The “pig in a poke” caveat dates back to the mid-sixteenth century. It’s said to refer to a confidence trick where a farmer, instead of the suckling pig he had promised to bring to market, would substitute a cat in the sack (poke) that was traditionally used to transport small animals. I can only assume the intended purchaser was either deaf or incredibly gullible to have mistaken the cries of a trussed up cat for the squeals of a piglet. It turns out that this is a twofer idiom, in that our “let the cat out of the bag” expression has its roots in the same medieval scam.
Where I’m going with all this, is that ‑ when I strongly recommend you get your hands on tickets to the Miller & MacDonald concert in Dunvegan on Friday, March 13th – I don’t want you to worry I’m selling you a “pyg in the poke.” Test-drive the talented duo yourself by visiting their new web site (benandanita.com) and listening to a sample tune or two. By exploring their web pages, you’ll also get to know a bit more about the performers.
Ben Miller is an American-born player of Scottish bagpipes, currently living in Halifax. He began his piping journey in his hometown of Glens Falls, New York. As he grew, Ben gravitated to the smaller, “cauld“ wind bagpipes, a term that refers to any Scottish bagpipe that is bellows-powered rather than mouth-blown.
Anita MacDonald is an accomplished fiddler, step-dancer, and Gaelic singer from Little Narrows, Nova Scotia. Strongly rooted in her native Cape Breton fiddle tradition, Anita has created a sound that is both new and old, while still grounded in the Gaelic dance-music of her home.
Tickets are on sale for $20 each at the Quirky Carrot in Alexandria, the Home Hardware in Maxville and The Review in Vankleek Hill. The event is being held in the DRA hall, 19053 County Road 24, and will start at 7:00 pm. But I’d recommend arriving a wee bit early to get the best possible seat. To help you kill time while waiting for the curtains to part, there’ll be a cash bar with an assortment of alcoholic and non-alcoholic refreshments. When the house lights come on at the end of the concert, I think you’ll agree it was worth every penny.
Pugmill by the Scotch
A recent study of Ontarians commissioned by a masonry trade association found that 90% of those surveyed would prefer to buy homes made of brick, block and stone over wood, vinyl siding or stucco. The reasons cited included: fire resistance (82%), durability (81%), stability in extreme weather (78%), visual appeal (78%), resale value (75%), least maintenance required (67%) and termite resistance (74%). While this research was underwritten by the masonry industry, I suspect its findings are fairly accurate. On many a Glengarry pioneer homestead, the original square log home was repurposed as an outbuilding as soon as the family’s finances were sufficient to erect a brick farmhouse. And in this corner of Kenyon, the brick probably came from Donald Sinclair’s brickyards on either side of the Scotch River at Lot 34, Concession VII and Lot 35, Concession VIII.
I’m not sure when Mr. Sinclair first began making bricks, but the operation was of sufficient size to make the 1879 edition of the Belden Historical Atlas of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry. Donald Sinclair’s entry in Royce MacGillivray’s Dictionary of Glengarry Biographytells us that the Gordon Church at St. Elmo was clad with his brick, as were many of the homes in Maxville. It also notes that Donald Sinclair’s own house (later the home of the late Keith and Velma Franklin) was fashioned from brick in 1865 by Alexandria contractors John R. Chisholm & Son.
When I discussed the brick works with Ken McEwen, who lived on the 7th of Kenyon until 1952, he recalled that in the late 1940s, “the Sinclair yard still showed evidence of what it once was, with broken piles of red brick and rusting iron works.” He also remembers seeing a picture of the Sinclair brickyard taken in its heyday. “There were several workers posed in strategic stances, typical of photos of the day,” Ken wrote in his email to me, “with a couple of teams of horses and wagons, and many piles of brick under temporary covering.” It would be a shame if this photo has been lost forever. Perhaps it will make its way to Glengarry County Archives one day.
Why did Donald Sinclair choose where he did for his brickyard? No doubt because it had an abundant supply of high-quality raw clay that had perhaps settled where it did because of the bend in the Scotch River. Clay soil is composed of minerals such as silicates, mica, iron and aluminum hydrous-oxide minerals that are leached from rocks and, over time, form clay deposits. By the grace of Mother Nature, Lots 34 and 35 were blessed with the makings of good quality brick. But as any brick maker will tell you, this is only the beginning.
First the clay in the riverside deposits must be mined and ‘weathered’ using the freeze/thaw cycles of winter. This helps break up the heavy lumps of clay, lessening the cost of mixing. However, before it can be moulded, the clay must be tempered to achieve a workable consistency. In the early days, Sinclair’s men probably did this by treading the clay by foot and turning it with spades. However, as son as was feasible, I would expect that a horse-driven pugmill took over the process. Pugging means to work and mix a substance such as clay to make more it homogeneous and easier to handle.
A pugmill is essentially a tube containing blades attached to a shaft. A horse ‘gin’ or ‘sweep’ turns the shaft and raw clay introduced at one end of the tube is churned and mixed with air and water. It eventually emerges from the other end as a workable paste and can then be moulded. In the Sinclair brickyard, this was probably done by hand. The brick maker starts by taking a handful of clay and slapping it into a brick-shaped mould that he has first dusted with sharp sand. The sand helps when it comes to releasing the brick from the mould. He then uses a bent stick with a length of wire tied to each end (like a cheese slicer) to remove the excess clay from the top of the mould. This done, he turns the mould over onto a sand-dusted bench and, using his thumbs, presses out the brick. It sounds labour intensive and it is. Nevertheless, in Victorian times, a crew of eight or ten experienced men could churn out over 5,000 bricks a day. These soft bricks would then be set to dry for two weeks or so, depending on the weather, and then they would be fired.
It’s unlikely the Sinclair brickyard had a sophisticated brick or cast iron kiln for firing the bricks. It’s much more likely they used a wood-fired “clamp,” the traditional method of baking bricks. This was done by stacking the dried bricks on top of a foundational layer of firewood. The pile of bricks was then sealed with clay and the fire lit. When the fire died out, the clamp was cracked open and the bricks removed. One mark of clamp-fired brick is the variation in colour. The darker the brick, the closer it was to the fire source.
I don’t know exactly when the Sinclair brick works closed. Given that Ken McEwen remembers the site as the “Finlay Sinclair brick yard,” it suggests that Donald passed the operation on to his son. So it’s probably safe to say brickyard was operational for at least 35 or 40 years. Over that time, I’d think they supplied brick to more than just one church and a few houses in Maxville. It might be an interesting project to collect samples from brick structures in Kenyon and compare them with a known sample of Sinclair brick. Once identified, a selection of these buildings might make an interesting candidate for the museum’s Historical Driving Tour.
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