Photo courtesy
Husk Scow Ferry

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

Drummond County was at the northwest edge of the Eastern Townships as they were laid out late in the 18^th century.  Unlike most of the Townships, which were first settled by Americans from the New England States, Drummondville was founded by a British army officer.  Frederick George Heriot, who had distinguished himself in the War of 1812-14, was given the mandate to establish a dual-purpose settlement.  This new place would be a farming community, but it would have an armory and a ready militia.  Almost all of the first settlers who followed him to Drummondville were disbanded British soldiers and mercenaries. 

One of those disbanded soldiers who received a 100-acre allotment was John Husk.  Born in 1781 near Plymouth, on the south-west coast of England, he was a married man with a young son when he enlisted and was shipped out to Canada to fight in the War of 1812-14.  He and his fellow soldiers arrived in St. John, New Brunswick and inaugurated their first winter in Canada by marching 1400 km to Niagara, Ontario.  He fought and survived several battles, and at the end of the war, he opted to join Heriot’s colony rather than return to England. His wife, Elizabeth Wood, and son, William, joined him some time later.  The couple had a second child, Mary Ann, whose date of birth is unknown and who passed away in 1881.

The first years, John Husk and his fellow soldiers-turned-farmers had a very rough go of it.  Unbeknownst to them, as they were scurrying to erect shelters and sow crops, halfway around the world the eruption of Mount Tambora was starting to spew so much smoke and ash so high into the atmosphere that the Earth’s climate was changed for the next few years.  Carbon particulate floating ever so slowly downward blocked so much of the sun’s light and warmth that 1816 came to be known as the year without a summer; and 1817 was not much better.  

John Husk’s 100-acre allotment was on the west bank of the St. Francis River, approximately where the Drummondville airport is situated today.  He fulfilled his obligation of building a cabin and clearing a certain acreage of farmland.  Sadly, he was killed in 1823, at the age of 42, while felling a tree.

John’s son, William Wood Husk, perhaps partially prompted by his father’s death, moved upstream to L’Avenir.  Many of the early settlers did likewise as the Drummondville area’s sandy soil—the dried-out bed of the Champlain Sea—was ill-suited to farming.  William moved to another river-front property, a location which would later lead his son to operate a ferry service for almost half a century.   

William Cyrus Husk, son of William Wood Husk and grandson of John Husk, the disbanded soldier, was born on the family farm in what is now L’Avenir on September 8, 1847.  In 1868, when he was 21, he married Sarah Ann Barker and the couple had nine children.  Sadly, in 1884, Sarah passed away.  Five years later, Cyrus remarried and with Mary Selina Harriman he had five more children.  At the time of his death, in 1924, 11 of his children were sill living, some of them as far afield as Saskatchewan and Ohio.

Cyrus Husk played an active role in his rural community.  His death notice in the Sherbrooke Record following his passing on May 27, 1924, reads in part:

A long life spent in the service of other—no duty shirked, no task evaded—warrants the statement that in the death of Mr. Husk, Drummond County has lost one of her outstanding citizens.

The relatively long obituary mentions that Cyrus Husk died of pneumonia following a short illness.  He died on the family farm where he’d been born 76 years earlier and where he’d spent all his life.

Cyrus had played a major role in church affairs and this was reflected in his funeral services.  They were officiated by not one but two clergymen, the Reverends Thomas Knowles and J.S. Dickson. 

The Sherbrooke Record noted:

Mr. Husk ever displayed a keen interest in the work of the church with which he was long connected as a member and an official.  For more than 40 years there was scarcely an activity of the Methodist Church or of the Sunday school of Ulverton in which he did not have an important part. 

The obituary notes that Cyrus Husk was keenly interested in education and served as a school trustee.  He was similarly involved with agriculture, serving for 30 years as president of the Ulverton Farmers’ Club.

What is not mentioned in the obituary is that between 1876 and 1920, Cyrus Husk operated a ferry service across the St. Francis River. 

Cyrus was 25-years-old in 1872 when, following his mother’s death, he inherited the family farm on the first range in what is now L’Avenir.  The farm fronted on the St. Francis River and was only a short distance from the road that ran from Richmond to Drummondville.

Four years after taking over the farm, Cyrus invested in a long steel cable, a scow, and a couple of rowboats—all the equipment he needed to begin ferrying people and livestock from L’Avenir and Ulverton near the west bank of the river and St. Felix de Kingsey and St. Lucien near the east bank. 

A vivid description of the ferry is provided by J. Clifford Moore who, in 1996, when he was in his 90s, published a slim volume entitled The Life and Times of a High School Principal in Rural Quebec.  Moore grew up, and later taught, in St. Felix.

Moore wrote:

The ferry boat was able to accommodate two rigs at $0.25 per rig and $0.10 a person for pedestrians.  I don’t think Mr. Husk adhered strictly to that regimen.  This writer remembers helping his dad drive ten or twelve head of cattle to the river en route to the fair in L’Avenir.  Mr. Husk and his sons were very cooperative, loading about four of the animals on the boat and those of us on shore urging the rest of the animals into the water.  As I recall, when we had safely crossed the river, my dad asked Mr. Husk how much he owed him, and Mr. Husk said, “Forget it,” and that was that.

Moore points out that the ferry was particularly important to the younger generation.  While Ulverton’s two-room schoolhouse offered primary education, it was St. Felix that had a Consolidated School—the first such school in the province—that provided high school courses.  Several families, including the Husks, on the west bank of the river, sent their older children to the Consolidated School thanks to the ferry. 

The scow was moved back and forth across the river by one or two men hauling on the steel cable.  Pedestrians, if there were only two or three of them, were ferried over on one of the rowboats.

The ferry ceased operating when the river started to freeze up, usually in December, and, after the ice was thick enough, people crossed on an ice bridge.  In the spring, after the ice had cleared, ferry service resumed.  This meant that for two or three weeks every year, students from the west bank were unable to get to school.

Cyrus Husk operated his ferry service until 1920 by which time roads and vehicles had improved enough that people found it easier to travel to Richmond or Drummondville where bridges spanned the river.  During its four decades of operation, it was one of a handful of ferries that regularly crossed the St. Francis River.  To the people of Durham and Kingsey Townships, Husk’s Ferry was a vital service.

Family lore recounts one other unusual story about Cyrus Husk.  Along with another man, he was hired by a Montreal merchant, James Millar, to drive a flock of lambs to pasture in Vermont.  The trip took several days and was made with a horse and buggy.

After his death, his farm was taken over by Stafford Husk, the oldest of the children of Cyrus Husk’s second marriage.  Stafford would be the last of the Husks to operate the family farm.