vanessa farnsworth's blog

To Bee or Not To Bee

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Neighbours gathered at a chopping bee.

What do you do when there's more work on tap for a single day than a family can reasonably be expected to do in a month and the consequences of even a minor delay could spell disaster? If this was the late 19th century in Ontario, the answer would be simple: You hold a work bee and invite all of your neighbours to participate. And chances are they would knowing that the next time they found themselves in a similar predicament you would do the same for them.

Sloane’s Melodeon Factory

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Crumpled Sheet Music on Piano Keyboard

Somewhere in the midst of researching The Haweaters I stumbled across a list of the dozen or so manufacturers that were operating in Owen Sound around the time the Amer family were living there in the mid-1860s. That list included many of the sorts of businesses you'd expect to find in a burgeoning 19th century Ontario port city -- tanneries, potash works, foundries -- as well as a curious entry for Sloane’s Melodeon Factory.

Baking Bread Like a Pioneer

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Sourdough bread

One of the questions that bugged me from an early point in the development of The Haweaters had to do with baking and specifically how those early European settlers to Manitoulin Island made leavened products like breads, cakes, and cookies when they had limited access to conventional leaveners such as yeast, baking powder or baking soda.

All Guns Are Not Created Equal

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Drawing of Beaumont-Adams Revolver

One thing that was clear from the outset was that a handgun figured prominently in the murders of William and Charles Bryan and yet nowhere in the court documents is the make and model of that gun ever specified. To make things more interesting, the trial transcripts contain conflicting witness testimony over whether the murder weapon fired bullets or balls. In the mid-1870s, it could have been either.

The Picture Worth a Thousand Words

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Credit: Alexander Henderson / Library and Archives Canada / PA-149763

When imagining what life might have been like on Manitoulin Island in 1877, I found it helpful to surround myself with photographs that dated roughly to that era, some of which were taken on the island, but most of which were discovered in books or archives dedicated to preserving images from mid-to-late 19th century rural Ontario.

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Based on the real-life 1877 killings of William and Charles Bryan by their neighbours, The Haweaters brings to life some of Manitoulin’s earliest European settlers as they struggle against nature, poverty, and each other in a collective quest to leave their dubious pasts behind them and attain prosperity in this rugged wilderness community. Learn more.