Appendix A - the Gatineau Valley Historical Society

Bricks
Butter
Butter Path
Butternuts
Cheese
Childes
Christmas
Were made above Gilmour's farm-it is possible
that bricks for Dean's Hotel came from there. Most
certainly the brick houses in the newer Chelsea
came from the same source.
Me mother was a great one for work. She made
butter, kept in a 50 lb. crock - salt kept it. She sold
butter to people from town and she took it, packed
in baskets, to deliver in Ottawa. Wm. Ryan
The people who lived on the butter path, so called,
as it was used as a trail down the mountain by
those carrying butter for sale. It ran past Clarence
Moore's to Deschenes. The users stayed overnight
at McCluskey's because of the wolves, returning
the next day with half a bag of flour on their backs.
The peel of the butternuts were used for brown
dye.
Wm. Ryan
Although cheese was made to the north of the
Chelseas there is no record of a cheese factory
locally. Perhaps it was a cottage type of industry...
obviously the product was cottage cheese.
Jim Childe's house is really old. Jim was an old
man when I first saw him-used to have a
dragsaw on the hill (across from Crawleys')-the
wood came down the slide to the road. I used"to
watch it when I was a kid. Wm. Ryan
Christmas time. .. a dance every night. .. all
square dancing... hardly ever saw a dance in a
Protestant house.
Christmas was the Big Day. .. work on New
Year's... didn't come home for Christmas from
the shanties.
Xmas dinner middle 6f day-hung up sock, orange
or two and a few candies. .. no Xmas tree in old
days. .. Midnight Mass-Protestants too.
Wm. Ryan
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