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Note: Petty Parish is just east of Inverness on the Moray Firth.
"Our Open Fireplace" was one of many articles that Mary wrote for farm papers. "A Mr. Haines - a contractor - bought the farm we lived in for so many years back about 1910. He only stayed on it two years but in that short time he made more alterations on the house than we did in 50 years. He moved the stairs from opposite the front door to the rear of the dining-room. He did away with the bedroom there and also the bedroom off the living-room. He divided the open upstairs into four bedrooms. But more than all that he built a chimney from the cellar up to replace the short one that had begun upstairs. He also made a fine open fireplace with a cement chimney piece and hearth made of smooth stone.
Our first winter on the farm we decided to put in a small heater upstairs in the hall to heat the bedrooms and downstairs we used the open fire all winter. I do not recall much of that winter. I expect we used soft slab wood for Mr. Haines had a crew of men cutting the lumber on the place. There were plenty of slabs left after the sawmill cut it up. Dad had to go back to the city to work at his trade. We had taken on a mortgage so that had to be closed off.
My only memory was when my mother visited us. An elderly man drove her. It was a cold windy day and after dinner we sat around the open fire. Every now and then the old chap would shiver. "Gee! it's cold in here." There was a November baby in the cradle. "Gee! how does that baby live?" Actually the baby was the warmest person in the room - snug in his blankets. "My old shack is snug compared with this." I don't think we suffered so much but it was the one and only winter we tried to keep the open fire going all winter. What with the poor heating qualities of the slabwood and the draughts when it was windy that sucked the heat up the chimney instead of warming the room, it was not comfortable.
Every winter after that we moved the cook stove into the dining-room and every spring when we moved it back out to the kitchen, we welcomed the open fire. It reminded us of Scotland and with big hardwood blocks, it gave out a good heat until the hot weather made us shut it up. Then in the fall we were very pleased to open it again. The children would be busy on their lessons at the table but then they'd take their chairs to the front of the fire and I'd read a story aloud or Dad would tell them one. Checkers was a favourite game in those days. The fire was never the same: blazing up sometimes and then smouldering in red coals and needing another stick. There was always a plentiful supply.
This obituary appeared in the Kings County Record on Dec 5, 1974: The death of Mrs. Mary A. (MacDonald) Thomson occurred at Bayview Nursing Home, Pointe-Claire, Que. on Nov 29. She was the daughter of the late James and Annie (MacKenzie) MacDonald, Nairn, Scotland and was born March 28, 1884. She was the widow of Thomas Thomson, Belleisle Creek.
Mr. and Mrs. Thomson, with two small children, came to Canada in 1911 and resided at Saint John and Kingston. In 1913 they purchased a farm in Irish Settlement, three miles from Belleisle Creek, where they lived for fifty years. Following the death of her husband in October 1963, Mrs. Thomson moved to Montreal on her 80th birthday to reside with her eldest daughter, Mrs. Mary Starkey, Pointe-Claire. For the last two or more years she was a patient at the Bayview Nursing Home.
Mrs. Thomson was widely known as a contributor to the news and features columns of newspapers and farm magazines, including The Kings County Record, The Maritime Farmer, Family Herald, Farmers Advocate, Farmers Guide and the Scottish Farmer of Scotland during the last 50 years. Her writings on the social and agricultural life of the community resulted in a wide range of acquaintances among other writers and journalists, with whom she has kept up a correspondence until her final stay in the nursing home. A life member of the Belleisle Creek Women's Institute, she contributed a monthly newsletter until recent years.
She leaves to mourn five sons: Ian, Belleisle Creek; Thomas, Ottawa; James, Penobsquis; David, Brampton and Andrew, Lambeth, Ont; three daughters: Mary, Pointe-Claire; Mrs. Albert E. Allnutt (Helen), St. Laurent, Que.; and Mrs. Robert Johnson (Sara), Spruce Grove, Alta.; two brothers: John, Oshawa, and Alexander, Moncton; 20 grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren, and 16 nephews and nieces.
The body rested at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ian Thomson, with funeral services at the Belleisle Creek United Church. Rev. Ray Hagerman of St. Paul's United Church, Sussex conducted the service, assisted by Rev. Canon W.E. Hart, Bloomfield and John Pringle, lay preacher of the Norton-Belleisle charge. The organist, Mrs. Walter Ward, was assisted by the choir and congregation in the singing of hymns "O God of Bethel" and "The King of Love My Shepherd Is". Scripture was read by Canon Hart and Mr. Pringle pronounced the benediction.
Interment was in the family lot of Belleisle Union Cemetery. Pallbearers were her five sons and a Nephew, Ronald MacDonald, Lower Millstream.
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