OLD TIME STUFF
as told to a Valley Times Reporter by Ezra Casselman
How a fire swept Casselman Country. Great fire of 1897 cleared an area five miles wide, twenty miles long. All of Casselman and all of South Indian burned; Four lives lost at South Indian….how teacher Bouck saved the lives of forty school children wild flight of villagers for safety...a graphic description.
This is part two of the romantic founding of the village of Casselman. Part I appeared in last week's O.T.S.
Part I ended where the Canada Atlantic Railway had been built through the Casselman Timber Limits in Cambridge Township and the little frame station erected on the North side of the South Nation river. When the little station was built in 1881 it was, as told in the former article practically in the middle of the wilderness, and the people who lived south of the river had to cross the river to get to the Station. As there was no other bridge than the railway bridge, these people from the south had to either row across the river or take a chance and walk over the railway bridge, the which, by the way, the railway people objected to.
When the people who lived south of Casselman in 1881, later found they could save a long drive to Ottawa, they set up an agitation for a pedestrian and vehicle bridge over the Nation at Casselman. Things drifted along like that until the year 1885.
It should be told that soon after the erection of the station, the nucleus of the village had been started on the North side of the river. Louis Lemieux who had come from Riceville, opened a small Hotel on the North side of the river near the C.A.R. Station. He also opened a small General store. That was the condition up to the year 1885.
Then things happened. One night the station took fire and was completely destroyed. Mr. Ezra Casselman says there was something peculiar about that fire. The Canadian Atlantic Officials were inclined to agree that it was deliberately set on fire. They were rather confirmed in that belief when soon afterwards an agitation was started by the people on the south side of the river to have the new station place on the south side.
The Canadian Atlantic Officials were rather favourable to the proposed change because they had found they were getting more passengers from the south than they were from the north or east.
And so it came about that the new station was erected on the south side of the river. The new station was hardly up before Mr. O. Sabourin erected a frame Hotel and Mr. Oliver Quenville built a small General store.
As the firm of Flatt and Bradley cut and sold the timber and thus cleared the land, they sold the land for farming purposes and it was not long before grain began to grow where before, the tall pines and oaks had grown. As settlers came in from other parts of Russell County and from Prescott County, the village began to grow and prosper.
Most of the settlers to whom Flatt and Bradley sold were French. Soon a Roman Catholic Church was erected. By 1890 Casselman was on the map.
And now we pass on to the year 1987 when Casselman was destroyed by fire and the people had to flee for their lives. It is an exciting story.
At the time of the fire the village of Casselman was a place of 300 inhabitants. It boasted two stores and two hotels, the former kept by Mr. Quenville and Mr. Pilon and the latter by Mr. Octave Sabourin and Joe Charlebois, who was called by the English people Mr. Wood, which was the last part of his French name.
The village also had a brick Catholic Church, the Priest of which was Pere Francoeur and a frame Presbyterian Church which was supplied by students. At the time the fire broke out a manse was being built for the Rev. David Craig, a coming Minister. All told, there were about 50 buildings in the village.
And now we come to October 5th, the day of the great excitement. Before we proceed to the story of how the village became fire swept and the people lost their all, let us explain the general situation for the fire was not a thing of Casselman only. It was a fire which swept the country by a width of five miles and a length of twenty miles which started up in a little settlement called St. Albert, and destroyed everything in it's path clean down to the very doors, as it were, of Riceville in the east, and while on it's way, it swept over the little Hamlet of South Indian and swept it clean, taking a toll of three lives as it passed. It was one of the worst fires this part of Canada has known and takes rank with the great fires of Carelton and South Hull in the year 1870.
Let us draw a picture of the District affected. First we have the line of the Canada Atlantic Railway with Casselman as the strategic point of the story. Then seven miles west (near Ottawa) the village of S ?(the next few lines are obliterated)…Casselman…St. Albert, in the vicinity Of where the fire started. St. Albert is west and a little south of South Indian. That is why South Indian also was burned.
Then northeast of Casselman, a distance of some twelve miles, we have the old and historic village of Riceville. Then running north from South Indian to Rockland and playing a part in the story, we have the branch line of the Canada Atlantic Panber (?) village, the home of Edwards Mill on the Ottawa river.
And now, with these preliminaries we are all set for the story of the fire. The fire, it should be told had it's origin in a land clearing just east of the village of St. Albert. A wind sprang up and the fire went eastward. It traveled and spread rapidly because the whole country was full of the debris of the former pine forest and the ground was strewn thick with pine brush and nice easy burning pine stumps. Anyhow, the fire spread, and spread rapidly.
On the morning of the fifth the people of awakened to find the air thick with smoke from the direction of St. Albert. They knew there was danger but did not know it was so imminent.
At two o'clock that afternoon the people knew they must get away at once. The air was so thick with smoke it was hard to see which way to travel. A general cry of "Fly for your lives" went up. An unhappy condition at once arose. In the morning all the older Protestant children had crossed to the north side of the river to go to school, the school not having been removed to the south side of the river when the change of village site had been made some years before. There was no time to get them back to the south side.
A few people took boats and fled to the north side of the river and joined their children. Others decided to trust in the capacity of Lorne Bouck, the teacher, and fled south where they found shelter on the farm of D. Racine which was just outside the fire zone. This Mr. Racine later became the M.P.P. for Russell County.
Let us go back a bit and say that early in the day when real danger was first apprehended, it had been arranged that if the situation became serious, the whistles at Merkley's brickyard and Baker's sawmill were to be blown as a signal to desert the village.
At two o'clock the whistles did blow and the people scattered. Some fled one way, some another. About sixty took refuge with Mr. Racine, as already told. Mr. Ezra Casselman, the narrator of this story, and his family were among the Racine party.
And now let us cross the river and see how Mr. Bouck and his charges fared. The confidence of the people in Mr. Bouck had not been misplaced. When the teacher heard the whistles blow and saw the flames across the river, he quickly conducted his class of some forty boys and girls of all ages to "The Bay" below the Falls where he planned, if necessary, to have the children take refuge in the shallow weed grown water of the Bay. All night the fire burned on the site of Casselman village and on both the south and' the north sides of the Nation river. (more obliteration)….broken by help to reach to where they were.
Mr. Casselman tells that the next morning he got the surprise of his life. When he and the others who had sheltered at Racines, came back to the blackened village he was surprised to find that his house, which was a little to the left of the village, was still standing untouched although all his farm buildings, barns, stables, etc., were gone.
While he and his wife gazed at the house in joyful surprise, two Nuns who had been at Racines, came up to him and said, "Mr. Casselman, all we can say is that the Good God saved your house." Mr. Casselman, like the good Presbyterian that he was, replied that he also believed that.
Before dark that night supplies of all sorts from the sympathetic people of Ottawa began to pour in, to what had been, Casselman…groceries, tents, bedding, etc. Most of the people had been dispersed among friends but there was a number left to use and appreciate the help.
That fall the rebuilding of Casselman began and it is now a prosperous village of about 800.
And now let us go to South Indian and learn of the tragedy that marked the destruction of that place. At that period there were about 20 or 25 buildings at South Indian. Everything burned including the little Roman Catholic Church. Among the fleeing villagers and farmers that day was one Frank Levee or Lavigne who lived near the village to the southeast on a farm. When it became evident that the fire was to sweep his farm, Levee, his wife and his wife's sister, together with Levee's infant child, fled for safety to the South Indian-Rockland Branch Line, down which they hoped to travel. But in the dense smoke they all succumbed and were over-taken by the flames. None survived.
Author's note:
As Ezra passed away in 1930 this article was written before that time, possibly around 1920-24, possibly earlier.
A.C.P.
