KAWARTHA LAKES-Murray Walker was born in his parents’ bedroom on the family farm, near Bury’s Green—roughly equidistant between the villages of Fenelon Falls, Bobcaygeon and Burnt River. “I understand it was not an easy delivery, so Mom (Myrtle) went to the hospital when I was born. I’m not sure who the midwife was, but my guess would be Aunt Ruth (Moffatt, being father Henry’s sister). “At lot of midwives were just someone that you knew. Ruth did not have any training, but had one child, so she knew what to expect. Then there would be someone there to help clean up.”
The farm had originally been settled by Murray’s great grandparents. In fact, all of his great grandparents were from the neighbourhood. This was by no means unusual at Bury’s Green. Practically every agricultural lot had a family working it, and most families had been there for generations. When Murray was born in 1932, the western world was at the depths of the Great Depression. In this farming community, unemployment was not as much of an issue as it was in cities. By working together, families could get by on their farms, but there were precious few luxuries. As they had since the first British immigrants came to the neighbourhood—here practically everyone had British ancestors—families worked together to get by at many work bees throughout the course of the year. No one could thrive on their own, but by working together, the community could achieve a modest prosperity.
By the standards of their ancestors, this community was prosperous, even during the Great Depression. Murray grew up in a brick-clad, storey-and-a-half house, on a cleared farm, that had livestock, apple trees and one of the cathedral barns that was common in the area—all luxuries that his great-grandparents could only dream about. To the end of his life, Murray often spoke about how fortunate he was to have such good houses and farms. He grew up in a time when the farm could provide for most of their daily needs.
When Murray was born there was no broadcast media. Whereas today people spend much of their recreational times watching television, streaming content or enjoying social media, back then people spent time with their families and their neighbours. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew each other well, and looked forward to the time that they spent together. Neighbours were like extended family—and often were actually related.
During the Great Depression, children had nothing like the multitude of toys that youngsters take for granted today. One year, Myrtle sold the stone out of her engagement ring so their family could have Christmas, substitute a fake diamond. As a youngster, “Murray had a red metal toy truck, that was his main toy, and it was a beautiful toy truck, his pride and joy. He would have a ball to bounce, and a few other toys, but there was not a lot. We had some pieces of wood for building. They were not commercially made, just scraps from here and there.” Children spent their days alongside their parents as they went about their daily work.
“In winter we would wait until the kitchen warmed up before coming down for breakfast. We slept under the comforters that mother made. The house was significantly cold. The water in the water pail would be frozen. Mom made us breakfast, and we would help with the dishes. I remember drying the dishes…. After breakfast Murray would go out with Dad once he was 3 or 4 to help with the chickens, but then he would come back in while Dad looked after the cows and horses. He was probably 4 or 5 before he went out to help with the cows. It was as soon as he was able. He would play in the afternoon while Dad was doing the field work in summer.”
His first cousin, Ross Walker, lived on the farm to the south. “Ross was a year or two older and they used to play together. They would be back and forth as kids. Then Ross’ mother died and Ross lived with the Pennocks (neighbours)… Mom was good to play, she often took the time, much more than Dad did. One game we could play was crokinole, but for many of the others you just had to use your imagination. Building things out of pieces of wood or whatever happened to be available. Then Mom would have to start getting dinner ready, that would take up her time.”
“On Sunday we would go to church. In winter we didn’t go to church, because we did not have a minister there. We just had a student minister from the middle of May until September. We did not go to Fenelon Falls regularly in winter, Mom would just read us Bible stories. Often, we would go to visit neighbours on Saturday or Sunday. Carl Humphries was close to Murray’s age, at least a year younger. As a kid, if he was invited up to visit Carl (there were then telephones), Mom or Dad would take him. Carl often came to visit at our place. A lot of childhood was just spending time with your parents as they were doing laundry or feeding the chickens.”
It was a special occasion indeed to travel to Lindsay. “It was more than two hours each way. We would always go to Lindsay prior to Christmas, after the chickens had been killed and sold. Then we would have the money for Christmas shopping. I remember going to a big department store in Lindsay, where the I.D.A. is now [Claxton & Co.]. A department store would have a lot of things that weren’t available at the shops in Fenelon. You could buy fabric at McFarland’s or Burgoynes, but department stores had a different level of selection. You could buy mitts, pants or shirts. It was something special to have clothes that were ready made at the store. We, of course, thought of clothing as being better if it was purchased at the store, but that was something that wouldn’t happen—Mom lovingly made our clothes. Now you would perceive homemade clothing to be better, because it is not what you are used to. How things change.”
“We used to go with Dad when Mom was shopping for us. Then we would go with Mom while Dad was buying his presents. We were given a dollar or two to shop for our parents and for each other. Money was always tight. I never really had money until I cashed my cheque for being a teacher. It was $172 and I thought I had the world by the tail. For most of his adult life, Murray never really had money of his own.”
“I remember saying before Christmas ‘please don’t buy me long underwear.’ And then you usually got it even though you had asked that you wouldn’t get it. It was a necessity, and you were glad of it when you were walking across the fields.” Later in life, Murray had a drawer full of long underwear, some of it still in its original package, because you would not open the new package until the old was entirely worn out. “You would always give long underwear, and you always got this damn long underwear. Grandma Flett, who lived with us, was great for buying long underwear. I’m not sure where she got the money, and Dad was very strict that you always obeyed Grandma, no matter what she wanted.”
“We would always have Christmas at lunch time, and it would be with Mom’s side of the family—the Fletts. Supper would be with Dad’s side, the Moffats. We would go to Fletts in the morning, then come home to do chores. The next year we would host Christmas as both Moffats and Fletts would come. Casey and Laura Flett’s only child, Grenville was much older than Murray and I. It really was the meal that was special, and getting together with family. The adults would play cards and the kids would play with a new toy if they had it. You might get a toy for Christmas. They usually tried to find something that we would be happy with—like a red wagon.”
Catherine and Murray had one pet when they were growing up, Pat the dog. “It was probably funny for the adults to say ‘Pat the dog’ and maybe the kids didn’t catch on. Pat would play rag. She would chase us around the kitchen table, trying to get a hold of a rag. If we didn’t eat what was on our plate, it would be fed to Pat. But Pat did not eat from the table, that would not be allowed.”
“Our first car was a 1929 Ford, and I remember when we got it in the late 1940s. It was probably about the same time that [neighbours] Uncle Casey (Flett) and the [Cessil and Lila] Johnstons (lived across the road. By then I was in my early teens. Before that we would take horse and buggy or a light sleigh. We had a light pair of smaller horses, Nick and Nancy. We would take them if we were going over to Moffats. Uncle Tom always had a place for them to be tied up. We would go for the noon meal. We had the afternoon to spend with them.”
In the late 1940s, “we had a car for the summer and horses for the winter. The roads were not plowed in the winter. We were often snowed in. You just had no place to go and no way of going, except by horse and sleigh. Sometimes we were snowed in for the better part of the week. We often had to wait for a bulldozer, when an ordinary plow could not deal with the snowfall. Then they could work at keeping the roads as open as they could. The trucks were much smaller than they are today, and the roads were not plowed to allow cars to travel yet.”
“The hydro came in 1951. Prior to that, Uncle Casey (Flett who lived around the corner on Cedar Tree Road) had hydro, significantly before we did. They also had it on the boundary line (as Bury’s Green Road was called before it was officially named circa 2000) before we did. After visiting us, I remember Uncle Casey would be giggling, as he reported that Henry’s bulbs were burnt out, because that was before we had hydro. It was installed a concession at a time. Cedar Tree Road and Lamb’s Line had hydro 2 or 3 years before we did. And when it came it was a big expense to have the houses wired. Carl Haw wired our house and Johnstons also.”
“I bought the first television—after I had grown up and was teaching. We brought it home and it was cold. We were so excited to plug it in. It had been in the car for a while and we did not realize that it should be warmed up first. It went on for just a minute, and then it was game over because of the weather. We had to take it back to Lindsay and get it fixed. So needless to say, the next time we brought it home, we gave it the chance to warm up significantly before we turned it on.”
When Murray was growing up, there were two community organizations for local youth. “At Young People’s, there would be sports activities and some bible studies. At Junior Farmers, there were speakers. They were both quite social. At Junior Farmers there would be square dance competitions. I remember we won the square dance competition one year. It was after I had been to Chicago to represent the county there. In Chicago, I had seen them parade out onto the stage, rather than starting out standing in a square—and that’s what we did. We were really pleased to win, and Murray said it was because of what I had seen in Chicago.”
“When we went to school, there was no kindergarten, and you would start in Grade 1. By the time you were 6 and starting school, you were big enough to walk. We would ski, walk or take horses to get to school. If there had been a severe snowfall, Dad would hitch up the team and take us. Our teacher was Jean Taylor (married Doug Jones), as well as Lib McGinnis, who was from Fenelon Falls. Jean was a good teacher, quite firm and no one looked sideways. She retired from teaching because she was getting married. That was the expectation: That you would then have a family in those days.”
“When we were kids, we had to cross one concession through the fields to go to school. Murray and I used to ride together, tandem, on a quiet horse, Nancy. Murray would sit in front, with me behind. When we got to school, we would take off the halter, giver her a twitch, and she would head home to the stable. At the end of the day, we usually walked home, with Marilyn and Janice Johnston, who lived across the road. When we didn’t ride Nancy, Dad was good natured about hitching up the team to take us to school, which would make a trail for us to walk on coming home.”
As a young adult, Murray dreamed of becoming a veterinarian—an ambitious goal for a farm boy. He was one of the best students at school, but he grew up in a generation when going to university was simply not an option financially for most farm kids. Like most of his neighbours, Henry was not going to mortgage the farm so his son could get an education. Murray would have loved to have gone to the University of Guelph, as his daughter later did.
Murray went to high school before there were busses, so he took a light team of horses (they had a heavy team for field work, and a faster, light team, for transportation) and buggy with his neighbours. “Dad would have the team hitched up to the sleigh and have it at the house by 7:30. By then, Vic Coulter would walk or ski over, across the Johnston farm. Gordon Flett would walk down (now Martin’s Road) to Cedar Tree Road, over a mile and a half, in order to catch Murray and the sleigh. It took about an hour and a half to get to Fenelon Falls with horse and buggy or sleigh, depending on the weather conditions. They would leave at 7:30 in the morning, take the team to Dick Bulmer’s blacksmith shop, then walk over to the high school in time for 9:00 classes. They would take feed for their horses. Dick was our blacksmith, so I doubt there was much of a charge for having the horses there for the day. As they travelled, neighbours would often ask them if they had the time to pick something up while they were in town. The boys were seldom home before 5:30. In winter, the roads were often not plowed well, and the boys would have to take down fences and head across fields if they ran into a large drift. In the good weather, Vic Coulter would take the family car to drive the neighbourhood boys to school.”
“The horses were really important for Dad, they were what kept him farming later in life. It would be me who would go down to the barn with him to help him with the horses. I think I enjoyed 4H a lot more than Murray did. He would be busy doing his homework. He took pride in completing every school assignment, and in keeping the neatest and most attractive notebooks. Everything was very well finished, everything was coloured. They were absolutely picture perfect. That was not a priority in my books, but he was a very meticulous person. He got all those skills—he would never forget the lessons he did learn at school. Murray was one of the best students, he used to compete with the teacher’s kids for the highest mark when he went to high school.”
As time passed, Vic and Gordon moved on to their working lives—Vic went into construction and Gorden went to work at GM. Murray, though he was an excellent student, was not able make the trip on his own. He went on his own for a few months, but it got to be too much as winter came. Murray returned to work on the family farm—most boys from the neighbourhood did not have many choices of career, other than farming or the local sawmill. Some moved on to factory work at GM or “The Motors,” while some of those left on the farm wondered how their life would have been different if they had moved to follow these neighbours to the city.
Murray grew up in a generation when a lot of kids ended up doing what their parents did by default. He was not particularly interested in farming, it was just the way of life that he inherited. He was very academically smart, though he had only completed Grade 10. For the rest of his life, he could easily solve math problems. Later in life, when he married a teacher, he could readily understand subjects that he had never taken. He had no trouble helping his wife, Muriel, grade assignments at a grade level he had never himself attended, in subjects that did not even exist when he was in school. Given his impeccable spelling, grammar and penmanship, no one would realize that the grading work was not always being done by the teacher.
Murray was always very caring and conscientious, much more than he was results-oriented. People from the community would remark that he was one of the nicest people that you would ever meet. He was quiet, but practically everyone around knew him, and most formed positive memories of him. “In those days, the perception was that what made a good farmer was the ability to do labour—a farmer needs a strong back and a weak mind. I remember Cess [Johnston] saying so many times that Murray should have gone on with learning. He was someone who might have done well in a career where there was mental stimulation. But he really didn’t have that choice—his life was to look after his parents and the farm, that was just the way things were, it was just a given. His generation was the last of that era.” By the time his younger sister Catherine went to high school, there was a bus, and she became a teacher. If bus service had come one year earlier, how much different might Murray’s life have been?
“Back then as a farm boy, you really were working for your Dad. Dad would make all the decisions, and you would just go along with it until Dad retires, or more likely dies. Dad stayed in the driver’s seat way longer than he should have.” Henry lost his sight around 1975, but lived until 1988. “As long as he was around, Murray had to do what Thomas Henry wanted. Dad never stopped calling the shots, even when he couldn’t see.” By then, Murray was married and had a family of his own.
His father expected him to help look after the farm, and it was certainly not a priority that he have a family of his own. One day, when he was in his late 30s, there was an advertisement in the newspaper to come and meet the new teacher at LCVI, and Murray took the radical step of actually going and doing it. He then took the even more drastic step of writing her a letter, and Muriel McIntyre was not quite sure of what to make of this stranger. She asked one of her colleagues, Ruth Sims, who he was. Ruth was from one of the local farming families and gave Murray a positive reference, so Muriel went out with him. Murray quickly decided that she was the one, though Muriel was at first a little hesitant. She was 10 years younger, and it was the first time that a member of his family would marry from outside the home community since they had migrated to the Kawarthas generations before.
Whereas Murray had grown up in the Great Depression, Muriel’s formative years were the postwar boom. As a young woman, Muriel had gone against her family’s wishes and gotten a university education. “She had different expectations of doing things your own way, reflecting a different generation.” It caused her no end of frustration that Murray would just go along with whatever his father wanted. He did not even have his own bank account. He reacted to this by trying to go along with whatever his wife wanted at the same time, though this often contradicted what his father wanted.
As a boy, Murray had gone to the neighbourhood United Church (it had been Presbyterian until Church Union in 1925—Bury’s Green also had an Anglican Church) and after he was married, his family expected him to go to church with them. His wife, Muriel, was Presbyterian, and expected him to go to church with her. Murray solved this problem by attending the Presbyterian Church until his wife went down to teach Sunday School, then he walked up the street to catch the second half of the United Church service with his parents, then would return to meet Muriel as she was finished with Sunday School. It probably seemed to him that he had come up with a way to keep everyone happy. His plan went alright until the minister observed to Muriel that he kept walking out in the middle of service. After that, Murray would just go to the Presbyterian church. Did what Murray wanted enter the equation at all? For him, to try to do what was right for your family (and neighbours) was second nature. “That was just the way he was, what would make him happiest would be to keep everyone else happy. His mom was like that too.” It would be very unusual for Murray to say what he wanted—just like his Mother.
Murray’s life was to look after his family and to try to keep the farm going. Once his father was blind and could not work any more, then Murray had to do everything to keep both farms going. He was from the last generation where many of the boys who grew up on farms lived by farming. Then farmers were not particularly business-oriented, they basically lived by farming. Though he spent his life farming, he would not manage the operation, nor make financial decisions until he was in his mid 50s. To him, farming was a caring occupation—he looked after his family, the farm and the animals.
“Murray was from a generation where families stuck together. Everyone was not off doing their own thing. You spent your spare time doing things with your family, and that’s what he continued to do as an adult.” Murray would spend a lot of his life looking after his kids—driving them so they could enjoy activities with other kids. He always made the effort to play with them. He was very proud of his kids, but modest enough that he would never make a public demonstration of it.
Many of his neighbours who were a few years younger than him, would work off the farm and farm part time. Many others just moved on to full-time employment elsewhere. Over the course of Murray’s life, farming changed from mixed farming, where you largely lived off the fruits of your own labour—to a specialized business, where farms typically produced one or perhaps two commodities, which would be sold. People came to take for granted eating imported groceries. “The world changed around him, but he didn’t really change.” Murray had grown up in an era when farmers would make porridge for breakfast. They ate beef, potatoes, carrots and onions that they grew, day after day, after day. When the time came to provide for his family, he would make porridge every morning. He would boil beef, potatoes, carrots and onions every day. By then, this diet was old fashioned in the days of Honey Nut Cheerios and Kraft Dinner.
Murray lived in an era when farming changed from a means of providing for your own family and community’s needs, to one where farmers would make calculations of how to make (or maximize) profits. When he was young, you could not get by without the help of your neighbour, and you really needed the help of your family to farm. By the time he grew old you had to be shrewd to stay in business as a farmer and farmers were investing in modern equipment.
Murray had the smarts that he probably would have been quite good at the calculations that would go into making a business profitable. But he would be in his late 50s before he could make a financial decision, and he would not think about his cattle as a variable in an equation. He tried to look after them. He would not make a financial calculation about whether or not it would pay to call the vet, he would call the vet because the animal was sick. Though he would find hearing an animal rights activist talk jarring, he did deeply care about the animals. He would not want to watch a rodeo, because he did not think that was a nice way to treat animals. He would not want to participate in a truck or tractor pull because he would not want to put his horses or vehicles through that.
Though he was not particularly mechanically inclined, he looked after his vehicles and equipment. At the first sign that anything was wrong he would get it fixed, and he really appreciated the help of neighbourhood tractor mechanic Duane Johnson. His father’s truck was the only one that he would ever own. He also made it through his whole farming career with the two tractors he inherited. Murray was very careful in how he operated his vehicles, he made sure they were looked after professionally, and they lasted a remarkably long time. Yet he never believed in himself, and as some people gave him a hard time about his vehicle choices, he would go along with them.
Having worked his whole life on the family farm, “Murray did not know until his Dad’s will was read that he was going to inherit the farm.” Now in his mid-50s, his time had come to manage the family farm, but he did not really change. He carried on trying to care for the farm and his family. He would often say he was just trying to keep it going. It was the farm that had been passed down from generation to generation. His ancestors had worked their whole lives so that their children might have a farm. He never made the transition to agribusiness. His cautious, caring, conscientious ways of farming that were what you needed to do to get by during the Great Depression, were just not financially viable by the end of the twentieth century. The day came when the hard calculus of profitability trumped his instinct to keep the farm going as it always had, and he had to sell his herd of cattle. It was devastating for him, and he was never quite the same again. “I often wished that things had turned out better for him.”
As had been the case when he was younger, Murray always retained that sense of neighbourhood. As one by one, the old family farms sold, then would sell again, he always made a point of going to meet his new neighbours. He could go to any farm in the neighbourhood, and tell the occupants all about the people who had lived there, dating back generations. Neighbours would often remark about how he knew not only how they might be related to him, but how they were related to anyone else in the neighbourhood.
“When Murray was young, culture was what you made with your neighbours, and everyone carried on the traditions. It was expected that you would carry on the traditions of your family. He really enjoyed all those connections of the neighbours. He was the one person in the neighbourhood who knew how everyone was related, and all the stories from the community.” Today, people with these abilities would be revered as a remarkable historical resource for their communities. To him, it was nothing special. It was just the way things were in the old neighbourhood.
By the time Murray was an old man it was no longer true that practically every farm was worked by a family living there—where there had once been dozens of full-time farmers, in the next generation there would be two, plus several others with full-time off-farm employment. Families would no longer be satisfied eating porridge for breakfast, with meat, potatoes, carrots and onions for supper, every day—healthy though it was. Families aspired to have newer, perhaps open-concept homes. The neighbourhood was no longer an extended family. Though the world changed around him, Murray was always someone who cared about his family, his farm and his community. When he was young, there were a lot of people like that, by the early twenty-first century, he was unusual indeed. “Murray was at the last of that generation”—a generation where most farmers struggled to keep their farms going as the world changed around them. And with him passed the traditions of a neighbourhood of old family farms.
This story is a memory and memories aren’t perfect. Sometimes details get a little mixed up, things get forgotten or overlooked, and the perspective is inevitably subjective. If you notice something that’s not right, have something you would like to tell us, or a memory to share the museum would be happy to hear from you: [email protected]
This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum and was written by Glenn Walker.
If you want to make a donation to the museum, you can e-transfer to: [email protected] or mail a cheque to :
Maryboro Lodge Museum
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