Barb and Keith Flaherty
Barb and Keith’s home sits comfortably on the brow of a hill, on the 15th Concession Road in Tehkummah. As one approaches, the stunning panorama hidden behind the home, comes into view, inviting the viewer to admire the charming treed and grassed landscape arched below. The Flaherty garage supports 24 eco-friendly panels on the roof. We settle at the dining room table, where tea and delicious muffins are served. The ancestral history begins to be revealed.
“My maternal great-great-grandfather was Joseph James Russell,” Barb shares. “He died of a heart attack while walking from his house near here to Michael’s Bay where a council meeting was being held. He had emigrated to Canada in the 19th century, likely during the potato famine. Their first stop was Orangeville and soon after, Tehkummah on Manitoulin Island, close to where his son John erected the old log home in 1906. It still stands today, just down the road from here. Joseph married Margaret Crawford of Irish ancestry, born in 1834. Margaret was four when she came to Canada with her parents. Joseph and Margaret had 10 children, William, Thomas, Elizabeth, John, Joseph, Robert, Richard, Matthew, Margaret and Edward Alexander who was born on Manitoulin. John, born in 1857, was my great-grandfather.”
“John married Ellen Martin and they had four girls and two boys: Catherine died after two months, Margaret, Phoebe, Alex, Percy who was adopted and lastly Lillian. Alex and Bessie were my grandparents. They had Fred, Irene, and Justine. Only Justine is still alive at 93. Alex worked on the farm and continued living in the old log cabin. Barb was born on September 1, 1949, to Frederick Leland Russell and Beulah Ilene (Quackenbush). She had two siblings, Evelyn and Esther. “Today, Evelyn still lives in the family log cabin each summer and Esther lives in Gore Bay.” My father, Fred, worked for the Department of Highways doing roadwork and plowing snow. Our mother was a homemaker. She also milked the cows, fed the chickens, and helped us get ready for school.”
“My sister Evelyn saved me from drowning. We were at a picnic at Stanley Park when my uncle decided to take the boat out further out on the lake and dive into the water. To avoid getting in deeper, my cousin and I jumped out. Our feet didn’t touch the ground, so we panicked. Evelyn saw our perils and swam over to pull me out. By the time she pulled Linda out, Linda had swallowed lots of water. She vomited all over Evelyn. That event has left me with a lingering fear of water ever since.”
“When I was about five, we used to ride our bikes to grandmother’s house, across from Ward’s Store. She would give us a nickel to buy Lucky Elephant Popcorn from the store,” Barb offers. Another vivid memory when Esther, three, and I got our tonsils and adenoids out in the Red Cross Hospital in Mindemoya. I would have been seven. They took her in first and I remember she cane back with blood trickling from the side of her mouth. Then it was my turn. I recall having a mask over my face and that chemical smell. Dr. McQuay and the nurse, possibly Mrs. McCutcheon, took care of us. That night, they put Esther in this big crib with me. It was probably a hospital bed with sides. She was crying. In the morning mum and dad took us home.”
“When school started, I had the same teacher for all eight grades. We would ride our bikes about a mile and a half to school. Winter was harder because we had to walk on top of large snow drifts. I was very cold. In high school we got to ride the bus, but it could still be cancelled on bad snow days. Then mother would have to walk all the way to the bus stop on Government Road to alert us. Meanwhile, on stormy days, dad would put on his snowshoes and walk down to his parent’s place in Tehkummah where he had left his truck the night before. Then he drove to get the snowplough. At night he got home the same way, in reverse. He was a hard-working man.”
For two summers, Barb worked at Merritt’s Motor Court, doing laundry and cleaning cabins. “At 17, I found summer work at the Ferry Dock Restaurant, in Tobermory.” At high school in Mindemoya, Marion Seabrook was Barb’s grade 12 home room teacher. “For our class trip that year, Mrs. Seabrook took us on a much-anticipated trip to Waterloo and Guelph University and to see a play at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival. I loved Stratford.”
After high school, Barb moved to Stratford to train for nursing. “This was the time I first saw Keith. He and a friend were in a canoe, on the Avon River. The two girls I was with knew him and his friend and that is how we met in 1968. The boys took back the canoe and then took us to the local Dairy Queen. Keith and I started to date. He came with me to my ‘Blue Band’ ceremony after my second year of nursing and we have been together ever since.” Barb got her RN designation in 1970. She came home to Manitoulin in September and worked one year in the Little Current hospital, run by the St. Joseph nuns.”
Keith shares his ancestry. “My great-great-grandfather was Mathew Flaherty. In about 1840, he left Ireland and sailed up the St. Lawrence, settling in St. Thomas, near London, Ontario. He farmed and he had eight children. His son, Thomas ‘Francis’ Flaherty became a doctor. He married an Irish girl, Anne Sullivan and became the first doctor in Massey. In 1896.” Keith recalls a story about his great-great-grandfather. “He would drive an ox cart to London to visit the hotel. He would tie the ox to a stump and enter the hotel.”
Keith s dad worked at the Falconbridge Hardy mine until he was injured underground. “After being on a Stryker frame for several months he was able to ambulate wearing a back brace. He changed careers, went back to school, and got his ‘Doctor of Divinity’ diploma.”
Keith was born on August 14, 1949 to Thomas and Barbara (Chapman) Flaherty. He had two sisters, Helen and Colleen. He recalls his first fish, a bass caught at Windy Lake. “I was sitting on the edge of the dock, near the boat house. Dad had to help me get it out of the water. The fish was just bobbing up and down. Later that day we had fish and chips.” Keith did quite well in school, but he preferred more practical, hands-on kind of education.
Keith also recalls an incident at Onaping Falls. “I was with my two sisters, Helen and Colleen. We were tethered together with a rope around our mid sections so we could jump from rock to rock. Suddenly Colleen fell into the water. I couldn’t reach her, but I realized that the current would push her against the shoreline if she were let loose.” Keith untied himself and sure enough the current pushed Colleen to safety.
“Mother was a teacher in Levac until 1962, when we moved to Stratford. I was beginning high school. Dad started a garage. A few years later, he changed courses and became a liquor inspector for the government. For the next 25 years He would check establishments for compliance to fire and safety regulations. After high school, I worked for Clever Brooks, a boiler factory in Stratford. After I learned to weld, I moved back to Sudbury and worked in the heavy construction industry, fixing their equipment.”
Keith and Barb were married on October 9, 1971. “It was a lovely wedding at the Pentecostal Church. “We had 30 guests at the South Baymouth Hall afterwards for Thanksgiving supper. I recall Keith ripping his pants as he tried to extricate himself from the back seat of the car,” Barb adds smiling. “For our honeymoon, we travelled to Memphis Tennesee where my recently-married aunt lived. I found out much later that Keith had sold his best guns to pay for the trip. We visited Graceland, Elvis’s home. Elvis was away so his security guard drove us right up to his house. Years later, after Elvis’ death, we returned and toured the mansion.”
The newlyweds moved to Penage Lake Road and lived in a trailer, 35 ft. long and 10 feet wide. “I had recently bought a Ford Pinto and Keith had a car too, so we were broke. The trailer seemed like a good option. We had our two children, Tammy, and Patrick while living in our mobile accommodations. Later, we moved the trailer to the Carmen Fielding Construction site, and Keith built an extesion, two eight–by–eight rooms and a 16-foot deck. Finally, we had a room and a crib for eight-month-old Tammy. She had slept in a car bed beside our bed with my nursing textbooks piled underneath for support.
After a year, Keith got a job at the Bruce Power station for Ontario Hydro. “They sent me and my family to Deep River for a year of specialized training for the nuclear component. This was followed up with three months of annual training thereafter. I was a ‘mechanical maintainer’ in the major components division. I helped take apart a 360 ft. turbine and removed the heavy parts. These generators weighed 220 tons and followed the curvature of the earth to avoid a ‘residual frequency’ that could cause the machinery to self-destruct.”
“In March of 1975 we moved to Port Elgin into a hydro apartment until we could build our own house in Southhampton. We paid $10,000 for the lot and we moved into our first house on September 18, 1975, and we still own this house.” In 1985, Barb got a day job with Health Canada doing community health nursing. This involved trips to Cape Croker, and Saugeen First Nation. At age 42, Barbara went back to Laurentian University to get her BSc Nursing degree. Barb graduated ‘cum laude’ from Laurentian and became a Certified Diabetes Educator, continuing to provide services to Saugeen First Nation.
“When Dr. Big Canoe, who lived on Georgina Island, drowned in 1993 while canoeing from the island to his Jackson Point office, I helped with two years of part-time work. This gave the band time to hire their own Community Health Nurse. Travelling from Jackson Point to Georgina Island on the winter ice road was a bit uncomfortable at first. I had to follow the tree line in my car to stay on the safe part of the road. Nevertheless, over time, I got used to that routine.”
After Keith retired, the couple moved to Manitoulin where Keith had built their retirement home. The bulldozer and tractor continue to keep Keith busy on their 100 acres. “We are part of a reforestation project that has us removing the dead trees and replacing them with young trees.” Keith is also working with timber from his own property. Meanwhile, Barbara went back to work. She started a part-time job in the Little Current Hospital and in the Wiikwemikoong Health Center. Most of her free time then and now, has been spent on volunteering or helping others.
“We love travelling. We have been to Florida many times. We have also visited France, Belgium, the Netherlands and to Germany with family in 1994. We made trips to England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales in 1997 with our parents, Aunt Justeen and Uncle Ron. We have also toured China and Israel. Canada has been seen from Victoria to Newfoundland and we have driven the Dempster Highway to Tuktoyaktuk.”
“Our two children have done well. Tammy Eisses, a nurse, now owns her own business. She and her husband own a Club Pilates in Barrie and they are opening another club in Erin Mills, Mississauga. Her husband Gord, step-dad of Kaitlin, also runs an architectural landscaping business. Their daughter Kaitlyn is in her fourth year of nursing at Cambrian. Son Patrick was a marine engineer at Upper Canada Steamship Lines. Now he is a licenced operator at Bruce Power where he runs a control panel for the reactors. He has two children, Liam, who is power engineer and Karlie, who is in her first year of nursing at Georgian College.”
Were either of you named after anyone? “I was named after Barbara Ann Scott, Olympic Champion in figure skating c. 1948, but my middle name is Lynn,” Barb shares. “I was named Thomas after many of my predecessors. We all had Thomas as a first name, but our second names differed,” Keith adds.
Responsibilities as a child? Barb had to keep her room clean, make her bed. “My mother was the oldest in her family and she wanted a tidy and clean house.” Barb’s mother taught 4-H and she taught her daughters how to sew, but this training did not succeed with Barbara.
Favourite season? “Fall, that’s when we married, and when we do our travelling. The colours are so bright and beautiful. It’s just a good time of the year.”
Favourite book? “The bible, repair manuals (Keith) and books by Basil Johnston,” Barb adds. Collections? “Royal Doulton China, Precious Moments figurines, spoons, antiques and two quill boxes that I am very fond of.”
Favourite television show? “Jeopardy.”
Awards? “A ‘proficiency of pediatric nursing’ award from Sick Children’s Hospital in Toronto.” First hourly wage? “At 16, at Merritt’s Lodge, I made $60 a month and had free room and board.”
The most important events of your life? “When I asked my wife to marry me,” Keith offers. Barb, agrees and adds “when we gave birth to our children.”
Favourite pets? “We didn’t have pets, but as a young girl, I loved Tonka, my pony. Unfortunately, he would run under our apple trees and throw me to the ground so he could eat apples. My father got a little sulky, a two-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle and that seemed to keep me from being thrown. I also drove the tractor. Dad would toss hay bundles on the wagon. The only tricky part was stopping on the hills.”
What are you most afraid of? “Being a passenger. I feel safer if I am the driver. I don’t carpool and I don’t enjoy flying either.” Keith’s greatest fear is Barb in the passenger seat.
What are your strengths? “Important traits for nursing: honesty, generosity and caring for others. Going the distance for charities has kept us busy too.” In the last four years, Barb has ridden 2,585 km and raised $14,767 km for cancer treatment and research at Sick Kids Hospital. “For several years I have volunteered Wednesday afternoons at the South Baymouth museum. Both Keith and I volunteer for the Manitowaning Fall Fair.”
Anything you would still like to do? “See Australia and New Zealand.”
First impressions after meeting each other? Keith felt he had met his future wife from the onset. “I was positive about him too, but it took a while for me to understand his sense of humour.”
What did you enjoy most as a parent? “I loved being a mum right from the start. We did so much with them. We were young too and fun things were on the agenda. Both of us are so proud of them.”
Holiday traditions? “We all get together at Christmas. Since moving to Manitoulin, we go to Barrie where our daughter lives. Then it’s off to Port Elgin to our son’s home. In earlier times, we would take our family to see our parents.”
Associations you were involved in? “The Registered Nursing Association and the Ontario Nursing Association. I was on many boards as well, notably at the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre, representing the First Nations of Cape Croker and Saugeen until 1991.” Keith was a member of the Society of Professional Engineers.
If you could keep three things from your current life, what would they be? “Two would be our photos and paintings.”
If you could go back in time, would you change anything? “No,” says Barb. Keith adds, “Spend more time in architectural school.”
Anyone that inspired you? “Grandma Russell would help others with intimate chores like emptying slop buckets and washing feet. People appreciated her. She helped me envision a nursing career. Others are Marion Seabrook, Reverend Frank Haner, who married us, and my parents for teaching me Christian values and beliefs that took me years to appreciate.” Keith adds, “my dad. He was a veteran in the army, in the medical corps. I always took an interest and participated on Health and Safety committees at work and kept my first aid and CPR up to date. I taught first aid courses for years.”
Recipe for happiness? “Trust one another, share your feelings and listen to each other.”
“Manitoulin has always held a special place in my heart. I was born in the Red Cross Hospital in Mindemoya and I never wanted to leave,” Barb offers. “To get the education for a professional nurse, I had to leave the Island. Our family stayed in the south for some years, but we came back in February of 2007, shortly after dad had died. Sadly, he had been looking forward to our return. Keith was born in Sudbury, but he is an ‘Honorary Haweater’ now and you can’t take the North out of someone who has lived up here. People on Manitoulin are laid back and everyone helps one another. We both love being back here, and we wouldn’t consider moving.”
