Recorder with the Answer Again!

 

Today's New Year's Day 2024 post tells my blog readers about a mystery solved recently by browsing archived issues of the Reston Recorder online. The surnames listed on the bronze plaque pictured above on the Archer Gate in Reston Memorial Park are ones I've run across while writing about the Reston area with the exception of one - Klingbel.  

Arthur Fredrick William Klingbeil was born December 18, 1907 in the RM of Brokenhead near Beausejour, Manitoba.  His parents, William and Matilda were Polish immigrants, arrived in Canada in 1892 and started out farming.  On the 1911 Census, the family of 3 boys and 2 girls can be found running the general store in Beausejour.  Just five years later, William is working as a machinist for the railway and continues this work for the next 22 years of his life, moving to Transcona.  The 1931 Canadian Census shows the 23 year old son Arthur living with his parents and working as a crew clerk for the steam railway. In June of 1933, a marriage record is created for Arthur and Juanita Jane Irwin in Winnipeg. The surname is spelled Klingbell sometimes but Arthur seems to go by Klingbel in his adult life.  I hadn't found much more about his life except being on Manitoba voters lists from the 1930's forward.  Arthur died at age 80 in Winnipeg on October 26, 1988. He is buried with his parents in Beausejour Cemetery. But why is his name on the Archer Gate in Reston 

 due to a contribution to the Park of $1000? 

 

It was the spring of 2022 when the RM of Pipestone finished digitizing the Reston Recorders and made them available free online.  I've spent many hours since then reading up on people and events from 1905 to 2018. The link to the archive list of issues to browse is here: https://www.rmofpipestone.com/p/reston-recorder-archive  The January 18,1989 issue has the rest of the story at the top of the front page!  I can't help think that times have certainly changed.  I am picturing a friendly Reston citizen or perhaps Alfred Archer himself making Arthur Klingbel feel welcome enough in our Park that he left a gift to it in his will 3 decades later.  The inscription "A Friend to All" was written on his gravestone and his generosity is now remembered here as well. Thank you, Mr. Klingbel.  

Practically Everybody Interested in Oil

Wow!  I'm not sure which font size was used for this headline in the Reston Recorder on February 21, 1952 but it couldn't have been overlooked! You can click here to browse the 1952 papers online and see various stories about drilling activity, rumours of strikes and reports of dry holes.  Seventy years ago, the Reston area was agricultural but that was about to change.  With the exploration for oil around Virden in the late 40's and a big discovery in 1951, Reston and area residents were excited to see if the deposits went further south.   The headline making well was located on the farm of George and Ellen (Wilson) Walker in the Prairie Rose District  on SE 21-7-28.  Although the well was soon capped and did not produce as anticipated, the Walkers took a trip back home to Scotland, 44 years after coming to Canada. Can you just imagine to tales they could tell their old school chums of their experiences in Canada? Their real treasure would have been their five children, many grandchildren and today the multitude of descendants who have made their own marks in the world. 

Caption: Mr. and Mrs. Geo. Walker Sr. reading the news of the spectacular oil strike on their farm.  The strike set up a blaze of publicity which made the couple known from coast to coast. The outcome of the well is in doubt, but in any case, the couple have benefitted.  Sale of half royalties amounted to $6500, enough to pay off the mortgage, and leave a few thousand in the bank. 

Photo Courtesy of the Winnipeg Free Press.  March 1952

Gwen Simms and Jim Milliken 1947

I do have a physical copy of this historic Reston newspaper thanks to my cousin Marilee.  Her Mom Gwen (Simms) Milliken had handwritten a note on the top of it to her Uncle Bill Sinclair from Oak River. 

Dear Bill, This country may be “stoney and scarce of bluffs”, but shows signs of much greater things underneath.

 I saved this paper especially for you as I knew you’d be interested in hearing it and had said the same thing.  Love your soon to be wealthy niece, Gwennie

There was no doubt of some ongoing joke between the two about Jim's family choosing  stoney and treeless homesteads in Pipestone rather than God's Country at her family's home at Oak River. 😊 

The title for today's blog post comes from an article that I stumbled across on the Peels Prairie Website here .  It was clipped from a 1952 newspaper in Irma, Alberta which is now a tiny community 90 minutes east of Edmonton. I'm not sure why they picked up the story written for the Brandon Sun by John McNaughton but everybody is interested to read our own history from another perspective.  Practically everybody at least. 

Bonniman the Drayman

Today's post introduces us to another long term resident of Reston whose contribution deserves to be remembered.   Chester Gordon Bonniman was born in 1881 in Woodstock, Ontario. At the age of two he came west with his family to build a new life. His father Alexander was born in Scotland, where their surname was spelled Bonnyman, and came to Canada at the age of 18. In 1883, Alexander, his wife Sarah Eastman and two little boys Franklin and Chester  purchased a farm in the Lambton district northeast of the present town of Reston at 14-8-27.  The school was built on the corner of their land in 1889.  Two girls and a boy were later born into the family.  In April of 1926, Chester Bonniman purchased the livery and coal business from McMurchy Brothers - Colin and Archie Jr -  who began the Ford vehicle business.  The livery barn had been built by Colin Campbell Sr in the early days of Reston when he was a horse buyer and seller and ran a livery barn. It is just out of sight at the far right of the picture below, by the piles of wood. 

Corner of Railway (First) Avenue and Fourth (Main) Street looking north from the top of the elevator

Completes 21 Years of Service -1947

Mr. Chester Bonniman who for twenty-one years and three months carried the mail from the Post Office to the station made his last trip on Monday, June 30. Mr. Bonniman in all that time has never failed to meet the trains.

Officially Mr. Bonniman has been the mail carrier for the past twenty-one years, the extra three months is accounted for by the fact he took over the contract from McMurchy Bros. 

 The new mail carrier is Norman McCartney

Amy Law was born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire England to Samuel and Louisa Law. She came west from Ontario with her family but upon the earth death of her father Samuel in 1904, the family took up homestead in the Fry district near Antler, SK.  Amy met the young farmer Chester Bonniman and they were married in 1910. Chester's parents moved to Virden and the young couple took over the farm. In 1927, looking for a new challenge, they rented out their farm and took over the McMurchy draying business in Reston.  Draying has evolved into trucking and along with getting things from place to place, he sold coal and wood for heating.  Hauling pails of water and blocks of ice to houses in town for 5 and 10 cents was an important part of his business as well. Advertising was important to Chester and few weeks went by without his box ad in the Recorder. 

June 1947 New Team

No doubt you have noticed the well matched team of blacks that haul Mr. Bonniman's dray. The new team are Prince and Maud. They replace the well known bay team which gave such a good service for the past four years. Mr. Bonniman told the Recorder that it takes only a few weeks to break a team into the draying business. In time the horses get to know the route and they require little handling. Mr. Bonniman told us of one team he had which he left standing for a whole afternoon and when he got back they hadn’t moved an inch.

First (Railway) Street looking east from the top of the elevator - about 1960

The livery barn that Mr. Bonniman purchased from McMurchy's burned in a fire in the 1930's.  the buildings on the right of the photo above were built to service the Coal and Wood dealership as there was less need for a livery barn. The dray team would have used the eat doors in the bigger building and being just down the street from the train station was convenient when he carried the mail from there to the post office and back all those years. 

It was announced in the Reston Recorder on November 2, 1949 that Chester was retiring from the coal, wood and draying business after 24 and a half years. He sold to George Cheyne Jr, who had been working for him since returning from WW2 in 1944. 

Chester and Amy's only child  Irene Rose was born in 1914.  She married John Oberlin later in life and lived and farmed south of Reston for many years. Fletch Manning wrote in the Recorder about the history of the Bonniman House across from the Memorial Park back in 2004. Chester died in 1951 and Amy in 1960. 

Thanks to Ancestry user lindacarlson_1 for allowing me to use the portraits of Chester and Amy to help tell their story.

Bee Keeper Bert Stratford

This post is not about a building but a long time resident of Reston.  In pages of the online archived Reston Recorder, I ran across a few facts about his contributions and legacy.  If someone out there has a better picture of Bert and Minnie Stratford, I’d love to include it in this post. ssimms@escape.ca 

Robert George Stewart Kitchener Stratford, known as "Bert" was born in Surrey, England in 1900.  Bert once said his 4 given names were in honour of British Generals of the Boer War.   The family immigrated to Canada in 1908 to the Austin, MB area where his father George along with his mother Marian and 6 siblings got a new start.  George was originally a farm labourer but later worked on the coal dock in Austin.  

From the Reston Recorder November 1948

Bees aren’t so tough to handle? Not at least for Bert Stratford, who has over 100 hives of them and never thinks of wearing gloves when working with them.
Bert took the writer on a tour through his colonies and when it was all finished your reporter knew a little more about the way honey is gathered. For instance, a good swarm of bees contains from 70,000 to 90,000, and may harvest over 200 pounds of honey, provided the queen rules the roost the way she should.

It all depends on the queen, according to Bert. If she makes the workers step they gather a lot of honey, but if she is the indulgent type, well, they kind of get lazy on the job. Pointing to two hives of about the same strength, he explained that because one had a good queen they had gathered a lot more honey than the other.

Queens live from 2 to 3 years, while workers, when the queen is driving them, last only six weeks. However, In the winter the workers live a lot longer, for during that season the queen permits them to eat and they don’t have to work.

Bert had enlisted in WW1 in March of 1916 and subtracted a couple of years from his birth date to be able to do it.  His service file indicates his correct birthdate was discovered once he was overseas so he became part of the YSB (Young Soldier Battalion) who were trained for jobs like orderlies and construction but kept off the front line for the most part.  He was demobilized in 1919 and married Minnie Ball from Napinka in 1921.  The newlyweds arrived in Reston that same year1 where he worked on the coal dock for the next 27 years.  Buckets of coal needed to be winched overhead in from the dock to the train. Later, the coal was raised to the overhead bin by power but unloading to the dock was still done by hand.  Once diesel engines arrived in the 1940's, his job became obsolete.

 

The ever resourceful Bert had a Plan B so purchased a farm at SE 22-7-27 along the Pipestone Creek just east of where the Canupawakpa Walking Trail is now, farther east of  Harper's Grove as written about here. He owned the quarter from 1945 to 1965.  Bert learned the bee keeping trade and his beeswax and honey won many prizes including first at the Toronto Royal Winter Fair.  The 1948 Reston Recorder article continues below.  

One of Bert’s chief gripes in his business is people saying ‘ you must be making a lot of money’. Burt pointed out that the cost of supplies has advanced tremendously, while the price of honey has dropped. Packaged bees which must be bought in each spring to replace hives which have died over the winter, now cost over six dollars they used to be three dollars. Foundation for the combs now cost $.90 a pound, against less than half that amount a few years ago.

In addition to the cost of supplies, there is a lot of work connected with the beekeeping business. For instance, It is necessary to go through each hive every eight days during the honey season, no small chore. Other tasks involve the moving of the bees, and of course the job of extracting the honey, which is when you find whether there is to be a profit or not.

Bert and Minnie's first home was two boxcars, set about where the Elliot Brothers (former Pool) elevator stands today in Reston.  They later lived on the west side of First Street, just two houses north of the tracks. The coal docks were conveniently right out his back door.

 

Bert did carpentry as another hobby and the Reston District Museum was the beneficiary of this skill in 1970’s when he made frames for the many pictures that were in the museum.  He had collected and restored many First Nations artifacts from his farm and these can be found in the museum as well.  

Bert passed away in 1977 and Minnie in 1986. They had no children but left much of their estate to benefit the Reston community.  The Memorial Park remembers them with their names on a bronze plaque at the main west gate.  Other beneficiaries included the Hospital Aid,  the Museum, Lions Club and the two churches - United and Anglican. 

A quote attributed to the Victorian poet George Eliot seems appropriate to remember the Stratfords. 

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.