Business over Breakfast: Clare Price & the CPR

Jeff Green | Mar 03, 2011

Guest speaker Dr. Peter Frise recieves an Oconto paddle from Mayor Janet Gutowski

Ever since the Frontenac Heritage Festival was started up, the opening ceremonies of the festival have been held at a Business Over Breakfast event.

This year the ceremonies featured Children of the Drum, an Algonquin Drumming group made up of students at Sharbot Lake High School under the direction of Danka Brewer. They performed two songs, one called “The Wanderer” in English and the other called “The Woodpecker”.

Every year there is a speaker at these events. One time the speaker was a festival promotion guru with the apt name of Jan Bonhomme.

This year it was a distinguished engineer from the University of Windsor who delivered the keynote address, Dr. Peter R. Frise, FCAO, FEC, P-ENG. Dr. Frise is a member of the National Research Council and he is the Executive Director of Automotive Research and Studies at the University of Windsor.

The audience got ready to settle in for a dissertation on automotive research and its relevance to business/tourism promotion in Eastern Ontario, a topic that was not exactly dear to our hearts after a large breakfast and two cups of coffee.

Peter Frise stepped forward and said he was going to talk about the Price Farm in Mountain Grove, and about his grandfather Clare Price, his grandmother Kathryn Muriel Price (not her real name – but we'll get to that later) and the CP rail days in Olden township.

It turns out that when Peter Frise was a young boy he would visit with his grandparents in Peterborough. While his grandmother Kathryn had “a seriously underdeveloped sense of humour regarding young boys,” Peter Frise was very fond of his grandfather Clare, who would sit him on his knee and tell him stories about the railroad.

Peter Frise also remembers coming up to the Price farm in Mountain Grove as a young boy and playing in the hay barn.

This all led Peter Frise to put together the story of Clare Price and his early days on the Price Farm and the CPR.

Nicholas Price (1815-1899) was a Welsh immigrant and one of the first European settlers in Olden Township. His son James (1855 - 1935) ran the Price Farm for many years. James and his second wife Ada (1869 – 1963) – the Prices are long lived - bore eight children, six boys and two girls. Of those Clare was the second.

As Clare told it later on, at the age of 14 his father informed him that there was only enough value on the farm to support one son, and that son was not going to be Clare, so he handed him a shovel and told him to head down to join a railway crew that was working in the area.

Whether that account was accurate or not, it is true that Clare never looked back. One of Clare's brothers, Wilfred (1907-2003), also spent his working life with the CPR, and he also did well.

In the end, the fifth son, John (1905 - 1979) stayed on the farm and his son Clark is still on the Price farm, where he raises cattle that are named after female country singers. Of James and Ada Price's eight children, only two, John and Gertrude, did not live into their ’80s, and five lived until they were over 90. Herbert Price, who moved to Detroit and ran a plumbing business, was the longest lived. He lived 98 years, from 1901 to 1999.

The youngest child of Jack and Ada, Charlie Price (1910 – 2005) lived and farmed in the Mountain Grove area as well.

Clare Price thrived on the railroad, so much so that he was exempted from serving in WW1 because of his railroad skills. In 1922 Kathryn Muriel Taylor arrived in Mountain Grove to be the new school teacher and she boarded at the Price farm. She was 20, tall and slim, and Clare Price reportedly had the first, or one of the first, cars in Olden Township. They were married in 1925.

Many years later, Peter Frise, likely still nursing a grudge over his treatment by Grandma Kathryn when he was a youngster, looked into Kathryn's background. She originally came from a farm between Middleville and Hopetown in Lanark County. Her given name was Katie Muir Taylor, but when she went to Sharbot Lake to become a teacher she decided she needed a more dignified name, so without taking any legal steps she began calling herself Kathryn Muriel, and that is the name she signed on her wedding certificate.

“This is scandalous,” said Peter Frise. “It's fraud.”

After they were married, legally or not, Clare and Kathryn had three children, and moved around as Clare's career took off. They lived in Havelock in the 1930s, and then in Port McNichol, Peterborough, Toronto, and eventually, London.

One highlight of his career came in 1940, when Clare Price was chosen to lead the Maintenance of Way Crew when King George VI (recently portrayed by Colin Firth in the King's Speech) and Queen Elizabeth travelled across Canada by train in 1940.

Clare worked for many years in the B&B (Bridges and Building) division of the CPR, culminating in the role of B&B Division Master for a number of years before his retirement in 1965.

“Not bad for a kid from Mountain Grove” said Peter Frise.

At the conclusion of his talk, Peter Frise read a poem that his grandfather used to read to him when he was a child. It was written in place of a standard accident form report, a 1409 incident report, after a “serious incident” that took place on the rail line near Mountain Grove in 1917 by Sammy Fielding, a friend of Clare Price, to his supervisor, a Mr. Uren.

The 1409 Report

By: Mr. Sammy Fielding – CPR Locomotive Engineer(written in 1917)

Mr. Uren, let me tell you when, On a west-bound drag proceeding. On the mentioned date, at an easy rate, All speed restrictions heeding.

I had a string of 50 things,

The hog was steamin’ bummy. The tallow green, one trip had seen, And the shack was in her crummy.

Two miles I drove, from Mountain Grove, With smoke and cinders tossing. Two farmer men with cattle – ten, Were passing o’er the crossing.

The horn I blew, an hour or two,

I tried my best to stop her. I had a hunch some of the bunch Had come a nasty cropper.

Too late I stopped, and to the ground I dropped, And back to the scene I wandered. One cow had died and by her side, Two more their last were sighing.Those rubes they swore and their hair they tore, And raved like men demented. I let them rag, called in my flag,

And resumed my way contented.

At Ardendale, I told my tale,

to Operator Burleigh. And once again, I yanked that train, and arrived at Havelock early.

So now you know my tale of woe, Each word the truth unyielding. I’m very sorry it happened so, Yours truly – Sammy Fielding.

Notes: 50 things – refers to the number of freight cars in the train. A 50 car train was a pretty big train in those days.

the hog was the steam locomotive – likely of the Pacific 4-6-2 class. “steamin’ bummy” means that the engine was operating well and that the trip was going nicely, at least until the cattle incident.

the tallow – is the fireman who stokes (with a shovel) the boiler of the locomotive with coal. The tallow on this particular trip was new to the CPR (i.e. – he was “green”) and this was one of his first trips.

the shack – is the train conductor who rides in the caboose or crummy at the rear end of the train. He would have been responsible for walking back along the track and placing a warning flag to indicate to overtaking trains that Fielding had stopped his train on the line. In those days – there was no radio communication between trains and so everything had to be communicated by flag and/or horn and light signals. The reference to “her” is likely a tease between Fielding and the conductor.

the horn – all trains were, and still are, equipped with either a compressed air or steam operated horn which is extremely loud. Fielding’s statement that he blew it “an hour or two” is sarcasm but was meant to emphasize that he did his best to warn the farmers to move their cattle off the track.