I’m told that the Yiddish word “chutzpah” originally had a strong negative connotation. It came from the Hebrew word “huspāḥ,” meaning insolence or audacity. However, these days, the term has entered common use in English and is now suggestive — especially when applied to business dealings — of a person’s ability to cope well with difficulties. In other words, his or her spirit and resilience.
A perfect example is former Dunvegan entrepreneur, Steve Merritt. Steve isn’t Jewish, but he definitely has chutzpah. And he used to put it to good use back in the early 70s when selling his wife’s superb hand-woven creations in Ottawa and Montreal. Not content with supplying select retail outlets, Steve would take the ‘Anne of Dunvegan’ branded wares right into television studios, sound stages and backstage at concert venues where music stars like Joni Mitchell would buy off the rack and place custom orders.
One time, knowing that Sonny & Cher were slated to play at Place des Nations, Steve drove his Volkswagen ClubCab (a strange cross between a VW microbus and a tiny pick-up truck) through the limousine entrance at the former Expo ’67 site and set up shop. “I knew that Cher was a clothes horse,” Steve told me. “So I folded down the sides of the truck where I had Anne’s stuff on hangers and waited for Cher to take the bait.” And it worked. Cher loved Anne’s weaving and ordered a bespoke woven gown. As Steve recalls, the finished piece was full-length, done in earth tones and fully lined, with a zipper down the back. It took Anne a month to weave and stitch together… and cost Cher $250 or $1,700 in today’s money. I wonder if Cher still has this little piece of Dunvegan in her wardrobe?
Window to the past
At times, the synchronicity of this world is truly amazing. As you may recall, if you read last week’s column, Dane Lanken turned me on to a ‘Iocal boy makes good’ story in which a wee lad from Dunvegan grew up to be the mayor of Côte St. Luc. Born in 1873, Donald Fletcher moved to Montreal as a young boy, went on to study Engineering, moved with his own young family to the fledgling Montreal suburb of Côte St. Luc and got caught up in municipal politics. As I admitted, I knew little about Donald’s early days in Dunvegan and even less about the Fletcher family as a whole.
So, I was delighted when an email hit my inbox from James (Jim) Fletcher of Kanata. Mr. Fletcher admitted to having been a long-time reader of the Dunvegan column. His message went on to say he grew up here in the 40s and 50s… on the farm right across from the one where Terry and I live today. Where the whoo-whoo factor comes in is that Mr. Fletcher is a snail mail subscriber. His copy of the Glengarry News is always one week behind the times. Which meant he hadn’t yet read the column on Donald Fletcher when he pushed the send button on his email to me.
I can’t tell you how delighted I was to make Mr. Fletcher’s acquaintance. He knew the couple — Mogens and Inglebird Jensen — who had once owned our place. Jim Fletcher and his older brother Duncan Donald (Lolly) played hockey with the Jensen boy using sticks fashioned from crooked branches. He watched as Mr. Jensen reassembled the square log building he had moved from west of the crossroads…the front part of the house we live in today. He sat with Mrs. Dewar on her front porch and enjoyed the soft summer breezes. (This is the old house that Dunvegan Carnival goers have passed by for years on the way to our pond and sledding hill.) He went to school with Sherrill (nee Ferguson) Trottier in Dunvegan’s brick schoolhouse, and to Sunday school in the church. In other words, like our dear friend Ken McEwen from the 7th of Kenyon, he is a direct connection with life as it was in the Dunvegan area during the early and mid 20th century.
Jim Fletcher left Dunvegan at the age of 19 to join the Royal Canadian Air Force and had a long distinguished career in the military. One of his last tours of duty was during Operation Desert Storm, the ‘100-hour war’ in 1991 against the Iraqi Army in Kuwait. Now retired, he returns regularly to the place of his youth… on both Memorial Sunday and the museum’s Harvest Fall Festival. And hopefully… now that the connection has been made… as a contributor to future Dunvegan columns.
Go west young man
The originator of this pithy phrase is still a matter of debate. Some attribute it to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley. Others claim it was John Babson Lane Soule, editor of The Wabash Express. Regardless, it was a sentiment that generations of young men from the Dunvegan area took to heart as a way of earning cold hard cash as temporary farm hands during the annual wheat harvest in western Canada.
When I asked Ken McEwen about what I gather was known in these parts as a “farm excursion”, he admitted that he had never participated. He did go out west as a young man, but as a RCMP constable. However, his father went on one in 1909, and worked in southwestern Manitoba. Raised in the horse and buggy era, his dad was good with horses. So he was recruited to go out west as a teamster. When he arrived though, the foreman of his work gang offered him the job of firing the steam engine that was used to power the threshing mill. Usually a plum assignment, his father’s engine lacked grates and was harder to operate. Nevertheless, he mastered the apparatus and stuck with it for the entire threshing time.
The boiler was fired with straw… not with wood or coal, which were scarce. And to increase efficiency, the sheaves of grain weren’t brought in from the field by wagon or cart to the mill. Instead, the threshing mill was moved across the fields from one huge pile of sheaves to the next. When the harvest ended, Ken’s father was offered the chance to work as a teamster in the bush east of Carrot River in northern Saskatchewan with a gang of
woodcutters. He really liked the west, and probably would have stayed there. However, his Uncle Peter needed him at home. So he returned
to Lot 35, Kenyon Con. 7 in March of 1910. And we’re glad he did. If he hadn’t we’d never have come to know his son Ken.
Interestingly, in 1957, brothers Jim and Warner Fletcher and three of their friends took part in what was probably the last of the farm excursions to Western Canada, at least from this area. We’ll take a look at their adventures in next week’s column: Go west young man – Part II.
They’re trying… but
If you’re wondering what’s happened to the Dunvegan Recreation Association, in a word: Covid. One of the main raison d’êtres behind the DRA is bringing people together. Which, with public health restrictions over the past two years, has been nigh on impossible. Just last week, word went out that the Ontario Festival of Small Halls concert that was being planned for Dunvegan in February had been cancelled.
Likewise, I was back at the pond this past weekend and the ice was perfect. But, even if I could find a horse sleigh long enough to maintain social distancing between the passengers, I don’t see a DRA Winter Carnival 2022 in our future. Now this isn’t my call. The DRA Executive Committee may have a Covid-scale mini-carnival up their sleeves, but I somehow doubt it.
It’s a real shame, because the longer this goes on, the more momentum a volunteer organization like the DRA loses. Pity.
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