This ongoing series from Barrie Historical Archive curator Deb Exel shows old photos from the collection and one from the present day, as well as the story behind them.
The historic Brock Park neighbourhood was perfectly situated for residents employed by Barrie’s bygone industries, the Barrie Carriage Company, Barrie Tannery Co. and Canadian General Electric, as well as the railroad in Allandale.
For most children, it was a short walk Prince of Wales school and Barrie Central Collegiate.
Once lined with residences, Bradford Street, over time, has become more commercial, but there are still some Victorian homes remaining.
Many families have lived under the roof of this old red brick house at 212 Bradford St., in Brock Park.
Just after the turn of the century – 1900, that is, Donald Joseph “Dan” McDougall resided at this address.
Dan was born in 1868 to one of Vespra Township’s earliest settlers, Angus McDougall and Mary McDonald. In 1885, Dan enlisted with the "Simcoe boys," and saw service in the North-West Rebellion that same year. In 1894, he married Ellen Teressa Byrnes, daughter of Midhurst pioneers Simon Byrnes and Margaret Myers, who came to Canada from Ireland in 1860.
Ellen’s father, Simon, had died 1873 and her mother lived with Dan and Ellen for 26 years. At the time of her mother’s death in 1920, Ellen was the only one remaining of the Byrnes’ eight children. The McDougalls had not been living in the Bradford Street house for very long when in 1905, while Dan was employed as a conductor with the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR), he had an accident at work.
Three years later, McDougall had to leave his job with the GTR. He opened a business in the Bothwell Block about 1908, then relocated his dry goods store to Bothwell’s Corners, a year later.
The McDougalls moved from 212 Bradford to 19 Essa Rd. not long after, about 1913. Dan McDougall passed away at 62 years old, from Parkinson’s disease, after spending 13 years as a patient at Royal Victoria Hospital.
Another railroad family would live in the Bradford Street home. Born in Michigan in 1883, William Herbert Jacobs came to Canada with his family in 1887. By 1905, he was a fireman with the GTR and married in 1906 to Margaret Alice Morrison, in Whitefish.
The couple’s four children were born in Barrie, beginning with Lorne in 1910, and William, Douglas and Helen would follow. The family lived on nearby Charles Street (now Sanford Street) in the 1920s and 1930s before moving to the Bradford Street house about 1940. They would sell their home to another young couple … likely very well-known to longtime Barrie residents.
Roy Russell Church and Grace McLaine “Scottie” Scott, newly married in 1949, purchased the lovely home at 212 Bradford from the Jacobs family in 1952. Russell, born in Edgar in 1925, was the son of Charles Victor Lennox Church and Retta May Brown, who married in Dalston in 1923. Vic Church’s Tourist Cabins and Trailer Court was a familiar business on Burton Avenue for many, many years.
Russ and Grace had three children, David, Margaret and, sadly, a daughter Leslie who died as an infant. The family attended Essa Road Presbyterian Church, where Russ was an elder, trustee, church school superintendent and sang in the choir as well! Russ had a White Rose oil and gas distributorship in the 1950s before operating Russ Church Mobile Homes on Burton Avenue for more than 30 years.
Seen here in the 1960s, while owned by the Church family, the property at 212 Bradford St. certainly had some of the most beautiful and abundant gardens in the Brock Park neighbourhood.
