Whither resilience?

Marc Clerk

It takes resilience to pursue one's dreams and projects despite failures, obstacles, and natural disasters. The history of Sutton offers many examples of such resilience.

With confidence and enthusiasm, the first settlers straggled into Sutton Township around 1790. They looked forward to creating a farm, raising a family, establishing a new community on free virgin land. Back home they were accustomed to labour, hardship, and coping. They arrived with the certitude that hard work faced them. They had no illusions about what was in store, had lived through reverses at home, expected difficulties, and knew what to avoid. In their minds they borrowed the examples of the villages, the trades, the experiences of home, to set as standards.

Methodically they attacked the task of shaping a homestead, including home, fields, and barns, out of tree-covered land. They made plans, talking quietly with their wives and families. They set small goals for each day's work in the knowledge that these small steps would end in their making slow but steady progress.

These were secure people, able to take care of themselves, able to figure out what needed to be done and how to do it. Most were in the wild woods of Sutton because they had the confidence, the courage, the intestinal strength to have come here. Moreover, their religious faith gave them great comfort.

One of their initial efforts was to seek out and develop good relations with their neighbours. Connection with their peers was an essential element of security. It brought physical and mental support when needed, exchange of ideas, peace of mind, expressions of humour and laughter. Connection was the beginning of community.

These then were resilient folk.

As the cleared land began to produce food for their tables and feed for their flocks, as smoking chimneys could be seen here and there in the flatland, on the mountainside, in the valley of Glen Sutton, in the flatlands of Abercorn and North Sutton, a certain calm came over the township. Families grew. Schools were built, roads laid out, ditches dug, fences put up. Frequent barn building bees occurred. A community had been created.

In 1816, disaster came. Snow lay on the ground all through the summer months of June, July, August, and September. Crops did not grow. Famine threatened. Some settlers gave up hope, abandoned their dream and returned to their home villages or headed elsewhere. Most survived, stayed put, and pursued their plans. A strengthened society emerged.

Photo courtesy of Mr. W. Griffin

In 1845 a village was cobbled together to provide essential services for the settlers. Sutton Village was in the very center of the township where the blacksmith, the grain store, the clothing store, the hardware store, the lumber mill surrounded the spanking new Town Hall. Doctor Cutter set out his shingle here. French Canadians from the northern seigneuries came, were welcomed, and hired by farmers needing an extra hand. These hard workers quickly learned English and began to assume active roles in community life. The community expanded.

The railway came to Sutton in 1870, the result of tenacious work by farmer and Mayor Asa Frary, who saw the long-term benefits for his community. Sutton tradesman Tertius French began exporting Sutton farmers' produce to Boston and Montreal. Travelling salesmen added Sutton to their circuit, bringing clothing, farm equipment, tools, and new-fangled gadgets from the big cities. Hotels in Sutton, Glen Sutton, and Abercorn flourished.

Photo courtesy of Mr. W. Griffin

In 1898 a traumatic thing happened in Sutton Village. Most fine buildings on Main Street, Maple Street, on Depot Street, and on what is now Pine Street burned to the ground. Private homes, grain stores, clothing stores, farm equipment places, the two doctors' offices and homes, the train station, the main hotel all disappeared in smoke. Most of the

prudent owners had with foresight carried insurance, and within the year the buildings were rebuilt. The disaster itself had no depressing effect on the people of Sutton who had the will, the stamina and the resilience to face the challenge of reconstruction of the heart of their town.

Two things resulted from the fire, one good, the other unfortunate. A long delayed plan for a water system was quickly implemented so that hydrants became available to quell future fires. Baths and sinks soon had running water. Outside toilets moved indoors. The other result of the fire was that Sutton's new buildings, most of which still exist today, were not built following the architectural style of the original structures. Sutton lost its New England charm and acquired the appearance it has today.

Photo courtesy of Mr. W. Griffin

Life continued on in Sutton. Sutton's farmers dropped subsistence farming in favour of growing excess produce for sale to the outside world. The First World War had a positive effect on farm prices and production rose to meet that demand. The inevitable happened. The resulting over-production lead to a dramatic lowering of prices around 1920.

The depression of the 30s was the beginning of the end of Sutton's farming resilience. It was put to a test against which it did not survive. Operating farms declined from three hundred and fourteen in 1941 to ninety nine in 1971. The need to electrify and mechanize farm equipment, the need for increased production, the need for better education, the need to compete, came at a time when Sutton's farm population was suffering a mass exodus. Sons and daughters moved to large towns or to western Canada. Sutton's remaining milk industry ended in 1980 with the closing down of the milk factory. Small beef operations replaced large dairy herds for a while as farmers tried to cope. In 2007 not more than ten true farms are in operation.

The resilience of the first settlers came full circle. There are few descendants to perpetuate Sutton's long farming tradition. Farmers have faded away. Over the last forty years most have sold their ancestral lands to “gentlemen farmers” and weekenders from the city. Sutton's fields are returning to scrub and brush. Sutton land will soon have returned to its initial state of two hundred and more years ago when the sound of axes echoed through the virgin woods.

Resilience today manifests itself differently because of a different context. Noise, air, and visual pollution and world crisis cannot be ignored with the sophistication of today's communication technology. Resilience must be present so that one can carry out individual tasks and fulfill individual responsibilities despite stressful contexts which extend far beyond our individual lives. To remember the resilience of our ancestors and the establishment of links with the history of our community can only strengthen our individual and community resilience.