Seeing ‘Peterboro’ through fresh eyes
Young Sandford Fleming called the growing community his home for two years
Sandford Fleming is one of Canada’s most famous and productive individuals. He is closely associated with Halifax, the city of Toronto and several of the country’s major railways. However, as a result of family connections in his native Scotland, he spent his first two years in Canada here in Peterborough. His youthful presence is one of our city’s great stories.
Today that legacy is commemorated in the Hutchison House Museum at 270 Brock St. One of the museum’s rooms is dedicated to Fleming who boarded for two years at the home of his second cousin, Dr. John Hutchison, the first doctor to settle in the small but growing town. In the hope that he would stay here permanently Hutchison’s fellow citizens built the house for his family in the mid-1830s.
Fleming’s record of accomplishments in Canada is staggering. An artist and a surveyor, he created and promoted Standard Time, he designed the first adhesive postage stamp (the Beaver, as it became known), and he encouraged the laying of the Pacific Cable.
In addition to his important work on railway projects such as the Canadian Pacific and The Intercontinental ( joining Quebec to the Maritime provinces), he created early maps of Peterborough and Toronto. He even preceded Thomas Edison in experimenting with his own “electrifying machine.”
When he arrived in Canada with his brother David in 1845, he was not quite 18. Earlier that year while still at home in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, he made a new year’s resolution to keep a personal journal or diary, and he made good on that promise with only a few lapses over many years. We might see that journal as a sign of his eagerness to make a record of his workaday efforts and his impatience to get on with professional challenges such as mapping, surveying, and railway work.
One of Peterborough’s most accomplished historians, Jean Murray Cole, had for years envisioned a project to transcribe his journals and make them into a book. The result in 2009 was “Sir Sandford Fleming: The Early Diaries, 18451853” published by Dundurn Press with the support of Barry Penhale of Natural Heritage Books. Still available for sale at the Hutchison House Museum Book Nook, the volume contains many facts about and insights into mid-19th-century life in Peterborough, Cobourg, Toronto and Hamilton.
“The Early Diaries” show Fleming busily seeking out projects he hoped to tackle in Canada West. The entries are typically matter of fact and to the point. Few are lengthy and few enter into emotional responses or the intricacies of social relations. Fleming’s mind was highly focused on family matters (the immigration of his parents) and the work he hoped to accomplish, whether it be the creation of a town map or the preparation of a garden. For the first few years he struggled to find gainful employment, but he was steady in his ambitions and confident in his abilities.
Two Peterborough family relationships are central to these early diaries. The first is Dr. John Hutchison, his wife Martha and their children. Dr. Hutchison had a few years earlier travelled to his native Scotland in part to encourage members of the Fleming family to immigrate to Canada West.
The two eldest Fleming boys, Sandford and David, were the first to come, arriving in Peterborough after a long, sometimes harrowing ocean crossing. Despite sea sickness and severe storms, young Sandford kept busy sketching scenes in his journal along the route to Peterborough. Many are included in the book.
Here is Fleming on June 17, 1845 entering “Peterboro” for the first time (that was its spelling then): “It looked rather a poor place where we entered, the stumps of trees still in the middle of the streets, a wood house here and there, with a few good villas with verandas around in the suburbs. Drove up to Dr. Hutchison’s, a two-story little house. He was not at home but Mrs. told us to bring in our chest & was very kind to us.” Later they met the doctor, “talked a little,” and then went to bed “having slept little the last two nights.”
The next day the doctor showed them around the town. Fleming reported that “There are some good shops and stores in it and a large courthouse and cells which we went through ... The place looks very well down about the river — it is more than 1/2 the size of the Clyde at Glasgow ... A part of the town is on the other side of the river which is crossed by a wooden bridge. It consists of about 2,000 inhabitants.”
Such glimpses are historically important. So too are his descriptions of a visit by “spring wagon” to Mud Lake (Chemong) and its “Indian village ... Peter Nogey, Chief.” Hutchison served as the village’s doctor. Another day they took the steamer to Rice Lake where they visited a second Indian village (Alderville) and the Serpent Mounds. Fleming was interested in and puzzled by the Indigenous peoples he saw.
But this trip also flagged an issue of family concern. The group missed the steamer back up the Otonabee and had to walk the 12 miles to town. On route Hutchison “took rather unwell” and they had to stop overnight at an inn. That brief illness would prove a harbinger of the strokes that the doctor would suffer a few months later. In the meantime Hutchison wrote letters of introduction to friends in Toronto and Hamilton, and did what he could to make business connections for both his nephews.
In late October 1845 Hutchison suddenly took ill while travelling to Hamilton. Initial reports indicated that he was not expected to live. The Fleming brothers rushed to Press’s Hotel where they found the doctor “much better” and “out of danger,” though his second fit of “apoplexy” had nearly finished him. Hutchison was “delirious all night” but slowly recovered.
When Sandford brought Martha Hutchison there to see him, she “almost fainted at the sight of the Dr. he was so pale & his eyes sunk.” He had in fact suffered another stroke when he refused to remain in bed during his recovery.
Little wonder then that Hutchison died of typhus in 1847 while providing medical aid to the suffering Irish immigrants in Peterborough. His own health had been severely challenged, but he refused to slow down his schedule.
After his death Martha Hutchison would leave Peterborough and take up living quarters in Toronto where she could be closer to her family. Sandford boarded with her on occasion as he was now spending much of his time pursuing opportunities in the city.
The other Peterborough figure in Fleming’s life was Jeanie Hall, who lived across the way on Brock Street. She was the daughter of James Hall, a prosperous and generous shopkeeper who was elected an MLA in the Canadian Parliament. Hall helped Fleming get started in his mapping and engineering projects. Whenever he returned to Peterboro, Fleming always visited the Hall family.
Jeanie often visited Martha Hutchison in Toronto. Increasingly, she and Sandford enjoyed “walking out together” in both places — that is, until he noted in his diary: “An intimacy growing up with Miss Hall of Peterboro. How it may terminate I don’t know.”
They married on Jan. 3, 1855, and stayed together thereafter.
Hence, Peterborough had an especially warm place in Fleming’s early Canadian experiences. Canada, however, still awaits a well-researched biography of the life and times of Sir Sandford Fleming.