Cousin Agam Fhein

by Hughie Ferguson
(recorded in Dearborn, Michigan, February 2007)

Hughie, talking about his parents’ home in Inverness: The only job that I ever did, and it would be kind of a crazy job [today] — see, there were sixty-five windows in the house. And there was I forget how many storm windows.

Dave: Sixty-five storm windows!

Hughie: But imagine going up on a ladder. And I did all that.

Dave: This would be like a wood-framed window, as large as the house window.

Bruce: With one big sheet of glass.

Dave: Or it might have grids in it. Probably it did back then. There’d be the panes and you’d have to put them in with glazing compound. But the thing would be the size of the regular window, so it would weigh a ton.

You remember the Brothers’ place in Alfred? We had those kinds of windows, and at the hardware store you’d get a set of nails with a big wide head. And every two nails would have the same number on them, like “17″ or “18.” And you’d put one nail on the window, and one nail on the storm window, because sometimes it wouldn’t fit…. I remember that because this was a real old place.

(The window in the photo is an example of the old-fashioned storm window.)

Hughie: It was a hell of a job one time. We used to take the storm windows down and put them in the garage. My brother John, he went in and he had a target, he put it over there, and he broke twelve.

Bruce: What was he shooting?

Hughie: He was just trying to practice with a rifle. I had to get six panes [of glass] from Cheticamp, from L.D.’s.

Bruce: All the glass that they had! One summer, didn’t you fix windows at home? Like buy a gallon of glazing compound and replace all the glazing in the windows, especially on the side?

Hughie: Yeah, oh, yeah. It was easier on the front, because of the roof on the little verandah. The other ones there, you’d have to get the ladder, the double ladder.

Dave: And the window would be heavy!

Hughie: Ohhhh, yeah.

Bruce: I wouldn’t want to do that.

Hughie: After a while, we started letting a window or two stay up there. That was just as good, because the goddamned place was cold anyway. Even if we had windows and storm windows on every window, it was still cold.

There was Duncan MacNeil, right across the street from us, he came over. Duncan had kind of a queer limp, you know. Going up on the ladder, and my father came home and saw that. He gave me a going over, “Don’t let that man go up that ladder!”

Dave: When did they move into that house?

Hughie: Our house? Wait now… I was about 12 years old.

Dave: So, 1925 or so.

Hughie: Yeah, ‘24 was when they moved down there.

Dave: You said one time you didn’t think of that as your house, but wherever they lived before. Where were you before?

Hughie: Oh, where did we live? Do you know where my dad’s store was? Well, right down that row of houses. We lived in one of them. You wondered how in hell they could ever — with my grandmother, somebody else, and a maid, and all those goddamned kids…

Dave: That was MacIsaac Street, was it?

Hughie: No, no. On the other side, right across the street [across Central Avenue]. My grandmother, after my grandfather died, she came back down. She didn’t go to church, you know. She was Catholic, of course. My grandfather, Hughie, he was the Protestant, like my dad.

My grandmother was with us, and we had a maid, and at least seven kids. You’d wonder where in the hell they would all fit.

Just think in the wintertime when you had to go…they had a coal house, and a shithouse. And that’s where you’d go. And every time I think of — Pa would be taking the toilet paper from the store.

One woman wrote to Eaton’s wanting to get toilet paper. And they wrote her back and they said get the catalog and get the number and everything. So she wrote back and said “If I had the catalog, I wouldn’t need it.”

Dave: Was there central heat in the new house?

Hughie: According to what room you where in. Holy Christ, they had a little stove, and out in the kitchen the stove. They didn’t have a furnace, there wasn’t a furnace at that time.

Bruce: That big house wouldn’t have a furnace?

Hughie: We had to get a new one right away — you’d get more heat with a match. With all those windows and no insulation.

I often wondered, tried to figure out after my grandfather died — Grandma came down to live with us. I think it was either six or seven, six kids, and my grandmother, and a maid — in a two bedroom house.

Dave: The maid probably slept in the kitchen.

Hughie: God only knows. I’ll never forget when my grandfather died. My grandmother came out and she stood at the casket, you now, and said the rosary. I don’t think she said it from the time she got married because Grandpa was a real Protestant. And Grandma with no reading or writing. She could talk English and talk Gaelic but that was all.

I don’t know, before we went to sleep they must have given us something so we’d sleep and hung us up on hooks. I don’t know in the name of God — think there were three bedrooms, three small bedrooms.

Dave: So you and Dannie and Roddie and Johnnie…

Hughie: There was myself, and Johnnie, and Danny… and then the girls were Cassie, Mary, Sadie, they were home in the Red Rows.

They must have hung us up on a hook or something. There was nothing but I think it was three bedrooms and a hallway.

My father, he bought that house, the one with all the windows in it, four thousand dollars. Everybody in Inverness thought Pa was a millionaire to pay four thousand dollars for a home.

• Dave, Bruce: two of Hughie Ferguson’s sons
• Hughie Ferguson’s parents: Mattie Ferguson and Sadie MacDougall
• The Brothers’ place: a school in Alfred, Maine, run by the Brothers of Christian Instruction
• “My grandfather, Hughie”: Hugh Ferguson (1856 - 1926), father of Mattie Ferguson
• My grandmother: Catherine MacIsaac (died 1936, aged 90)
• The Red Rows were rows of small, duplex houses in Inverness, most of them originally owned by the coal mine, and most painted red. I was nearly an adult before I learned it was “Red Rows” and not “Red Rose” like the tea. — Dave

by Frank Macdonald

Janice Ferguson, daughter of Johnny and Mina (MacFarlane) Ferguson, has been collecting souvenir spoons for more than 30 years and her collection now stands at 1050.

The collecting began, Janice explains, in 1975 when her grandmother, Mrs. Mattie Ferguson, gave her a collection of spoons depicting the 12 apostles. One of the spoons had been lost by her grandmother, so it was 11 Janice received, and since then she has lost another so the apostles have been whittled down to 10.

In addition to the apostles, her grandmother gave her a spoon celebrating the 50th anniversary of the United Church of Canada, and from there a passion was born that has filled walls of Janice’s home.

Janice has documented every spoon in her collection, knowing exactly where each comes from, who gave it to her. While the spoons commemorate places and events from all over the world, Janice herself hasn’t had to travel far to gather her collection. It has become so well known in Inverness that few people leave for places beyond without returning with a souvenir spoon for the collection.

The tiny spoons are from avross the province, the country, the world. They feature crests, Christmas, Mother’s Day, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Unification of Germany, the eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s, Halley’s Comet, Canada’s prime ministers, scores of other people and places.

The spoons are made of sterling silver, pewter, copper, brass, wood, plastic, bone and moose antler. Her oldest spoon, a family heirloom, dates back to 1905.

Janice averages adding about 60 spoons a year to her collection.

Janice Ferguson: daughter of Johnny Ferguson and Mina MacFarlane
Mrs. Mattie: Sarah MacDougall, wife of Matthew Ferguson, Johnny’s father

by Janice Ferguson as told to Frank Macdonald

The first airplane to land in Inverness was not for a joyous occasion.

On March 13, 1948, Johnny Ferguson, age 33, died suddenly of diphtheria. There was a terrible snow storm raging and no cars were getting through to Inverness.

Johnny’s brother, Roddie, was attending St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish and was desperately trying to get home for his brother’s funeral. The train would not arrive until 7 p.m. and the funeral was at 3 p.m.

Roddie called a priest friend who located an airplane belonging to Eastern Airlines, a private club with a small field in New Glasgow. The pilot was willing to fly Roddie and his cousin-in-law, Leo LeFort through the storm.

They boarded the three-seater prop plane at St. Martha’s Hospital in Antigonish. A short time (35-40 minutes) later, the ski plane landed on a frozen MacIsaac’s Pond. The ice was cracking under the plane but held up for both the landing and the later lift-off.

A picture of the plane was taken by Sarah Beaton who was among the large number of people who turned out to witness the arrival of the first plane in the town.

Roddie and Leo arrived in time to attend the funeral of Johnny Ferguson.

Johnny Ferguson: father of Janice Ferguson
Mina MacFarlane: Johnny’s wife and Janice’s mother
Roddie Ferguson: Johnny’s brother

by Greet Macdonald as told to David Ferguson

[Hughie Ferguson's brother Johnny] died before John [Ferguson] was born [April, 1948]. I went home from Halifax because we didn’t have any money to have a baby in Halifax, and it would be cheaper at home. So I went home to Inverness in March, and Johnny Ferguson picked me up at the station because he had a car. And he drove me home.

And he said to me on the way up to Jack D’s, he said, “I have one hell of a sore throat.” He was sucking those cough drop things.

And he came in with me and he talked with Momma and Poppa for a bit, and then he left. And Momma said, “My God, how good John Ferguson looks. I wish our Freddie would put on a little weight.”

Freddie was after having stomach surgery and he was skinny as a rail.

And anyway, I don’t remember what day it was, but it was about two days later when I got up in the morning I came down stairs and Poppa said, “John Ferguson died.”

I said, “What John Ferguson?” And he said, “Hughie’s brother.” He died that suddenly.

He apparently had diphtheria.

It was wintertime, March was winter down there . He went home and got very sick that night, and the next day he was taken to the hospital.

Well, I didn’t have any way of knowing any of this, and he died the next night. And since it was diphtheria, they couldn’t have a wake. He went from the hospital to the church with a closed casket, and was buried like that.

And then they quarantined Mina and the three kids for, I don’t know, a month or something they were quarantined.

So when that happened, Sadie went over. She said, “I’m going in quarantine with with Mina. She can’t stay there alone with three kids,” you know.

And Hughie used to sneak over at night. Janice said that today. She said, “I can remember Frank Chisholm coming over and passing the pie in through the window.”

John died that suddenly. It was an awful shock to the town. Mattie was upset about it, very upset. Because there was no need of anybody dying of diphtheria at that time….
You could have had a shot for it.

Like Mattie said, if he’d had the old doctor, Dr. Proudfoot, who was real good– Dr. Proudfoot would have smelled it. He would have swabbed that right away, you know… but nothing much was done.

And Dr. Ratchford was the doctor who was looking after him, and very shortly afterward, Dr. Ratchford left town and went to another town.

But it was horrible. There was no excuse for anybody dying of diphtheria. That was in the 40s, and he was only 33.

Johnny Ferguson: son of Mattie Ferguson, brother of Hughie Ferguson.
John Ferguson: son of Hughie Ferguson and Greet Macdonald.
Poppa: Jack D Macdonald, Greet’s father.
Momma: Annie Belle Rankin, Greet’s mother.
Freddie: Greet Macdonald’s brother.
Sadie: Sadie Ferguson, sister of Hughie and Johnny.
Mina: Elizabeth MacFarlane, wife of Johnny Ferguson.
Janice: daughter of Johnny Ferguson and Mina MacFarlane.