By Maurice Smith

You don’t have to drive far in Whitchurch-Stouffville to come across any number of unique building structures, most constructed many years ago.

As I chance upon one of these for the first time, I wonder what the surrounding area was like when it was erected or what circumstance prompted its construction in the first place. I encounter one of my favorites each time I drive along Aurora Road in Ballantrae. It is a home, sitting on a farm property, alone and abandoned on the south side across from and just east of Ballantrae Public School.

The family of Edward “Buster” Nesbitt came along what was then a dirt road to start farming on this site in about 1904. The family purchased the property and constructed the house in 1912.

In 1950 Buster married a local lady named Doreen Wagg, left the family farm and bought a property a little further south. Other family members however, remained, living on and working the land until about 1988.

Last summer I was fortunate enough to happen upon and chat with Mrs. Nesbitt. She was at the farm picking the last of the summer’s rhubarb that still sprouts in what remains of the vegetable garden.

Today the hundred plus acre farm is still active, although on a rental basis. However, the steel-sided, corrugated tin roof house still sits proudly off to one side in a bush lot. If structures could talk, would you not want to sit and listen to the tales this one would tell? The house, by the way, has never had running water or electricity. However, at one time it did have a working telephone.

Gentlemen, how would your marriage be if you moved your wife, in 1988, to a home without electricity and water? Well I guess she could at least have phoned her mother to complain.

A plus for Buster and his brother and sisters, growing up in this house so close to the then one-room Ballantrae schoolhouse, was that he could lie in bed till he heard the first ringing of the school bell. He would then make a dash across the field and laneway so as to be on time to line up with classmates for the ringing of the second bell.

Buster has since passed away, but Doreen still lives in the same marital home in the Ballantrae area of Whitchurch-Stouffville into which they moved in 1950. 

Maurice Smith lives in Ballantrae and has a keen interest in local history. You can contact him at mauricefp@rogers.com.

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