When Lillian Campbell set off for school nearly 60 years ago this spring, I suspect her thoughts were occupied by the big changes that lay ahead in her life. Lillian was a Grade 3 student at SS #2 (better known as Beaver Cotton), one of the four single-room schools that served the Dunvegan region. Five if you include Skye School. Located on Dunvegan Road just west of Highway 34, the building still stands today, directly across from McMaster Road. By the time Lillian was completing Grade 3, SS #2 was down to just nine students and it was the little school’s final year of operation. In the fall, Lillian and her classmates would be transferred to Maxville Public School. Unfortunately, I can’t ask Lillian what she was thinking about on her two-kilometer trek to Beaver Cotton, because she’s no longer with us. Lillian (Campbell) Hyslop was among the 22 Portapique residents tragically killed last week in Nova Scotia
Lillian was born in May of 1954, the daughter of Donald and Freda (Nixon) Campbell. She and her four sisters and one brother grew up on the family farm at the corner of Highways 34 and 24. Like so many farms, then and today, it required a second income to stay afloat. So their father also operated Kenyon Township’s road grader. After graduating from Maxville Public, Lillian and Robert Campbell from downtown Dunvegan (no direct relation) went on to Glengarry District High School in Alexandra. From there, she headed off to St. Lawrence College in Cornwall to earn a Registered Nursing degree. That box checked, she set her sights on the Yukon. There she worked as a nurse, married Maritimer Michael Hyslop in 1983 and raised a family. According to the Whitehorse Star, “…in the 1980s and ’90s, the couple kept a dog team at their rural Whitehorse property, and Mike worked for a local art store and the territorial government.” The travel bug seems to be in Lillian’s family’s blood. Her parents, Donald and Freda, pulled up stakes in March 1986 and left Dunvegan for British Columbia.
MacCrimmon Corners resident Donaldson MacLeod fondly remembers dropping in on Lillian back then. “I was working on the Alaskan Highway and was passing through Whitehorse every six to eight weeks,” Donaldson told me. “I’d bring her copies of the Glengarry News.” Former SS #2 classmate Norma MacCrimmon, who moved to Whitehorse in 1996, also renewed her friendship with Lillian when she hit town. She recalled that, as a break from nursing, Lillian became a travel agent. “She then leveraged this experience to land a job with the Yukon government arranging medevac flights,” Norma told me.
Lillian and her husband finally retired in 2014, moved back east to Nova Scotia and slowly began to connect with their new community. I was also told that this past winter was the couple’s first extended trip to Florida. They left shortly after Christmas and apparently were having the time of their lives. “Lillian loved Florida,” a close family friend told me. “They only returned to Portapique to comply with the government’s directive to skedaddle back to Canada.” I then asked if one memory of her late friend stood out from all the rest. “Her Christmas cookie parties in Whitehorse,” I was told. “Lillian was one smart cookie. A woman with a big heart and a fierce loyalty for her family.”
I never knew Lillian, which is too bad. The more I learn of her, the more I wish she had stayed here when the family gathered in 2017 to inter her parent’s ashes in the Dunvegan graveyard. Her community-mindedness would have been an real asset. I extend my condolences to her family and friends.
More on bladeless jack knives
Last week, I wondered out loud if anyone could explain the word puzzle I came across in the April 27th, 1900 Dunvegan column in the Glengarry News: “The small boy is not playing marbles in this place, but sometimes perhaps he trades bladeless jack-knives sight unseen.”
Local historian and bookseller extraordinaire David Anderson promptly emailed me and decoded it thusly: “A jack knife without a blade is just a jack,” he wrote. “Why play marbles when you can have a game of jacks?” Of course, this presupposes a hierarchy in children’s pastimes of this period in which a game of ‘Jacks’ trumps one of ‘Marbles’, but it is an elegant explanation. Thank you, David.
“Greatest Hits” driving tour?
While we’re on the subject of responses, allow me a moment to answer a question raised by another reader. He caught my brief mention of the Glengarry Pioneer Museum’s Historical Driving Tour last Wednesday and wondered if he could sign on for this year’s expedition of discovery. For those of you unfamiliar with the museum’s Driving Tour, it works on the convoy principal. Participants, having registered and paid in advance, gather in their own vehicle at the tour’s starting point. As the route usually involves travel on dusty back roads, you might forsake taking your motorcycle, but the choice is yours. The group then sets off, one after another, stopping at sites of historical interest along the way. It sounds a bit wacky, but it works. This year, the tour was to have featured “Waterways of Glengarry.” However, because of Covid-19, this itinerary has been postponed until next year. That said, event organizers Lindsey Howes and Stuart Robertson are considering a half-day “Greatest Hits” mini-tour in August that would feature favourite stops from past years.
Bob’s close shave
Last Friday afternoon around 4:00 pm, Marlie Tilker was sitting on the edge of her porch playing catch with Bob Barquer, the canine member of their household. All of a sudden, there was a loud cracking sound and a substantial section of an old Manitoba maple crashed to the ground right on top of their wee dog. From Jim Tilker’s description, I gather it was just like the classic silent movie scene from Steamboat Bill, Jr. In this 1928 film, Buster Keaton (not a stunt double) stops to catch his breath in front of a two-story house. The moment he does, the front wall of the house crashes down around him. He escapes without a scratch because his body is perfectly framed by an open window. It seems that Bob pulled off the same “old” trick.
A look before we leap
I am excited that Alexandria’s new seniors village is moving forward. Dunvegan seniors like Terry and I need options like this, now that securing spots at the Maxville Manor is no longer the “slam dunk” it used to be. However, I found the words of Steve Grieveson, IHA Canada’s president, a bit at odds with his firm’s architectural rendering of the proposed long-term care facility at the Glengarry Memorial Hospital. Despite the fact he told North Glengarry’s council that IHA is in a strong enough financial position to move forward, IHA’s sketch of a key part of the proposal tells me a different story. The drawing is at the extreme low end of the scale when it comes to this type of visualization. Perhaps a team of architects did the illustration, but in my opinion, it looks like it was quickly thrown together using software such as SketchUp Free, a web-based 3D modeling program. If corners are being cut when it comes to the project’s foundational visionary statement, what does this suggest for the future?
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