As I have often mentioned, the Glengarry News collection available through the Glengarry County Archives’ web site is a marvelous resource. To be frank though, when I come upon the Dunvegan columns from yesteryear, I often experience a twinge of envy. Definitely before the 1970s, and even as late as the 1980s, there was a healthy dollop of community spirit in our little hamlet. The columnist of the day could write “Mr. and Mrs. MacBeamish were in Cornwall last Friday to visit their son Alistair,” and his or her readers would know which MacBeamish was being mentioned and have noticed they had been away from home. Today however, the vast majority of Dunvegan area residents wouldn’t know their neighbour if they ran into them in the Independent parking lot. Which sometimes makes coming up with a column during these lazy, hazy days of Covid a bit of a challenge. So forgive me please if, in these times of informational drought, I return to the past.
3Rs Erratum
At the end of April, I recounted how the late Lillian Campbell (who died in the recent Nova Scotia tragedy) attended SS #2 on Dunvegan Road. This was indeed true. Where I went off the rails was when I said that her school, better known as Cotton Beaver, was “one of the four single-room schools that served the Dunvegan region. Five if you include Skye School.” This total should have read: “Six.” Roughly, from east to west — over the course of the latter part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century — there was Kenyon SS #2 (Cotton Beaver), Caledonia SS #5 (Skye School), Kenyon SS #20 (Fiske’s Corners), Kenyon SS #3 (Dunvegan), Kenyon SS #24 (Ireland) and Kenyon SS #21 (Stewart’s Glen).
Origin of “Cotton Beaver”
Many thanks to Robert Campbell for the loan of his copy of The Schools of the Glens. It was of great help in getting me back on track. It also provided the possible genesis of Kenyon SS #2’s “Cotton Beaver” nickname. As Hazel Renwick MacIntosh (who started teaching at the school in 1942) explained in Schools of the Glens, “A bog area north and east of the school was filled with cattails which in the fall opened and spread their white fluff on the wind. Hence the name Cotton Beaver.” Well, that explains the cotton part, but what about the beaver? Luckily, Janet MacCrimmon was ale to offer a suggestion. Her late husband Harold said it referred to a type of swamp grass in poorly drained areas known as beaver grass. “My own family closer to Apple Hill also called wetland grasses, beaver grass,” Janet wrote me in an email.
Prize looking for good home
While we’re on the topic of Cotton Beaver School, a loyal reader from Cornwall has asked for my help in locating any relative of Eunice MacGillivray. I’m told Miss MacGillivray attended SS#2 in the 1940s and, at the close of the 1942-43 academic year was awarded a prize for the neatness of her work. Evidence of this accomplishment can be found on page 360 of Schools of the Glens where teacher Hazel Renwick MacIntosh continued her account of teaching at Cotton Beaver, “If I remember correctly I had about 20 pupils at that time. Two girls who passed the entrance exams were Hilda MacCrimmon and Eunice MacGillivray.”
Further proof turned up a few years ago, when my Cornwall reader stumbled across the prize Eunice had taken home: a handsome, leather-bound book entitled Life & Literature Book 2, Grade 8. Inside the font cover are pasted ‘stars’ for neat work and the inscription: “Eunice MacGillivray, Cotton Beaver School, 1942-43.”
As is the case for many of at this stage of our lives, the person who came across this book is beginning to think of downsizing or, at the very least, hopping aboard the latest de-cluttering fad. Consequently, she has asked me to act as an intermediary in finding a relative of Eunice MacGillivray who would be interested in giving the book — which I’m told would make a lovely coffee table tome — a good home. There is no cost involved. The book is free. So, if the ever-so-neat scholar Eunice MacGillivray is a branch on your family tree, simply get in touch with me and I’ll set the wheels in motion.
Arboreal buzz-cut
While completely off topic, if you get a chance to thumb through The Schools of the Glens(the 1992 history of many of the one-room schoolhouses in this area) take a gander at the photo of the buildings. They tell an interesting story when examined in the context of last week’s clear-cutting item. In many of the shots, much of the land surrounding the schools is largely devoid of tree cover. Back in the day, it would appear the fields were being used for agriculture. Two perfect examples can be found on page 335. It shows “Battle Hill” school and the “Big Beaver” school that replaced it in 1910.
Low Self-Esteem Group… use the back door
My old friend Mike Helm from Ottawa sent me a gem last week that his wife Barbara spotted in her church’s bulletin. It was a collection of typos and bloopers that purportedly were gleaned from actual church communications. Here are a few samples: The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals; Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands; Place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered: and… Low Self-Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 to 8:30 pm. Please use the back door. I’ll bet at least one of them brought a smile to your face.
I’m not aware if this “Church ladies with typewriters” feature has appeared in Dunvegan’s church bulletin. I’m not on the mailing list. However, a quick Internet search indicated that similar collections of jocularity have appeared on church web sites all across North America. I hate to be a Doubting Thomas, but the bloopers, while good clean fun, all seemed a little too slick. So I tried to find the e-headwaters of the ecclesiastical snafus. Nowhere could I nail down the original compiler of the typos and malapropisms. There are countless references to them online… but in virtually every case, the introduction that precedes them goes like this: “They’re back! Those wonderful Church Bulletins! Thank God for the church ladies withtypewriters. These sentences actually appeared in church bulletins or were announced at church services.” Perhaps.
I suspect it’s much more likely they are the product of a joke factory. A Christian joke factory, but a factory nevertheless. The closest I’ve come to what might be the rib-tickling source is a web site called Laughbreak.com. It bills itself as “The Best Place for Clean Jokes & Funny Useless Facts!” One of its pages is devoted to “89 Church Bulletin Bloopers To Make You Smile.” It looks like this could be where the typewriter-toting Church Ladies get their material.
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