Dave and Barb McCauley
The McCauleys live in a beautiful stone home that this writer has admired since it was built.
“We moved in about three years ago when we sold our farm and the home on it, just east of us. For this house, contractors were organized in advance and each did an outstanding job with both the exterior and interior.” The McCauleys are ‘almost retired’ now. They still have about 30 cattle that will be sold this fall. Dave has had several jobs over the years, including splicing wires for Bell and working for Manitoulin Tel. Nevertheless, farming has always been his favourite occupation.
Barb was a medical assistant, organizing and doing the paperwork for a physician specialist in the south and a chiropractor on Manitoulin. Their two offspring frequently visit, bringing their four grandchildren who have come to love the Island also. “All our grandchildren spent quite a bit of time with us when they were younger. We would visit favourite haunts, like the Providence Bay Beach and the Bridal Veil Falls.”
Barb shares her early years. “I was born on March 24, 1947, and grew up on the outskirts of Buffalo, New York. My paternal great-grandparents lived in Northeastern Germany. Their son Ernst Lubstorf was born in 1886 and immigrated at age 23, landing alone at Ellis Island in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. That statue must have been an impressive sight for the new arrival. He moved to Buffalo, worked for the railroad and married Christine Hansen whose parents had also immigrated from Germany. They had three offspring, Evelyn, Elmer and Raymond. Grandmother Christine died in 1959 and Grandfather Ernst died in 1966.”
“My maternal grandmother’s parents were also German immigrants, but grampa was of mixed German and Welsh heritage. My mother, Elvira, nee Oakes, married my dad, Raymond, who had become a printer by trade, in Buffalo. Mom was a good disciplinarian who could control each situation with just a look. My brother Gary is a retired computer programmer for the Department of Education in the state of New York.”
“As a toddler, I remember our dog Rocky who used to nip at our feet. I would run across the kitchen floor as quickly as I could, to avoid his certain but playful attack. Sadly, he died with distemper. Many of our holidays were spent on Manitoulin Island where dad’s first cousin, Mabel Ritchie, and her husband owned Ritchie’s Resort in South Baymouth. It was renamed several times with subsequent owners but is no longer there now.”
“Uncle Bill Ritchie also bought the Morrison property on Second Street in South Baymouth. It extended from the highway to the waterfront. Later he severed off the section next to the highway. My parents bought it and built a one-room cottage in 1950. We added on to it over the years and spent many good holidays there, fishing and sightseeing. My older brother Gary and I would each get a dime to go to the Ferry Lunch Restaurant to buy an ice cream cone.”
“Starting at 14 I would spend my summers working at the Ferry Lunch Restaurant. Apparently, there were many young ladies, possibly as many as 30, working in South Baymouth at the time, so it was a popular place for young men to visit.” This is where Barb first met Dave. “I think I may have taken his order while he was sitting at a booth. After we met, we felt an immediate attraction and spent many Saturday nights at Tehkummah Hall dances.”
Dave shares his background. “My great-grandfather James ‘Cochrane’ McCauley and his wife Jane (McCurdy), from Northern Ireland, moved to Owen Sound. “My grandfather, Mathew McCauley, lived in Walter’s Falls, near Owen Sound, and he worked for the police in Owen Sound. He married Jane Hilson of Georgetown in 1864. She had moved to Michael’s Bay at age five with her parents. Mathew moved to Manitoulin in 1875 and settled on the land that is still in the McCauley family today. My grandmother, Jame Hilson, born in Georgetown in 1867, moved with her family to Michael’s Bay when she was five years old. It was once the largest settlement on the Island. My grandparents, Mathew and Jane, married in 1883. Mathew bought two 100-acre parcels with a $150 mortgage that was good for 10 years. Beef cattle, chickens, roosters and pigs were raised. Each year they would produce 100 roosters for meat. They also sold eggs and cream and cared for a large garden. Grandfather died in 1928 at 74.” Dave and Barb still live on this ancestral McCauley land.
“I was born on February 16, 1947 to Vilda (Perrins) and James ‘Dodds’ McCauley,” Dave continues. “Vilda, my mother, had been born in Wales and came to British Columbia with her parents as a young girl. Dodds met Vilda when he travelled to that province to work in the lumber industry.” Early memories include the advent of hydro lines on Manitoulin. Our neighbour, Jerry Bowerman, wired the house, inside and out, and the barn. I remember an early Christmas, in about 1953. Lots of family members visited that year. We had chosen a tree in the woods and brought it home by horse and sleigh. I got lots of toys and a cap gun with plenty of caps.” Dave’s siblings are Patsy, Shirley, Joan, Blaine, Dodds and younger brother Brock. Dave also had a twin who sadly died at three months. “I was told we were born six weeks early and could fit inside a shoe box.”
Dave recalls cutting grain with his brother Dodds, who was 13, and driving the tractor in the hayfield. “I was 11 and riding on the binder in the back. We were driving along the fence line where the apple trees, planted by fence-sitting birds, sat. Dave picked a few apples and put them in a toolbox next to him, awaiting the perfect time to play a trick on Dodds. “I picked up one of the hard apples and threw it against the back of Dodds’ head. Dodds clearly thought it was a mistake because he didn’t get angry with me.” The second time a similar missile hit the back of Dodds’ head he quickly turned around and voiced his complaint to his mischievous younger brother.
Another story from Dave’s youth concerned his sister Joan. She was doing the family laundry with the wringer washer. Joan was standing by the wash tubs and Dave was standing on the other side of the machine. Dave decided to loosen the plug on the wringer washer’s main tub. The pressure of the water soon blew the plug out and water cascaded everywhere. Dave started to laugh, caught the gaze of his sister and quickly made his exit by running out the door and into the orchard. Joan was in hot pursuit. She was not able to catch up to him and he hid for a while. By the time he had returned to the house, Joan had calmed down and Dave was only mildly chastised.
One spring break, Dave and the children, Brett and Jennifer, were dehorning some of the calves. Jennifer was holding each calf’s head while Brett held the back-ends steady in the chute so Dave could remove the horns with a wire saw. It was a bright sunny day and all three got nicely tanned. A side-effect of removing the horns, and part of farm life, can be a small splattering of blood from the cut and Jennifer did get some blood on her during the process. The children were working in bright sunshine. Friends of the McCauley children had gone to Florida, but they had encountered clouds and rain and did not get their anticipated tans, while the McCauley children had wonderful tans, just from working on the farm.
“I walked two miles to the school in the Slash. It was usually cold, so I kept my coat on in the winter,” Dave continues. “We would get the teacher for a half day then a Grade 8 student would take over at the back of the building, so the teacher could instruct the other classes. In the Mindemoya High School I enjoyed math and track and field. I also played defense for the Tehkummah hockey team. We won a couple of tournaments playing against teams from Mindemoya, Wikwemikong, Gore Bay, Little Current and Manitowaning. I played ‘hooky’ once when four of us ignored the school bell and drove away with the principal watching. He was quite strict and gave all of us detentions for a week.”
“After Grade 12, at 18, I left the Island in an old Volkswagen and $20. The VW broke down in Britt. I called my brother Blaine in Aurora and he drove up to get me. We left the broken car at a garage and returned to get it, a month later, after it was repaired. I drove it back to Blaine’s place and worked for him for the next year, drilling water wells. In 1969 I moved to Toronto to work for Bell Canada, splicing cables. You work under the city, in bunkers, and splice cables that will branch out to various locations above ground.” Dave would spend 15 years at this class one job in Toronto.
“I liked growing up in Kenmore, just north of Buffalo,” Barb adds, “History and English were favourites. In high school, I took German, worked hard and got good marks in all my subjects.” History was studied at the University of Buffalo and yielded an associate degree after two years. Barb and a friend, Lenore, played badminton as part of a phys ed course. “We became university champions and we even beat the teachers.” Later, Barb got work in the medical field doing secretarial work for a gastroenterologist in Kenmore. “I also helped with the lab administration.” Barb and Dave had met by this time, and they were dating.
On September 27, 1969, the couple tied the knot in Kenmore, New York. “We had pleasant weather for our 150 guests. Dave’s older brother Blaine took videos of the ceremony, his camera tethered to a plug. At one point, well into the ceremonial process, he was alerted by a guest that the cord for his camera had been dislodged. He had moved around to get all the action and had accidentally pulled out the cord. Unfortunately, he had missed much of the ceremony. Nevertheless, the wedding went off with no other hitches, and the couple was soon on the way to their honeymoon location. “I had left specific instructions,” Barb declares, “no decorations on the car.” True to their promise, nothing was stuck on the outside of the car. However, the inside was filled to the brim with paper flowers. “That night Dave had a flower stuck to his backside when we walked into our hotel,” Barb added, smiling.
“We only spent a brief time in Muskoka. It was raining a lot, so we came back to the Island to spend the rest of our time at the South Baymouth cottage. Then we headed back to Willowdale to our apartment so Dave could go back to work for Bell.” Barb started to look for employment in her new location. She found work with a general practitioner for two years. This job was followed by work at a rehabilitation hospital where she would spend 10 years. “We had left the apartment after two years to buy our own three-bedroom house in Willowdale.” In 1974, they moved again, this time to a home in Thornhill where they lived until 1981. It was also a brick bungalow, like the first home and it also had a large yard. “The same year, we bought Barb’s aunt and uncle’s house on South Bay, and we visited as often as we could.”
“We moved to the Island in 1981. Dave transferred to the Bell office in Sudbury but managed to do much of his work on Manitoulin. We built the big house, recently sold, further east on this land and settled the family there. The kids took the bus to school and began to enjoy life on a farm. A small 4.5-acre section next to Highway 6 was later severed so we could build our retirement home here.” Dave later found work with Manitoulin Tel so he could spend more time on the Island. “I stayed at Manitoulin Tel for about seven years and then left to do full-time farming, which I love.” Barb would help during calving season for a month each spring and fall. She also found secretarial work with a local chiropractor at the time.
“Both children, Brett and Jennifer, were born in Toronto but they loved being on the Manitoulin farm. The family kept a steady supply of about 300 cattle and various bulls. Walter the bull is featured in one of the photos in about 1990. Jennifer really enjoyed the riding horses we had. She would be on them often, usually on Lakeshore Road. One day Flipper, her favourite horse, stopped dead in his tracks and didn’t want to continue. It took a while to convince the horse to move ahead. Jennifer found out the next day that there had been a bobcat spotted in the area.”
“Today Brett lives in St. Mary’s in the London area where he works for a large factory that makes body moldings for cars . His wife Megan is a Presbyterian minister in Milverton. They have three boys, Aaron, 17, in Grade 12, Levi 13, in Grade 8, and Caleb, 11, in Grade 6. Jennifer lives in Marmora, near Peterborough where she works from home in journalism. She writes articles for the Epoch Times, which includes some very interesting articles. She has one son, Gabriel, 12, in Grade 7. Her husband Dave Cowan is a mechanic with his own garage and a contract with the Belleville EMS.”
“As previously mentioned, when they were young, all four grandchildren would visit in the summer and they all came to love the Island. We often swam at Providence Bay, or we would jump on the ATV at the farm to check out the cattle and feed them round bales of hay, about ten bales per week. Occasionally grain was added for the 300 cattle. The children loved to help with those tasks.”
Were either of you named after anyone? Dave: “My parents had run out of names, so I was named by the nurse that delivered me, in the old hospital in Mindemoya.”
Fondest memory? Both declared it was their wedding.
An important other memory? Dave: “My brand-new car at age 19. It was a 1966 Ford Fairlane Convertible.”
Favourite pets? “Dudley our border collie. He would only bark if the cows were out of their pen.”
Specific chores when you were a child? Dave: “Dad died when I was 14, so there were lots of farm chores to do. My younger brother and I were soon doing most of dad’s tasks.”
Favourite season? Fall and hunting for Dave. Summer for Barb, who enjoys gardening.
Collections? Barb: “fine China” and for Dave, “raising collections of cows.”
Favourite family holiday? “Marineland and Canada’s Wonderland when the kids were under 10 years old.”
Favourite television show? “Old sitcoms like Lucy, Dick Van Dyke, Perry Mason and Fox News.” Your first hourly wage? Dave: “One dollar an hour in the summer at the Lands and Forest Station on Lakeshore Rd. I was 15.”
What are your strengths? Dave: “Farming and splicing wires.” Barb: “Organization and paperwork.”
What do you still want to do? Both: “Retire, but we still have some cows on the farm, and they will have to be sold first. Also, we would like to see the West Coast again and travel to the East Coast.”
What did you enjoy most as a parent? Barb: “Spending time with the kids. Jennifer and I would go to the Costco in Barrie before we got one here in Sudbury. It would be a girls’ weekend. Brett and I went to Columbus, Ohio once to check out a big gymnasium there.”
Organizations you were involved with? “The Cattleman’s Association.”
What are you most afraid of? Barb: “Bats.” For Dave, “losing our independence. I have an older sister, Joan, in the Little Current Centennial Manor. She couldn’t care for herself anymore, but she is doing fine there now.”
If you could only keep three things from this life, what would they be? “Our photos, the computer with the genealogy files and our Christmas decorations.”
Looking back is there anything you would do differently if you could go back in time? Dave: “I would have stayed at Manitoulin Tel a few more years. Also, we might have kept the South Bay property, beside the water, a little longer.”
What is your greatest hope for the future? “Peace for the world, and good health for us, so we can travel.”
A recipe for happiness? “Sharing the same interests.”
“Manitoulin is a wonderful place. We wouldn’t want to live any place else. We have a beautiful home, all on one level with no stairs, and we are surrounded by trees. We have clean water and air. Driving up here on the Bruce Peninsula, we could already notice the difference between air quality here and our Toronto environment. We sleep better here, feel more energetic and we eat healthier. We like the friendly people on the Island. We are aware of a keener sense of community. Whenever we go out, we see people we know. That never happened in Toronto. Seeing a familiar face, just around the corner, is a big bonus for living on Manitoulin.”
