From what I was told, William McLean was born in Scotland. He’d travelled by ship across the Atlantic Ocean to Canada. It must have been a scary decision to leave your country and begin a new life in a foreign country. However, he married Alice MacDonald, and together they started their married life on a farm just off the main road, a few miles from our house. They embarked on a journey defined by hard work, love of nature, and a shared dream of a simple, self-sufficient life. Their days typically begin at dawn, marked by the sounds of the natural world rather than traffic noise. Their home was a rustic farmhouse in need of a few repairs, surrounded by acres of land, a large, weathered barn, and fields that were fallow when they moved there but full of potential. Over time William learned how to manage livestock, plant crops, and fix his old machinery. Their early days involved more calloused hands and muddy boots than peaceful evenings sitting together out on the porch watching the sunsets.
Alice followed a daily routine governed by the needs of the farm: household chores, laundry, baking, preparing meals, feeding and watering the chickens, collecting eggs, and tending to a vegetable patch that would feed them in the months ahead. She started each day very early, rarely resting until bedtime. The amount of work she had to do depended on the time of year. At harvest time, was the time for preserving fruits and vegetables from the garden so they had food to last all winter.
William spent his time mending fences, caring for his herd of cows, his horses, and a couple of pigs, when not working in the fields. He worked long hours in the fields, planting crops and harvesting them when the time came. He grew hay, barley, and oats, which supplied feed for his stock and provided an income. He spent the winters tending to his animals and chopping wood for the fire in their wood stove. After a few years their first son was born, and a couple of years after that a second son came into the world.
Willard and Wilber started helping on the farm from a very young age. They helped in the garden, fed the animals, and gathered the eggs from the hens. When they got older, they also had other chores, like pumping water and milking cows. They attended the local school until their father passed away. Following the death of William, Alice and her sons continued to operate the farm for several years. Animals were essential to their farm, and they now had chickens, cows, pigs, horses, and turkeys. Each animal played an important role on the McLean Farm. The turkeys, chickens, cows, and pigs were used for their meat and eggs, milk, and butter. Horses were used for labour, pulling farm machinery such as plows and seeders.
After Alice passed away, the boys, by then grown men, continued operating the farm their parents had started. I was too young to know how Willard and Wilber met Hazel Banister, or where she came from, but Hazel now lived with them, doing all the chores the boys’ mother had previously done. Hazel was lanky. Not only tall and thin but also a little … how shall I say … awkward? She was not one to socialize and the only times we saw her was when she’d walk down to the general store to get a few groceries, her eyes focused on the road ahead of her, never looking toward our house so I could wave to her. I was perhaps five or six, but I still recall watching her walk past our house, a flowered kerchief around her head, wearing a long dark-coloured trench coat and those gum rubber boots, no matter the weather during spring, summer, fall, and winter.
I remember one trip Dad made to the McLean boys’ farm, as it was called, to butcher a pig for them. When he drove into their dooryard, Hazel could be seen peeking out from behind the curtain in the kitchen window but remained out of sight the rest of the time that Dad was there. My memories of Willard and Wilber are vague, and sadly I have no recollection of how long the boys farmed or what happened to them and Hazel. It’s been many years since I have been down that road to their home. So many old farm buildings have fallen over the years, perhaps the McLean farm no longer exists.
