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Note: N59 Stories paraphrased from phone conversation with Sybil Grace [Strachan] on April 18, 2012
When John was 15, we was about to be apprenticed to an undertaker in Toronto, which he really didn't want to do. So he found a ship heading west, and left home on it, winding up in Rossport, Ontario. Soon thereafter, he literally joined a band of Indians (tribe unknown) and lived and traveled with them for 8 years, getting as far north as James Bay. Eventually, he wound up back in Rossport, where he met the McLeod family, which was engaged in building an inn there (which still exists; Sybil has stayed at it). He wound up marrying Isabella McLeod. The Indians with whom he had lived for 8 years gave the couple a full array of tribal gifts. Their first child, William, was born in Rossport, but within a few years they were in Port Arthur.
In Port Arthur, John Strachan worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway and also as a millwright in a grain elevator. At some point, maybe around 1903/1904 while working in the grain elevator, another worker dropped a cold chisel from 90 feet overhead, which punctured John's skull, but remarkably didn't kill him. He was, however, unable to continue working as a millwright. He wound up working as a caretaker in a church; its basement was quite damp and so he developed pneumonia, from which he died in 1914. As Sybil said, a short but very interesting life.
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Part of an email from Sybil Grace [Strachan} on 25 April 2012
The story of John Strachan leaving Toronto at age 15 and landing in Rossport on the north shore of Lake Superior is that he probably read of a special voyage to the designated main port on Lake Superior. Maybe he went searching for Indians and made contact immediately but we don't know which band. Family myth said JS made one of his rare trips to Rossport when he met Bella. Looking at the map, the rivers north of Rossport flow into James Bay and have several Hudson's Bay posts on them. This seems most likely as the Platt River band is only five miles west of Rossport. I did have an interesting afternoon with an elder there and looked unsuccessfully in the records which had been moved to the reservation in Fort William, to see if there were any births indicating an association with JS. Apparently when WJS was born in Rossport in Nov'91 the band presented him with everything that would be given to a first-born native child, beaded clothing, papoose board rabbitskin blanket woven from skins cut in a spiral. I saw the remnants of this
JS worked for the CPR when he married and moved west with them to Port Arthur where John (Jack) was probably born. When the CPR moved west JS chose to stay and become a millwright, a heavy duty carpenter, and was working in the bottom of one of the elevators between Fort William and Port Arthur when someone 90 feet above dropped a cold chisel. Supporting it in his head JS crawled out the shoot, notified the office and walked up the road to meet the doctor arriving by horse and buggy.
WJS had just enterred Port Arthur Collegiate on scholarship but left to attend business college as he was assumed to be the breadwinner for the four younger boys. But JS lived another ten years, dying eventually of pneumonia from working in a church basement as handiman. He had to give up the heavy duty carpentry as it would cause the pieces of bone left on his brain to shift where the doctors had left them intact and simply covered the hole with a steel plate. WJS remembers periods of time when notes would go up and down the dinner table as the shifting bones presumable blocked the power of speech of JS. Which would then alter again. Their house on Hill Street (?) was torn down and the TV antenna for Port Arthur stand there as it seems to be the highest point in PA.
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Obituary from Port Arthur Daily News states that he died at 2:40 am. He had become ill on Friday, February 27 and was taken to the R. M. & G. Hospital the following Wednesday. He had been a resident of Port Arthur since the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
He was survived by his wife and 4 children: Will, of Fort William; Jack of Alsask, Saskatchewan; Malvin and Russell of Port Arthur. Also survived by three brothers: Alex, of Toronto; Jim, of New York; Will, of Portage La Prairie; and one sister, Kate Strachan.
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