Killarney
cemetery. She had lived to see one of the boys become a medical
doctor, one a farmer and the other a druggist, and the two girls, Jean
and Mary, university graduates.
David Yule with his wife and two Killarney-born children, Bertha and
Bruce, went East in 1906 and took over his father-in-law’s farm.
Bertha died in 1963, and Bruce is still on the old farm.
Alf Brebner lived in the district until he died in the 1930’s. in
the early days, when threshing machines were hand-fed, he was
considered the smoothest and fastest feeder in the district.
Mabel, their only child, is married to Ralph Wittal and lives in
Assiniboia, Saskatchewan.
Mac Yule died in 1961 in Vancouver, B.C.
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