Posted on

EPISODE 288 FARMING WITH JOHN AND ELEANOR CALDER



EPISODE 288:  FARMING WITH JOHN AND ELEANOR CALDER

alan skeoch
March 2021





FARMING in Ontario has changed.  Many farms have been combined into large holdings of several thousand

acres.  Corporate farms.  These farms specialize in production of various grains…wheat, oats, flax, corn, soybeans.

Sometimes corporate farmers have large holdings of animals as well but many others market grain on a grand scale.

John and Eleanor Calder had a diversified  farm.  Successful.  Depends how success if measured, does it not?

Milk was the best income producer I believe.
Sheep for John were a matter of the heart.  He was a shepherd…and not just a shepherd of sheep.
His vision went far beyond that.   John and  I formed a natural bond of shared  interests and some
shared values.  19th and 20th century machines.  He knew how they worked.  I knew how they looked.
  Eleanor (Townsend) Calder is a keeper of the clan.   She, like her mother Elizabeth (Skeoch)
Townsend,  undertook the task of keeping a massive extended family in as close a contact with each
other as possible.  That meant opening up the Townsend/Calder farm to all of us.  I cannot think of
anyone in our family that Eleanor did not greet with open arms.

Today, March 20, 2021, he task of bringing a huge extended family together is just about impossible.  Why?
Because none of us farm anymore.  We are an urban clan spread across he world from Woodruff Farm to distant
points in Canada to New Zealand to England to South Korea to God knows where.    When I was a little boy
that was not the case.  We had many farms in the family.  So many.  Most of them in Wellington County but others
in Saskatchewan.

But the Skeoch Townsend farm was the hub in the wheel.  Why should you care?  Because these pictures should
make you understand just what we have lost in the 80 years or so.  For many of us the rural roots have been
severed  so long ago that sometimes you may feel they never existed.

John and Eleanor made sure that never happened to us.


Eleanor is the big sister…oldest of the the four Townsend children…and the hardest working in my opinion.  Jim and Owen will be

offended by that remark.  So be it.  If a  cow had to be rolled helped with a calf.  Eleanor was there.  If kittens got out of control….I counted

30 cats in the dairy barn once…someone had to keep that population in check.  Enough said.

She met John Calder at the OAC where Eleanor thought of becoming a veterinarian. She would have been a natural except for one problem.
She was female.  Tough sledding.  But all was not lost for she and John fell in love.  Enduring love.  Love that triumphed over minor blips in
the human journey.  First they farmed near Carluke, south west of Hamilton, but something went wrong and they had to trek back to Bellwood.
Trek ?


John was a collector of machines.  Particularly Threshing machines.  He had five or six of them….each as big as a transport
truck.  All had to be hauled by back roads from Carluke to Bellwood.  Along with ancient tractors, hay wagons, mowers, plows,
…etc. etc.   John did this alone.  His tractor hooked to one thresher.  Slowly making way, trip after trip.  Until the Carluke
farm was stripped bare.  I wish I had known.  I would have traced him down on some gravel road inching his way north with 
all his machines.   Eleanor was busy making a new home on the Bellwood “new property” her dad had purchased across
the highway from  Woodruf Farm, the home farm.  









John Calder’s face seemed to always be locked in a smile.


Six of the Skeoch ‘kids]’…left to right,  Marguerite (Skeoch) Metcalfe, Lena (Skeoch) Tosh

Elizabeth (skeoch) Townsend, back row…John Skeoch (Saskatchewan farm 3,200 acres), 

Norman Skeoch (younger, got the Home farm), Arnold “red” Skeoch (my father, tire bullder)
Stories about Red  Skeoch are featured in several of these episodes.  He will either offend
or amuse.   Missing  Arthur Skeoch (tire builder), Sarah Skeoch (teacher, died in 1918-19
Spanish Flu epidemic). 

 Cousin Eleanor picked up the responsibility for the Skeoch clan
from her mother Elizabeth in the picture.   a very strong willed woman.

John Skeoch (Art Skeoch’s eldest son, spent his youth at the Skeoch farms as

we did.  John and I had the thankless job of being executors at the sale of the home Skeoch farm.)

No joy in mudville doing that job.
, Owen Skeoch Townsend (computer specialist…entered the industry when the word
computer meant adding machine, James Skeoch Townsend (agronomist, University of
Manitoba…potato specialist among others).  Owen Townsend’s son Dirk is responsible
for this Blog…he set it up for me.  (Mary, the youngest died a few years ago. We are
the same age.  Mary wanted  me to play house with her on one visit.  Drinking from make
believe cups of tea, eating from make believe dinner plates, cuddling dolls to put them
to sleep.   I was most uncomfortable that day but did what was expected.
 Seems a Townsend is always in the right place at
the right time.


All of my pictures of Eleanor Townsend seem to show her at work.  She is a

sure fire multi tasker.   I am proud to call  her my cousin.  Admire her much.





Alan Skeoch … holding a lamb …taking credit for the work of others…i.e. the ewe, John

who cornered the ewe on a cold  March evening, Eleanor who helped the ewe put out the lamb.



When most farms were switching over to combine harvesters, John and Eleanor insisted on taking
the crop off using a binder to cut and tie the sheaves, then each sheaf had to be “stoked” in the field
to dry, then loaded on a wagon,  hauled  to John’s best Threshing machine powered by an ancient
Rumely Oil Pull tractor.   The threshed  grain was blown through a long tube into the
granary deep in the bowels  of the barn.  

When Eric and  I were 10 and  12, we were told to crawl into the granary and keep
pushing the grain to the back.  It was a race with death.  Push the grain back or die.
We kept sinking in the grain…die smothered we felt…so we fought that steady
stream of wheat that showered us.  We fought to stay on top.
We did what we were told but got scared as our backs began to touch the ceiling
of the granary and  there was only one tiny escape hole.   The noise of the thresher
and the humping of the Oil Pull tractor was deafening.  Had we been forgotten.
Then SILENCE.  “Crawl out boys, time for dinner.”   Big spread,  More pies  than
I ever saw in a bakeshop….Rhubarb, apple, blueberry, mincemeat, cherry…so much
pie that we were not sure we could crawl  back in the granary through that tiny hole.
“It’s over boys.  Threshing is done.” We looked  at each other.  We had been part
of something great…something we would never forget.  We had lived through it.










There is no money in raising sheep I am told.  No one told that to John and Eleanor.  They loved the 

role of shepherds.    Fleeces are hard to sell.  Mutton  is  not the best kind of meat.  Spring lamb meat
rings of murder.   

I have one enduring memory of those sheep.  One bright sunny late spring day I wheeled into their farm
…met Eleanor who seemed a little non plussed. 

 “Where’s John?”
“Down in the back field burying his sheep.”
“What?”
“Dogs got into the sheep last night…ripped them bad.”
“Wild dogs?”
“No, I don’t think so.  Likely some pet dogs that were allowed to run loose.”

I hiked down the lane and there was John burying his sheep.  Not all of them
but many of them.  The corpses lay around  like limestone boulders.   John was
not a man to curse but he cursed that day.

“Alan, the dogs did not even kill the sheep.  Just ripped them to pieces. I had to 
shoot them.”,  then i saw the rifle leaning against the tractor as John hauled a ewe
into the pit he had dug.
“Whose dogs?”
“Not sure.  I do not want to talk about it.”

I got the feeling that the rifle would do double duty if a dog showed  up that day.





The story of this farm house will come as a separate Episode.  The house, to my mind, demonstrates

the triumph of the human spirit.








Posted on

EPISODE 287 MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLIITION BITS AND PIECES and WOODEN QUILTS FROM THE ASHES


EPISODE 287   MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION        BITS AND PIECES OF THE FACTORY     WOOD QUILTS OUT OF THE ASHES

alan skeoch

march 2021





WELL this is the end of the Massey Ferguson Demolition series.  Just a few bits and pieces that were not
woven into a story form.  Some pictures of the Massey machines made at the factory.  And some more
of the wood quilts made from some of the Massey Ferguson salvage and snow fence, old house shutters,
lath from plaster walls… A mish mash.

1)  Uncle Norman’s Massey Harris  combine harvester circa 1950….while combining it picked up

a rock which dented the cylinder and could not be fixed even thought Uncle Norman tried to fix it

with a ball pain hammer.  At the farm sale years later the combine sold to a scrap man for around $100
even though some members of the Skeoch family thought it was worth several thousand dollars.  I think
cousin John and I, who were Norman’s executors, have never been quite  forgiven.

  


2) Below are a selection of Massey Harris machines…most of them are designed

to encourage sales.  Massey Harris colours are red snd gold, two colours which
I used often in my wooden Quilts.  The same colours, red and gold, were the proud
colours of Parkdale Collegiate Institute.   Strange?



That’s one of our sons, Andrew. siting on a Massey Harris tractor.  Note he is replicating the

sounds the tractor would make had the motor been running.






I an not sure where this ancient tractor was made.  It is a Massey Harris machine however.


3) A selection of my fold art.  Please do not feel I am trying to sell.   Just having fun.



  END EPISODE 287



Post Script:  Who were the Masseys?

Massey Manufacturing Co.[edit]

In 1847, Daniel Massey established the Newcastle Foundry and Machine Manufactory in what is now Newcastle, Ontario.[2] The company made some of the world’s first mechanical threshers, at first by assembling parts from the United States, but eventually designing and building its own equipment. Daniel Massey’s son, Hart Massey, subsequently renamed the enterprise as the Massey Manufacturing Co. In 1879, the company moved to Toronto,[3] where it soon became one of the city’s leading employers. The huge complex of factories, consisting of a 4.4-hectare (11-acre) site with plant and head office at 915 King Street West (now part of Liberty Village), became one of the best-known features of the city. The company expanded further and began to sell its products internationally.[3] Through extensive advertising campaigns, it became one of the most well-known brands in Canada. A labour shortage throughout the country also helped to make the firm’s mechanized equipment very attractive.
Massey began experimenting with oil engines about 1910, with engines such as the Bulldog. However, success came only later in the 1920s with the Wallis line of tractors which was purchased by the firm.
In the 1930s, it introduced the first self-propelled combine harvester.[2] Massey Harris also produced one of the world’s first four-wheel drive tractors. Hart Massey’s sons Charles, Walter, Chester and Fredbecame closely involved in the business and eventually took over its operations. They were the last generation of Masseys to run Massey-Harris. Other members of the family went on to other accomplishments: Vincent Massey became Governor General of Canada and Raymond Massey became a noted actor in American films. The Massey family used its fortune to improve the city of Toronto and many institutions, such as the University of Guelph, University of Toronto, Upper Canada College, Crescent School, Appleby College, Massey Hall and Metropolitan United Church, were partially financed by the Masseys.
Credit above  to Wikipedia
Posted on

EPISODE 286MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION THE JOHN CALDER SAW MILL, BELLWOOD, ONTRIO


EPISODE  286    MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION        THE JOHN CALDER SAWMILL,  BELLWOOD, ONTARIO

alan skeoch
March  2021




“Alan, if you ever need some logs cut into planks, bring them up to the farm.”

John did not have to ask twice.  On week ends i began moving my Massey Harris beams
from Toronto to Bellwood.   And then the nice part happened.  I spent several days
helping John convert old factory posts  into nice white pine planks which we then
fed into his planer.  

Saw dust and wood chips  peppered the air and on some days the wood chip shower
was interspersed with snow flakes.  It was  ‘the best of times’.  Unforgettable. 

Especially when the milling was halted for a few hours so the lambing could be assisted if
a ewe needed help getting the little lamb into the open air.  Then there was  milking time
which took precedence over everything.  The Holstein herd had to be milked on s
a regular schedule.   The Calder/Townsend herd bellowed at milking time.  Painfull.  Could
not be delayed.  Seven days a week job.   Imagine trying to tend a flock of sheep, a dairy herd and a saw mill
all on the same day.

John had his flock of sheep.  Eleanor had her herd of cattle.  There lives were contained within that framework
from which there was no desire to escape. Morning, day, and night labour.   No time to waste?  Not quite true for there were 
hours in the daytime when the saw mill could be put into operation.   Those were my moments.



Some Massey Harris beams ready for the saw mill after we made sure there
wer no nails.   Jus one nail could damage the saw blade.   Most small saw mills
will not accept used wood beams…nor will they accept logs from city trees
lest there be a fence bolt or worse buried in the log.






The wood grain streaks, along with blemishes from long gone branching points, made the southern pitch
pine planks, in my mind, an imaginary terrain of farm fields freshly furrowed but interrupted by granite 
boulders pushed down here by glaciers that towered above the land pushed and pushing those stones.  



John had other jobs than mine such as this gargantuan piece.  John was  not a man to waste things.   Even the towering skeletal
dead elms on his farm were worth salvaging.   Once put through his saw mill the spoliated elm planks had a beauty all their own.
John used these planks with their ghostly markings to clothe the interior walls of the stone house he had almost completed.









I am not sure why John is threatening to eat here.  





END:  THE JOHN CALDER SAW MILL, BELLWOOD, ONTARIO.

NEXT:   EPISODE 287:   WHAT THE CALDER FAMILY WERE DOING OTHER THAN SAWING WOOD

alan skeoch
March 2021

SAMPLES OF WOOD QUILTS MADE FROM WOOD SCRAPS

Post Script   Just a couple of my Wooden Quilts to remind readers that there
was an end use of some of this rescued lumber.  Small bits and pieces captured
my imagination so often.  It began with a crumpled sections of snow fence on Uncle 
Norman’s farm.  Each piece of distressed lath looked like a dark and foreboding
sky.   A little polishing with the belt sander and shaping with the band saw and… ‘Presto’… the 
busted  snow fence pieces became something real.


I made this one in remembrance of an attack on John Calder’s sheep by ‘pet’ dogs…story 
coming in an Episode




These large pictures now hang above fireplace at home and on wall at farm


This is an old school near Thornbury… enclosed in a white pine forest.

Posted on

MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION ANCIENT TIMBER RESCUE…JOHN CALDER SAWMILL

EPISODE 285    MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION    ANCIENT TIMBER RESCUE…JOHN CALDER SAWMILL


Alan skeoch
march 16, 2021


From this jumble of broken dreams…timbers were rescued.




then put through John Calder’s saw mill and planer



To become white pine planks from ancient trees…almost free of knots.

THIS IS THE STORY OF THE RESCUE OF MASSEY HARRIS  FERGUSON WHITE  PINE BEAMS.

alan skeoch
March 15, 2021.

The Massey Ferguson  factories were built in the late 19th century.  Red bricks turned black by the soot of untold numbers
of coal fired steam engines,  White pine timbers bashed  snd  beaten by cast iron parts carts.   Southern pitch pine
flooring so tough they were hardly scarred.   I found them 40 years ago when the factory was being demolished. 
A rescue seemed necessary.  You can be the judge of that.

Those  wood construction materials were almost overlooked while I was retrieving factory pieces such as the Iron Working machine
or the the wheeled cast iron parts carts.   So much wood.  Piled and shattered by the excavators and bull dozers.   What a waste.
I rescued a cross section of the wood…some white pine timbers…some pitch pine floor boards.  Then cleaned them at home
pulled out an spikes…tested the pieces with my belt sander. They were beautiful.   So  the wood rescue began.




ALL the Massey Harris factory carts were abandoned and damn difficult to rescue like
this beauty angled for a fall.  Sadly it was lost,  But several were saved. and  rolled
up planks into the back  of the truck



The Massey Ferguson factory floors were held up by hundreds of white pine
beams…12 x 12 inches wide, perhaps 12 feet long.



Problem getting these beams  after the building was knocked down.  How  to get
the beam out from under all the broken pieces.  Think about it.





How?   Not so easy.  Imagine a gigantic game of ‘pick up sticks’.  Dislodging one beam in a pile of beams might cause
an avalanche.  To avoid that I used a heavy rope attached to the ball Hitch on the back of my truck.  Tie the rope to the
selected beam…drive forward to get the beast into a level place for loading.  Watch out for spikes that could blow a
tire or puncture my hand.    I think one tire got punctured and CAA was called.  Fixed in not time.  Not sure that happened
on the Massey site.  It has happened often.

First rescue was the big 12 x 12 white pine beams used to support all the floors in the buildings. Most were about 12 feet long
and could slide in my van with a little effort.  Truck could take six with ease if back doors were open and the extended beams
were flagged with a red warning sign.   I got pile of these beams.  Then about halfway through the demolition some other
guy got the same idea on a bigger scale.   He brought in a flat back truck and had the beams loaded by a  crane.   Glad
to see him.  I stopped my beam rescue about then as I had more than enough stacked at home in the laneway.


Eventually someone else got the idea and the rescue of the beams was done
on a larger scale.



The southern pitch pine planks were totally ignored and there were hundreds of them.   Most had big spikes in them
with points obvious.   The wood grain once cleaned was marvellous.  So I continued fishing for lumber but it was a
little more difficult because the spikes were like fish hooks.  Trying to get one plank brought a whole bunch.    These were
not small planks…4 inches thick, 8 to 10 inches wide…heavy and long.   Such a waste to see these planks
ground to splinters and hauled to some disposal site.  I managed to get several van loads of them and now
our cellar has pitch pine walls.  Wish I had rescued more but there was no time and too much  danger even when
using a long rope and the truck hitch.  Somebody had to tie the plank which  meant getting a little to close to
the piles of planks dumped by the excavator.   




You my begin to wonder wha I would want with this beaten up lumber.  See
the final entry…the Wooden Folk Art piece
Why would  I be stupid enough to do  this?

Because John Calder, my cousin Eleanor’s husband  had just finished assembling a saw mill on their farm.  John was
a brilliant man.  I miss him as do all that knew him.   He bought or was given a saw mill that had been taken apart some years
earlier and left in pile of rusting parts.  In the pile was an immense cast iron planing machine still intact.  So John spent
months reassembling the mill beside his barn located between Fergus and Bellwood in Wellington County.   This was
not an easy task.  But John had time and he had the skills that I will never have.  

TO BE CONTINUED IN EPISODE 286    THE JOHN CALDER SAWMILL, BELWOOD, ONTARIO

P.S/

Might interest you to know what I made with some of the bits and pieces
of Massey Ferguson wood waste.   Sample below, story is coming.I loved using distressed
wood pieces to work into a picture.   The backboard of this piece has been pecked by a thousand
chickens.  The piece has No Name…that is your task.


Posted on

EPISODE 284 PART TWO: PARKDALE COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE PICTURES OF THE PAST MARCH 15, 2021




EPISODE 284   PART TWO     PICTURES OF PARKDALE COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE  …MOSTLY OF CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION IN 1989


“Listen up kids,  I bet Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau would come to Parkdale if you

send him an invite.  He would not listen  to me but he sure would listen to you.”

So my Grade 10 kids send an invite and sure as  god made little green apples, the
Prime Minister arrived.  His sniffer dog came the day before PM Trudeau…then the
RCMP undercover guys, then the entourage.  One of our girls at Parkdale broke through the 
security detail and grabbed  Trudeau in a bear hug giving him a big kiss.  He smiled.





NOTE:   PART TWO PICTURES  OF  PARKDALE COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE STUDENTS
AND  STAFF.   (A continuation of Part One )  

alan skeoch
march 15, 2021




Posted on

EPISODE 284 MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION: PARKDALE C.I. STAFF AND STUDENTS MAKE A FILM SET COME ALIVE (PART ONE)

NOTE:  THIS story can stand alone.  One year Around 1980 a whole movie
set from the demolition of Massey Ferguson was moved to our
high school auditorium.  Play Chuck Berry’s SCHOOL DAYS while
reading below.  I mean it.  Get the recording going…



EPISODE 284   MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION:   PARKDALE COLLEGIATE  INSTITUTE BEOMES A FILM SET


alan skeoch
March 2021




About the time the Massey Ferguson factory was being demolished, our high school, Parkdale Collegiate was a big
part of my life.   One day I brought the two together…the demolition site on King Street West and PCI on Jameson
Avenue

If life is to be enjoyable then laughter is a key element.  At PCI we tried to mix the good times with the rigour of
academia.   Successfully done I feel.   

One day while rummaging through the wreckage at the Massey Ferguson factory
I noticed  a film crew doing the same thing.  Rummaging. They even made the wreckage look worse by having graffiti artists spray
symbols all over the bricks.  I think it was supposed to be the wreckage of  New  York City after some disaster.
Bottom line is that when the film was finished and the set was piled with the trash I moved in with my truck and loaded up all the discarded props  and
set material.  Garish signs with big dollops of paint over and under.  A  real mess.  Looked terrific.  Drove the stuff to Parkdale 
and staff and  student remodelled  our auditorium into a rock and roll music hall in New York City.  Some of the staff and
students were already rehearsing “School Days”,  that fever pitched song promoted by Jerry Lee Lewis I think.  No, it was Chuck Berry.
 Mary Hunter, staff member, had been a cheerleader in the past and gave leadership not that much was necessary.  The school was exploding with anticipation


Up in the mornin’ and out to school
The teacher is teachin’ the Golden Rule
American history and practical math
You study’ em hard and hopin’ to pass
Workin’ your fingers right down to the bone
And the guy behind you won’t leave you alone

Ring ring goes the bell
The cook in the lunchroom’s ready to sell
You’re lucky if you can find a seat
You’re fortunate if you have time to eat
Back in the classroom open you books
Gee but the teacher don’t know
How mean she looks


We dressed ourselves up as outlandishly as possible for our annual rock
and roll assembly.  We did this often each year but that one year was really special because the set design was
perfect.   About mid way through our preparations there was a visit by a young man.  “It’s about the movie set.”
He  had planned to pick it up as well.  In other words he knew it was junk.  But good  junk.  “Yes, come into
the auditorium and take a look.”  He was impressed.  “Do you suppose I could have the New  York subway signs
when your show is over?”   “Sure, take what you want.”   The  music  of Chuck Berry was busting up the the
speakers.   Everybody gyrating even if not on stage.   This was one grand  use for a discarded movie set.

The pictures of staff and students above and below will give you an idea.  With all he feverish energy that only
teen agers can inject.  Sorry, not true.   i meant to say all the feverish energy that only teen-agers and their teacher 
could inject.

NOTE:  This is only Part One:  The pictures are from various rock snd roll shows.  And from the Parkdale Centennial celebration.  


ENOUGH SAID…TOO MANY WORDS WOULD SPOIL THE IMPACT

alan skeoch
March 15, 2021


alan skeoch
March 15, 2021


Up in the mornin’ and out to school
The teacher is teachin’ the Golden Rule
American history and practical math
You study’ em hard and hopin’ to pass
Workin’ your fingers right down to the bone
And the guy behind you won’t leave you alone

Ring ring goes the bell
The cook in the lunchroom’s ready to sell
You’re lucky if you can find a seat
You’re fortunate if you have time to eat
Back in the classroom open you books
Gee but the teacher don’t know
How mean she looks

Soon as three o’clock rolls around
You finally lay your burden down
Close up your books, get out of your seat

Down the halls and into the street
Up to the corner and ’round the bend
Right to the juke joint you go in

Drop the coin right into the slot
You gotta hear something that’s really hot

With the one you love you’re makin’ romance
All day long you been
Wantin’ to dance
Feelin’ the music from head to toe
‘Round and ’round and ’round you go

Drop the coin right into the slot
You gotta hear something that’s really hot

With the one you love you’re makin’ romance
All day long you been
Wantin’ to dance
Feelin’ the music from head to toe
‘Round and ’round and ’round you go

Hail, hail rock’n’roll
Deliver me from the days of old
Long live rock’n’roll
The beat of the drum is loud and bold
Rock rock rock’n’roll
The feelin’ is there body and soul

Posted on

EPISODE 282 MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLTION GETTING THE IRON WORKER MACHINE…NEAR DEATH EVENT…GLAD POLICE ARRIVED

EPISODE 282   MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION     THE IRON WORKER MACHINE….NEAR DEATH EVENT…GLAD POLICE ARRIVED

alan skeoch
March 2021


THIS WAS MY GOOD FRIEND BILL PARSONS.  WE SHARED A LOT OF GOOD TIMES.  THIS WAS ONE OF OUR BEST.

Most of the Massey Ferguson buildings were stripped bare.  Hundreds of machines gone God knows where.
But I found one machine that had been judged worthless and left behind for the demolition crew.
Who would possibly ever want a lever action ‘iron cutting machine’?  Obsolete remains of 19th century
manufacturing.   Who would want it?   Well, I wanted it.  Never heard of such a machine that could  cut
iron or steel just by use of he human hand and a long lever.

Extricating the machine turned out to be quite an event.  Exciting in the extreme.  Even a member
of the Toronto Police force and his cautionary black and white car with flashing lights got into 
the adventure.



This was not an easy job.  The iron worker was located on the third floor of the old paint shop building.
How the hell would I get it down to ground level.  The machine must have weighed 300 pounds or more.
This required thought.  And help.  So I called up my good friend Bill Parsons.  A man who loved
outdoor bizarre adventure.  

“Bill, can you help me move a machine out of the Massey demolition site?”
Bill Parsons already knew about my rescue missions as he had received
some of those pitch pine planks.
“Sure, When?”
“I think Sunday morning  is best.  Most people will be at church or asleep.”
“What will we need?”
“Just a  long piece of heavy rope…40 or 50 feet long.”
“Got it right here.”


The foreman and his boss found my presence amusing.  

I had already got permission … first to get the machine which was junk to him and
second to be on the demolition site on Sunday when no men would be working.

We took my truck right up to the doomed building. Climbed up the stairs to he
third  floor and then did something I should never have done.
Best understood  in numbered stages.


This was the building.  We knocked out one  of the third floor windows.


1) We used our hammers to smash the glass window and sash.  No one
seemed to have heard the glass shattering.
2) We manhandled the iron worker over to the window.
3) We tied the rope to the machine.
4) We walked the rope back to a vertical ceiling support beam.
5) Looped the rope around the beam.
6) then went back to the window and managed to lift the
iron worker onto the ledge.  It Teetered there…unstable\
7) “Now, Bill,you go back and hold the rope.   When you
are ready give me a signal.”
8) Bill signalled.  Then I pushed the Iron worker
off the smashed window ledge.  It dropped like a wrecking ball.
9) Bill took off like he had been shot from a cannon.
10) I got to the rope just in time.  We were holding
the rope … the iron worker was dangling between the second
and third floor.  Heavy…but manageable.

REVIEW THE STEPS.
We looped the rope around the distant beam, then Bill held the rope while I pushed the iron worker out
the window.   That was  a deadfall drop of about five feet before the slack was taken up.  Imagine.
Dropping a 200 to 300 lump of iron in a free fall for several feet.  Bad business.  I got back
just in time.  WE stopped the drop but could not move. Then help arrived…in uniform.
Police.







About this time the police arrived.  One policeman.  He
wondered  what the hell we were doing.

11) “Glad you got here.  Grab the rope.   We can all slowly lower
the machine to the ground without smashing it.  I have permission..
take my licence…whatever you want.  But grab the rope.

And he did.   We gingerly lowered the iron worker to the ground
and tipped it into my truck.  The adventure was over.


The paint shop on the second floor should have given us second thoughts.  Looked like splattered blood.

We survived. Note to worried readers.  Do not get too agitated.  If we failed all that would happen would happen only to the iron worker…it would be
smashed below.  We had an emergency plan.
“Bill, if things go wrong, let go of the rope.”

Once loaded in the truck we felt the adventure was over.
But not quite.

“Do you fellows know why smoke is coming out of
that chimney?”  And the cop joined to the sky where the
tall chimney ended.  Sure enough…smoke.
We were not alone.

“We have no idea.”
“Well, I better check that out as well.”
“Thanks for the help officer.”
“Our motto is We Serve…or something like that.”
(I Think he thought we were a brick short of a load…nuts in other words.)

The foreman told me on Monday that some enterprising thief
had cut loose all the copper electrical wire he could  find…
a great roll was made.  Then he burned off the insulated 
covering in the furnace before getting on the King Street
car and riding to a scrap yard downtown.  He got away.

“He could have killed himself had one of the lines been alive.”

Now it is year 2021…decades later. Guess what?  I cannot find where
I put the iron worker.  Somewhere in a fence row at the farm.  Sinking.

THE END













mar




Posted on

EPISODE 283 STONEHOOKING

EPISODE  283     STONEHOOKING   


Jackson Skeoch  and I are admiring a pile of rock shingles on a Mississauga beach
…yesterday…March  15, 2021.   We have been in isolation for a
full year now due to Covid 19.  A  good time to reflect on an event
that happened a year ago.


alan skeoch
March 2021

It took a month to put my lecture together.   The occasion was a  fund raising dinner held at the Stonehooker Brewery, Port Credit, on
Feb. 29,2020.   We had a grand time entertaining and drinking fine beer with 100 guests.  Sold out tickets.   I was the feature
speaker  who  was introduced by my wife Marjorie.  She took 20.5 minutes in her introductory remarks which were a hoot.
In the process she managed to push a wine bottle from lecture to cement floor which shattered like a hand grenade.  Shaymus
Stokes then picked up the pile while Marjorie continued with her admiration of her husband.  She had practiced the speech
for four weeks.  Why the wine bottle?  Because the label featured a wise comment by Albert Einstein.  “A mind that opens to
a new idea never returns to its original size.”  Think about that for a moment.  

Now we had allocated 45 minutes for my speech and the rest of the time for dining and sampling beer from the huge vats
surrounding our dinner tables.   Our son Andrew began tapping his watch as Marjorie spoke.   She ignored him just
as she ignored the splintered wine bottle.  Imagine the scene…Shaymus at the foot of the lectern gathering shards of glass
while Marjorie carried on without pause.  She was on a roll.   If the gods  of ancient Greece really existed then her
husband, namely me, should be placed among them.  Wow!  I know this long introduction sounds like trouble.  It was
not so because Marjorie performed with a kind of innocence few speakers are able to accomplish.

The result?  I cut my speech…less than half.   Who would listen to a Greek god?  I did  not have a
wine bottle to smash on the cement floor.  I was just a back up speaker.  Andrew tapped his watch.
If there had been a long pole with a hook it would have been used to haul me off the stage.

So a year has passed.  One of the most catastrophic years in human history.  Pandemic  … Covid 19 spread
with the speed of summer lightning.   Meetings of people in large groups has plummeted.   We had 100
people at the Stonehooker Brewery on Feb. 29,2020.  One daughter in law, Gabriela, and one grandchild
 Nolan flew over from London , England for the occasion. Other friends came from as far as  Collingwood.   We had fun.   

 Then the deadly PANDEMIC curtain came down.  We have
all been in isolation for a year.  And the isolation may continue longer.

Seems to me like a good time to send out that speech.   So here we go.



Begin forwarded message:


From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
Subject: speech feb .29 shingle beach at Rattray Marsh…Ordovician  
Date: March 29, 2020 at 5:11:34 PM EDT
To: Alan Skeoch <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>



WALKING BACK IN TIME
(will make you feel smaller than a grain of sand…or speck of shale)

alan skeoch
March  11, 2020

“Let’s take a walk, Marjorie,
“Where?”
“There is a shingle beach that fronts the Rarrray Marsh.”
“Why?”
“Because I am trying to get a grip on ‘time’”
‘Time cannot be held.”
“It can  in the mind…”
“Not even there.  Tine moves on…fast sometimes, slow at others.”
“Let’s just take our time and see where it leads.”



(Note, the Rarrray Marsh is one of the wonders  of the City of Mississauga,  It slumbers behind  a rock  strewn beach of Lake Ontario.  The southwest quadrant of
Mississauga…almost approachable….definitely unforgettable.)

“Wouldn’t a  sand  beach be more charming?”
“That depends upon the power of your imagination.”
“Easy to trip and fall here.”
“Right…if you do trip and fall you will find yourself among interesting company.”
“Piles of flat stones.”
“Piles of blue shale….”
“Are you trying to make these stone sound romantic?”
“Romantic?  No, these stone make me feel humble…like a speck of sand on the beach of time.”
“Carry on.”
“Do you know how old these pieces of shale are?”

“I don’t even know what shale is”
“Shale was once mud…pressed by the  weight of untold piles of mud…heavy…so much so
that this ancient mud became sedimentary rock called shale.
“Our city sits on top of this vast expanse of ancient mud…for that matter the ancient mud
once ground and dried became the cement that holds up all the buildings in Mississauga.
And for seventy years, 1850 to 1920, slabs  of this  shale were pried up by crowbars right from
the place we are standing, pried  up in great slabs, manhandled onto schooners and  sailed
to Toronto as the foundations of all the great buildings of the time.”
“Do you mean the Stonehookers?”
“Right.  Nothing quite as Romantic as those stonehooking years.”
“Unless, you actually had to do the stonehoking…it was a brutal business.
“Anybody die?”
“Many. In 1900, One of those old  stonehooking schooners, the Pinta, capsized
just offshore around here.  Young crew trying to make a few bucks before 
winter set in.  They were spotted by some men shingling a barn roof off Marigold Point.
Spotted in the November mist…then gone.  The schooner just flipped over.  Searchers
found three of the men right away.  The fourth was found  frozen under the thwarts 
of the hooking scow some days later…body frozen solid.”

The Stonehooker Lillian resting in Port Credit Harbour in 1910  (Lakeshore Road and Credit River, SE shore.)



The harbour reached its peak between 1880 and 1900 with the advent of stonehooking; one of the primary building materials for construction in Toronto was shale from the bottom of Lake Ontario. The vessels that raised this stone were called Stonehookers and a great many of them were based at Port Credit.
The trade started in the mid 1800s and lasted till about 1910 when inland quarries opened up. The peak of the trade was in 1881 when 23 stonehooking vessels operated out of Port Credit. An extensive lake fishery also operated for a time out of the Port Credit Harbour. Today the historic harbour is largely home to recreational activities.


I often think of one Port Credit lady, whose husband suddenly died.  Their only source of

income was stonehooking.   She was left alone with several young children and
a decrepit schooner bashed up by the loading and unloading of slabs of shale
from the shallow waters along Port Credit shores.  She became one of the few
female stonehookers.  Wading with her long skirts in the shallows.  Straining with
a stonehooking rake to loosen the flat slabs of shale.  Hoisting the slabs with
the help of her children into her skiff and then transferring the slabs to her schooner
anchored offshore.  Once loaded she set sail for the docks of Toronto to market
her stone slabs to builders.

THAT IS ABOUT AS FAR AS I GOT WITH MY SPEECH…WE  NEEDED BEER 
SAMPLING TIME.

END PART ONE:  STONEHOOKING



Posted on

EPISODE 281 MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION : PATENT RECORD FOUND UNDER WATER…LOOKED LIKE BLOCK OF WOOD

EPISODE 281   MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION:   PATENT RECORD FOUND UNDER WATER…LOOKED  LIKE A BLOCK OF STONE


alan  skeoch
March 2021





Often things are not what they seem.   A friend pointed  that out to me once in a short
comment.  “I don’t like him, I think I should get to know him better,”  that comment stuck  
in my brain.  Too easy to form snap judgments.  Get to know him better.  Get to know it better.
That simple idea Cannot be dislodged.   Of course my friend  applied it to human relations but the
comment is  bigger than that.  Often things are not what they seem to be.  Look closer.

As  the Massey Ferguson plant was tumbling around me I came upon a very unusual thing in
the basement of a building about to be pushed down.  The basement had flooded but there
were stepping stones here and there as the water was only two or three inches deep.  So
exploration was possible.   Getting wet feet was to be avoided since most of my days
were spent teaching history at Parkdale Collegiate.  Sloshing around in school was not something
I wished to do.

Those stepping stones allowed me to hop scotch my way through this doomed cellar 
to a distant stairway exit. I  was glad those stones were there.  Lots of them.
Big blocks of wood or stone.  Spongy!  Must be wood.

What the hell are these things.  Mushy.  So I stopped and pulled one of the blocks
out of the black water.   Lo and behold….it was a book.  A book so large that it
was thought to be a construction block…perhaps stone at first…then wood…and
finally paper.



In the darkness  I was unsure about the soggy thing.  Was  it important or some convoluted
legal tome of no interest at sll.    So I carried the sodden mass up the stairwell to the daylight.
Flipped it open.  Looked at the heading.   I was holding  The Canadian Patent Record volume
dated January 31, 1909.   The Patent Record! Incredible.  The blocks in the sodden  basement
were these records.   

How did this happened.  it seemed to me that Patent records were important documents.  Yet
in the haste to vacate these books had been discarded and used as stepping stones
by others who had explored this basement before me.  Time was critical. The excavators
with their huge mouths were chewing at the building already.   My rescue was limited to
this one book.

What to do with it was never resolved.   I still have the book.  Is it important to an
archivist?   The last page number is 1,625.   Huge .  And there is an index.   Wonder if
I can find any  Massey patents?   

In a random search…i.e. opening the book in a totally random fashion I notice patents
for railway track ‘fish plates’ and wooden handles for paint brushes.   Patents for
railway spikes and a farm implement to remove Twitch grass  from hay fields.



THIS book is big….1,615 pages of patented inventions…perhaps  more than
5,000  inventions many of which pertained to the improvement of agricultural
machines.   All neatly indesied by subject and also by  inventor.





PATENTED  DISC PLOW

Again my random search proved interesting.  Here was  a patent for a Disc Plow.  I happened to purchase
an ancient disc  plow at a farm sale a few years  ago and it rests comfortably beside a wild apple tree where
once my grandfather’s barn once stood.   Patent Number 118,406 by John Lavery,  WAUBRA, Victoria, Australia,
on May  18, 1909.  Filed April 17th, 1909.  followed by a description of the disc plow.




TWO FURROW RIDING DISC PLOW RESTING BENEATH A WILD APPLE TREE ON OUR FARM.  



Water was seeping into the buildings…never very deep but deep enough
to destroy any paper records left behind and strewn about.  It was only pure chance
that I stepped  on the Patent Record book in the darkness.  The daylight picture
above was taken in another building.


 Eventually the scene around the Massey plant looked
like Berlin in 1945 after a bombing raid.





SUGGESTION CORNER:  WHAT SHOLD  I DO WITH THIS ARTIFACT?

IF I put the book back in our cellar where it is at least dry then it will just disappear.  Is it important enough for
an archivist?    There are so many patents  described that it would take a month or more for some brave soul
to put the book in digital form.  Just think of a book with 1,615 pages illustrating as many as 3 or 4 patients per
page.   4 x 1,615 = 6,700 patents, likely more.

Maybe i am the only person that gives  a sweet damn about the book.  And  all I did was randomly turn
a few of the 1,615 pages.   Likely doomed.


END EPISODE 281     CANADIAN PATENT RECORD BOOK
Posted on

EPISODE 280 DEMOLIITON OF MASSEY FERGUSON: RESCUING LINE SHAFT PULLEYS (KILLED AND MAIMED WORKERS)



EPISODE 280      DEMOLITION OF MASSEY FERGUSON:   RESCUING LINE SHAFT PULLEYS

alan skeoch
March 2021


ARNOLD ‘RED’ SKEOCH…TIRE BUILDER

DAD MADE TIRES LIKE THESE IN 1920…LATER HE MADE THE BIG TRUCK AND TRACTOR TIRES.  PROUD OF IT.  SKILLED TRADE.

Why was I so interested in those line shafts hat were being ripped from the ceiling of the Massey factories in 1980?
 A legitimate  question.  I ask myself the same question once 
in a while.  Why would anyone want ro spend
days and weeks high on ladders unbolting ancient wooden laminated pulleys that would never be  used again.
The answer?  My  dad was a factory worker…a tire builder.   He spent much of his working life beside the swift moving belts
that ran from line shafts in factories  across the industrialized world.  He did not make farm machines.  He made rubber tires.
  Rubber tires made for the passenger cars of the 1920’s.   He  was a very tough
man…a proud tire builder…member of a skilled trade. 

Natural  rubber was needed big time.  It still is needed…both an aural and vulcanized rubber.  From the Amazon rain forest came this peculiar gum upon which great swaths
of human society would ride.   Rubber tires,  initially solid rubber then the pneumatic tires..  The story of rubber 
is too large for this sidebar….suffice it to say that rubber tires in the 1920’s had replaced Iron and wooden wheels on farm machines
as well as trucks and  automobiles.   Today rubber is taken for granted…not talked about but it is worth 
remembering that those huge four engined  jet passenger planes could not take off or land without rubber…natural rubber.

Dad never said much about his work when we were little kids.   When asked, however, he did say
a few things about the line shafts on which all manufacturing depended.  

“Were those line shafts dangerous, Dad?”

“Bloody  right they were dangerous.  Do you really want to know?”








  Around 1919,  After dad got back  to Ontario from a winter on the prairies living and bedding
down 16 horses in a barn…no farm house, no people, jus 16 horses…after that experience…dad welcomed the switch  from a rural to
an urban life.   The motor industry was booming.  Cars and trucks needed  pneumatic rubber tires
so dad became a tire builder.

“What did those factories look like, dad”

“Our factory in Guelph was powered by belts running off a line shaft.”
“Line shaft?”
“A long piece of thick rounded steel rod with pulleys of various sizes bolted to the rod.”
…and  the rod revolved via a belt looped around an electric motor…or a seam engine in early factories.  Bloody dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“I saw a young man killed on a line shaft.  It was not pretty.”
“In order to shut a machine down there were two choices.  First
choice was  to turn the motor off but then all machines would
shut down because the whole line shaft would not be moving.
Companies did not like that.”
“So, what was the second  choice.”
“Just shut one machine down;””
“How?”
“There was usually an  idling pulley right beside the drive pulley. If
the belt could be edged over to the idling pulley then just that machine
shut down.  Often there was a lever that could gently move the big belt
from drive to idling.  I am not sure why the guy decided to push the
belt by hand.  No one knew why he did that.  In an instant his arm slipped into the
drive pulley and his body was wrenched up and around the line shaft.  By the
time the motor was shut down he was dead  as  a doornail with some body parts
detached.”

Now was that story true?  Had my mind magnified the story?  Never totally sure so I looked up lineshaft accidents
on the internet.  Seems that many workers got their body parts severed on revolving
pulleys attached to line shafts.   Do so yourself.

Dad did not stop there.  He had  a more chilling story about a new employee
at Dunlop Tires Corporation … I think the Whitby plant.

“Some guy took a short cut across the rubber rolling machine…he came
out the other side flat as a goddamn pancake.”

A much shorter story that may or may not be true.  I believe it.  The week dad retired
Eric and I asked if we could visit the factory. We wanted to see how dad spent his working life.
We got the royal treatment from the
executives and the foreman.  Dad was busy making truck tire.  Seemed a little odd  for Eric  and I to be escorted 
around the White plant while our father was slapping heavy belts of rubber…vulcanized rubber.. onto a
spinning machine then carving the rubber into a tire.   Dad was always in good shape physically
because tire building needed strong men..  He grinned at us as we passed his  work station.
His clothing was spartan…a sleeveless T shirt and belted  work pans.  Nothing for the
spinning machine to grab.  No jewelry.  

 If I remember correctly we also passed by the long
rubber rolling machine.   We did not take that short cut that made pancakes our of
rubber workers.  Dad did not want Eric  or me to become tire builders.  Why?  Take a  guess.


An artist’s sketch illustrating a line shaft powering many machines


A more complicated line shaft powering real wood working machines.


Some line shafts  in the Massey Ferguson factory.   Awaiting rescue.   These I was able to reach using a step ladder.  Shaky job but
I had no worries.  Superman.


Now these beauties were another matter…they were 20 feet in the air.  Impossible to reach.  Well…not quite…!

IN the back of my mind were the stories dad mentioned so casually about those early line
shafts.   Wouldn’t these things be needed for horror moves?

Note the bolts.   Once removed carefully the pulleys spill into two parts which I then revolted back together.   



Most of the time I was absolutely alone in a building that had not been touched by the wrecking ball.  The  wrecking was going on
in other Massey buildings.  Where I worked there was no one around. Some buildings I could even drive my
truck into for fast loading.  Some of these pulleys were so big that even when bolts removed the two halves were a bit of a problem getting from
the ceiling to the floor and then into the back of my truck.   Wouldn’t the big pulleys be grand  show pieces for a movie.  I felt elated by both 
the challenge of  recovery snd the prospect of a bit of profit.

You can get some idea of just how high the line shafts were in this factory room.  So high up as to be invisible.   Then I fount the gantry.  
(Unsure if this is he right word…gantry)




Yet the real beauties (if a mineshaft pulley can be  called a beauty)…yet those grand pulleys were way beyond reach.  Twenty feet up.  So I wrote them
off.  Then by a quirk  of fate I discovered an abandoned gantry on wheels….  A set of movable stirs with a small platform at the top…on
wheels the size of dinner plates.  So for two or three visits to the factory i was high up in the air liberating some grand pulleys.  They were oily and
dusty…messy job…  have time to wash at school before class.



In the end I managed to get about 30 or 40 of these pulleys.  

Guess how  many have been used  on movies sets between 1980 snd 2020?    You got it.  None.  Not one goddamn pulley.   There was joy in the getting.
That was good enough for me.  

MAY I INTRODUCE YOU TO A RUBBER TIRE BUILDER”   ARNOLD “RED” SKEOCH


DAD   and his fellow retired rubber workers  met annually at the Royal York Hotel.