Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 21.
The Raising
Stan Cross
The barn that remains at Meech Creek on Lot 24B range 14 West Hull (now Chelsea) located about twelve hundred feet north-west of the National Capital Commission parking lot on the Pine Road was built by my father Wyman Cross. In retrospect, 1 would say that it was probably the crowning jewel of his attainments.
The sand and gravel used in the concrete for the basement was scraped from sand bars in the Meech Creek with a team and scraper and mixed by hand on a sweat board, seven parts sand to one of cement. No reinforcing iron was used.
Likewise, the hemlock trees, required to make the 10x10 foot frame and the sheeting, were felled from the farm bush lot immediately to the west and sleighed, on the ice, down Meech Creek to the F.T. Cross mill at Farm Point, for sawing. The tin required for the roof would carry a bigger outlay of cash and would likely have come from McFarlane and Douglas roofers in Ottawa. Whatever the initial cost, it was relatively inexpensive when spread over the life of the building, since during the past seventy-seven years no replacement was ever required.
In later years, father would periodically get the urge to expound about his barn-building experience but he never seemed to comment on the materials used in its construction. He preferred to recall the fifty-two friends, neighbours and relatives who arrived to help with the Concrete Bee and a week or so later with the Raising Bee. The number fifty-two never seemed to change and correspondingly his admiration for them and gratitude towards them seemed to increase with the passing of time, even though he lived for more than ninety-four years. He would refer to the Caves, Reids, Clarks, Stevensons and Bradleys who farmed on the East side of the Gatineau River at Farm Point, and how they had to cross the river with their horses and buggies on a scow or ferry and then journey the three or four miles to the bee site.
The Raising Bee took place on June 16, 1916 when 1 was two days less than three months old. I had two elder sisters and my mother would then have been twenty-three years old.
Since no-one in those days would ever be seen carrying a brown-bag lunch to a bee, it follows, of course, that the same fifty-two people would have to be fed on the bee site, both dinner and supper. In the long days of June some of the workers might tarry to help with tidying up until dark, when sandwiches would be served.
Knowing my Mother as I later did, she would have taken charge. The feeding would be pickings for her, for she liked a stir. What is more, mother was never afraid of anything she could not see and she would see no problem there. She would not be without help. The senior ladies would insist that they just had to pitch in, at the same time knowing full-well that under no circumstance did they want to miss the event. The sixteen to twenty-four year old maidens would want to be there, probably to glance at some of the younger men and also to see first-hand how my mother, who was one of their peers, would approach such an undertaking, especially with three babies in tow.
A stir of this magnitude at Meech Creek, at a time when no-one there yet owned an automobile, would in itself generate a marvellous exchange of neighbourly friendship with lasting reminiscences. It is little wonder that my parents carried the memory of this lifetime event forward to my generation.
The date of the barn-raising was also memorable within the family for another reason. In life the good seems to come with the bad: Mother sadly mentioned to me later that the day the barn went up, March 16, 1916, was the day that her brother Roland went down, killed in action in France.