Patrick Mulligan founds Murrays and Mulligan in 1886, serves as Chapleau postmaster, attends Sacred Heart Church, builds camp at Mulligan's Bay by Michael McMullen

Patrick Mulligan and family 1895

Here is Michael McMullen's story of the Mulligan family, particularly Patrick Andrew, who arrived in Chapleau almost at the beginning of the community's life, and played various roles in its early years. Patrick Mulligan was Michael's great-great uncle, and mine, as our grandmothers, his nieces, May (Mulligan) McMullen and Lil (Mulligan) Morris were sisters.Since the Chapleau High School reunion, I have been working on several family histories, and will share more as they are completed. My thanks to Michael for the Mulligan story.

by Mike McMullen

In 1885, as the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was constructing its main line west through northern Ontario, it began providing a monthly general store on wheels or as it was commonly called ”a store car” that offered merchandise (dry goods, groceries, etc.) to those living and working along the line. The major supplier of these products was T. & W. Murray of North Bay. One of their senior clerks, Patrick Andrew Mulligan, was in charge of these Murray-supplied store cars that went to construction camps and permanent settlement locations along the developing CPR line, including Cartier, Biscotasing and Chapleau.

Murrays and Mulligan was located in Dominion Store building

In 1886, Patrick joined in partnership with the two Murray brothers, Thomas and William, who were merchants, financiers, politicians and entrepreneurs, to purchase lots and invest in Chapleau. On one of these lots, at the northwest corner of Birch and Young streets, Patrick constructed a two-storey general store that was under construction in 1886 and fully open for business in early 1887. This store became the third permanent general store in Chapleau, following shortly after T. A. Austin & Co (mid-1886) and the Hudson’s Bay Company (late-1886). Murrays and Mulligan, General Merchants, operated until 1897 when the business and the property were sold to Patrick McCool, a long-time Murrays employee and associate. 

Five years later in 1902, the business was sold to Alex Langis and James Jackman and then in 1908 a change in ownership was made to Desjardins (Albert) and Langis. The following year, these partners relocated their general merchant business to the southeast corner of Lorne and Birch streets. From there, that business evolved over time into what is today Collins Home Hardware and Building Centre and Collins Home Furniture.

Following the departure of Desjardins and Langis in 1909, the Murrays and Mulligan building, 4 Birch Street W., among other uses, became the location of the Macnamera general store, a Dominion store, head office for Austin and Nicholson Lumber Company and a branch of the Bank of Montreal. The building was demolished in late 1980.

Patrick was the oldest of seven sons and two daughters born to Hugh and Mary (Griffin) Mulligan in Quyon, Quebec, a village located on the Ottawa River, west of Ottawa, now part of the Municipality of Pontiac. Like many in the Ottawa valley in the 1880s, Patrick moved up the Ottawa River on the Ontario side to places, such as Pembroke and Mattawa, and then on to North Bay and Northern Ontario as the CPR was being built. Not only was there work available with the railroad, but towns were being established and services were needed for both.

He was working in Pembroke as a store clerk in the early 1880s, when he met Julia Catherine (Kate) Flannery. They married in September 1882 at nearby Chapeau, Quebec, on Allumette Island. She was the daughter of William and Catherine (Wells) Flannery, and the family lived in the Pembroke area. Her father died at an early age leaving a wife and five young children. Willietta, a younger sister, married Thomas Mulligan, one of Patrick’s brothers, also in Chapeau in August 1890. Thomas worked for Murrays and Mulligan, and his brother Patrick, as an accountant and clerk in Chapleau. A brother of Catherine’s, Maurice Flannery, originally a merchant, became town treasurer and Divisional Court Clerk in North Bay. Patrick and Kate had four surviving children: Effie, William, Inez and Beatrice.

Besides managing the Murrays and Mulligan store, Patrick developed contracts with the CPR to supply the work crews between Cartier and White River and to supply the CPR restaurants at Cartier, Chapleau and White River. He built a large warehouse near the corner of Birch and Lisgar streets to service these contracts. Today, the Bridgeview Motel, 16 Birch Street W., built by Yen Hong in the mid-1950s, is on the lot where this warehouse was located.

As well, he became the town’s fourth Postmaster in late 1896 (1896-1913). He followed T.A. Austin (1886-1890), J. M. Austin (1890-1892) and H. Nicholson (1892-1896). His sister-in law Winnie Flannery was the Assistant Postmaster for some time around 1900. While Postmaster, he built a small Post Office just to the east of his warehouse on Birch Street. It was the first stand-alone post office in Chapleau as all former facilities were in stores. This building would have been located where an addition was made to the original Boston Café building on Birch Street in the early 1970s. My grandfather, William McMullen, was the fifth Chapleau postmaster (1913-1919) and worked in that post office building.

At least three of Patrick’s brothers worked in Chapleau at various times between 1886 and 1913. In the mid-1890s all four brothers, Patrick, Thomas Michael, John George and Charles R. were in Chapleau at the same time. Patrick and Thomas were working at Murrays and Mulligan, John was the agent for Dominion Express (later named Canadian Pacific Express) and Charles was a carpenter.The Mulligans were involved in Chapleau community activities and attended the Roman Catholic Sacred Heart Church. In 1909, Patrick built a new house at 49 Monk Street, which is still standing today.

Another brother, who never lived in Chapleau, but had an impact on Chapleau, was James Edward Mulligan, my great-grandfather. Originally a storekeeper, he was working as a bailiff in North Bay in the mid-1890s when he died suddenly in December 1895. At the time, he was the father of five children aged 10 and under (three girls and two boys) and his wife, Jennie was pregnant with another daughter. In large part, because of the Mulligan presence in Chapleau, members of this family moved to Chapleau in the early 1900s and some became long-time Chapleau residents.

T hree of the daughters (who were brought up Anglican by their mother) met future husbands in Chapleau and lived there for many years. May married William McMullen, Lillian married Harry Morris  and Kathleen married John Hogg. The other daughter, Nellie, did not live in Chapleau. The two sons, Griffin and Charles, worked for the CPR out of Chapleau, served in World War 1 and subsequently, moved to the United States after the war.

Patrick died in Chapleau in April 1913. Later that year, Kate sold their house to Frank Keenan and moved to North Bay with her two daughters, Inez and Beatrice. Effi, their first born child, died when she was nine years old in 1891. Their son William had left Chapleau and apparently was not actively involved in his father’s business activities in Chapleau at the time of his father’s death. It is likely that Kate sold most of Patrick’s business ventures before she left Chapleau. However, she maintained ownership of property in Chapleau and in 1918 sold three contiguous lots on Birch Street to Hong Fong and Hong Sam. On one of these lots, Hong Fong built the Boston Café in the mid-1920s. The restaurant, now called Hongers Redwood Restaurant and Tavern, 12 Birch Street W., is still in the Hong family in 2013 with Jim Hong the owner and manager. Kate died in April 1945 in Toronto.

One would be hard pressed to find any traces of the Mulligans in Chapleau today. As far as I can determine, this line of the Mulligan family in Chapleau ended with Michael Morris, a grandson of Harry and Lillian (Mulligan) Morris. He grew up in Chapleau,  worked as a journalist, then became a high school teacher and reeve in Chapleau before moving to Cranbrook, British Columbia to continue his teaching career. There is not a Mulligan street sign or a house referred to in the community as the “Mulligan House.” The only legacy would be Mulligan’s Bay. Family history has it that Patrick was the first to build a permanent camp on Brownlee Island (Card Island) in the 1890s and as a result the area became known as Mulligan’s Bay.

My email is mj.morris@live.ca

Mileage 615.1 becomes Chapleau as Canadian Pacific Railway contruction makes impossible dream a reality

Chapleau Plan 1886. courtesy Ian Macdonald

Just imagine for a moment that you were moving to Chapleau as the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks were nearing Mileage 615.1. The train stops seven miles east of the fledgling community, and you are told that is the end of the road. Pack up your belongings and children and walk the rest of the way pushing a cart that is provided. Or, perhaps, you might have enjoyed the experience of walking the entire CPR line from Sudbury to Chapleau, and maybe even as far as Port Arthur, a distance of about 2,000 miles.
CLICK ON DIAGRAM TO ENLARGE FOR BETTER READING
 Maybe you were coming to Chapleau from James Bay by canoe with some family members walking along the shore as there was only limited room in the small crafts. Just imagine!

You have learned that Sir John A. Macdonald's government had decided to turn the impossible dream into a reality. Across this vast land called Canada, a nation only since 1867, a transcontinental railway was being built to link it from sea to sea. The Canadian Pacific Railway would stretch from settled sections of the young nation, through the forests, muskeg and rock of Northern Ontario; across the flat lands of the Prairies; through the Rocky Mountains into the valleys of British Columbia to the Pacific Ocean.

First station. courtesy Ian Macdonald

 Welcome to Chapleau. In 1885, instructions were given to put a spur for a car to be set out at Mileage 615.1 on the CPR line, which was in the centre of the new community of Chapleau. This car became the first station, office building and train dispatcher's office. In no time, or so it seemed, a roundhouse with turntable and water tank had been built. A station and office building were under construction and Chapleau had become a town made up of surplus boxcars and tents with a population of about 400 people, ninety-five percent of them men as 1886 began.

 Reports from the time indicate that the first winter was very strenuous for the early citizens of the community. That is really an understatement as they had left their old way of life to build a new one far from any comforts they might have known. Apparently it was also one of those bitterly cold winters, to which Chapleau citizens became accustomed, and disease was also rampant.

 Lambert Lafrance arrived in Chapleau in 1885 and was joined by his wife Adele Roy and children in 1886. According to a biography of Father Albert Burns, their grandson, the train stopped seven miles east of Chapleau and they had to walk the rest of the way pushing a cart with all their worldly belongings. Members of the family still live in Chapleau.

 Rev. Gowan Gillmor, commonly called 'The Tramp' because apparently on many occasions he walked the railway track from Sudbury to Chapleau and on one occasion at least to Port Arthur. Rev. Gillmor, who was in Chapleau in late 1885, conducted a meeting in the partially completed CPR station which resulted in the decision to proceed with the building of St. John's Anglican Church. The first St. John's was on the old tennis court and was opened and dedicated on July 1, 1886 with Rev. Gillmor in attendance.

 As an aside Rev. Gillmor was also instrumental in the establishment of Church of the Epiphany in Sudbury where Thomas Corston was the rector before becoming Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Moosonee. As many readers will know, Tom was born and raised in Chapleau, the son of Frances (Jardine) and the late Henry 'Chicken' Corston.

 Rev. Gillmor provided an insight into his life and the situation along the CPR line. "I ministered to the construction people numbering about 5,000, holding services as I went along in camps, shanties and box cars and sleeping in these overnight; my experiences were the roughest. These people were from all parts of America and Europe. "Typhoid fever was the scourge of railway construction. Hospitals (Note: Not in any sense, a hospital as we would know one today) were filled with the sick and dying. My experiences ... were varied, solemn and awful."

For many years, he literally lived with the railway men, often pushed a handcar from section house to section house, drank tea from the same pan, ate green bacon from the same plate and often slept under the same blanket, according to Archbishop Robert J. Renison. Although First Nation people had travelled through the Chapleau area, they now began to move to the new community and settle there. Although Rev. John Sanders, perhaps the first aboriginal Anglican priest in Canada, never lived in the the community, members of his family have moving from James Bay by canoe. One of his trips after becoming based at Mattagami, was to go to Flying Post and then reach the Loon (Borden) Lake portage to the Chapleau River into Chapleau. He did conduct services at Chapleau.

 Although there were a number of Roman Catholic Jesuit priests in Chapleau, Father Louis Cote may have been the first to live in Chapleau, and helped establish Sacred Heart Church.

 Notwithstanding the horrendous challenges facing them in the beginning, by the summer of 1886, the tents and shacks which had comprised "Old Chapleau" -- a term used by the settlers to distinguish it from the "New Chapleau" -- were being replaced with permanent structures. The thoroughfares of the community were being set out, as land was cleared and replaced the forests.

John Young who became Earl of Lisgar

 The CPR prepared a diagram of the community including the streets -- north and south after Governors General of Canada and east and west after trees. Interestingly, and I only discovered it as I was examining a copy of the diagram, provided to me by Ian Macdonald, Chapleau has two streets named after the same Governor General -- Young and Lisgar. John Young became the Earl of Lisgar.

 Meanwhile, general stores were established as well as private residences. The CPR had completed its station and office building. It had also built a general store, fueling plant, freight sheds, two boarding houses and residences for local officials. Life was not easy. For example in 1888 an outbreak of diptheria struck and several, including young children, died during the epidemic. Fire was also a constant threat.

 However, these amazing pioneers, who really did carve a community out of the wilderness, never looked back as they established churches, a school, curling and skating rinks, a town band, sports teams, organizations, businesses, and continued to lay the foundations of their community in so many ways despite the obstacles.

 By 1901, with the leadership provided by George Brecken Nicholson, as the first reeve, Chapleau became incorporated as a municipality, and continued to move forward, demonstrating so often that the greatest resource any community has is its people.

 Ian Macdonald, who is always so helpful, has kindly agreed to share his research into the building of Chapleau in a future column. Ian who lived in Chapleau and attended Chapleau Public and Chapleau High schools also worked for the CPR. He is retired head of the department of architecture and professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba. My email is mj.morris@live.ca

Engine 5433 a national treasure symbolizes Chapleau's railway heritage as one of only 48 preserved CPR steam engines

Brass replica of 5433. Courtesy Ian Macdonald

Engine 5433 located in Chapleau since 1964,  one of only 48 of the preserved 3257 Canadian Pacific Railway steam engines, perhaps more than anything else, symbolizes the community's railway heritage.

When I learned that Engine 5433 was one of only 48 CPR engines that have been preserved, and it is in Chapleau, its historical significance struck me, and during this Heritage Week in parts of Canada, including Ontario, I  have been "Googling" and contacting others who know much more about the history of the CPR than I do.

Well, let me digress for a moment with an anecdote about my display of CPR knowledge when I was taking Grade 13 history at Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute in Etobicoke.  Mr. Young, our rather excellent teacher was showing us the route of the CPR across Canada on one of those old red classroom wall maps.

I knew that he was showing us the route of the Canadian National Railway across northern Ontario but hesitated to tell him so. Gathering my courage, I raised my hand, and he said, "Yes, Morris." In those days teachers tended to call boys by their surnames.

Standing, I told him politely he was showing us the wrong route, followed by a dead silence in the classroom.

"How do you know Morris?", he asked, to which I replied, "Because I am from Chapleau, sir, and it is on the main CPR line." Mr. Young then invited me to come forward and outline the route. Gathering my courage again,  I did so and added that I knew the names of all the places between Chapleau and Fort William.  Mr. Young said, say them and I did: "Chapleau, Boucher, Esher, Pardee, Musk, Nicholson....and so on." He never held it against me but I sure had to know the history of the CPR as I was usually asked about it. Paybacks can be, well you know..!

How did I know them? Because my grandfather Harry Morris a CPR conductor gave me a timetable, and I learned them and when my mother   Muriel (Hunt) Morris and I were at their Elgin Street home for dinner waiting for him to come in off the road, I would tell them, 'ad nauseam', that  "Grandpa is now at Musk, now Pardee" etc.

Back to Engine 5433 and Chapleau. It arrived in 1964 because of the efforts of Arthur and Nettie Grout who were largely responsible for the creation of the entire Centennial Park. They contacted N.R. Crump, then the CPR president, who even came to Chapleau for the occasion.

Arthur Grout with N.R. Crump

How did they get it to the park after it arrived in Chapleau? I have the story from writings of Wilf Simpson and Dr. Bill Pellow.

Here is a summary. Engine 5433 is a testament to Chapleau's railroading past. The Iron Horse #5433, was proudly placed in the park in 1964, through the initiative and generosity of Arthur and Nettie Grout. This unit actually worked these tracks for many years west of Chapleau. It weighs 275 tons, measures 95 feet long, and hauled 1900 tons in its prime.

To place the engine on location meant building a special spur, or track, straight across from the roundhouse. A building had to be demolished to make way for the spur, which ran right up to the main line on the engine side, and continued on the other side of the main line. With a gang of trackmen, and everything timed to the minute, the spur was laid across the main line. The steam engine was then pushed across by a diesel. Within 30 minutes, the Iron Horse was in place, and the main line cleared again for service.

Also of historical interest is that J.M. "Bud" Park was the engineer on Engine 5433 for its trip from the roundhouse to the park while Earle Freeborn was the engineer on the yard engine diesel.

At the ceremony Samuel Chappise, a full blooded Cree who had come to Chapleau with his parents mostly by canoe from James Bay presented Mr. Crump with a rifle. Wilf Simpson related a story that Mr. Chappise had told him that for the first few weeks after they arrived along the CPR line near Nicholson, every time he heard a train whistle, he would race to the shelter of the forest.

Sam Chappise presentation to Mr Crump

In 1967, Mr. Chappise was invited to sound the 'O Canada' whistle opening the 1967 Centennial Caravan when it passed through Chapleau.

As I so often do, I turned to Ian Macdonald for his expertise on Engine 5433. Ian has a brass replica of this engine in his Winnipeg home. 

"Locomotives were the primary symbol of the railway. Occasionally we would digress ( as we did with the Canadian ) and use an image of an observation car or caboose but nothing really had the visual impact of a locomotive to define the railway. It was ( and is ) truly potent.  It is, therefore, the most logical symbol to use when you're trying to make a statement." Ian wrote in an email.

 "I remember when I first saw 5433 in (the park)  my first reaction was ' perfect'. Why perfect??? Dates generally become 'historic dates' when it can be reasonably said that the world was never the same after.  5433 to me, is important because it is symbolic of the end of the steam era in Chapleau in the same sense that the first GM diesel that went through Chapleau in December 1949 represented a new era which had an enormous impact on the community.

"In this sense, 5433 as an individual locomotive was not the important thing. It was everything required to operate it, maintain it and the infrastructure associated with supporting steam power."

For instance, Ian wrote, "try to envision the number of enginemen in Chapleau during steam power, their families, homes, and an economy generated to support them. Then think of everyone associated in some activity associated with maintenance and operation and interpolate this number into individual families etc. This was important in defining the specific culture of our community and who we were. Who we were is an important aspect of 'community'  and provides reference to who we are.

He explained that "The Mikado was the most dominant locomotive type on the Schreiber Division as the steam era ended and one which most people were familiar with. The era was important for me because the Mikado was designed and manufactured in Canada in direct response to the specific demands of Canadian operating conditions. I like that.

The GM diesel that went through Chapleau in 1949 was built in GM's plant at LaGrange Illiois and was typical of locomotives used everywhere else in North America. There was nothing particularly Canadian about it which didn't change when GM allowed them to be built under licence in Canada. Some people enjoy being reminded of that."

Until I started researching Engine 5433, I never fully realized the tourist attraction it is, and the potential it and all things railway in Chapleau has for the future. I discovered many references to it on web sites along with photos taken by people who had visited Chapleau. It may well be the most photographed site in Chapleau. 

While home for the CHS reunion in 2012, I was of course made aware that proposals have been made to enhance Chapleau's CPR heritage as a tourist attraction and ensure the care and maintenance of Engine 5433. Chapleau is home to a national treasure in having Engine 5433 there -- only one of 48 CPR steam engines that have been preserved. My email is mj.morris@live.ca

Thanks to Ian Macdonald, Dr Bill Pellow and Gerry Bowland director of the Crump Centre, Calgary