"Take Me Back To Old Cat Hollow": Schooner Days CCXLVI (246)

_______

Take me back to Old Cat Hollow, where I spent my boyhood days,

Where the bright sun gilded everything that met my childish gaze;

There on the hill, so nobly, stood one of knowledge's springs

Where we got an education by the rod's persuasive ring.

---

SO sang an unnamed bard in the Colborne Enterprise some time ago, his heart reverting to the little old school house which still stands in the modern village of Lakeport, nearer the Kingston road, Highway No. 2, than that greater highway, Lake Ontario, along which travelled so many Cat Hollow craft and Cat Hollow boys in the nineteenth century; blue old Lake Ontario, which still claims the boys, though the craft have changed. The bard goes on to tell of the teacher, old Mr. Johnston, as well as Messrs. Peterson and Carswell, whose mild whispers were as the thunders of judgment day to the children over whom they ruled. Messrs. Wilson and McHale were the school trustees, who, every so often, put on their white Sunday-go-to- meeting vests and made an inspection of the children and improved the shining hours by expounding their own opinions on current events and, sometimes, on teaching methods.

---

Take me back to Old Cat Hollow- let me see the old school crowd

Where old Johnston spoke in whispers, but the whispers they were

loud,

And where Peterson and Carswell and Wilson and McHale

Taught the children new ideas, when the old were growing stale.

---

EVERY spring, fifty, sixty, seventy years ago forty-two masters, mates, sailors and cooks packed their bags in old Cat Hollow and disappeared, leaving two hundred and twenty-three women and children (and a few tottering old fellows) to hoe the little garden plots, raise geese, work in the comb factory, crowd Schoolmaster Johnston's knowledge-box, or warm rheumatic joints in the sun, till "the men" came back in the fall. Then things did hum. Farmers' wagons blocked the village streets waiting their turn to unload at Campbell's elevator or Cole's dock and get the precious season's barley out to Oswego before the final freeze-up. The four taverns, which then flourished, did a roaring trade.

---

Old Grimes he kept the tavern, on the corner next the lake,

Where the boys used to gather, and proceed to irrigate.

There Bill would do the fighting stunts, dug up for him by Nick,

For it was a very husky man the brothers couldn't lick.

---

SO, continued the bard. Doubtless the other three taverns had their claims to fame also, but of all the hostelries Grimes' alone survives. Its original use and its peculiar attraction have long departed. Gone is the giant blue goose-egg boulder which stood up-ended at the corner, a permanent challenge to all guests.

"Kin ye budge that stone, stranger?" would be the hail from the regular customers on the stoop when a newcomer approached. "Ef ye bring it into the bar your drinks is on the house. Ef ye cain't divil a drop do ye get unless ye treat the boys!"

The stranger, be he landsman or sailor, would "rassle" the stone, and perhaps he would get it up and perhaps not. Much gratuitous irrigation was the result of this test of strength and skill. The stone which so many rejected (as being too heavy to lift) has become the chief stone of the corner of a church—St. Peter's, Anglican—in the modern village which knows not even Cat Hollow's name.

THE sweet William and sainted Nicholas of the ballad were valiant sailor brethren who frequently made good their modest claim that they could between them "lick as many men as there are fingers on a fist or lakes in the land." There are five Great Lakes, as you may have forgotten.

They tell of some worthies that one winter night as they were homeward bound in the wee sma' hours ayont the twal they came to anchor at the front door of a public house which was dark and silent as the tomb. They hammered and knocked and at length mine host's night-capped head appeared at the window above and bade them begone, alleging the lateness of the hour and the coldness of the night as a reason for not serving them. The boys, affronted by this discourtesy, put their shoulders to the door and gently pushed it in. Together or singly they noiselessly gathered up the stove in the house and carried it out to the deepest snowdrift gleaming under the moon, and there deposited it as a triumphal cairn of cast-iron.

O, those were very happy days, those days so far away

When to us boys, it seemed, the world was only made for play;

O, the swimming and the skating, how our pulses they would thrill,

When Joe Keeler ran the navy, and old Niles he run the mill.

The gentleman referred to so familiarly was Major Joseph Keeler, third of the name, member of Parliament for East Northumberland, in which Cat Hollow lay, 1867-71, and promoter of many improvements in the town of Colborne, which his father founded, and which shared its name with Cat Hollow until postal requirements gave the latter the separate name of Lakeport. Major Keeler was an extensive shipowner, having built the Octavia, Sybilla and other vessels, and owning a wharf and warehouse at the lake front. The family mansion, Kelwood, still standing, was located on a magnificent height inland.

---

All the old familiar figures to my memory come and go

As remembrance traces backward, to the days of long ago;

There comes dear Aunt Rosie, whose cares would never cease

If she lost sight of the gander that led her flock of geese.

---

GOOSE raising was one of the major industries of Cat Hollow during the summer, while the able-bodied manhood of the hamlet were away in their ships.

Dear old "Aunt Rosie" was the grandmother of the present Captains William, Nelson and Henry McGlennon, beloved by everybody in Cat Hollow, and particularly successful with the noble bird which saved Rome from the Gauls, from the yellowy-green gosling stage to the rich brown condition, stuffed with sage and onions, which made Christmas a feast of feasts for the returned mariners.

Mrs. McGlennon's gander was her field-marshal once the goslings were hatched, and she relied on him to lead the flock through the summer campaign towards the Christmas oven.

Cat Hollow sailors took such pride in the geese grown in their home port that the bloodiest battle that pretty-near happened on the lakes was precipitated when a Cat Hollow crew made aspersions upon the geese of Port Credit, which also had famous flocks. Goose Point, in Port Credit Harbor, preserved the name of the white-winged argosy that for years fattened there in even greater numbers than the stonehookers. The up-shore tars rallied to the support of the native bird when the visitors voiced contempt, and every bar in the place—there were five, at this time—was a bedlam until the wind suddenly came fair down the lake and husky mates bundled belligerent crews aboard and made sail.

There was almost as great an uproar in Cat Hollow when the goose growers announced, one fall, that they just couldn't continue the prevailing retail price for fat plucked geese delivered to the customer's kitchen. Hitherto it had always been 50 cents; henceforward it was going to be sixty-five, cash money. What with one thing and another and the poor season and the wet summer and help being so scarce and the rheumatics so bad and wheat so high, etc., etc., etc., danged if they could or would sell another goose at half a dollar. The consumer kicked, as usual, the consumer paid, for what would Christmas be in Cat Hollow without a Cat Hollow goose on the table?

---

You can tell the generation now, that Lakeport habitate,

That they missed an awful lot of fun by simply coming late.

They may can a few tomatoes, but that is very slow

To the business that was done, when Dewey ran the show.

---

"The show" was Alonzo Dewey's comb factory, occupying the building which began as a mill in the village. Why a comb factory flourished in Cat Hollow, and how, and what its product was and where marketed must be left for someone better informed to tell.

Take me back to Old Cat Hollow, if I thought that I could find

All the faces and the places as I see them in my mind;

Take me back to Old Cat Hollow, when Life's Lesson I have read,

But you need not hurry matters, take me back when I am dead.

---

The Colborne Enterprise bard here ceased his song, but F. H. Batty, Cat Hollow graduate thus took up the tale from the composing room of the Port Hope Guide:

"Times have changed wonderfully down at this well known spot

And the people living there now have at heart one thought,

Trying to remember when Campbell owned the elevator and dock,

And when Sproule traded his flour mill for an old sand lot.

 

We would like to mention all the names, but find we haven't the space,

But the Matthews, Hendersons, Redfearns and Shaws were all a sailor race

The others tilled the land and did the best they could.

And we can't forget Cat Hollow, the best place that ever stood."

---

WELL, one can't be born everywhere, like Homer, who had a birthplace in seven cities, and the compiler of these Schooner Days missed the honor of being born any place other than Sherwood, Vaughan Township, York County. In compensation perhaps he can provide the space for some of the mariners' names Mr. Batty has given elsewhere.

Capt. Robert Snetsinger, for whom the S. & J. Collier was built at South Bay, and who later sailed the E. H. Rutherford; Capt. James Shaw, Capt. Geo. Brown, Capt. James Dougherty, Capt. Alonzo Matthews. Capt. Don. C. Matthews, Capt. H. I. Matthews, Capt. Wm. Matthews, Capt. Frank Matthews—good men all, now safely moored in the last great harbor.

---

GRIMES HOTEL, where the goose-egg boulder tested strangers' strength.