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PRIVATE PETROL PUMP Private petrol pump at Mount Victoria farm.1930
Mount Victoria Farm, Hudson, Quebec
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The farm was a relatively self-sufficient community. The barn was built of oak from magnificent oak trees on the property (many of which remain providing a shaded driveway up to the stone house). The oak beams and boards were cut in a sawmill on the property. A team of farm workers cut ice from the nearby Lake of Two Mountains to refrigerate the milk before delivering it by rail to the Elmhurst Dairy in Montreal West and to Ontario. There was even a private petrol pump on the property to feed the farm machines and, briefly, an iron mine.29
SUN LIFE HEAD OFFICE OUTING18 September 1917
Mount Victoria Farm, Hudson, Quebec
30
Not content to limit his prodigious energy to being President of Sun Life and owner of the most important dairy farm in Canada, T. B. was also very active as a philanthropist. His philanthropy started at home - literally. Every Summer his employees at Sun Life would be invited to take a special reserved CPR train to his country estate for a giant picnic. Workers on his farm had a New Year's Party in their Social Club. Local children would be invited (in those more innocent times) for rides on his various vehicles - cars, haywagons, yachts, and even ponies.31
WELCOME HALL MISSION1992
247 St. Antoine Street, Montreal, Quebec
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On 13 September 1892, he opened a drop-in center at his Calvary Congregational Church, which evolved into the Welcome Hall Mission at 247 St. Antoine Street. He was President from 1892 until 1899. A hundred years later, in one year, it provided 62, 580 meals and 7,869 beds to homeless men and food and clothing to 2,800 destitute families.33
He also nourished his Scottish roots. He funded the Macaulay Institute for Soil Research in Aberdeen and provided a building and operating expenses to Edinburgh University to start a center for the study of animal genetics. He financed various projects in the Island of Lewis, where his grandfather grew up, and in the Orkney Islands, where his father started working at age 12.34
He died at his beloved farm in Hudson Heights on 2 April 1942 after a long life which straddled the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A thousand people attended his funeral at Calvary United Church on Guy Street near Dorchester Street (now Boulevard Rene-Levesque).35
DISPERSAL SALE 1942 (INTERIOR)29 June 1942
Mount Victoria Farm, Hudson, Quebec
36
Most of our chronologies end with our deaths. However, his "story" continues way beyond this date. Less than three months after his death, on 29 June 1942, his herd was dispersed in a gigantic sale attended by over 2,000 people. The average cost of the cattle - 68 head at an average of $1926 - was the highest yet recorded. Buyers came from around the world and went off proudly with members of the herd. (The herd that was shot around the world?) Local resident, John Brooks, whose family had rented a house from T. B. Macaulay at 664 Main Road, was amazed to see farmers pulling thousands of dollars in cash out of their overalls to buy a cow (at a time when a few thousand dollars would have bought a good-sized house). Douglas Macaulay, grandson of T. B. Macaulay, remembers watching this great gathering from the top of the barn.37
His accomplishments were not unappreciated during his lifetime. He received an honorary degree from McGill University in 1930, and was granted the freedom of Stornoway, Orkneys in 1938. However, recognition of his contribution to the dairy industry was largely posthumous. In 1943, T. B. Macaulay was honored as a Master Breeder, and, later, he was belatedly inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame and as Pioneer in the Dairy Shrine Club.38
CROWD AT DEDICATION OF PLAQUE9 September 1995
Mount Victoria Farm, Hudson, Quebec
39
PIPER AND PLAQUE Unveiling of monument to T. B. Macaulay at bottom of Mount Victoria hill, 1995.9 September 1995
Mount Victoria Farm, Hudson, Quebec
40
On 9 September 1995, more than 400 people turned out to see a plaque dedicated in honor of T. B. Macaulay by the Holstein Association of Canada. The plaque, attached to a 9-ton boulder, is just in front of the stone pillars at the entrance to Mount Victoria Farm on Main Road, Hudson. The pillars were built by Lorne Graham, with stones from Quarry Point in nearby Como, |
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