Prompt #7 - Grandfather #1

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 49^th 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.