Changing Cherrywood

CHANGING CHERRYWOOD
by Henry Gawman Reprinted from The Brooklin Village Voice & Country Rambler, 24 August 1993

Mary and Edith remember growing up in Cherrywood. It's a small little hamlet with a general store, a lovely old United Church and an ancient blacksmith shop, all haphazardly clustered around the crossroads of Rosebank Rd. and the Third Concession in Pickering. It's as quaint and rural now as it was a hundred years ago. Only time once again is trying to change it.

Back in the early days, it was an Irishman from Tipperary who tried to change the dense forest in the area; James McCreight was one of the first settlers in the area. Why he called the place Cherrywood is anyone's guess.

Two more Irishmen by the names of John and Patrick Teefy landed in Pickering in 1896. Patrick bought a farm near Cherrywood and raised eight "wild Irish roses" and one son. The son, William, married and had six boys and five girls.

Another one of the founding families was the Petty family. Just west of the Cherrywood General Store is the old Petty Garage, the Cherrywood United Church and the Church hall opposite. They are all the result of Charles Petty who came from England to Markham and then Cherrywood in the mid-19th century.

He built a store and then began a brickyard nearby. The Cherrywood United Church was built in 1874 of yellow Petty brick. It still stands today. Sadly, the brickyard does not. It closed in 1918.

But the Petty family played an important role and left a lasting legacy in Cherrywood. Besides the Church built with their bricks, the Pettys opened the first store among other enterprises. Wesley Petty, for instance, owned the first garage in Cherrywood.

Growing up in Cherrywood was a delight for Mary and Edith. As children they accepted life as they found it. They set off for school in sub-zero temperatures, often trudging through three feet of snow, each girl hoping to win a prize for her perfect attendance at school.

Catholic and Protestant children attended the same school in Cherrywood. Upon entering the school — boys through one door, girls through another — they sat together in the same classroom!

The boys tended to be winter scholars because they had to work back on the farm at other times. The school was heated by a wood stove and the teacher boarded with one of the local families. Sometimes the children arrived under adverse conditions only to find that the teacher had been snowed in.

When asked about the local doctor, both ladies remembered Dr. Dale of Dunbarton. In those days, a doctor was only called in as a last resort, not the first. Payment was often in kind, not in cash; the loan of a horse might pay a bill. Edith said that Dr. Dale would never grow rich from his infrequent visits to Cherrywood, especially when cash was so scarce.

Everyone patronized Morrish's store in Cherrywood. Not only because there was no other store but because the storekeeper had a reputation for being totally honest.

If you wanted to buy something that wasn't available in the store, the mail order catalogue was an alternative. The goods ordered would arrive on one of two local trains.

The hamlet was served by both the Canadian Pacific and the Canadian National Railway. Mary remembers how the two trains — one CNR and one CPR — might race to be the first in the station. She also remembers the sound of the steam train whistle echoing over the fields and farms in what was then a great solitude to her.

Edith recalls that there was only one policeman in the township and he came to Cherrywood on horseback. To summon the police was also done only as a last resort. Whoever wished for strong drink could visit the cider mill in Cherrywood, walk to the old Liverpool House at Kingston Rd. and Liverpool Rd. or patronize certain illegal premises on Dixie Rd.

But Mary said that the policeman who came to Cherrywood may well have been the loneliest man in the township because people settled their own disputes. She also said that the teacher was never lonely but he may well have had his fearful moments. Some of the farm boys who attended school could pitch the teacher as easily as a bale of hay.It was probably one hundred years before the last coal oil lamp went out and electricity came in. Some of the men of Cherrywood went off to fight in Europe in 1916 and learned that grand old song of the Great War, It's a long way to Tipperary. They went back again in 1939. But both times when they returned, they might have found that war had changed them but Cherrywood hadn't.

Things seem always to be eternal around Cherrywood. Except that in 1972 the Ontario government tried to do what nothing else could: propel Cherrywood into the 21st century before it was ready.

The province wanted to build a massive community originally called Cedarwood but now called Seaton. And they wanted to build it near Cherrywood. Local people were invited to sell their land and their homes to the government. When that failed, the government began to expropriate the land.

The boarded up farmhouse at the corner of the Third Concession and Altona Rd. is a raw testament to what has happened over the past twenty years. There was strong resistance to the new provincial community of Seaton as there was further north to the attempt by the federal government to expropriate farmland near Claremont to build an airport.

Neither Seaton nor the Airport has progressed much beyond the planning stage. But the steps so far taken have uprooted old residents and shattered forever the tenor of village life in Cherrywood. Everyone was paid, not everyone was happy.