Land of Smoke and Maple Syrup.

John McLeod, farmer from Linguick Quebec, The Horse. My husband, this man’s great great grandchild, has a slight palsy too and the same eyes.

Here’s a bit from a History of Compton County by L. S. Channell. You know, I called my website about John’s descendants, Tighsolas, because that is the name of the comfortable home in which the Nicholson family lived. Reading this bit below, no doubt taken from first-hand accounts (perhaps Margaret’s Mom lent her bit in Gaelic, as that is all she spoke) it is easy to see why this lovely brick house meant so much to the family. This book was published in 1896, the year Norman Nicholson (husband of Margaret Macleod) built Tighsolas, in Richmond, Quebec and the year Wilfrid Laurier came to power

This is from the chapter on Lingwick. The first settlers to the region were Americans, then some Irish, then the Scotch..

“They were shortly followed by a number of Highland Scotch from the Isle of Lewis. They were Donald MaKay, Murdo Maclean, Donald MacDonald, John MacLeod (the Horse so-called because he he was the only Scotchman to have a horse for the first four years) Donald MacLeod,

Donald Matheson, Angus MacLeod and John MacLeod the weaver. There were so many MacLeods and MacDonalds, the Scotch to this present day have many nicknames to distinguish one from the other.

These Highlanders had several reasons for seeking their fortunes in far away Canada. They were poor and had considerable trouble at home with their land-lords. They wanted to own farms of their own. Some of them had been mislead by stories of the advantages of the New Country. They had been told that tobacco is grown in Canada as easily as barley. That when they wanted sugar they simply went to the woods, bored a hole in a maple tree and filled a bucket with syrup, which immediately flowed and which after a little boiling made splendid sugar. When they had all the sugar they wanted they put a plug in the hole until more was needed.

The first 8 families were brought over by the British American Land Company but the rest paid their way. They they settled on the road between Bury and Gould and lived as close together as they could. This was always the main thought with the Scotch settlers in those days. It was this that made them leave the farms close to Sherbrooke, which could be secured at the same price. They wanted to have a settlement of their own, where they could live like Highlanders “shoulder to shoulder.” None of them in those days thought of owning a larger farm than 50 acres.

The cabins built by the settlers the first year were very small. The season was so late when they came that the bark would not peel, so they roofed them with split cedar and some with spruce and fir boughs. They were floored with little poles, hewed on one side, and had one door one window, being only one story high. The cabins had no fire places or chimneys the first winter. Flat stores were laid on the floor and against the end of the cabin furthest from the door. A hole was made in the roof to let all the smoke out and that was inclined to escape. The roof was generally so badly constructed that whenever it rained outside, it rained inside also. The kitchen utensils were a few dishes brought over from Scotland and a pot or two. The furniture consisted of a table, a cupboard or a dresser as it called, some clumsy home-mde tools and a bed or two.

The settlers lived the first year principally on oatmeal, advanced by the BAL Company. They paid for this the following summer at the rate of $5 for one hundred pounds by grubbing out a road from Bury to Gould.”

What is a House? What is a Home?

Tighsolas, 1910 era. House of Light

In 1896, while the Liberals were lobbying for the right to rule, and while Herbert Ames was conducting his survey of Montreal poverty in the City Below the Hill, Norman Nicholson, my husband’s great grandfather was building a house up on the hill, or up from the river at least, in Richmond, Quebec. He built it ‘himself’.

What is a house, I am moved to ask.

In this case it was $100.00 for a lot, (a large unknown sum borrowed but the house itself ending up costing 2,700.00) payment of note 300.00, stone for south wall, 53 dollars, lumber 74.80, plastering house, 96.48, carpentry labour 373.80, bricking house 106.60,etc.

Norman was doing well in 1896. Big money poured through his business (I have the records.) So was the country of Canada doing fine and it would continue to prosper in the Laurier Era to come. Norman was a successful hemlock bark dealer. But soon the hemlock in the Eastern Townships of Quebec would be used up and tanners (who used the bark in their process) would look to Scandinavia for hemlock bark, or use other methods in their tanning process.

This, at least, is how I understand it.

Tighsolas, the house that Norman built for his family in 1896, would become both an anchor for the family in hard times and a brick albatross around its neck, keeping the family from being nimble enough to keep with the changing economy in the early twentiesth century.

As I have written elsewhere, Tighsolas was more than a house to the Nicholsons. These people were descendants of Isle of Lewis crofters, cleared from their land in 1838, 41 and 51, and forced to come to Canada, the US and Australia. PEI and St. Francis Quebec were their ports of destination in Canada.

In some cases, their homes, mud huts with thatched roofs, were burned from over them. In some cases they came to Canada with nothing. One group of immigrants, which probably included the McLeods, Margaret’s ancestors, arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

So, this puts the story of Tighsolas into perspective. Call it racial memory. If Margaret Nicholson, born in Canada in 1854, felt like a ‘true Canadian’ she also had a mother who spoke only Gaelic.

And Edith was moved to visit the Homeland in 1932, where she took pride in the fact that some Nicholson ancestors had founded an education institute of note on the Isle of Lewis. She brought back the documents for the Nicholson Institute.

But Norman’s Nicholsons had come to the Isle of Lewis from Skye.

Stornoway is the capital of Isle of Lewis. It is no coincidence that the house of the Leader of the Opposition in the Canadian Parliament is called Stornoway.