After submitting last week’s item on the tragic 1949 Stewart’s Glen air crash in which Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Siple and their five children perished, I realized that two regular contributors to the column were residing in the Dunvegan area at the time. Jim Fletcher, who used to live on the farm to the east of Bruce MacGillivray, was eight and remembers that everyone was talking about the crash. “I think we were sort of scared of what happened,” Jim told me in an email. “Like, what’s next?” Jim didn’t visit the crash site, but does recall that whenever they were lucky enough to go to Alexandria, his stepfather would remark, “There’s that plane that crashed,” as they passed by M. & N. Scrap on County Road 34, south of Fassifern.
Ken McEwen, on the other hand, was nineteen and remembers the event in vivid detail. The crash occurred on a Sunday evening and Ken, together with his father and Ken’s older brother, visited the site the following afternoon, as did many others. “The tail and tips of the wings, were the only recognizable remains of the aircraft,” Ken told me. “The weather was not
conducive to flying Sunday evening,” Ken continued. “Nasty freezing rain was slanting into the Ottawa Valley from the east.” According to Ken, the Siples refuelled at the Uplands airfield. But I’ll let him take up the story.
“While there, Siple spoke with the crew of a Colonial Airline plane. They advised him to hold up in Ottawa. Although their aircraft had some basic de-icing capability, the Colonial crew had struggled to make it through the freezing rain. However, Siple opted to proceed. His aircraft struck the ground… in Alex Stewart’s field and skidded to a halt on the north side of the family’s log barn… leaving a trail of burning fuel. The Stewart family heard the resulting noise and rushed to the site, but there was nothing to be done.”
It’s interesting to note that the ‘Stewart Barn’ which served as a backdrop for this tragedy is now part of the Dunvegan museum’s collection of historic buildings. When I asked Ken how on earth he possessed so many details of the crash, he attributes it to having known the Stewart family very well. Their daughter, Margaret, and Ken’s wife-to-be, Chris, were second cousins and worked side-by-side as telephone operators in Maxville. I also surmise it might have had something to do with the innate forensic abilities that resulted in Ken’s long, rewarding career with the RCMP.
Although the skies over Dunvegan during WWII were filled with planes from the pilot training bases in nearby Pendelton and St. Eugene, there were no crashes in our immediate area. Four years later though, there were two fatal aviation accidents within about a month of each other.
The second crash took place on March 25, 1949, when a RCAF Harvard trainer from Ottawa aircraft plummeted to the ground on John Christie’s 6th concession farm, one mile east of Maxville. Both members of the two-man flight crew were killed instantly. Ken McEwen was in high school at the time, and visited the crash site with some of his chums right after the crash. “Fuel still gurgled from the wing tanks,” Ken told me. As he recalls, the Harvard was doing aerobatic exercises at the time. The day was overcast and the snow was weathered and gray, so there was some speculation the pilots may have become disoriented while executing a vertical spin.
First Sunday of Lent
The period of Christian observance that leads up to Easter, known as Lent, starts today, March 2nd. On most North American calendars, including my desktop Dilbert one, this first day of Lent is known as Ash Wednesday. I’m told the Lenten Fast period lasts for 40 days. Remember though, if you’re double-checking my math, don’t count Sundays, as they’re not considered days of fast. One source I consulted suggested that the 40 days of Lent mirrors the length of time that Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness… and the 40 hours that Jesus was entombed prior to the Resurrection.
To mark this season’s beginning, Rev. Jim Ferrier informs me the Kenyon Presbyterian Church in Dunvegan will be celebrating the Sacrament of Holy Communion next Sunday, March 6th. Please don’t forget, though, that this Sunday the congregations of Kenyon Church and St. Columba will be returning to their own respective churches for worship. And that, for the months of March and April, Kenyon’s service will start at 11:00 am. Rev. Jim tells me everyone is welcome to join them in worship.
Ghostly hamlets
I did a quick ‘smash and grab’ raid on the Glengarry County Archives last week to search for a ‘vein’ I had seen out of the corner of my eye (but not pursued) on my previous visit to Mr. MacDonald’s stone-clad history repositorium. In a student’s essay on the Baltic’s Corners Cheese Factory, I came across the following nugget: “The Baltic’s Corners sign made by Neilena MacRae disappeared for a time. Barbara MacLennan found it at Maxville Sportsplex and it was reinstalled.” And the handmade sign proudly stands there today marking the location of a once thriving, albeit small, community.
I’ve written before of the ‘Lost Hamlets of Glengarry.’ The County News section of the Glengarry News from the late 1800s and early to mid 1900s are awash with regular reports from place names that few, if any, of present day Glengarrians have ever heard of: St. Paul’s Corner, Pigeon Hill, Unity, Eig, Butter Hollow, Gravel Hollow, Cotton Beaver and many more.
It’s true that, at the very least, the location of some of these ‘ghost’ communities — Athol, Baltic’s Corners and Fiske’s Corners immediately come to mind — have been proudly kept alive by volunteers. For example, a group of dedicated residents led by the late Alex and Lila Mogelon lobbied hard for the first ‘Fiske’s Corners’ sign on Dunvegan Road. And when entropy claimed it at last, their daughter Ronna took up the torch. However, the vast majority of these forgotten places have slipped beneath the waves.
Which brings me to my modest proposal. What if the Roads Department of the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, which recently celebrated its 100thanniversary, were to spearhead a ‘Lost Hamlets’ signage program? And the Glengarry County Archives, the Glengarry Archives and the Road Departments of both North and South Glengarry could be potential community partners.
My vision is to see these ghost hamlets recognized with uniform government-quality ‘place name’ signage done in the previous blue rectangle with white letters format… not the new, already-dated swoopy-doopy design. Each sign post would have a ‘King’s Highway’ shield displaying a QR code below the place name sign. This code would allow people to scan it with their smartphone and be linked to a web page with a historical account of the former community.
The first step would be to do a lit review of the Glengarry News and establish a tentative list of ghost hamlets. The next step would be to ascertain which of the place names can be attached to an actual geographic location. Then it must be determined which ones can be supported with a background story.
I know money is tight. That’s why I saw doing the project in two stages. The first would be for a Steering Committee to select and describe the ghost hamlets they believe should be included in the program. Stage two would be the sign manufacture and installation phase. This portion of this project could be executed gradually as funding (counties, municipal and donations) allow.
If Vankleek Hill can hang its hat on being the Gingerbread Capital of the World, why can’t Glengarry be renowned (from a tourist perspective, at least) as the Capital of Wacky Place Names? And for those readers who I can hear asking… “But what about Wales?”… I said wacky names, not unpronounceable ones.
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