Brown Boat on the Water Once More: Family Links Restored

When I was growing up, my mother had told me that her grandfather, James G. Brown, was an Irishman who had a canoe factory in Lakefield, Ontario. According to a catalogue we had from 1921, he had started the company in 1887. After my great-grandfather died from injuries from an accident with a Toronto streetcar in 1920, my mother’s Uncle Fred, his youngest son, had continued the family canoe-making business until he, too, died after an accident in 1932. My mother, whose family lived in British Columbia, had never been to Lakefield, nor had she met Fred and his family, and contact with that side had been lost.

She remembered that her father had owned two canoe paddles made by the Brown Boat Company at one time, but they had been given away. In the summer of 2006, my wife, my daughter and I visited Lakefield and were intrigued to visit the old Brown canoe factory – now making and selling furniture – and to find a Brown canoe in the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough.

After our visit, I started to write back and forth to Rob von Bitter at Heirloom Canoes in Toronto regarding the possibility of finding an original Brown canoe for our family. Rob was very helpful, and a while later he managed to locate a Brown cruiser that had been restored into beautiful condition. By the following spring, we had managed to find it a ride in a moving van coming out west, and the old cedar canoe had returned to the family, with a place of honour in my mother’s garage in Victoria.

That summer of 2007, we were visiting my mother in Victoria, and we took the Brown cruiser out on the water of a local lake. The first time out, it did let in a fair bit of water, but we were able to keep up with the odd bit of bailing every ten minutes or so. A couple of days later, on our second time out, the intake of water seemed to have slowed down quite a bit with the wood expanding, and though some came in the bottom, it wasn't worth bailing.

During our time in Victoria, we also met two American cousins who came up to visit. Their grandmother was J.G. Brown's oldest daughter who eloped with the son of an American man who helped start the Portland Cement Company in Lakefield. We took the two cousins to the lake with us to see the canoe in the water. The ladies were very moved to be able to see one of their great-grandfather's canoes gliding through the water in such beautiful condition.

They both told me that they never imagined that they would ever get to see one of the old canoes in use. Even just seeing it in the driveway took their breath away. Our cedar strip canoe is a very real and living link to the past, and it helped to whet our interest for knowing more family history.

One of the two cousins, with a great passion for genealogy, had just been to Ireland tracing the Brown roots further back before they immigrated to Canada. In the process of putting together our family tree, we realized that one side of the family had got "lost".

Fred Brown, the son of James who took over the company, had two daughters. We didn't know what happened to them after he died in 1932 and if they had any descendents. I started phoning around in Lakefield to see if any old-timers knew the story. Sheila Garrett, secretary of the Lakefield Historical Society, was very helpful, and she referred me to Walter Walker, the last living link with the old canoe makers of Lakefield.

Walter is turning 100 in November 2007 and had just finished another cedar strip canoe when we called him in summer. Walter told me that one of the very first canoes he was involved in making was at the request of Kathleen Brown after Fred died, to complete an outstanding order. Up to that year, Walter had been a furniture maker, but he was laid off in the Depression.

Thus, one of Walter's first experiences in canoe building was completing one of the very last canoes made by a member of the Brown family. Walter wasn't able to tell us what had happened to Fred's daughters, but he and Sheila both referred me to another Lakefield old-timer who could. Through our conversation with John, who had been the next-door neighbour to the Browns, we realized that Fred Brown's younger daughter Barbara might still be alive.

After phoning most of the nursing homes in Peterborough, we found her. It seems that she had lost her last contact with the rest of the Brown family when another first cousin of my mother in Toronto had died in 1993. Barbara was thrilled to be in touch with family again.

So, through the interest sparked by visiting Lakefield in the previous summer and then acquiring the canoe from Heirloom Canoes, we were able to find a long lost cousin, bringing some joy into the heart of a lonely, elderly lady and completing the missing chapters of our family’s story.