In 1946 the community on the 5th and 6th Concession of (back then) West Gwillimbury Township welcomed a new farm family to the “settlement.”
Robert Andrew “Andy” and Mamie Ida Olive Russell moved into their new home, a wedding gift from Andy’s father, George McNair. It was formally listed as the west half of Lot 10, Concession 4, West Gwillimbury Township.
Andrew was born July 1, 1918, the third child of George and Mary Ann McNair. He was raised in Richmond Hill at the corner of Jefferson Sideroad and Bathurst Street. He grew up with siblings Allen, Clark, Mary and Bessie. Allen and Andy went up in the barn to catch pigeons, like so many farm boys did, and Andy, at the age of six or seven, fell out of the window and dropped 40 feet to the ground. His sister, Bessie, found him halfway to the house with a broken collar bone and cuts and bruises.
In his teen years, he had a dream of heading west, so he boarded a freight train and they were put off north of Orillia. It rained for two days. His dream was crushed, so he jumped a train back to Toronto. Andy decided he would do military training in Newmarket to prepare for the call to go to war. He worked on his father’s farm until he met Mamie and was married.
Mamie was born Feb. 26, 1924. She was a city girl from Willowdale and went to Oriole Public School (a tiny village that is now Willowdale). Mamie said it was so small, if you sneezed you would miss it.
Mamie had a sister, June, who always got the boys at a party. At one party the girls went to, Andrew McNair walked in and Mamie said to June, “He’s mine,” and they married April 27, 1946, in Toronto and moved north.
Now Mamie was in for a shock. They arrived at their new home that had no plumbing, no hydro and no heating system. They slept in the dining room off the kitchen in the winter, close to the wood stove.
As a city girl, she didn’t even know how to boil water, let alone cook a meal. Bobbi Hodgson (Mrs. Herb), who lived a bit east on the north side of Concession 5 and the 10th Sideroad, taught Mamie how to cook, how to kill chickens and make a meal for her hard-working husband. Mamie said it was like going back to pioneer days.
The first crop of grain was ready for harvest and the threshers would be coming to bring in the sheaves, and would be hungry for a good noon meal. Lylia Culbert (my mom) volunteered to help make pies for dessert. Mom said she would make the pie crust and Mamie would fill the dish with apples freshly peeled. Mamie remarked she had filled the pies with apples and was ready for the top crust.
When Mom turned to look at the pies, she remarked, “Oh, Mamie, you have to fill the pie plate with a lot more apples than that. You have to fill them to overflowing.” When the pies were cooked and Mamie started to cut the pie, she realized they cooked down a lot and remarked, “Lylia, thanks for the tip. The men would think I was very cheap if they had a pie with practically no apples.”
In the early years as newlyweds, they met neighbours, and the couples would get together to play cards, taking turns hosting the evening games.
In winter, if the roads were blocked, they would hitch up the horse to a cutter and head to town (Bradford) for supplies.
They were happy to have hydro installed in 1947. Andrew had remarked when he started farming on his own he would never milk another cow, but with the hydro in, he started again in 1947 and did so until 1997.
Time went on and Mamie and Andy started a family. Timothy George was born Aug. 7, 1951, while Andy was in the fields plowing.
Jane Helen was born July 6, 1954, and Andy was out in the field as it was right in the haying season. Such was the life of the farmers of bygone days.
In the winter of 1958, Mamie had health issues, so Andy and Mamie went to Arizona for a month and Tim and Jane came to live with our family. It was like having a new brother and sister. Again in 1960, the whole family went to Arizona for a month.
In later years, Mamie's mother, Helen Fraser Russell, came to live with them on the farm until she passed away in Beeton Manor in October 1968.
As Tim grew up, he found out there was a lot for a young kid to do around the farm — Staking sheaves of grain, mounding hay and helping with the milking, to name a few.
As kids, Tim and I would go back and forth to each other’s houses. One night, I was sleeping in Tim’s room and I would hear steps going back and forth, up and down the hall. The next morning, I asked Mamie if she had had a bad night. She said it was probably old Mr. Carscadden walking the halls. She told me that when they first came to live there, usually around the supper hour, they would hear footsteps on the back steps going to the hired man’s room. The door to the summer kitchen would open but no one was there. She told a new hired man not to be upset if he saw this happen, and he laughed and said that could not happen. Sure enough, it did and he was out of the house that day and never came back.
Mamie said after they opened the wall between the back wing and the front wing of the house, the steps moved all over the house. She said the kids would be in school and Andrew in the field, but she would have to go check when she heard footsteps coming down the front stairs. So, I concluded I was not imagining things.
In 1965, my father was in ill health and we sold the farm. I would go out to visit the McNairs and, one time I was out there, an old Victrola was outside just beyond the back door, going to the barn. I asked why it was there and Mamie said it didn’t work and was going to the dump. She asked if I wanted it, so I took it to our new home in Bradford. I took it all apart out on the veranda and greased it well and put it together. I think the whole neighbourhood came to see it when it started playing a record. That was my first collectible piece of furniture and got me started on the antique craze — something I still do.
Tim married Jean Charlebois in 1981 and they have a daughter, Mellissa Jane, born June 1, 1989.
Jane married Paul Frederick Williams (son of Thomas Earl Williams and Dorothy Abernathy of Tecumseth) June 23, 1979.
They have two children, Chad Thomas Andrew (July 21, 1987) and Amber-Rose (Oct. 11, 1991).
As milking was their bread and butter, Andy, along with Tim, renovated their barn in 1958 using a new method of bringing the cows in for milking. It was called a milking parlour. The cows would come into their station, which was elevated so the milkmen would be at arm’s length to apply the milking machine to the cow’s teats. It was a lot easier on the men, instead of having to kneel to milk the cows. From there, the milk went through the lines and went into the milk cooler. On the appointed day, the milk truck would come in and take the milk to be processed and the cycle would be repeated.
In 2000, at 51 years of age, Tim was doing a lot of the farming and Andy suffered a heart attack, and his health began to fail. He was devoted to Mamie’s care, and when she passed (Dec. 8, 2002), he moved in with his daughter. He then started to spend a lot of time at his sister’s house, talking of old times, but would return on weekends for his game of euchre with “the boys.”
Andrew passed away Jan. 4, 2004.
They are buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto.
Thanks to Tim and Jane for family pictures.
