Bill Votary, A Canadian Pioneer

Peter Bird | Jun 30, 2021

I first met Bill Votary about 20 years ago. My wife and I had just moved to Raymonds Corners. Bill, waiting in his mid-afternoon school bus, would walk across the lawn and have a chat as I worked renovating my house. He would talk about life in the area, and of his farm, and I thought that one day I would like to write about this interesting man. I believed him to be one of the true Canadian Pioneers. I finally got to sit and speak with Bill and his daughter Judy recently.

Talking of the farm, Bill says, “This farm was a dairy farm with 20 cows. I started milking cows when I was 9 years old. I’ve always been up around 4:30 a.m. every morning to milk the cows. We supplied the local cheese factory, but mainly, we’d separate the cream and ship it to the Kingston Creamery. This unfortunately came to an end when margarine became popular in the early ‘60s and there was no use for the cream.”

Bill continues, “There was a time around the mid-fifties when we were taking a bunch of young cattle to pasture on Shales Road. When we came to the railroad track there was one cow that refused to cross, no matter how hard we tried. Finally some neighbours came along and lifted it up and took it across the track. When we returned to the pasture in the fall we found one of the fences down and the cattle gone. We found them scattered all over, some found by deer hunters, some as far as Buck Lake. That was some task to drive them back.”

I asked how he met Louisa, Bill said, “I’d seen her occasionally when we used to go to Youth for Christ meetings. She was there with her sister and husband and their children. I said to myself I’d like to get to know her. My brother picked her up once from church in Sydenham, I asked him if he was going to see Louisa again…he said “nah, she’s not my type”. I didn’t know where she lived but I had cousins in Kingston who went to school with her, so I found out where she lived. I went and knocked on the door and when her mother answered the door, I asked if Louisa lived here? I was nervous and didn’t know what to say when she came to the door. I asked her if she wanted to go to church with me that night and we continued to see each other from then on. We were engaged for about two and a half years. Louisa didn’t want a ring so I bought her a heart shaped watch, with our initials engraved on the back.”

Bill built the house that they were going to live in. Bill says, “The living room became the workshop for three years. To make the trim work and window frames, I used some scrap wood and built my own a table saw with parts from Canadian Tire, and a planer with parts from an old Model T Ford. The rough cut lumber had to be hauled via our horse drawn cart, from the saw-mill a mile north on Perth Road.”

On the morning of Saturday, June 16, 1951, the day of the wedding, Bill was working on finishing the Insulbrick siding on the house prior to the wedding at Louisa’s home later that afternoon.

I was a nervous wreck, Bill says, “I said to Louisa, I feel like running away.” “Don’t you dare”, she replied.

“We were a good match. Although she was a city girl, she helped with the milking and made the best jams and preserves.”

In winter, Bill made toboggans, one made from Black Birch and the other two from Rock Elm, for the kids. Bill said, “We’d drag them up to Franklin Lake and ride down the hill back there, then walk back down Wilmer Road and ride down the hill there. We’d take sleigh rides on the road at night time, attach a flashlight to the front, I didn’t have a tail light. There weren’t too many cars around then.”

Bill drove school buses for 50 years during which he received several safe driving awards. He recalled one day when 2 kids were getting off his bus and a transport came around the corner on the shoulder. He managed to pull one child safely out of harm’s way while warning the other. The truck hit a mailbox sending it flying. He got special recognition for that day. Bill says, “It scared me half to death and I shook the rest of the day.” Driving the narrow roads in winter came with its share of scares. Bill tells, “One year I met a snow plow coming around the corner, partially on my side of the road…just cruising along…he was going to cruise me too, until I took to the snow bank.”

Judy Buckley, Bill’s daughter, recounted their trips to Watertown in the back of Bill’s three and a quarter ton truck. Bill adds, “We had 3 kids who couldn’t sit inside so they rode in the back. I fitted a cap so they could keep dry and I installed an old sofa for the kids to sit on. No seat belts, you couldn’t do that today.”

Every spring, since Bill was a youngster, he would go with his dad, Harry, up into Votary’s Maple Bush. “Building up to 2000 taps in a season, working through the night when the temperature was just right, my dad would often boil all day and night, come home for a sleep break and go back to work at six and boil again. Bill was forced to downsize mainly due to the devastation from the ice storm in ’98. “We went from 2000 taps to about 800.”

In 2010, Bill, at the age of 81 was still going strong keeping his father’s business alive with the help of his wife, Louisa, and their children and grandchildren. You can still enjoy the taste of Votary’s Maple Syrup at the Perth Road United Church’s annual Maple Syrup Festival (when the pandemic is over), the Perth Road Store, or directly from Bill.

Bill and his son Richard work together on the farm, and for past four years Bill has been joined by Montana, a teenager, from the village. Bill says, “She taps trees and help collect the syrup, she helps with my 40 goats. She even helped me repair the gutters.”

Dementia was setting in and three years ago, Louisa had a fall at home and broke her hip. She was cared for by her daughter Judy. Louisa now resides in a nursing home in Picton. Bill visits weekly, and recently got to give his wife a hug after almost 2 years.

Bill still gets up at 4:30 a.m. every day and puts in a full day working around the farm and vegetable garden, enriched with the goat manure. “I even bake my own bread,” he says.

I believe Bill to be one of the true Canadian Pioneers.