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7. 707 Boyle:
Witness for the Dispossessed
Architect Alexander Malcolm Fraser designed and
built this house in 1897, the same year that he came,
with his family, to Indian Head. Fraser’s attention to
detail is evident in the spruce-tree-shaped decorations on
the eave brackets.
The house was in the Brooks family by 1904. Edwin
Jackson Brooks had come from Quebec early in 1882,
a time when no local land office existed to file for
homesteads. Like many other “squatters,” he was forced
off the land by Major Bell’s Qu’Appelle Valley Farming
Co. A legal battle against Bell Farm was pointless,
especially since Lieutenant Governor Edgar Dewdney
had shares in the enterprise. Instead of homesteading,
therefore, Brooks became a shopkeeper.
In 1885, Brooks was chosen to sit on the Riel trial
jury. Brooks said, “. . . it was the unanimous desire
of the jury that he (Riel) should not be executed . . .
the Government slighted the jury’s recommendation
and hanged Riel confirm(ing) . . . the execution was
firmly resolved upon from the outset.” Brooks wrote
that John A. Macdonald and Edgar Dewdney were also
responsible for the uprising.
After Nellie Brooks died, in 1945, Mrs. Irene Martin
bought the house, and then her daughter, Jean Howe,
bought it and built the addition to house her mother.
Other owners were Don and Marie Liggett, then Jean
and Henry Hatherley. Tim and Jane Hogan owned it
from 1998 until 2011, when the property, including the
original carriage house, was sold to Hélène Giroux. LK
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