Canadian Houses
of Romance

by

XXII

A CURSE AND A BLESSING

THE Curse first snugly in between other houses on the long busy thoroughfare that links Windsor and Walkerville. It seems not unlike the structures that surround it, unless one is aware that an ancient malediction has touched it. Then, of course, it looks different. For, this is Moy House, and here is its sentence:

That never the son of a Chief of Moy
Might live to protect his father’s age,
Or close in peace his dying eye
Or gather his gloomy heritage.

     The Curse came down the centuries, and it was to touch Canada, since this house was founded by a member of the Moy family. Its fate was pronounced by Margaret Grant of Urquhart, as she ended her life in Loch Moy after the dead bodies of her father and brother were brought to her by the chief of the MacIntosh clan whom she had rejected as a suitor. And, from the time of Lochlan, the twentieth chief, who died in 1731, to that of Angus, the twenty-fifth, in 1833, not a son was left.
     This twenty-fifth chief settled near the Detroit river and called his house by the fatal name of Moy. He figured in the War of 1812, he became a Hudson’s Bay factor, and he built his home of lumber [page 182] from the virgin forests about the settlement. It became a trading post. From its colonial porches the master could look down upon his pioneer shipping-yards. The countryside had many settlers from Lower Canada, who had come up to this region, so after a time the MacIntosh married a French wife.
     Perhaps it all worked together for good: the fresh, hardy, woods life, the break with tradition, the actual contribution to the opening up of new land, the generous giving, instead of reaping, from the very soil itself. At any rate, the spell was broken. After the twenty-fifth chieftan was recalled from Canada to possess Moy Hall, its sons were allowed to remain in the world long enough to protect their father’s age, and to gather their gloomy heritage.

     The Curse is allied to the Blessing in several ways. When Angus MacIntosh returned to Scotland he sold Moy House to William Hall, upon whose death it came to his ward, a Miss Bâby, thus linking the most significant dwellings of the neighbourhood.
     For the Bâby Mansion stands on the banks of the Detroit River, in Sandwich, which many people to-day might call a continuation of the thriving city of Windsor. But a hundred years ago it was affectionately described as “a picturesque old town”, [page 183] and no one had dreamed of such a place as Windsor. Sandwich was an important Hudson’s Bay post from which, by log canoe, people could go to and from Detroit. “La Traverse” was already popular, and Madame Labalaine, the ferryman’s wife, would suspend over her door a tin horn exactly four feet long which she blew lustily to call her François’ attention to important passengers. Labalaine being so rheumatic that he must be assisted in and out of the canoe, spent all his days therein, leisurely paddling across, and landing people where it suited his convenience—at the foot of Woodward Avenue, Griswold, Shelby, or Cass Streets.
     Jacque Duperon Bâby, His Majesty’s Indian Agent, and his wife, Susanne Reaume, were the important people of this early Sandwich. M. Bâby was a great trader, and had an uncanny power and influence over the Indians, who feared and loved him. A delightful story is related of his prowess in this direction and that of his wife, typical of the careful diplomacy necessary at the time.
     Pontiac, the Ottawa Chief, a great warrior, had come down full of wrath from his camping ground on the Ile au Pesche to visit his friend the trader. He found him in his store adjoining the house busily counting furs.
     “Sit down,” said Bâby.
     Pontiac, looking suspiciously at him, reluctantly took a seat before the log fire. [page 184]
     “They tell me,” remarked the chief, “that those red-coats have offered to give you a basket full of silver if you will betray me into their hands.”
     “How foolish that would be!” was the answer. “For I make a living by trading with your and your tribes. As proof of my friendship we will smoke the pipe of peace.”
     Pontiac seized his tomahawk, and pointing to its head, declared, “This is my pipe.” After their smoke, his host remarked, “It is a long walk to the Island to-night; here are my buffalo skins; use them and sleep before the fire, and see if I betray you in the morning. But before going to bed Theresa, my negress, shall bring your supper.”
     “Theresa has gone to bed,” Mme. Bâby said, “but I shall bring bread and milk for Pontiac.”
     Presently, she entered with a silver tray, a large china bowl, a loaf of bread, and a silver spoon.
     “Good squaw, Bâby; many papooses?”
     Bâby held up both hands twice, counting twenty.
     “Big Camp!” exclaimed Pontiac, smoking his tomahawk pipe in silence. He made his bed of buffalo skins, and went to sleep with his feet to the fire.
     The next morning after breakfast Mme. Bâby appeared, and shaking hands with the chief bade him farewell, saying: “Remember me to your squaw, and when you return I should like six marten skins, dressed, for a boa, and a beaver skin for my bonnet. [page 186] But here is blue cloth for frock and leggings, a red blanket and twelve yards of calico, two shirts, and glass beads, and a silver brooch the size of a saucer for your squaw to wear.”
     Pontiac gave a grunt, wrapped them in his blanket, said “Bonjour” and left—a contented man.

     The Honourable James Bâby, born in 1762, was the son of this Jacque Duperon, and he, too, was connected with the fur trade. Being a great favourite with his father, he was permitted a Grand Tour to Europe before settling to an extensive business; for, since the family had come up from Lower Canada, their holdings near Sndwich and Detroit were important.
     The homestead was destined to become historic. A grandson, William Lewis Bâby, writing just thirty years ago, says:

     It was built about the middle of the last century when there was difficulty in accumulating material and labour to erect such a structure. Along the shores of the River Detroit there were nothing but scattered moulines au vent. The nearest saw and grist mills, up to the year 1828, were fifty miles away. The siding and all lumber required for use in the construction of the building were cut out by a whip-saw and every board was finished with a bead, and every wrought iron nail driven through a hole bored with a gimlet to avoid slipping. The size of the house, and it was built for the Northwest trade, made it capable of [page 186] holding six hundred or more pipes of wine or liquors, which were then of the best quality in the world and were brought from Montreal in bateaux to Queenston, then loaded in waggons to Chippewa, again trans-shipped, threading their way along the Niagara River and the shores of Lake Erie to their different points of destination. The framework of our house is filled with bricks and mortar, beams and sheathing are of oak, and the sills of doors and windows of walnut. In the hall was hung an iron hook, from which was suspended massive scales capable of weighing two thousand pounds of fur, otter, beaver, buffalo and mink. The roof is steep to shed the tempests of snow and rain. It stands, the silent witness of the cannons’ roar on lake and field. Its walls and chambers have re-echoed the voices of the past, and it has sheltered and entertained the mitred and ermined. Its doors were ever opened alike to the Huron and the habitant… It has a well-stocked garden of the choicest fruits the climate could produce. In 1888, I measured two of its pear trees over a hundred years old, the bon chrétien, grafted on a stalk of the old French pear tree, the other the French tree itself. They measured nine feet in girth and seventy in height. These first and tenacious emblems of the gospel and cross were brought here from France nearly two centuries ago, nursed and cradled by the tender care of the missionary fathers in wet moss, and planted, and intermingled with the primeval forest adorning both sides of the Detroit River. They are gradually disappearing, but in the archives of Loyola will last forever.

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