Percy Returns to Gananoque
In January of 1908, a coffin with the body of Percy Ireland started its way back from BC to Toronto by train. By the time that train got to the Rockies, a sense of an unsatisfactory life, ended early and unfinished, disturbed the rest of Percy. He drifted through the lid of his coffin and into a passenger car. There he sat undisturbed, watching the country go by. Passing through Winnipeg, his thoughts turned to his wife, Lilian Hartley Brown. They had married in Neepawa on August 10, 1898. Their son, James Douglas, had been born May 12, 1899. James and Lilian had been living with her family in Neepawa while he worked as Secretary-Treasurer of Manitoba Produce Company. He’d been living in lodgings in Winnipeg. What would become of them? Would he ever know?
When the train chugged into Toronto’s Union Station, the ghost sat lost in his memories of living there, missing his chance to be in his coffin as it headed for the Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Life in Toronto after his father’s job as an accountant with the Trust and Loan Company of Upper Canada had taken them there were good. Well, at least until 1879. He abruptly stopped wanting to continue with his memories and became aware the train was silent, empty. He drifted off the train, panicking an old drunk on the platform who could actually see him. A nearby conductor was yelling, “Last call for Kingston, Montreal, and points in between.” As always since leaving Toronto, Kingston and the Islands drew him. He wondered what life would have been like if he’d chosen that path over the lure of the West.
As the Montreal train pulled out of the station, Percy was on it, bound for the Gananoque home of his McDonald roots. He shivered remembering what disrupted the life of his family in 1879. Whooping Cough. It had swept his older sister Laura Athol, himself, and his two younger siblings onto a train with his mother that summer. Mother was taking them home to Gananoque, where her mother and sister could help with care and nursing. Eight-month-old Violet was the first to lose the battle after a three week struggle. Four-year-old Vernon struggled for three weeks after that, before also losing the battle. They were back in Toronto, still mourning Violet and Vernon when his mother died in March of 1880 after a three-month illness.
A few hours later he was savouring familiar territory from his childhood. Percy was a little surprised when the train did not stop at the Cheeseborough station he’d used in the past. Since the conductor was announcing “Gananoque, next stop” he didn’t fling himself from the train as they passed the old station. When the train stopped at the now decade-old Gananoque Junction Station, the passengers hustled to the “combo car”. One half of the car was designed for freight and one half was for passengers. The other unique thing about Thousand Island Railway was that as there were no turnarounds for the train, the engine pulled on the uphill grade and pushed from the rear on the downhill return run to Gananoque.
It was full dark as the train crossed the bridge, followed the canal to King Street, stopping at the Umbrella Shelter. Once off the train it was only a minute or two and he could see his grandparent’s three-story red brick house on its park-like lot.
He had lots of memories of walking the wide drive, playing on the lawn and remembering to be seen and not heard in the elegant interior. His mother ran home to it, taking him and his siblings, every time life raising kids got tough. Now though, it was empty save two other ghosts like him. Grandma and Aunt Frances were still caught up in the glory days of the McDonalds of Gananoque. It reminded him vividly of why he’d chosen life in the West not life as their heir, to to be shaped by them.
As a child he’d spent many hours avoiding his relatives in a favorite spot at the northwest corner of the building. As the third McDonald ghost, it again became his spot. One good thing about being a ghost, even in winter he could enjoy the night outdoors there. So, Percy haunted that corner, focused on the miserable parts of his life. Slowly he became just sorrow. So powerful was that emotion that children playing in the park became able to hear him crying, sometimes even see him.
By Sherry Johnson, GanWalking, Gananoque ON
To believe or not to believe?
One of the ghost stories attached to Gananoque Town Hall is that of a crying boy seen at the northwest corner of the building by children playing in the park there.
Percy Ireland was a real person born on September 12, 1873, in Kingston. His mother Adelaide was the youngest daughter of John McDonald. She grew up in the building at 30 King Street East, built by John for his family, now Gananoque’s Town Hall. After the death of his mother, Percy Ireland appears in the 1881 Gananoque census living with his aunt and grandmother in the house that is now Town Hall. His father and sister are on a Toronto census. Percy is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto. The cause of his death and the reason for being in British Columbia at the time are unknown.
Does that make Percy a good candidate to be the crying ghost? As always with GanWalking heritage stories, you, the reader, must decide where fact ends, and fiction begins.
By Sherry L. B. Johnson
Sherry Johnson lives in Gananoque and is a writer and researcher, for GanWalking, which is focused on heritage storytelling, research and building a strong accessible research and genealogy community. Sherry has provided over half-dozen articles for TI Life. Each one provides a window of research on this small and proud Ontario Town.