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 second part of a three-part series. To read Part 1, click here.
105 Sunnidale Rd. – Sunnidale Orchards
A notice in 1918 read that after a quarter century in the butcher business, Athol Marshall will try farming for a while, having purchased W.J. Gilks’ farm at Ferndale.
Athol Monroe Marshall was born in Millbrook, Ont., in 1876. In 1888, the family was living in Batavia, N.Y., later settling in Barrie by 1891, where Athol attended school.
Marshall was working at a meat packing company in Ingersoll when he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Regiment, Canadian South Africa Services. Serving with the British Forces during the Boer War in 1899, Marshall was wounded and taken prisoner.
Following his tour of duty, Athol returned to Barrie, taking a job as a fireman on the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) and marrying Mabel Dollery in 1902, one of the most popular young ladies in Allandale. Marshall was well-known himself, for his lacrosse skills and as a keen checkers and billiard player.
Athol Marshall would change careers a few times. After working with the GTR, he operated a shoe store in Allandale before selling it and buying an established butcher shop on Essa Road from a Mr. Brennan in 1905, a business that flourished for many years.
With his newly acquired property at 105 Sunnidale Rd., Marshall would operate a chicken farm, offering poultry and eggs for hatching. His inventory included exhibition White Rocks (including winners at New York, London and Toronto National shows), bred-to-lay White Rocks and Guild Strain bred-to-lay South Carolina White Leghorns.
According to a source, Marshall’s daughters, Audrey and Jean, confided to their cousin that their bedroom in the old farmhouse was cold in the winter and would talk of their efforts to keep their feet warm! Athol was a poultry farmer for about seven years before selling the property at 105 Sunnidale Rd. He went on to become a beekeeper, then a boat builder.
In June 1925, James Alexander ‘Alec’ Goldie, purchased the property at 105 Sunnidale Rd. In less than two weeks, Goldie, a gardener, would be marrying Eileen Marguerite Blaney, of Richmond Hill, a teacher. The newlyweds would be settling down in Barrie. Goldie had plans for the Sunnidale Road farm.
You might say, no … you could most assuredly say, that Alec Goldie had gardening in his blood. His great-grandfather, John Goldie, born 1793 in Kirkoswald, Ayrshire, Scotland, an apprentice gardener, demonstrated the skills to warrant employment at the Glasgow Botanic Garden.
While in Glasgow he met John Smith, a botanist, nurseryman and florist, and his daughter Margaret Ballanytne Smith, whom he married in 1815. In 1817, Goldie left for New York, anxious to collect botanical samples from North America to send back to Scotland. Bad weather forced his ship to land in Halifax where he disembarked and began his botanist work, moving through Quebec to Montreal, then crossing the St. Lawrence to the Hudson Valley and on to the eastern seaboard.
He travelled extensively in Upper Canada, even walking as far as Holland Landing. He notes that the road to Lake Simcoe was the best he’d seen in Upper Canada and more wagons were travelling that road than all those he had seen since leaving Montreal. Botanical specimens Goldie had been collecting and shipping back to Scotland had all been lost at sea, but when he returned himself at the end of 1819, the specimens accompanying him survived the trip as well. Back in Scotland, the Goldie’s proceeded to have nine children, and John established a nursery business of his own.
During a trip to England, Nicholas, Emperor of Russia, purchased plants and trees from John Goldie, engaging him to come to St. Petersburg to supervise the planting. While in Russia in 1824, Goldie was offered the Superintendancy of the Siberian Department of the Imperial Botanical Garden, an honour he graciously declined.
John Goldie is credited with discovering and recording the existence of fourteen plant species previously unknown to science, including Dryopteris goldiana, or Goldie's wood fern, a fern native to the eastern United States and adjacent areas of Canada, from New Brunswick to Ontario and Georgia. The Field Botanists of Ontario established the John Goldie Award in 2007, to recognize individuals making significant advancements in field botany in Ontario.
In 1842, Goldie’s eldest sons James and William moved to the US, looking to improve their lot in life. James, with a basic English education and experience as a gardener, florist and nurseryman, worked for many years in New York and New Jersey, later becoming a gardener assistant then head gardener on the estate of Roswell Colt, of Colt Fire Arms, in Paterson, N.J. He married Frances Owen, a native of Wales, in 1848 and six of their nine children would be born in New Jersey before the family moved to Guelph, Ont., in 1860.
John Goldie, moved the remainder of the family from Scotland to Canada in 1844, settling in Ayr. The family was operating a grist and oatmeal mill by 1850, expanding to refine local wheat for export to international markets, in 1865. John Goldie, while in his 90s, planned and supervised the landscaping of son David’s mansion, the Gore, built in 1884.
John Goldie’s sons went on to establish several successful businesses and careers. John co-founded Goldie & McCulloch, a company producing steam engine and boilers. James became the leading flour manufacturer, the James Goldie Co. Ltd.
James Goldie built the Speedvale Mills, sold it in 1867, and rebuilt on the site of a former mill which had burned. The ruins of Goldie’s Mill still stand today as a beautiful park, a setting often used for weddings. James Goldie was renowned among flour manufacturers in Canada, England and the United States.
James’s son Thomas was mayor of Guelph in 1891-92 and son Lincoln became a provincial cabinet minister in the Howard Ferguson government, the ninth premier of Ontario (in 1929, Ferguson’s cabinet was returned with a substantial majority. Provincial Secretary Goldie’s opponent was a former resident of Barrie, Rev. Beecher Parkhouse). Son David operated the Greenfield Mills, later known as the Goldie Milling Company. David’s son William, a physician, helped institute the first full-time chair in medicine in the British Empire.
James’ son John, a violinist of some distinction, was also quite an athlete, playing for the Guelph Maple Leafs baseball team which won the Canadian Championships in 1869. While playing football at University College in Toronto, he sustained an injury that bothered him for life. He entered the milling business with his family, but suffered poor health, passing away at the young age of 52. He and his wife Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Budd had six children: Jennie, Nellie, William, Marjorie, John and James Alexander ‘Alec’ Goldie.
Alec Goldie was born in Guelph in 1893. He attended the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph from 1913-14, before changing to the Olds College of Agriculture in Alberta in 1914-15. His occupation in 1915 was a milk tester when he enlisted in the 62nd Battalion, as a Private, in July of 1915.
As a corporal in England, Goldie was drafted to the 48th Reserve Battalion, in October 1915. While in France with the 3rd Pioneer Battalion in March 1916, he was wounded. This was followed be a move to Zillebeke, Belgium on June 18, 1916 and the 58th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery, as a gunner. Goldie was discharged, April 1919.
At the time of his enlistment, his widowed mother, Bessie, was living in Victoria, B.C. and following his time in the military, Alec attended the University of British Columbia, known as McGill University College at the time, from 1922-24, but decided that was not the place for him, switching to MacDonald College, from 1924-25. According to his college profile, matrimony and possibly horticulture were in his future.
On June 19, 1925, Eileen, the only daughter of Major Robert John Blaney III and his wife Isabell McNally, dressed in an ivory crepe satin gown trimmed with ostrich and a veil adorned with orange blossom rosettes and a bandeau of rhinestones, wed Alec Goldie. She carried a shower of butterfly roses, orchids and lilies of the valley – a beautiful bouquet befitting a marriage to a gardener. Following their honeymoon, the couple would reside in Barrie.
The following June, 1926, Goldie had a market garden of sorts, selling plants such as Bonny Best tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, Sweet William and iris. Through 1927, changes were taking place at 96 Ross St., as the Sunnidale Road farm’s address was known at that time. That spring, Goldie was selling three 50-egg and one 200-egg capacity incubators, likely remnants from Marshall’s chicken farm, and in the fall, farm stock and implements were auctioned off.
Goldie’s vision for the Sunnidale Road farm was an apple orchard, eventually planting hundreds of trees on his property.
In 1937, Goldie purchased another piece of property adjacent to his Sunnidale Road land. Interestingly, the records at that time listed Goldie’s place of residence as Clinton, Ontario. In 1939, the Barrie papers noted that Alec Goldie, of Vineland, District Fruit and Vegetable Field Man for the territory north of Toronto to Georgian Bay and as far west as Bruce County, and his wife, were now residing in the former Marshall home on Sunnidale Road.
Of note, Margaret ‘Pearl’ Thornton, of Clinton, may have come to Barrie at that time as the Goldie’s domestic. She was formally part of the household by 1941. The Goldie’s had no children, but their home on Sunnidale Road was a large one, and the talk was that Mrs. Goldie was a semi-invalid, she would have needed help to run the house.
The Goldie’s were certainly back in Barrie by the late 1930’s and with a building permit in hand to spend $2,000 remodelling their home. In 1939, speaking on the dropping number of bees in apiaries, J.A. Goldie, Fruit Branch, Department of Agriculture, recent to Barrie as a District Horticulturist, warned again spraying fruit trees in full bloom, saying it was completely unnecessary. He went on to say that the Bee Protection Act states “no person in spraying or sprinkling fruit trees during the period when such trees are in full bloom, shall use any mixture containing Paris green or any other poisonous substance injurious to bees.”
The fine for such an offence ran from $1 to $25. Goldie went on to say that the best fruit growers consider spraying during full bloom to be a waste of product and harmful to the setting of fruit. Goldie, the local expert, would be invited to speak to groups such as the Simcoe County Women’s Institute, on methods of controlling insect pests and spraying.
In May 1939, Goldie reportedly struck a young boy, while driving on Ross Street, The boy, who suffered broken bones in his right leg in the accident, had gotten out of a car to cross Ross Street to get to his Marry Street home, after attending Sunday School at Collier Street Church. Dr. J.A. Shotton, the new associate of Dr. W.A. Lewis, attended the young fellow.
Farther on, the section of Ross Street where Goldie lived was still just a road at the edge of town, with areas of mixed hardwood and a few century homes on one side and the Goldie farm on the other. The dust generated by vehicles travelling the road was so unbearable that Goldie and his neighbour Mrs. Wadsworth, who owned a poultry farm nearby, complained to the Board of Works to have the road paved.
By the mid-1940s, Eileen Goldie’s parents, Major and Mrs. Blaney, were living in the neighbourhood at 20 Shirley Ave., possibly in the home we know as Bellevoir. Eileen’s brother, Norman, a captain in the U.S. Army, spent a week with his parents in 1946 before shipping out to the far east. Brother, Eric, a field officer, and his wife joined for the weekend. Eileen entertained the family at a dinner — it was the first time they had all gathered together in nine years.
By 1947, Alec Goldie’s apple business was firmly established. District horticulturist Goldie reported that market gardeners in the Barrie area had been contracted to grown 25 acres of asparagus, and were assured good prices. He went on to say that Smart Bros. in Collingwood were willing to sign contracts for 200 acres of asparagus and that cold storage facilities had been arranged for the growers until the produce could be trucked to the canning facility.
Alec himself grew asparagus in the valley area of his farm. Goldie and other landowners in Barrie who used their property for farm purposes, were given a small tax reduction by the Town of Barrie. That fall, his harvest was ready and Alec Goldie was advertising bushels of Wealthy, McIntosh and Wolf River apples, as well as potatoes, delivered to Barrie and Allandale on Tuesdays and Fridays.
And then, some front page news in the spring of 1948: the Ontario Department of Highways had been acquiring property in Barrie and Vespra Township for a new highway which would skirt the municipality. Starting at Highway 90, the new four-lane highway would wrap around the town, ending at Little Lake Road. Several houses and farms would be in the path: the Lowe farm near Anne Street and the Ferris farm at Bayfield Street.
On Sunnidale Road, the new highway would not affect Alec Goldie’s house, but it would cut through his apple orchard.
The story of 105 Sunnidale Rd. continues next week with Part 3.
