W.W. Howell

by H.M. (Bud) Howell.

My father, W. W. Howell was born at Southsea, Hampshire, England, on November 29, 1871. He spent his boyhood years on the Isle of Wight where his father taught at a prison school. At age 15, he started teaching as an undergraduate teacher and later completed his education at York University where he became a qualified school teacher. In May 1897, he took the position of Assistant Master of Hatherlow British School. The Head Master of this school was my mother's father, W. J. Burchall. She was teaching there and so they met.

My mother, Jeanne Burchall, was born at Hatherlow, near Manchester in 1877 of English and Scottish descent. She lived in the Manchester area until coming to Canada.

My father came to Canada in 1903, landing at St. John on April 12 and travelled to Woodstock, Ontario. There he took a job on a farm for $10.00 a month. Later he worked in a wagon factory and moved to Dryden in the fall and took up the S 1/2 L11, con.2 and N80 of Lot 11 Con. in Eton township. This land had been homesteaded before and a log house and barn remained on it.

During the first winter of 1903-04, my father chopped fuel wood for the Winnipeg fuel market. aws were not used in the woods for this kind of work. Three or four bachelors worked togather on this project. One of these men was Anthony Maynard, mentioned in both 'Carved from the Wilderness' by Geo. Wice and 'Oatmeal and Eatons Catalogue' by Ken Collins. Anthony was a great axman. Some years later he won a bet of $1.00 that he could chop a cord of wood in one hour.

My mother arrived from England in August 1904 and they were the first couple married in St. Matthews Anglican Church in Eagle River on August 30th. The church had just opened the Sunday before. Mrs. Stevenson, recently deceased at Dryden Hospital, remembered helping to decorate the church with wild flowers for the wedding.

When my mother and father settled in on the homestead, their closest neighbours were two miles to the east on the Skene farm and three miles to the west where Geo. Ruete lives.

By the fall of 1913, the Howells had four children; Margaret (Mrs. Vic Davis, Eve (Mrs. Ed Davis, Bud (H.M.) and George. Father had taught school in Oxdrift for a few years around 1907 to 1910. He was on the school board which organized the Minnitaki school sectiion and built the first school, which opened in 1911. From 1913 to 15 he was clerk of the Municipality of Machin. In Nov. 1915 he joined the army with the 94th Battalion, later transferring to the Canadian Forestry Corps in France until being sent home for discharge in Feb. 1919. During these war years, mother stayed on the farm with the four children, nursing my older sister and I through the flu epidemic of 1918. She also got someone to clear a few more acres of land and kept a cow and a few young cattle. One neighbour who had a team of mules helped with the harvest and another got fuel wood for the winters.

After the war times were quite good for a few years. The old wagon trail we walked to school on was improved and in the winter long lines of teams could be seen hauling gravel to cover the freshly graded road. Needless to say, nobody thought to grade the roads in the summer time and they soon became two long narrow ruts that were hard to walk in. Community life became active again and my father was instrumental in starting the Great War Veterans Association, which later became the Royal Canadian Legion in Oxdrift. He also helped to organize the first Co-op store in Oxdrift. Among the neighbours he would settle disputes as to where line fences should be. In Minnitaki, mother was the first woman trustee on the school board. Both my parents worked toward getting Holy Trinity Anglican Church built in Minnitaki and when it opened mother was the organist and father the rector's warden. Mother was also active in the church Guild and Women's Institute. Father was secretary of the Eton Road Commission for 25 years and a life member of the Dryden District General Hospital Board.

My father was a great booster of this Dryden district area and wrote many articles for various papers including "The Wabigoon Star", (later the "Dryden Observer"), the "Port Arthur News Chronicle" and "The Ontario Farmer" extolling the merits of this area. These articles cover a time span from 1903 to the 1950's.

In the early 1930's my mother had a stroke while getting supper for the threshing gang and never did regain enough control of her movements to be able to move about unaided. By this time, the family were all grown and with the help we could provide the farm carried on until 1940 when my brother and I joined the army. In 1944 fire destroyed the house and my parents moved to a house near the church and school in Minnitaki. In the early spring of 1946 my mother passed away. Father had a place built for himself beside my sister's house and there he carried on with his writing, his hospital work and his Legion work for twenty three more years. One day on his daily walk to the Minnitaki post office for his mail he was hit by a car. This accident crippled his right hand and from then on he had to write with his left. He carried on until Nov. 1970, just three weeks before his 99th birthday, when he passed away.

Of the four children mentioned, I am the only one left. I married Pansy Adams from Mitchell, Ontario, who taught in Minnitaki from 1939-41 and after the war we settled in Dryden. George married Amy Corner from Oxdrift, who also taught in Minnitaki and still resides in the community. My sisters spent all their lives in Minnitaki and were well known in the community. There are thirteen grandchildren scattered from Vancouver to Halifax and one in Scotland.

Excerpted from the Family History Section of "Evergreen Reflections", published in 1986.