Hidden Ontario by Terry Boyle Read Free Book Online

complete with a full basement, triple brick walls, open porches to the east and west sides, and turreted tower. This home, situated on Highway 2 just west of the village, would one day be called the Whitehouse.
    When Eyre died in 1889, nine years after building his home, it seemed no one in the family wished to keep his pride and joy, and the house passed into the hands of a trust company until 1898, when Samuel Nesbitt, a grocer in Brighton, bought it.
    Nesbitt was both industrious and highly imaginative. He founded the Brighton Bicycle Club on May 15, 1896, in the back of his dry goods store.
    On April 24, 1896, he wrote the column “Bicycle” for the Brighton Ensign newspaper. Partly a sales announcement, it stated, “Ladies and gentlemen, I carry the largest stock of wheels in the country. I have selected these wheels that have given the best satisfaction in Canada and the United States.” He later mentioned the names of people to whom he had sold wheels. On the list was Eleanor Bibby, a young lady who was soon to become his wife.
    Nellie, as she was called, was described as a being a very proper Victorian lady, somewhat severe in appearance but motherly by nature. Samuel and Nellie raised two daughters, Frances and Edith, and two sons, Edwin and Ernest. In the 1920s Samuel renovated the Whitehouse, putting stucco on the outside of the building and constructing a tower with windows to overlook his 53 acres. It was said that Samuel enjoyed playing a game or two of cards in that tower. Between games he would watch his work hands in the field with the aid of binoculars.
    Samuel’s greatest contribution to Brighton and the country was a canning factory, which he established in 1894 under the auspices of Dominion Canneries. Being a progressive man, he also established a laboratory for the development of better quality fruits and of finer methods of canning. This included some experimental work concerning the preservation of foods. An article appeared in the paper on December 2, 1898, regarding apples stored in Brighton. It read, “Nearly 70,000 barrels of apples have been stored in Brighton to be repacked for shipment, principally to Liverpool, England and Glasgow, Scotland. During the last of October and November, 266 rail cars have been unloaded and stored in Mr. Sam Nesbitt’s storehouses alone, and nearly 135 in other places in the town. There has been paid, for freight on apples inward here, the sum of $17,300. It has been stated that Mr. S. Nesbitt’s facilities for storing apples in frost-proof storehouses exceeds that of any other town between Toronto and Montreal.”
    Nellie died in 1929 and Samuel, aged 69, married her younger sister, Maria, a French teacher at the teacher’s college in Toronto. Samuel died in 1938 and the Whitehouse, known then as Grandfather’s House, became Rene’s Whitehouse Hotel. Rene was Irene Dickson’s nickname. She managed the Nesbitt estate for the next 34 years, serving many celebrities at the hotel, among them Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, Mr. and Mrs. Walt Disney, and Irene Castle, the famous ballroom dancer. Today, the Whitehouse has been converted back to a residential home.
    Anyone who has ever picked apples knows something about exercise and fresh air. In the early days, apple pickers would rise at 6:00 a.m. to have breakfast and then assemble at the farm before going out to the orchard. Pickers were expected to climb the first tree by 7:00 a.m., while it was still a bit dark and possibly cold. Everyone would stop at noon for a cold lunch and then return to work until 6:00 p.m. The grower would supply the picker with a ladder and a basket. Keep in mind that some of these trees were 80 years old and 40 feet high. In 1933 pickers were paid $1.50 a day.
    There was a fair amount of rivalry among the picking gangs to see who could ship the most barrels per day. Around 1908, eight men working for Mr. Bradd picked and packed