Perth and the Doyles

I spent most of the past weekend immersed in all things Perth and Doyle. My cousin Michael Doyle died on Vancouver Island a couple of months ago rather suddenly. His son, Jamie came east with a portion of Michael’s ashes for a memorial held in the home of Michael’s brother, Monty, in Perth. Two earlier memorials had been held, one in Victoria sponsored by the Search and Rescue community of which Michael had been a founder, and a second in Edmonton initiated by Jamie and his mother, Michael’s former partner. Michael, Monty, and their sister, Nonie are/were the children of Martin Doyle, my father’s younger brother.

I knew Michael only when we were kids together for a few years in Ottawa. Martin was a naval officer and their family moved accordingly back and forth across Canada – mostly in Halifax or Victoria. In 1954 our family moved from Brockville to Ottawa and we settled just a mile or so up Carling Avenue from the Martin Doyles, stationed then in the nation’s capital. Mike, the oldest, was about 10 then. I was 14. Television was just becoming a staple family appliance though it was another year until we landed one. In the meantime we trooped every Sunday evening over to Uncle Martin and Aunt Mary’s place, crowding into their living room for the splendours of the Ed Sullivan Show, and, if the adults were feeling indulgent, the subsequent Four Star Theatre. On Saturday nights we would often go over for the Jackie Gleason Show as well. There were four of us Jay and Mary Doyles: Linda, 15; me; Craig, 10; and Valerie (Teedy as she was then known), 6. Mart and Mary had three: Michael, Nonie, 8 or 9, and Monty, a couple of years younger.

During their stay in Ottawa Mart and Mary would rent a cottage at Rideau Ferry each summer and we would go to visit there for at least one weekend per year – most likely even when we were still in Brockville. My grandfather Charlie Doyle, then a widower, would come out from Perth, just a few miles from the Ferry. Martin would play the cottage piano; Grampa would play his fiddle; and we would all dance – everyone with everyone. It was a lot of fun and remains to this day one of my fondest memories of that early Doyle collection. Though Nonie was five years my junior, we played avidly together during those visits, especially in the lake. Parents still believed that allowing children in the water before an hour had elapsed after eating was to invite lethal consequences. Waiting for the hour to pass until we could once again throw ourselves into the Rideau seemed akin to the punishment of Purgatory to Nonie and me.

I have no memories of the Martin Doyles during my later teenage years, though they remained in Ottawa as did we. We got our own TV and we moved a bit further away. I was involved with my own adolescent life as undoubtedly those kids were with theirs. My parents moved to Toronto in 1959 and I joined my sister at the nursing school of the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Kingston; in February, 1961 I entered the novitiate of the Sisters running the hospital. When I left the Order four years later I had two months remaining in the second year of my undergraduate program at U of Ottawa. I moved in with Mart and Mary, sharing a room with Nonie, also in her second year. During those two months I ate dinner each evening with the family, reconnecting with them and getting a sense of each of them from the vantage point of a young adult.

Michael was still with the family, though I am not certain what he was doing then. Nonie was at university but I don’t think that Michael was studying. He seemed terribly awkward and sensitive to me then, nervous around his father whom I could then see had become a dominant, rather demanding figure, not the easy-going Uncle Martin that I had remembered. I think that it was not too long after that period that Michael moved to Vancouver Island, immersing himself in a life focussed on outdoor sports and eventually, safety and the rescue of people at risk in the vastness of the BC coastal lands. The memorial held for Michael in Victoria was attended by members of the Search and Rescue fraternity, an RCMP representative, Canadian Forces veterans, and other work mates and friends. Their eulogy stressed the innovations that Mike brought to search and rescue operations that have been incorporated in other parts of the world. It was moving to read of the love and respect for Michael that so many had for his idiosyncratic and clearly from-the-heart manner of being. Simply being who he was, Mike brought new approaches and energy to a sector in need. My sister, Linda remarked to me a couple of days later that we sometimes are given glimpses of a person at their funerals to which we have not previously been privy. This is ever so true.

At Monty’s place on Saturday Mark and I were greeted by generations of the Mart and Mary Doyles. Nonie and her husband Roy were there with their daughter, Natalie, who to our surprise lives here in Toronto, on Walmer Rd no less, about three blocks from us! One of Monty’s two daughters is undergoing treatment that kept her and her mother from attending, but her two children were there, as were five cousins of theirs, children of Monty’s son, Justin and their other daughter. A second cousin of ours, Pat, daughter of my dad’s first cousin Kathleen attended as well. And, importantly, Jamie, Michael’s 20 year old son was there, meeting and greeting all of these relatives whom he barely knew but with whom he quickly became one. It was a warm and welcoming scene, unburdened by any sense of familial regrets or recriminations.

We sat together in the living room, hearing from Jamie a report on the two earlier memorials for his dad. His cousin, Justin who had spent a summer after high school with Michael, spoke of his outdoor adventures and the many things he had learned under Mike’s tutelage. Then Nonie spoke at length about growing up with her big brother Mike and the many ways that he had helped and encouraged her. The seven beautiful young cousins, aged between about 4 or 5 and 12, sang together a rendition of This Little Light of Mine. It was a simple, sincerely loving memorial to Michael, to his life, given by some of the people whom he had touched. My sister Linda and her husband Darcy were there as well. We were moved by this entree into the family of our cousins and very happy that we had attended.

One other thing happened on the weekend as well that had great import for me, though I don’t know if it is as meaningful to anyone else. Fifteen years ago we had a Doyle family reunion in Perth. I had been able to locate the Doyle homestead on Concession 5 of Drummond county and Ivan Dowdall, then its owner. He had been renting out the house though he mainly used the property for farming. Some time earlier his tenants had vamoosed without paying their rent, leaving the place in poor condition. Ivan gave me permission to take members of the family to see and tour the house during our reunion weekend. Quite a few of us went over. The house was in terrible condition. The original stone had been plastered over, a surface which was then stained and peeling in places. A second story had been added at sometime earlier but a fire had left much of it in ruin. A large hole in the kitchen floor was the site of egress for rodents who had clearly taken up residence. But it was singularly moving to stand within the walls of this house, nonetheless. I think that we all felt it as a hush fell upon the party standing in the living area while we absorbed the fact that this home had been built by our great-great-grandparents Martin and Mary Doyle of Wexford County, Ireland, in 1827, and that our great-grandfather Timothy Doyle, our grandfather, Charley Doyle, and our parents Jay, Madeline, and Marty Doyle had all been born there.

I hadn’t been back to see the house since then and indeed, was uncertain whether it was still standing. I knew that Ivan Dowdall had died and that his daughter Gina had inherited his properties, but whether she had kept them, I didn’t know. Mark and I tried three times on the weekend to find the house and on the third try, we succeeded! Trees at the road now obscured our vision of the structure that we had been easily able to see 15 years ago. We had a map showing the various lots given to settlers in the early 19^th century and knew that we were close to where it had to be, or, to have been. We decided to drive up a long laneway just in case, and WOW, there it was. Not only that but the lawn was mown and there were lawn chairs about and a truck by the side of the house. We ventured to go further and knocked at the front door. A lady came out from the side, looking rather confused and possibly perturbed at our strange late afternoon appearance. I hastily told her who I was and why we had come. She became very friendly and welcoming. A moment or so later her husband drove up the lane. We introduced ourselves to Roy and Mary Watt and they promptly invited us into their kitchen where we sat and talked about their and our connections to the house.

It is still owned by the Dowdalls, by Gina, in fact. She lives down the road in the original Dowdall house which she is restoring even as she updates it. She is a most energetic woman in her forties, doing all of this as well as pursuing her profession as a high school teacher. Roy Watt is a stone mason by trade as well as a man of many practical capabilities. He was doing work for Ivan Dowdall about the time that we visited there 15 years ago. When he asked Ivan about the place, Ivan told him that he was welcome to live there if he cleaned it out and fixed it up. Mary and Roy have been there for the past 14 years. They have a relationship with Gina that mirrors that which Roy had with Ivan. He takes care of the properties and does work that Gina needs, for example, masonry and fence building, in exchange for their rent. They are all very fond of one another, true neighbours and friends. While we were still visiting with Mary and Roy, he called Gina and she agreed to meet with us.

We drove along Concession 5 to her place at lot 14, the home where my great-grandfather Timothy’s sister, Margaret moved when she married Lawrence Dowdall in 1850. When her father Martin Doyle died, her mother Mary moved there for her own last years. I believe that Gina’s father Ivan was my third cousin, making her my third cousin, once removed. (Don’t you love it!) She greeted us outside with her companion collie dog and then took us for a tour of her home, delving rather deeply with Mark into some of the minutiae of her restoration work.  As Mark is engaged often as a heritage architect, he has learned a great deal about this field. He was impressed with her approach and accomplishments to date.

We drove back into Perth tired and hungry after a long and satisfying day. I am so very happy that our family’s homestead is not just still intact but that it is housing a couple who clearly love the place and who are taking care of it. I know that my father would be happy to hear this news if he was still with us. You might ask: why do you care? I can’t really answer that question. I only know that I do. It is a concrete location that for me houses the lived history of my family, at least the Doyle portion of it for almost a hundred years. My grandparents left the farm in about 1921 to start a grocery store in Perth. The land was poor and the work of caring for it unending. Once Grandpa’s parents had died they struck out in a new direction, looking to find a different life for themselves. My dad was 10 years old then and his parents were in their thirties. Just like my daughters, both in their 30s now, they had the energy and the vision to move on in new directions for themselves and for their children.

Two years from now will be the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of Perth. In 1816 it was intentionally formed on what was to become Highway 7, a road linking the clearly vulnerable cities on Lake Ontario to the future capital of what became Ottawa. Already present Scottish immigrants and demobilized officers and regulars from the forces sent by Britain to end the War of 1812-14 comprised the core of the new settlement. There will be celebrations in Perth to mark the anniversary. I want to be there myself to be immersed in that aura of the pioneers, those people who have gone before us, laying the physical and emotional infrastructure for the lives that we live today.