FoodTrust - Connections

“I remember going down by horse and sleigh and crossing Belle River. It was warm and the water came up into the sleigh. It’s amazing the horse didn’t go down. We got wet but we had a buffalo blanket. We’re lucky we didn’t go through.”

The horse was named Maud. A “buffalo” was a warm quilt, originally a buffalo hide. I was helping my pal Mary Stuart Sage put together a profile of her father Hector Stuart, born in 1894, a man who served in both the First and the Second World Wars. After the 1^st WW Hector bought and operated a general store in Wood Islands. He also ran a sawmill and built fishing boats – for $75 finished, and made wooden boxes (caddies) for shipping Hickey and Nicholson Black Twist chewing tobacco. Maud the horse carted potatoes and eggs to the nearby railway station, and puncheons of molasses and groceries from Carvell Bros.Wholesalers, back to the store.

Talking to Mary reminded me that every winter the rivers and bays were once the highways on P.E.I Mary’s the ideal person to talk about traveling on ice. She was born on the 1^st day of 1923 during a blizzard.

1923 went on to become known as “The Year of The Big Snow”. Everyone who lived through the winter of 1923 says it with capital letters. It was also the year of the Big Cold - people ran out of firewood and burned the stalls of their barns and fence posts. Neither human nor horse could get through the deep snow to the woods.

The good news was the rivers and bays froze early that year making traveling easier. The ice was “bushed” with 15’ tall spruce trees jammed into the ice, a path that was followed assiduously to avoid the dangerous spring holes and freshets. Falling in could mean death for horse or passengers, and sometimes both.

The ice was bushed across Hillsboro Bay from Earnscliffe to Tea Hill, the route Malcolm Irving traveled for many years, hauling potatoes and pigs into Charlottetown. “Nine miles and it took 300 bushes, 150 on each wood sleigh, do ya see ? About every 60 yards you had to throw a bush off and punch a hole and stick it in the ice. It was quite a job - cold day, cold trip, cold work. Took a whole day, yeah. $20 for the job. $20 wasn’t too bad back then, ya know, yeah.” Not bad I guess if you were born in 1902 like Mac Irving. (Photo: a slightly more modern ice road)

The Hillsboro River runs northeast from Charlottetown to Mt Stewart. In January 1932 when the local flour mill was down for repairs, John W.MacEachern, a farmer and boat-builder from Cherry Hill decided to make a day of it and left with a sleigh load of wheat for Scott’s Mill in Parkdale, now part of Charlottetown.

“We left around 4 o’clock in the morning…know how cold it was? 29 below on the old scale! 21 miles in…we got in about 10 o’clock, pit our loads off and went uptown and put our horses in the livery stable. Had our dinner, then about 2 o’clock loaded up and headed back home again. I’d like to see them sitting out on a sleigh 29 below today! They don’t know what cold is, what!” John told me a full meal cost 25 cents at the King Edward Hotel where Tim Hortons is now on Kent Street. When they got home after dark John’s bay-coloured horse was white with frost, but safe.

One of Malcolm Irving’s cousins wasn’t so lucky. His sleigh wandered off the bushed trail and went through the ice at the wharf at Pownal. “A man and two women. The horse went through the ice and he couldn’t get him out alone so he started off walking and the horse whinnied when he seen him going. The man felt so bad he went back and the horse pulled him into the water and he drowned. Yeah. That’s a long time ago.” The horse then drowned, this tragic scene witnessed by the two horrified women passengers whose day had begun as an exciting excursion to town. The only way to save a horse that went through was by a choking method called “bloating”. The frantic horse, hooves chopping at the edge of the broken ice hole was choked around its neck with the reins; its lungs filled and the horse floated briefly, allowing several men to pull it up onto the ice. Sometimes it worked.

Ice travel went on into spring as long as possible to avoid the impassable muddy roads of April. A dairy farmer who rotated with his neighbours the task of hauling a sleigh load of 80–pound milk cans across the frozen harbor to Central Creameries in Charlottetown told me that in 1922 they started hauling before Christmas and the ice was still thick enough as late as April 15^th. That’s April 15^th, 1923 - the Year of The Big Snow…and Big Cold!

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