CA13 - Scarborough Logging Bee

Stitchers: Janet Lawrie Whiteley, Ashley Barr Cullen, Margaret Lawrie Bell, Christine Lawrie Trought, Nancy Weir McCowan, Ann McCowan Wakelin, Diane Kennedy McCarter, Joan McCowan Conway, Betty McCowan, David McCowan, Jennifer Clarke Tse, Joelle Clarke Tse, Valerie Pike Stormer, Megan Weir Burbridge, Kirsten Burbridge Gartshore, Dale Kennedy Clarke (Scarborough)        

I hope you will excuse bad write and also bad dite for I am so confused and wuried that I hardly know what I do, not having got much rest for three days and two nights. I am Dear Sir your Sincair old friend with I hope a new face.  James McCowan (Springbank, Scarborough, Aug. 20 1834)

Referring to his new life in a new land -- as if to say he was “turning over a new leaf” in the Scarborough forest -- both James and his third son, David, died of cholera 8 days later.

Community logging bees made an initial impression on the Scarborough forest and permitted the newly-arrived squatter, tenant or proud freeholder to plant a first crop. Logging was dangerous.

As my uncle, Robert Hamilton, was at this time (1832) engaged in chopping a fallow, my father went out to assist him one afternoon. But as he had no experience in felling timber, the first large tree that he undertook to cut down fell in the opposite direction he had intended and, in attempting to get out of the way of the falling tree, he ran in the wrong direction and was struck by the body of the tree and instantly killed, just four weeks after we landed in Toronto, leaving a widow and four small children. (Autobiography of Robert Rae)

Katherine Bowes, from Lanarkshire was widowed by a stump remover in the 1850s, possibly at a bee.  Robert Stobo became a prominent timber merchant and purchased over 400 acres in the front of the Township. Dumfriesshire-born Sandy Glendinning authored the Scarborough Settlers Lament -- “and Scarboro's fields o' pine”.

All of these early families attended the Scots kirk now known as St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Scarborough. The 200th anniversary of St. Andrews, the first Presbyterian congregation in Toronto, will be in 2018.

 CA13 Beach Logaidh
Thug beachan logaidh coimhearsnachd buaidh tràth air coille Scarborough agus cheadaich sin don luchd-tuineachaidh a bha air ùr ruighinn, a’ chiad bhàrr a chur. Bha logadh cunnartach: chaidh Raibeart Rae a mharbhadh le craobh a’ tuiteam air ann an 1832; bha Katherine Bowes air a fàgail na bantraich air sàilleabh inneal gluasad bun-craoibhe. Bha Seumas Weir agus Seumas MacNèill a’ glanadh a-mach fearann agus a’ logadh chunnradairean anns na 1830an, agus thàinig Raibeart Stobo gu bhith na mharsanta fiodha cudromach.