Last week, Leila Renwick from Cornwall called about the item in my June 2nd column on her time in Dunvegan as a young girl. She had spotted a few inaccuracies, but was unsure if she should contact me. I gather her reasoning was, in the long run, who really cares? I assured her that I did. As these columns may someday be a small part of Dunvegn’s historical curriculum vitae, it’s important to set the record straight whenever possible.
To start, the little house where Leila Austin spent the first five or six years of her life was not shared with her great uncle Finlay R. McRae. He had died around August of 1936 and had left his house/barbershop on Alice Street to his sister, Sarah Austin (née McRae), Leila’s grandmother. Her paternal grandparents lived on Main Street in Dunvegan and, in the autumn of 1936, offered the now vacant dwelling at the corner of Murray and Alice streets to their son Clifford, when he accepted the position of cheese maker at the Dunvegan cheese factory.
My suggestion that Leila’s maternal grandmother also lived with them in the little yellow house was even further off base. Her mother’s side of the family, including her grandmother, actually lived in Lochiel.
Last, but not least, Leila’s maiden name was Austin, not Austen. To be fair, this could have gone either way. In Rosemary Rutley’s history of SD&G cheese factories, Of Curds and Whey, the family name is spelled with an “e.” However, in the Tweedsmuir History of Dunvegan Vol. II, the name of the retired cheese maker and rural route mail carrier is “George Austin.” Given that “Cheddar” was virtually the family’s middle name, I put my faith in the definitive work on cheese making in this area.
Before I let Mrs. Renwick go, I asked if she had any idea who Alice Street was named after. In last week’s column, I conjectured that it might be someone related to James P. Wells, the man who drew up Dunvegan’s official plan in 1877 and attached his middle name, Pendleton, to the hamlet’s eastern-most street. However, research to date, has failed to uncover kinfolk named Alice or Murray on his family tree. The Wells clan, though, did seem to have a serious love affair with naming offspring “James Pendleton Wells.” But that’s a story for another day.
Mrs. Renwick had no clue from where the “Alice” appellation sprung. However, she did recall it having a naughty nickname: Polly Street. Leila and her chum Shelia Ferguson would giggle when no one was within earshot that the street might have had a link with the “most ancient profession in the world” as Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1888.
Ebb and flow
From the ups and downs of markets to the rise and fall of the tides, it’s the rhythm of real life. Similar forces can be seen acting in neighbourhoods. They have their good years… and their not so good years. It doesn’t take much to set the tone. Renovations half done. Projects abandoned. Orphaned automobiles. Peeling paint. Rotting wood. The list of negative forces goes on and on.
The same holds true for the reverse. When one person shows pride in the community, the spirit can be catching. And that’s what I’ve seen in Dunvegan of late. The first obvious sign things were on the rise was the new blue house Tyler Down from Riceville is building on Main Street. Then a few doors east, Marc Larose’s house soon sparkled in the noonday sun with its new cost of exterior paint. Robert Campbell mulched the shade trees in his front yard. Monica Ahrens’s green thumb transformed the site of the old Ferguson General Store into a summer wonderland. Chris Ami and Alex Manolesco continue to restore the old brick hotel by shoring up the sagging bottom courses of their north wall. Benoit Henri and his partner are building a wonderful replacement for the front porch on Marion Lowen’s old house at the south end of the hamlet. And Barry and Evelyn Viau have installed an impressive new access ramp and re-shingled their roof.
May this freshening flow of positive change continue in Dunvegan and environs well into the future.
Soccer season 2021?
From the Highland Road Tim Horton’s to the Highway 34 drag strip, soccer players, fans and even sponsors (assuming any of them are still in business after this last lockdown) are holding their collective breath. Depending on how last Sunday’s meeting of the Glengarry Soccer League went we might be looking at the long-awaited return of soccer to Dunvegan.
It all hinges on the Minister of Sport and an alphabet soup bowl of acronyms, like the EODSA and the EOHU, I won’t even try to unravel. There’s probably even an EOHU Ouija board in the mix somewhere. No doubt, if the meeting’s outcome was positive, there will be oodles of detail elsewhere in the paper. But if you, like me, are content with a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book version of sporting news, here is the skinny.
I’m told that the absolute earliest that the Glengarry soccer season would start would be Monday, July 5th. However, given that teams have to be formalized, schedules have to worked out, grass has to be cut, fields have to be lined, balls have to be blown up, nets need to be woven, etc., Monday, July 12th might be a more realistic start date. For this to happen though, the heavens and the stars would have to align perfectly. And I hope they do. It would be good to see the lights on at the Dunvegan field once more.
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