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LEGENDARY DOCTOR HELPED BIRTH 2,000 AUBURN BABIES

Dr. B.C. (Bert) Weir is one of the legends of the Auburn community, a doctor who helped bring more than 2,000 area residents into the world.

Dr. Weir was held in such  high esteem that on his 40th anniversary of entering practice, an crowd estimated at 2,000 in newspaper reports, gathered outside his home one July night in 1945. The crowd spread beyond his own lawn  onto the lawn of the Anglican Church next door. A speaker’s platform, decorated with flowers and lights, was set up for the people who wanted to praise the contribution he had made to his community.

Among the highlights was a march past of 300 of the children he had brought into the world, a demonstration that visibly moved him. It was just a small part of what Dr. Weir estimated later that evening would have been 2,000 babies he helped into the world including 18 sets of twins. He assisted at the birth of all members of one family of 12 children.

Dr. Weir recalled his first patient in Auburn, William Campbell who at more than 90 years of age, attended the celebration. The doctor recalled that he had been so pleased to be treating his first patient (for lumbago) that he used 75 cents worth of adhesive tape, even though his charge was only 25 cents.

The community raised a cash donation of $1,300 to give to the doctor as a token of their thanks.

Dr. Weir was born in Komoka but spent his early years in Delaware and showed an early interest in medicine, setting up an office in his own room with a sign on the door “Dr. B.C. Weir”. His family doctor took him in as a “partner”, taking the young boy on trips to visit patients, allowing him to help taking a patient’s pulse or reading a thermometer.

At 13 the family moved to Strathroy where he attended high school, one of his classmates being Arthur (later Sir Arthur) Currie, who became commander of Canadian forces in the First World War.

He attended “model school” and taught near Kerwood before he went to the University of Toronto, graduating in medicine in 1903. In 1905 he moved to Auburn.

Dr. Weir recalled that when he came to the village the cement sidewalks were just in the process of being laid. There was a two-room school at that time and more businesses, he said. He noted the disappearance of the cooper shop, the hotel, the implement shop and the Auburn brass band. He said community spirit had sadly declined over his years and blamed it on the automobile which, he said, took people away from the community and made them take less interest in their immediate surroundings.

LEGENDARY DOCTOR HELPED BIRTH 2,000 AUBURN BABIES

Dr. B.C. (Bert) Weir is one of the legends of the Auburn community, a doctor who helped bring more than 2,000 area residents into the world.

CPR came and went in just 81 years

The haunting sound of a railroad engine’s whistle is no longer heard in Auburn since Canadian Pacific Railway service was discontinued in 1988 and the rails pulled up shortly thereafter.

Ironically, it was exactly 100 years since Auburn residents were among a delegation that attended a meeting in Listowel to encourage the Canadian Pacific Railway to extend its line from Guelph to Goderich, to provide service to the village, still called Manchester at that time.

It wasn’t until the building of the Guelph and Goderich Railway (which would be leased to Canadian Pacific Railway for 999 years)  was announced in 1903 that Auburn could look forward to at last joining the railway age which had been transforming towns and villages across the province for a half-century. It wasn’t until July 1907 that the first passenger train arrived.

The station was located three-quarters of a mile southeast of the village proper. It was called Auburn station, though the village was still officially Manchester.

The railway changed more than just transportation. The mail arrived by train and the railway provided telegraph service, the most instant form of communications in those days before long-distance telephone calling became common.

The mail, express and freight were delivered to the post office and stores by horse and wagon by a series of local men including Joseph Lawson and Russell King.

Besides the station house there were a grain elevator where farmers could deliver their crops for easy shipment to distant markets; stock pens for receiving and shipping livestock in the days before dependable roads and large trucks; and a freight shed and a weigh scale.

From 1907 to 1930 the CPR ran four passenger trains a day, two in each direction along the line. Improving roads and the convenience of cars started cutting into the passenger business, however and service was at first cut to one train each way, then stopped altogether.

By April 1955 CPR passenger service was down to a bare minimum as The Blyth Standard of April 13 reported:

“Effective April 25, the present passenger service will be suspended and replaced with a mixed train that is expected to run daily, leaving Guelph at 8:30 a.m. and arriving at Goderich at 1:45, while the return train will leave Goderich at 10 a.m. and arrive at Guelph at 4:30 p.m.

“The train will be principally for freight and a check on the time-table will reveal  that very few people wishing to make time will use the train service after April 25.”

The express freight service by train was also halted at this time with deliveries coming by truck. The mail was brought from Blyth by Mr. and Mrs. Wesley Bradnock.

In 1958 the station house was sold to a Mr. Little of Goderich for the sum of $150. He tore it down and the removed the materials.

In 1959 the wail of a diesel engine replaced the hoot of the steam engine as the railway modernized.

The depleted mixed-train passenger service continued until August 1961. After that the route was only used for freight.

Freight was always a big part of the operation with grain trains up to 100 cars long chugging along the line. Salt from the Goderich salt mine and road graders from Champion Road Machinery (now Volvo) would move through Auburn along with prairie wheat, dropped off by lake boats at the Goderich harbour, headed to the flour mill in Blyth.

But as highways improved and trucks got larger and expectations of speedy delivery of goods increased, even freight traffic declined.

In 1988 CP Rail applied to abandon the line claiming losses of $836,283 in 1984, $1,003,521 in 1985 and $1,104,384 in 1986.

And so on Dec. 1, 1988 permission to discontinue the railway line 30 days later was given  by the National Transportation Agency.

For most people the last train came and went with no notice but train buff John R. Hardy, who grew up on a Colborne Twp. farm beside the Goderich-to-Guelph line, was there to record the last train on Dec. 16, 1988 as it passed through the farm of Adrian and Toni Vos, his in-laws, just west of Blyth. A photo of that train is contained in his book Rusty Rails: A Photographic Record of Branchline Railways in Midwestern Ontario 1961-1996.

The next year the rails and railway ties were torn up.

The portion of the line from south of Auburn to Goderich can still be travelled on foot on the Goderich to Auburn Rail Trail.

CPR CAME AND WENT IN AUBURN IN JUST 81 YEARS

The haunting sound of a railroad engine’s whistle is no longer heard in Auburn since Canadian Pacific Railway service was discontinued in 1988 and the rails pulled up shortly thereafter.

Ironically, it was exactly 100 years since Auburn residents were among a delegation that attended a meeting in Listowel to encourage the Canadian Pacific Railway to extend its line from Guelph to Goderich, to provide service to the village, still called Manchester at that time.

Bridges

As Auburn celebrates its 150th anniversary of the founding in 2004, the year also coincides with the 50th anniversary of the opening of the handsome Patterson Bridge on County Rd. 25 over the Maitland River.

That bridge, was named for T. Roy  Patterson, who served as Huron County engineer from 1919 until his death in 1951. The bridge was dedicated by his wife on Dec. 30, 1954 when she unveiled a plaque and cut the ribbon declaring the bridge officially open. The bridge was designed by the Pattersons’ son Peter,  who served as county engineer from 1952-1956 and was constructed by the county’s bridge-building team under John Snell.

It was quite a feat of engineering at the time. It was built nearly 1,000 feet upstream from the old bridge and cost what was an astounding price at the time: $225,500. The bridge itself is 360 feet long in four spans of continuous concrete. To smooth the route through Auburn, part of the hill to the west, known as Lawlor’s Hill, had to be cut down while at the other end, the route of Maitland Crescent was changed to avoid a steep winding grade into the village.

Throughout history, the mighty Maitland had caused plenty of problems for bridge builders and even this modern bridge had its brush with the river’s power. It was partly built when rains came and the river rose to a level where it was feared the bridge would be ruined.  Luckily, while some plywood forms and supports were washed away, no harm was done to the new bridge itself.

The Maitland had been a challenge from the days of first settlement. In a 1955 story in The Blyth Standard, Charles Asquith of Auburn told how  Eneas Elkin, after taking up the farm on the northwest corner of Hullett Twp., had set up a ferry service across the Maitland to be run by his wife during the day when the men were busy in the field. Although  it was unknown exactly where the ferry crossed the river, Asquith speculated it was probably a little north of where the dam was built.

The first bridge across the river was built in 1859. Belden’s Atlas of 1879  describes the bridge: “The Maitland River is spanned at Auburn by a fine wood truss bridge which rests on substantial stone piers; the cost of this bridge was $10,500, it being the most expensive in the county with one exception.”

Substantial as it was, Asquith recalled that one spring day in 1884, five years after the Belden account, two young Auburn men, Joseph Lawson and William Sturdy, were on the bridge watching the ice flows pass under it when they realized the bridge was being carried downstream. They raced to the eastern end of the bridge and managed to jump a gap of four or five feet to the safety of the shore.

While the bridge was out of commission, a ferry service was again set up, operated by George Dawson and Gerry McBrien.

Later that year a new steel bridge was erected without a central pier which was in more danger when the river was in flood. The abutments at the shore and the supporting pier in the stream were built by German craftsman Joseph Naegle with the stone quarried just south of Ball’s Bridge, according to Mr. Asquith. The eastern abutment can still be seen, well to the south of the new bridge.

In 1898 the western span of the bridge was replaced by a longer one and by a longer one again in 1912.

It was a bridge that was built in the days of the horse and buggy but the arrival, first of cars, then larger trucks, meant that by the early 1950s, the bridge was inadequate for modern traffic demands. Looking at the changes in transportation since 1954, it’s perhaps remarkable that the bridge still seems modern today.

When Auburn celebrated its 150th anniversary of the founding in 2004, the year also coincided with the 50th anniversary of the opening of the handsome Patterson Bridge on County Rd. 25 over the Maitland River.

That bridge, was named for T. Roy  Patterson, who served as Huron County engineer from 1919 until his death in 1951.

Amalgamation means end to village council

Situated at the corners of the former Twps. of Colborne, Hullett, East and West Wawanosh, Auburn has always been in a difficult position for governing itself, given that it never grew large enough to become an incorporated village.

From 1895 through 2000, Auburn had some measure of control over its affairs through the “Police Village” status under the Municipal Act.

Though they had no power to levy taxes, a council of three trustees would deal with such issues as public safety, including fire protection and street lighting. They had to deal with the municipal councils of the township that made up the portion of the village where the service was needed. In 1904, for instance, the council paid a grant of $7.10 to the Twp. of Hullett for building a cement sidewalk.

In 1896 the council had paid $262.72 to purchase a fire engine, $75 to buy land for a fire hall and $102.70 to build the hall.

In 1919 the council forbade livestock running at large and banned bicycles from the sidewalks.

In 1936 the trustees agreed to rent part of the fire hall to the Auburn Public Library for $30 a year. The trustees could also use the library for meetings.

By the 1990s the winds of change were blowing in Ontario with the provincial government pressuring municipalities to amalgamate so there would be fewer, larger governments. The government also eliminated the police village provision. While many of the seven police villages in Huron were located entirely within one municipality and the change wouldn’t be noticed, Auburn, even after the consolidation of surrounding municipalities, is still split among Central Huron (the former Hullett section), Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh (the West Wawanosh and Colborne portions) and North Huron (the East Wawanosh portion.) It can mean residents must apply to three different councils if they wish to get something accomplished in their village.

Situated at the corners of the former Twps. of Colborne, Hullett, East and West Wawanosh, Auburn has always been in a difficult position for governing itself, given that it never grew large enough to become an incorporated village.

From 1895 through 2000, Auburn had some measure of control over its affairs through the “Police Village” status under the Municipal Act.