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.
This is the first part of a three-part series.
105 Sunnidale Rd.
The east side of this beautiful residential street is mostly lined with bungalows, so to say the house at 105 Sunnidale Rd. stands apart is an understatement at best.
On one of Barrie’s oldest streets, part of the Nine Mile Portage, in a neighbourhood peppered with some of the city’s most recognized heritage homes, would it surprise you to learn there’s one more historic house that’s been hiding in plain sight?
It was still Crown land in 1831, but the sales and land speculation transactions for the 200 acres in the Sunnidale Road area on the outskirts of town were about to get underway.
One of those who had skin in the land game was William D. Ardagh, a lawyer and a future mayor of Barrie (1877 to 1881). In the early 1860s, Ardagh began obtaining parcels of land on the east side of the 5th Concession of Vespra (Sunnidale Road). The area between Sunnidale Road and Bayfield Street was divided into eight park lots, with four on each side of Kidd’s Creek.
William Carson, born in County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1789, took a young wife, Agnes Jane, in 1822. They had four children — William, Mary Jane, Robert and James — before reaching Canada in time for daughter Sarah Ann to be born here in 1833. Sons Thomas and Joseph would follow. The Carsons were among the earliest recorded settlers in the area before 1837. At the time when they made their way from Toronto to Holland Landing and then to the head of Kempenfelt Bay, Barrie was still a rough and developing settlement, with only about 36 families. William Carson built a shanty on a bit of a knoll near the foot of Bayfield Street, where the family lived for a period of time. They later moved to the 6th Concession of Vespra to farm. Many of his descendants settled and stayed in Vespra.
William’s son, James, born 1832, married Maria Brown in 1855. James, a shoe and boot maker, had a shop on Bayfield Street, and the family, Maria and their children, John, Louise and Albert, lived in a one-storey frame house. In 1870, James purchased park lots 2 and 3 on Sunnidale Road, where he built a house and established a farm.
He built his home on the picturesque hillside, overlooking a pleasant valley and Kidd’s Creek. Once the verandas and balcony were added, the handsome farmhouse had views of the new Queen’s Park, the town and the bay, and of the sunset from the western-side porch. The large, two-storey, nine-room red brick house had a 12-inch-thick fieldstone foundation, a formal parlour and dining room, a fine staircase and splendid woodwork throughout. A back staircase off the kitchen led to servant quarters above. A barn and outbuildings completed the Carson farm.
By 1881, Carson’s occupation was no longer a shoe maker — he was officially listed as ‘farmer.’ Within 10 years, James and Marie, along with their son, Albert, his wife, Charlotte “Lottie,” and daughter, Ruby, plus another child, Henry Butler, daughter Louise’s son, were living together in the Carson farmhouse.
Besides farming, James Carson was the first town constable of Barrie, in 1892. His son, Albert, a merchant and grocer specializing in teas, had a shop on Bayfield Street, just north of the Wellington Hotel. In 1896, local architect Eustace Bird supervised the construction of Albert Carson’s Tudor-influenced home at 77 Mary St.
James Carson never saw his son’s impressive new home. He died of stomach cancer in 1892, at the age of 60. The sombre funeral procession left at 3 p.m. July 10 from his Sunnidale Road home to Carson’s final resting place at Barrie Union Cemetery, not far from his lovely farm. In the county court records, Carson’s occupation was listed finally as ‘gentleman.’
Widow Carson stayed in the family farmhouse. Her son-in-law, daughter Louise’s husband, Richard Marshall “Marsh” Butler, a traveller or salesman, was now head of the household. In 1901, Maria, Marsh, Louise and the three Butler children — Henry, 18, a bookkeeper, Gertrude, 16, and Allen, 11, were living in the Carson home.
In 1902, the Carson family sold the property to James and Martha (Watt) Wright. Wright, a retired farmer who had resided previously in the Shanty Bay area, had begun auctioning off his farm stock and implements in the spring of 1901, and by October of that year, he had sold his Oro farm to the Aconleys, a farming family originally from Yorkshire, England. The Wrights did not stay long in the old Carson home before selling the Sunnidale Road farm to William J. Gilks in 1906. The Wrights were married and buried in Waverley, dying within two weeks of each other in 1913.
William John Gilks was born about 1862 in Frankton, Warwickshire (Rugby), England. He lived with his parents, Henry and Hannah (Busby), and younger brother, Henry, on a 15-acre property, Wood Farm. By the time William was 19, he appeared to have been working with his father as a knacker, slaughtering horses. Married to Emily Kate Savage in 1884 and with daughter Leila (1883), it’s believed the family came to Canada about 1887. A hotelier, Gilks operated the Dominion House in Alliston, the North Bay House in North Bay, the Windsor Hotel in Powassan (about 1901) and the Nipissing Hotel on the south shore of Lake Nipissing, before reportedly moving to Barrie about 1904 and purchasing the Vespra House Hotel from J.J. Coffey. Gilks invested substantially in the hotel, making the Vespra House a well-appointed downtown hotel with deluxe accommodations.
The Gilks couple’s only daughter, Leila Augustus, married Sherwood William Hill, of Orillia, a telephone man, in Allandale in 1905. The couple had three girls: Evelyn Alice (1906), Emily Rose (1907) and Frances Violet (1913). The feature photo of Leila Gilks, holding her daughter, Evelyn, at the side of the farmhouse, facing Sunnidale Road, was taken by the Jackson studio. J. Frank Jackson, son-in-law of popular Barrie photographer John Stephens, was highly accomplished and recognized internationally, winning a bronze medal for his portraits at the 1900 Paris Exhibition, among many other earlier awards in competitions in Canada and the United States.
It wasn’t long before the hotel keeper moved on to his next challenge. Chester, Smith and Gray were hired in the spring of 1908 to renovate the Railroad House hotel on Bradford Street, recently purchased by Gilks. When the alterations were completed, the hotel was considered a most attractive brick building, equipped with all the modern conveniences. The guest rooms were nicely furnished with ample bath service, and the parlours were pleasant and comfortable. A bright, cheery dining room with good meals and a bar stocked with the finest liquors, wines and malt products made the Railroad Hotel a popular spot with farmers and railroad men. Interestingly, only the bar was spared in the fire of 1913 that destroyed most of the premises. It was this event that changed the look of the Georgian-influenced building to a much different roofline when the business reopened in 1914 as the Classic Hotel (known as the Clifton Hotel in later years). One record suggests Gilks had been renting out the hotel for several years, due to health issues.
Gilks’s property at 105 Sunnidale Rd. was a farm in the traditional sense, complete with livestock. He posted a notice in 1907 that a Chester white brood sow had strayed or been stolen from park lots 2 and 3, Sunnidale Road, and that she was due to pig in 10 days. He went on to say parties detaining the pig without giving notice to the owner would be prosecuted. Gilks was not without his own ‘violations’ when cattle belonging to him were found roaming the streets, contrary to a bylaw, resulting in a fine of $3, plus costs.
Gilks’s true love was horses: race horses and fancy steppers. For several years, he often took prizes at the Barrie Fair: best mare with foal; his horse, Billy B, placed third in the 1905 open trot, among ribbons in other categories. His horses, such as roadster King Ansonia, often did well at the annual spring stallion show, and Gilks and his stable were frequently mentioned on the racing pages. Of particular note was Gilks’s famous race horse, Reprobate, and his up-and-coming foal, Miss Rep. In an unhappy turn of events, Miss Rep fell into a large hole on Sunnidale Road, sustaining serious injuries, including to her legs, making her ‘valueless’ as a race horse. Gilks’s lawyers, Stewart and Stewart, petitioned council for damages, and even though Miss Rep was registered and worth $1,000, the claim was settled at a mere $300.
Late in 1918, Gilks was found dead in his car, near Ferndale. With his hands on the steering wheel, his feet on the pedals, and the engine stopped, it appeared Gilks had fallen victim to the heart issues that had troubled him for years. His funeral took place at the Gilks residence at 124 Tiffin St.
Within two weeks of the well-known hotelier and horseman’s death, his assets and land were being sold. At auction were his livestock and farm implements: four brood sows, 11 young pigs, 10 Shropshire ewes and seven lambs, three horses, a binder, a cultivator, sleighs, a cutter, a harness, his McLaughlin automobile (the only item with a reserve bid) and his cherished stallion, the famous Reprobate.
The story of 105 Sunnidale Rd. continues.
