Banished Removed and

BY RODERICK MACKAY

Algonquin Park was established in 1893, in an area of the province of Ontario that was unsuitable for settlement and therefore largely unsettled. Through the years, Algonquin Park grew in size, to its current area of 7,632 square kilometres. In the process, for a few farming families there was a human cost, fortunately only in lives changed, not lost.

Previously in Algonquin Life (2019), we read about the Algonquin people who lived along the Madawaska River, now within Algonquin Park. They and their ancestors lived off the land, trapped, and hunted in that territory for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. In 1868, Chief Somogoneche, who had lived on Galeairy Lake since at least 1854, asked for reserve lands for the Algonquins in nearby Lawrence Township. He was refused.

Although legal title to the land could not be obtained by the Algonquins, that did not stop their use of the land. By the

1878 survey of Nightingale Township, indigenous farmers Peter Charbut and Joseph Francis had cleared farms within the township, on Galeairy Lake and at the head of Rock Lake respectively. In 1911, land was added to Algonquin Park, comprising most of Lawrence Township and Nightingale Township. Thirty-two Algonquin families using the townships for hunting or settlement were required to cease those activities and leave.

The Algonquin of the Madawaska were not the only people to be removed to make way for Algonquin Park. In 1914, four “settler” families were forced to leave their clearings and cabins when the Algonquin Park boundary was extended eastward; taking in the equivalent of eight townships, including Guthrie. ln Spirits of the Little Bonnechere we read:

“Fortunately we know a great deal about the lives of some of these settlers, relatively speaking, because of the author’s fortune in the mid-1970s of having met and interviewed five former residents of this area: Peter and Henry McGuey and their sister Hannah Hyland, as well as Mary Garvey and her brother Mike. All had spent their childhood on the Little Bonnechere, and all appeared to have excellent recall of memories ... ”

Unfortunately, at the time I knew of no descendants of Tom O’Hare or the widow McDonald to interview. What little information I could glean about the families eventually came from other sources.

In 2020 it is quite difficult to locate the old farm clearings, but back in 1913 Paddy Garvey, Dennis McGuey and the widow of Ronald McDonald each had large farm clearings and proper houses, then easily seen from busy sections of the Bonnechere Road. Tom O’Hare’s holding was smaller.

Tom O’Hare, possibly of Sligo, Ireland, and his wife Bridget Kelly moved to the Bonnechere, about 1906. Tom was a brother to Mrs. McDonald, whose farm was just up the road. According to Hannah Hyland,

Tom O’Hare worked for a lumber company and lived on a small clearance, inside what was to become Algonquin Park, “maybe a mile or a mile and a half from the park gate.” The O’Hares became part of an existing community stretched out along the Bonnechere Road. As with the three other settlers occupying land in the Township of Guthrie, Tom and Bridget O’Hare did so as squatters (without legal ownership of the land). The townships taken into the Park were never opened for settlement.

The McDonald farm was on the north side of the Bonnechere Road, at Sligo, where the Bonnechere River can be seen in close proximity to south of the modern road, about two kilometres inside Algonquin Park. It is known that others had lived previously in the small squared log building, and may have farmed the land before the McDonalds. Photographs of the building are few. One image was taken by John Joe Turner from across the river about 1930, when he lived in the house. Fortunately the photograph was provided for copying in 1980, as the original was later lost when a new wife of one of Turner’s sons “cleaned house” and burned many family photographs.

Paddy Garvey, said to be of Sligo, Ireland, came to work in the square timber firm of John Egan, arriving on the Bonnechere about 1855. Years later, he took up farming on the west side of an uphill stretch of the road running north-south, near the north end (about km 13.5 on the Basin Road). It was a large farm, stretching from the road to the river, with the house and barns within 50 metres of the modern road. I remember asking Mary Garvey what the house looked like when I interviewed her in 1976. She attempted to describe it in detail, but eventually brought out a black and white photograph. Only reluctantly did she agree to it being copied, because she was embarrassed about the washing hanging on the fence line.

The McGuey farm, at Basin Lake, just north of Basin Depot (about km 14.2 on the Basin Road) was on a road along which supplies were taken north to logging camps on Grand Lake. Another farm, cleared about 1875 by Frank Foy and on which the McGueys had previously lived and still grew crops in 1913, was upstream on the Bonnechere River along a then lessused section of the Bonnechere Road. The McGuey family had moved down to Basin Lake about 1906.

No photograph or specific location of the O’Hare clearing has yet been found, although John Joe Turner gave some clues: “Down on this side of Sligo, when you cross the creek there, there’s a little clearing on the left hand side. I think they have it planted with trees now. He built a place there and that was known from that time as the O’Hare place ... ” When he was interviewed in 1976, Turner was likely recalling the clearing as it was in the 1930s, when he worked as a park ranger. About that time old settlers’ buildings were being demolished and their clearings were being planted in pine, for in 1914 the settlers all had to leave their homes and start again elsewhere.

Back in 1913 Paddy Garvey, Dennis McGuey and the widow of Ronald McDonald each had large farm clearings and proper houses, then easily seen from busy sections of the Bonnechere Road.

As explained by the writer of an article in The Eganville Leader of May 29, 1914: “The Ontario government is gradually getting rid of the settlers in Algonquin Park. At the headwaters of the Bonnechere and the Petawawa Rivers in that portion of territory which is within park limits, there are a few yet remaining and with the purpose of buying the properties of these settlers for the government the Superintendent of the Park, Mr. Bartlett, visited the parties interested and secured their prices. Mr. Bartlett will probably recommend that these properties be bought. Among the settlers affected are: Messrs. Dennis McGuey, Paddy Garvie [sic], John [sic] O’Hare, and Mrs. Ronald Macdonald [sic].”

The Guthrie Township squatters had much work invested in their farms. By 1914, Paddy Garvey had lived along the Bonnechere Road for over 49 years, only marrying his wife Augusta in 1884.

They raised seven children there. Dennis McGuey and his wife Margaret and their children had lived on two different farm sites along the road for 34 years. They raised nine children there. James McDonald and his brother Ronald (who died in 1906), and Ronald’s widow Catherine and their family had lived for 30 years at Sligo, where the river runs just beside today’s gravel road. They had five children, one of whom is buried there. Tom and Bridget O’Hare were relative newcomers, with only eight years as settlers on the Bonnechere Road. They raised a daughter.

When they learned they were being evicted, both Dennis McGuey and Paddy Garvey corresponded with government officials in an attempt to get adequate compensation for their properties, or if possible to retain use of the land. Dennis McGuey wrote: “I have been a fire ranger over 25 years. If only I could be left here I would be quite content ... Or you might appoint me park ranger. I know this country well. I know the hunters’ trails, where they go into the park. This is a good place to watch them. I can do my duty in that line all right.”

In 1976, Dennis McGuey’s daughter Hannah recalled the day Superintendent Bartlett visited their farm:

“He just came along one day and told Dad and Mother that the park was taking over the township ... and Dad says, ‘Well I’m not going out.’ They said ‘You’ve no claim on this land. You’re a squatter ... You’ll just have to go.’

“And Dad said, ‘I won’t move.’ And they said, ‘What are you going to do if you won’t move? What are you going to live on?’ Dad said, ‘The same as we always did.’ But [Bartlett] said they wouldn’t let him work the land. He said the government owned the land ... The wild hay belonged to the government. He just told [Dad] they’d starve us out. He told Paddy Garvey and them [sic] all the same story, you know. He went around and told everybody the same thing. We had to get out.”

We learn from Hannah the strength of the settlers’ hard feelings: “We wanted to have a civil war and [have] everybody get out their guns ... ”

Again turning to Spirits of the Little Bonnechere, we read: “The pleas were of no avail, however, and it was reported [in the annual report for Algonquin Park] that ‘the four settlers who squatted in the Township of Guthrie have been satisfactorily settled and are leaving their places.’” According to Park Superintendent J.W. Millar, writing in 1928, Tom O’Hare received the sum of $500 as compensation for the burning of his house and barn by the government. Settlements for the larger clearings and structures amounted to $1,800 for Patrick Garvey, $1,100.00 for Dennis McGuey, and $1,200 for Mrs. McDonald.

Patrick Garvey and his family moved to Renfrew and shortly thereafter to Killaloe. Dennis McGuey and his family moved to farmland just south of Whitney. It is believed that Mrs. McDonald and her family moved to Killaloe. Tom and Bridget O’Hare and their daughter moved to Killaloe.

That just about cleared the Park of would-be occupants, with the exception of the Algonquin DuFond family living on Manitou Lake. But for a mining claim they took out in 1888, they likely would have been banished in 1893, but the old people of the family, Ignace, Francis and his wife Suzanne, were permitted to remain in the Park until 1918. Perhaps that is a story for another time.

This is just one of many fascinating stories to be found among the historical documents held in the Algonquin Provincial Park Archives and Collections.

Roderick MacKay is author of books on Algonquin Park history, including Algonquin Park – A Place Like No Other: A History of Algonquin Provincial Park; Spirits of the Little Bonnechere: A History of Exploration, Logging, and Settlement, 1800 to 1920; and A Chronology of Dates and Events of Algonquin Provincial Park. All three titles are available from The Friends of Algonquin Park bookstore at the Algonquin Visitor Centre or online.