Murray and Gladys Duncanson
Murray and Gladys greet the writer warmly, inviting her into their comfortable abode. A wood fire was burning brightly in the stove. Murray is nursing a sore knee, but he is open to visitors. Cousin Ken arrives shortly after and indicates that he will help by plowing the driveway. After a few minutes of visiting, Ken leaves to do his work. Murray was the second Duncanson interviewed for his story. He shares that distinction with Bruce Duncanson, interviewed earlier for this series, with whom he is closely related. “Our grandfathers were brothers and our wives are sisters.”
Murray spent much of his career at INCO as a layout plate worker. “I dealt with structural and metal fabrication and stayed for 31 years.” At the end of his career, he had become a supervisor at the Copper Cliff Smelter. Gladys, on the other hand, the youngest daughter in her family, claims that she was a bit of a brat. Nevertheless, she helped out on the farm as a youth and became a very nurturing person as an adult. She trained as an RNA, working on the pediatric floor of the Memorial Hospital, later providing aid to seniors through the VON.
Let’s inject a little history. Murray’s paternal great-great-grandparents John and Cathryn Duncanson hailed from Argyllshire, Scotland and settled in Dutton in Southwestern Ontario. In 1882, they took a sailboat to the Duck Islands and then travelled to the mainland to Silver Water. John, in his ‘60s, was eager to start a new adventure. They settled on the north side of Silver Lake and cleared part of their 500 acres to earn the deeds for the property.
Grandfather Archie sold the farm and decided he and his Minnie were moving to Manitoba. By the time they reached the United Church manse in Silver Water, Minnie got cold feet and they turned around. They bought another farm near Silver Water and soon set up a sawmill. They eventually got back the original farm when the new owner couldn’t pay the mortgage. Murray never knew his maternal grandfather, but his mother’s mum was Mary Brockelbank who enjoyed picking berries and gardening.
Murray was born on December 10, 1941 to Walter and Clara (Brockelbank) Duncanson. He had one older brother, Benjamin. “I was born three days after the bombing of Pearl Harbour” and that fact has crept into my birthday ever since,” he shares. Murray grew up amid all the activities of an entrepreneurial dad.
At 16, Walter had travelled to Flint, Michigan where he became a stationary engineer and helped build Buicks for General Motors. Later he worked for McDougall Construction in Gore Bay, running a sawmill that made shingles, farmed and solved many problems. “Dad was more mechanically inclined than he was skilled in the art of farming, so his adventurous streak revolved more around innovation than food production on his 300 acres.”
“He had one of the first manure loader attachments for a tractor. It would load the fertilizer on the spreader. He used steam to power much of his equipment.” The late John Lane, as MPP, visited the Barrie Island farm and saw the complex structures, the tool sheds and wagons, looking like towers in a row, some spouting steam. He declared aptly, “This is the first train I have ever seen on Barrie Island.” Walter was also involved in many local associations that benefited his community. He was one of the founding members of the Manitoulin Co-op as well as the Little Current Stockyards.
“Clara was a real lady. She had a dry sense of humour but would never speak ill of anyone, ‘If you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything.’ She was very kind, a good hostess, loved flowers and helped out in her community.” Gladys adds, “She was the best mother-in-law you could ever have. She never had a little girl to dress up, but she helped a family that had lost their mother. Clara would make dresses for the little girl, and she assisted in other little ways,”
Murray recalls. “I remember my first train ride from Little Current to Sudbury with my mum and my brother when I was four. We visited my aunt in the big city. That was quite an adventure. I was still four the day my dad was moving the changing block from one end of the barn to the other. I was up in the hay mow when I heard him call me. He wanted to know where I was before he swung the chain with the big haying hook. My timing was bad. I appeared just as the block was passing by and it caught me right on the side of my head and knocked me out for a spell. I was carried into the house and mother was able to stop the bleeding.”
School for Murray was SS#1 Robinson in Silver Water. “I liked math the most and the teachers were good, as I recall. One teacher boarded at our place. Bert and I had the job of taking care of the flowers at the school. One day Bert took a petunia and stuck it into the center of another petunia, so it looked like a double bloom. We showed it to the teacher who thought it was a new creation. Later, she showed it to our mother who smiled and said, ‘I think you’ve been had.’”
After graduating from Grade 12, Murray went right to INCO to apprentice and find work. He found it and stayed for 31 years, ending his career as a supervisor. He met his future wife when his cousin married Gladys’ sister. They met after the rehearsal. Gladys was just 15 at the time.
She was working at Griffith’s Lodge which later became Northernaire Lodge at Evansville.
Gladys was born on February 5, 1943 to Frank and Myrle Coburn on their Seventh Line farm in Gordon Township. It was a stormy, snowy day. “The doctor had to deliver me and another baby on Barrie Island. He didn’t get to the Barrie Island baby until after that baby was born.” Gladys had six older sisters, Frances, Alberta, Irene, Ardith, Betty, Barbara and one younger brother, Oliver. Dad Frank had been a sailor on the Great Lakes before he became a farmer in Mills Township and later bought the Gordon Township farm.
“It seems all my birthdays have been without parties due to being accompanied by large amounts of snow. The first sunny day with no snow happened in Sudbury when I was 18. I did plan my own party one time, at seven years of age. I had to ask a girl in class to help me spell ‘birthday’ on my invitations. She told her sister, who told my mother.”
“On my birthday, I got off the bus with four other girls and, much to my surprise, mother had sandwiches, cookies and even a cake ready! At first, I was not surprised by this. I should have been, and my mother must have been surprised when she found out initially. As usual, it was a stormy day and the four girls had to sleepover, but it had been a successful birthday party.”
Wintertime was also ideal for skating. “We loved to skate on icy fields or on the local pond.”
As the youngest girl, Gladys didn’t get a lot of work to do on her farm, “Only if I wanted to. It was a carefree existence.” At age 11 she was assigned to keeping the kitchen clean and doing dishes. “Sometimes I would get out of doing the dishes by going to the bathroom at the perfect time. My sister Ardith always referred to me as a brat.” On Saturdays, the responsibilities of sweeping the house and setting the table were added.
“Mum made all our clothes, kept the house warm, and cared for a large vegetable garden as well as flower beds. “I loved her flowers and the orchard of apple trees. We canned a lot of the apples. It seems that we were always busy. We didn’t have running water, just a cistern. Indoor plumbing arrived in the mid-60s”
Her paternal grandparents were Sam and Isabelle (Brimm) Coburn who farmed on Mills Road, along Lake Wolsey. They had three bachelor sons, Hugh, Len and Russ. The fourth brother Bill was married. “I often took food over to my bachelor uncles and helped out on their farm. It was different over there. How they cooked and put things away was not the way we did it. I didn’t have to clean the floors or do dishes over there. They would say ‘Gladys, you don’t have to do that’ when I tried to clean.”
On the other hand, the men taught her to run the horse-pulled hay rake at age 12 and she got pretty good at it. One time a young man in a car decided to take a short-cut across the field and he spooked the horse which took off with Gladys and the rake in tow. Since all Frank’s girls were held in high esteem, the young man got quite a lecture from the uncles.
Rusty, her sister’s dog, loved Gladys and she liked to take him for walks in Gore Bay. One day, the pair headed for the drugstore and Rusty entered with his mistress. Suddenly he chose to lift his leg on the toilet paper display. The owner of the store was amused by the fact that Rusty had appropriately relieved himself on the toilet paper, but her older sister chastised her for taking Rusty into the drugstore in the first place.
“We visited dad’s aunt in Weirwood once a year and I realized that not many people ever left the Island. When my older sisters left home and returned from time to time, it meant a trip to a bus terminal or the train station where you became aware of distant places.”
After Grade 11, Gladys headed to Sudbury to become an RNA, a Registered Nursing Assistant, as they were called then. The classroom was in the basement of the Caswell Hotel (now the Holiday Inn on Regent Street.) The practical training took place at St. Joseph’s Hospital. Afterwards, Gladys worked for six years on the pediatric floor of the Memorial Hospital.
When Gladys met Murray at age 15, she found him cute. Even though Murray had been warned that Gladys was a brat by her aunt, the two dated for six years and then married on May 30, 1964. “It was a beautiful day for the ceremony at the Anglican Church in Gore Bay. The dinner was held in the hall of the United Church in the same community and the reception in the Silver Water Community Hall. In those days, the entire population of the area was encouraged to attend receptions.
The honeymoon had them touring the Lake Superior and Thunder Bay areas before heading to the traditional Niagara Falls. “We found ourselves in a detour and wound up in a strange little town called Christmas, Michigan. It was late May, but it was beautifully decorated as if it were Christmas. We stopped at one place, but Murray said to her, ‘Gladys, you don’t want to stay here’ and pointed to two large German shepherds.” Gladys was not fond of large dogs, so they continued to drive. “We were really impressed by the Falls. Afterwards, we often returned for visits while staying with Murray’s brother in St. Catharines.”
The couple lived in Sudbury, renting an apartment at first and then building their house in Naughty in 1969. “We got all our lumber from dad’s mill on the Island.” While Murray continued to work at INCO, Gladys did home nursing for organizations like the VON (Victorian Order of Nurses). “I loved doing the general nursing, working one-on-one, helping people in their own homes.”
Murry loved his time with the Minor Hockey League executive in Walden where their sons played. He also coached and managed the teams. Gladys helped with the Ladies’ Auxiliary, raising money for the teams and helping to organize tournaments and road trips. “With the hockey, we travelled across Canada and got to see new places. We are very proud of our boys and all their accomplishments. It is a very good feeling to know they have done so much and become such good people.”
The couple has three boys, Craig, Blake and Clarke. Craig went on to play professional hockey in the NEL skating for Los Angeles and Winnipeg, as well as in the American League. When he retired from playing hockey, he coached at Laurentian and went on to university for a business degree. He has two daughters, Jamie and Jordan, both of whom this writer was lucky to meet over tea and fresh cookies they had baked. Granddaughter Jamie had had the chance of a lifetime to visit Mongolia. Her class had helped set up a medical clinic and put in a water system.
Son Blake works for a contractor that does pressure washing of large equipment at VALE. He lives in Sudbury and has two daughters, Willow and Shelby. Clarke lives in St. Catharines and works with Dejardins, doing hiring and training. He has a little boy, Ethan.
“My favourite memories,” Gladys reports, “revolve around my wedding and the birth of my children. There are 13 years between my oldest and youngest child. Watching them grow and develop was so rewarding. We went to a lot of hockey, soccer and baseball games.”
Another special time for Gladys was the birth of her granddaughter Shelby. “My daughter-in-law, also Jamie, asked me to come for the birth. Her own mother had been present for Jamie’s first daughter and she feared husband Blake was not up to the occasion. I heard the baby’s first cry and held this precious little bundle before her mother got to hold her. That was a very powerful moment for me.”
“Christmas time is always a fun time. I enjoy the hustle and bustle of the holiday period, the huge tree, all decorated and the precious family time. On Christmas Eve, we always go to church. The fresh snow and the starry sky are vivid memories that enhance this evening,” Gladys injects. “About 10 years after our honeymoon, we returned to the town of Christmas! It was a little bigger than we remembered, but it was still a trendy place. Our neighbours were in the area, so I tried to give them directions using land marks, as ladies like to do. Somehow, they got lost and wound up arriving to the town the same way we had, by mistake. We enjoyed a dinner together there, comparing notes about our dual experiences.”
Collecting plates has been Gladys’ hobby and many decorate the home. She also loves to paint gift cards which have been made into a calendar. “What am I afraid of? Mice make me shiver,” Gladys insists. Murray adds that he fears fire the most. “My dad always said that fire is a great servant but a poor master.” Murray was a volunteer fireman and chair of the Township’s Services Board for years. He also became a director of the Manitoulin Snowdusters Snowmobile Association for a number of years. “This year the grooming machine is sitting in West Bay, inactive, waiting for the appropriate amount of snow to fall,” he deserves wryly.
Murray says he is ‘A jack of all trades and a master of none.’ “Someone I admired? Orland Wismer,” Murray says immediately. “Whenever I asked him for advice, he never told me what to do, instead he would list the objective virtues and deficits of either side of the equation and let me decide the best solution. He was a wise man and a good one.”
“What would I still like to do?” Gladys shares, “I would love to visit Australia. We have taken trips to Ireland, Scotland and England and were impressed with the vast landscapes and the friendly people. We were in England the same year Kate and William were married. We toured Buckingham Palace and I saw Kate’s wedding dress and jewellery. They were stunning.”
Murray adds, “I regretted not having studied my history a bit more when the locals began to share their knowledge of the places we visited, and I regret that I never got to farm the way I originally imagined I would.”
“Manitoulin is a quiet, relaxing place, off the grid. We have picturesque trees and lakes. You always feel welcome here, no matter where you go. People say ‘hi’ and you say ‘hi’ back. We grew up here and always knew we would return. The hustle and bustle that has not quite caught up with us can stay in the cities. We always came back to the Island from Naughton, after we bought our camp in 1983; the camp which later became our home. It was wonderful to lay back, make meals when you felt up to it and not be on a schedule. Today we sit here in our renovated cabin-home, literally only feet from Silver Lake, enjoying our Manitoulin journey. There really isn’t much that’s better than that.”
