Prompt
#7 – Grandparents
I had a
wealth of grandparents, three of whom I knew fairly well. The fourth,
my maternal grandfather, Stanley Livingstone Bubar, was born in
Hartland, New Brunswick, on April 9, 1876. The Bubar family had lived
in the New Brunswick/Maine area since before the American Revolution.
We do not know where they came from, before moving to one of the
thirteen colonies. When he was four or five, Stanley's parents,
Charles Wellington Bubar and Sophronia Day Bubar, migrated to what
had been the Red River Colony, and was, since 1870, the province of
Manitoba. CW's brother George had been in Red River since before the
rebellion and had been confined in Lower Fort Garry by Riel's
provisional government. Rumour has it that GB's initials are carved
on the tyndall stone wall near the main gate of the fort. The
brothers, George Bubar and Charles Wellington Bubar, SL's father, ran
a paddlewheel riverboat freighting business out of Selkirk, Manitoba,
hauling produce from St. Paul, Minnesota to Winnipeg. The completion
of the trans-continental railroad across Canada in 1885 undercut the
river freight business. The American route was no longer necessary.
CW took the train west to scout out new opportunities. In 1891, he
found land in British Columbia's Kettle River valley, a couple of
miles north of the 49th
parallel, east of Kelowna and Osoyoos, and purchased the ranch from
Mr. McCallum, the man who owned the preemption. Three hundred and
twenty-three acres for $291.25, paid in four installments. The old
Dewdney Trail built in 1858, linking Fort Hope and the mining
district in eastern BC, skirted the northern edge of the ranch. And
in 1910, five or so miles of river frontage were expropriated for the
construction of the Kettle Valley Railroad.
But I've
already gotten ahead of myself. In 1891, Charles (CW) and Sophronia
moved their family to Kettle Valley, BC. Seven of them set
out—father, mother, Stanley, Franklin, Bayard, Beatrice, Charles,
and six year old Miles who did not survive the journey. His was the
first grave in the family cemetery on the hillside above the ranch
house. Six years old. The family built log barns and stables. They
lived in a log cabin and later built a log house. The cattle brand
for the ranch was 91, the year they began ranching. CW augmented the
unpredictable ranch income by doing contract work, freighting, and
working in sawmills. On July 4, 1900, he drowned in a log boom
accident in Golden, BC, leaving Sophronia and her sons to run the
ranch. When Franklin married the local school teacher, the ranch was
split between the two older brothers and a second home was built at
the western end of the property. (The two younger brothers later
purchased ranches at Beaverdell.)
Stanley
lived in the main ranch house with his mother, Sophronia. He loved
horses and raced his horse Solo in local fairs and contests. There is
a professional portrait of him taken in Walla Walla, WA, and another
tourist shot of him standing inside the famous hollow tree in
Vancouver's Stanley Park. And the iconic photograph of him fording
the Kettle River driving his two white horses known as the Two Blind
Mice. A large print of this photo hung in the ranch house dining room
all the years of my childhood.
In 1919,
during the Great Flu Epidemic which followed the first World War,
Stanley drove his sleigh (now in the Midway museum) pulled by
his favourite black team up to the door of a quarantined house in Rock
Creek, a few short miles from the family ranch in Kettle Valley. He
handed a sealed envelope to the child at the door and asked that it
be given to the nurse, Miss Hayne. This was the way he proposed to my
grandmother, Winifred. She must have said Yes as they were married,
not sure where, but registered in the courthouse in Nelson, BC, on
June 25, 1919. Stanley was 43 years old and Winifred was 25.
For the
first eight years, the couple lived with Sophronia in the big ranch
house. Winifred bore seven children (one was stillborn) between 1919
and 1931—Anne Patricia, George Murray, Elizabeth Jane, Margaret
Norah (my mother), Stanley Livingstone Jr., and Arthur Leonard.
Sophronia did not approve of Winifred, or of her “English airs”
so Winifred retreated to the library. Sophronia died on July 2, 1928,
when the house became Winifred's domain. Her daughters did all the
house work and cooking. The whole days worth of dirty dishes awaited
the girls when they got home from school. Auntie Betty remembers her
father Stanley closing the door between the dining room and the
kitchen, rolling up his shirt sleeves, and helping the girls wash
dishes. There are snapshots of him tickling his daughter Anne when
she is maybe four years old, and of him cutting his sons' hair
outside at the woodpile, and one of him and Winifred a couple of
years before he died.
Bill
Harpur, a neighbour whose mother Mary was a friend of Winifred's,
remembers the couple coming to the Harpur home for a meal. When the
platter of fried chicken was passed to Stanley, he piled his own
plate high with pieces, announcing to the table that “I was invited
to a chicken supper and I'm going to eat chicken.” I can just
imagine Grandma tut-tutting “Oh, Stanley!” This story may be the
origin of my thinking of my grandfather Stanley as a cross between
King Henry VIII and Tom Jones.
Stanley
died of a heart attack in September 22, 1937. His young son, Stanley
Jr. had been sent by his mother to call his father in for lunch. “I
found him there, lying in the field, stone dead,” Stanley Junior
recalled. “I was seven years old.” Stanley Sr. joined his parents
and young brother in the family cemetery. Winifred, with six children
under 16, carried on. She ran the ranch along with her sons until she
retired in 1959 and moved into a small house in town (Midway, BC).
My
mother was eleven when her father died. I think she felt abandoned. I
know she missed him terribly. I never met him, but I feel that I
would have liked him. I loved his three sons, my uncles Arthur,
Stanley Jr., and George. I have visited the family cemetery. Visiting
the family origin sites in Maine and New Brunswick is still on my
bucket list.
