This item is aimed at readers who regularly travel County Road 24 between Dunvegan and Highland Road. Commuters. School bus drivers. Farmers. Truckers. Whomsoever passes by the Glengarry Pioneer Museum’s sign on the northeast corner of the T-junction. The distinctive waymark has stood on this spot pointing the way to the Dunvegan museum for over thirty-five years… thanks to the largesse of the Arkinstall family.
Unfortunately, somewhere over the course of this past winter, the two-sided sign lost one-half of its impact; the north-facing panel mysteriously disappeared. The 4’ x 4’ graphics are made of metal and I assume that the errant one worked loose in a blustery winter storm and was carried aloft on the wind. I had hoped it would reappear somewhere downwind as the snow receded. But no such luck. So if you noticed which direction the sign panel was heading as it flew away from home, please contact me or call the museum at 613-527-5230.
Too many ringy dingies
The word ‘nuisance’ has its roots in the Latin word nocere, meaning ‘to harm’. Originally, it was used to refer to things that could result in serious injury. When used in a legal context, the term still refers to that which “disturbs the reasonable use of your property or endangers life and health or is offensive.” However, in more general usage, the word has been watered down over the years to describe “something that causes a small annoyance.” That pesky horsefly that follows your every move at the pool, or the thoughtless neighbour who plays his favourite music at levels that would make Woodstock envious.
Of late, the term has somehow come to be used to describe a category of unsolicited and unwelcome telephone calls designed to prey upon the unsophisticated or unwary. They’re referred to as “nuisance calls,” but I think the use of this term trivializes the problem. According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, phone-based scams defrauded Canadians of an estimated $24 million in the first ten months of 2019. And that’s only part of the problem. In households with a loved one who lives away from home and is struggling with a physical or mental health condition, long distance scammer calls (especially first thing in the morning or late in the evening) can be heart stopping.
Now, back in 2019, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission introduced what was touted as hardline measures designed to better protect Canadians against “nuisance calls that are unsolicited and illegitimate.” At the time, the head of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association was quoted as expecting a “massive decline” in unwanted calls. However the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre wasn’t quite as sure. They thought it could have an impact on some of the phone fraud, but said how much remained to be seen. Almost three years down the line, I’d say the Fraud Squad’s prediction was closest to the mark. Terry and I are still getting these tiresome calls each and every day. And the number is steadily increasing.
For those of us who haven’t given up on the concept of “community” and refuse to cancel our landline and phonebook listing, what’s needed is an aural CAPTCHA interface that asks the caller a simple question (what’s greater ‘1+3’ or ‘2+1’)… i.e., something the robocaller software may not be able to answer easily. “CAPTCHA” stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” If you surf the web, you’ve no doubt encountered one that asks you to interpret a series hardly legible letters, or select which squares contain a photo of a stoplight.
Alternatively, surely we can identify the countries where these calls originate and simply ‘pull the plug,’ or whatever the equivalent is in this digital age. Perhaps this would put pressure on the governments of these source nations to shut the phone fraudsters down once and for all. Obviously, this ‘big disconnect’ would have an impact on any diaspora from these targeted regions. However, they would still be able to connect with family and friends via VoIP, social media, video chat and the like.
Dunvegan’s buzz skill
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that one of the new in-person events the Glengarry Pioneer Museum has planned for this season is the Glengarry Honey Fair. Think of it as celebration of all things honey… sort of a sweet and sticky Wood Fair. I’ll get into more details about this family-friendly event in coming weeks. Today, however, I wanted to talk about one of Dunvegan’s original beekeepers: Johnny Carpenter.
Some readers may recall that we’ve encountered Johnny in one of my columns from October of 2019… although, to be totally honest, it was an erroneous reference. I wrote that on July 20th, 1899, young Johnny Carpenter and his sister escaped death when a bolt of lighting struck their family home and killed their seven-year-old brother, Duncan John, as they lay sleeping in their bed. I’m not sure yet who was in the bed with Duncan, but I know it wasn’t Johnny. He was the son of Jesse James Carpenter and Mary McPhee and, according to the church records, wasn’t born until 1902.
In 1899, the J.J. Carpenter family lived on Bonnie Hill north of Dunvegan. Come January of 1901, though, the News reported that Mr. Robertson of Manufacturers’ Life Insurance Co, Ottawa, leased his Maxville residence to Jesse James Carpenter of Caledonia. If and when the family moved back to Dunvegan, I have yet to uncover. I know from the News that Johnny’s mother was residing in Dunvegan when she died in 1951. It’s quite possible she was living with Johnny who had inherited the house just north of the brick school from Ann Campbell in 1931. He would have been 29 at the time. Even before moving into this property, his heart (if not his body) had been in Dunvegan. There is a photo outside of the Dunvegan Orange Walk Hall on the occasion of the 1921 Orange County meeting and Johnny can be seen in the third row, fourth from the left. There is also a photo of him and his teammates from the Dunvegan Soccer Club when they won the 1924 Glengarry championship.
What Johnny did in his 20s before moving to Ann Campbell’s house in Dunvegan North is a mystery. I know he had a reputation as being an excellent hunter and a fiddler, but he must have had other marketable skills. He may have even been an apprentice beekeeper. But this is merely speculation. However, I do have confirmation of his earning a living as an apiarist — i.e., a person who maintains hives and keeps bees, especially for the production of honey— while living in Dunvegan.
Both Robert Campbell and his sister Gwen remember him fondly. Their grandfather’s second wife was a Carpenter, which meant Johnny was their great-uncle. “He liked to come to the house to watch the World Series,” Gwen told me in an email, “always well dressed in outdoorsy clothing.” Apparently, Johnny had a dry sense of humour. Gwen remembers him remarking that someone’s baked biscuits were, “as hard as the hubs of hell.” She’s not sure whose baking was under scrutiny, but chances are good it wasn’t her mother’s.
In terms of Johnny’s honey business, Robert recalls travelling to Dion & Dion, a wholesaler in Montreal, with his dad and his great-uncle to deliver five-gallon steel pails of honey. Gwen also has memories of these trips. “Yes, he shipped honey to Montreal,” Gwen told me. “On one of these trips, I vaguely remember a very crowded, winding street.” At the time Dion & Dion was located in Old Montreal.
As far as I can tell many, or even most, of Johnny’s hives were kept on his property. Gwen describes the fields north of the schoolhouse as areas of “different growth, goldenrod and other various wildflowers, and scrub bushes so ideal for bees to thrive.” She also says his honey preparation rooms were immaculate, and he would often give her a piece of honeycomb. “Sometimes in the fall if I walk through fallen leaves, that fragrance reminds me of the honey quarters off to the side of the house.”
BTW: I too was unfamiliar with the expression “as hard as the hubs of hell.” One would think that a reference to hell would suggest heat, not hardness. However, as far as I can determine, American soldiers during the Spanish-American War used the expression to describe the hardtack biscuits that were part of their rations. One source claims that the alliterative phrase should actually read “the hobbs of hell”, where hobbs is an abbreviation for the hobbles (or shackles) of hell… restraints so hard than one can never break free.
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