a peek inside the fishbowl

Who knew that I had this much to say about Barrhaven!

In my last posts we had been exploring the Nepean Quarry and had participated in a little bit of geocaching. My legs were killing me but the girls desperately wanted to play in the little playground near where our car was parked. This park is called Lytle Park. On Google maps it’s actually named Fallowfield Park.

There’s a baseball diamond nearby which features some open water right behind it (which is too bad for anyone who hits one over the fence):

… and some more apple trees.

Do you ever wonder how places get their names? I rarely do. But a nearby plaque had caught my eye so despite my hurtin’ body and the chill in the air I wandered over and read it. Three times over. This is what it said:

James Lytle was just 17 when he came to Canada from County Cavan, northern Ireland, around 1855. He acquired 100 acres of land on Moodie Drive, built a log home, and began what eventually would become an impressive apple orchard. James was joined over the next few years by his mother, sister and brother, and in time married Letitia (Ludlow) with whom he raised nine children. His brother John Lytle, ran shot gun for travellers to and from Bells Corners which earned him the nickname Blunderbuss Lytle (for the Blunderbuss shotgun he carried). The Lytle farm was passed down through the family until it was sold in 1956.

That explains all the apples, doesn’t it?

I don’t know why I find all of this so compelling. Someone lived here over 100 years ago and tried to make a go of it. I started to search for other information and found a bunch here. But I will summarize:

• James (Jimmy) Lytle was born in 1837 and died in 1910. (In fact, here’s a photo of his gravestone. James and his wife were both buried at St. Paul’s United Cemetary in Richmond.)
• He had apprenticed as a jeweller in Ireland.
• He came over alone and acquired 100 acres of land on Moodie Drive in Nepean Township, Con.IV, Lot #22.
• The following year he sent for his Mother and sister, Fannie and a year or so after that his brother, John. James built a log house on the property and two barns, the first of which burned down and had to be rebuilt.
• He planted a large apple orchard that was said to be quite impressive. He apparently was very successful at drafting and at one time had four different kinds of apples growing in his orchards.
• He met his wife Letisha Ludlow (b1844 – d1921) in New York city. Letitia’s family was Pennsylvania Dutch and owned and operated a hotel in Philadelphia. Letitia was working in a hotel in New York when she met James Lytle and he brought her and her sister, Rosanna Ludlow, back with him to the homestead.
• James and Letitia were married and raised nine children, four daughters and five sons. Their children’s names are Elizabeth, Jack, Watt, William, Letitia, Della, Mabel, Hughie and Herbert Ludlow Lytle.
• All of their daughters married young men from neighbouring farms.
• All of James and Letitia Lytle’s children were born on the farm in Fallowfield, Ontario. They farmed and raised their family here. There were three other children who died in infancy, two of whom were actually buried on the farm property. The following are names and dates of birth for the children whose records have been found:

Adella Rose Lytle: born July 30, 1870.

Letitia Lytle: born August 26, 1872.

John James Lytle: born September 23, 1874.

William Thomas Lytle: born October 7, 1878.

Frances Mabel Lytle: born September 20, 1880.

Mulvina Mabel Lytle: born June 9, 1882.

Hugh Walter Lytle: born: August 31, 1884.

Herbert Ludlow Lytle: born August 23, 1886 and died October 1969

Here’s a photo of their homestead. (!)

And here are some of their family photos.

I haven’t been able to figure out whether the place where we had been poking around – with the old foundation and the rusty car – was the location of the family home or not. Maybe it’s the old stone foundation near the foot of the Lytle Park?:

I’m not a superstitious person, but I wonder whether the reason I felt so morose during our explore was a result of the weather or something else. Like maybe because there might be two infants buried somewhere on the property? I’m not sure if they’re still there.

It is nice that the old city of Nepean saw fit to erect a plaque in James Lytle’s memory, but seeing that broken tea cup and the ghost of the rusty washing machine and the crumbling foundation and the dead apples made me sad. I can’t really explain why. Maybe because our lives here are so short, and to have our lives represented by some broken bits and dusty photos depresses me to no end. Our lives are mere whispers. Maybe that’s the bigger reason why I’m driven to write? Because I want to leave some kind of trace? 

Oh look at me getting all morose and philosophical. Let’s move on, shall we? SOMEONE NEEDS A COFFEE! (Like me. Gah.)

So we all piled back into the car, cold and hungry.

If it wasn’t so close to dinner we would have gone to a fave new find of mine for coffee and snacks. But more on that tomorrow. :)

At the end of yesterday’s post I had just whipped out ye old iPhone and fired up the Geocaching app.

First, I should explain a bit about geocaching.

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting type of activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) to find “treasure” a.k.a caches. There is a sizable geocaching community out there and there are caches all over the world, plenty of which are in Ottawa.

Participants can hide or seek a cache, or both. Seekers keep a log of how many they find, collecting their finds as if they were pirate treasure. (Alas there is no real treasure – no gold coins or strings of pearls as far as I know.) I should point out that the caches are not kept, they are always returned to their hiding spot.

The caches themselves are made out of waterproof containers and contain small items. Finders are encouraged to leave things in exchange for others (although this isn’t strictly necessary), and everyone signs a notebook to prove they were there.

We’ve had a few successful (and some not-so-successful) geocaching outings.

I will say that if you’re looking for something active and interesting to do as a family, this is it. As you can imagine the girls love geocaching, and it is very exciting to be the one who makes the find.

 (Here’s the official site in case you want to look into it.)

Anyway, the cache we were looking for near the Nepean Quarry was called “Iron Ring” (all the caches have a name) and it took us about half a kilometre off the main trail, away from the highway. I should explain that I find things like wandering off trail a tiny bit nervewracking. I have a fear of getting lost in the woods, even within hearing of a major thoroughfare. (Heck I have a fear of getting lost ANYWHERE.)

We walked until we suddenly arrived at the remains of an old home. There were no walls or windows or doors, but I could clearly spot remnants of a foundation coming out of the side of a hill. We had passed some old fencing along the way, piles of stones (an old stone wall or part of a kitchen garden?), all kinds of bits of bric a brac that was slowly being overtaken by the wilderness:

It was part junk heap, part archeological dig.

There were a couple of broken cups, a rusty old wringer washer, and a car:

(it’s funny how some parts stay shiny, isn’t it):

Our quest to find the cache was took us to a very overgrown place which required some fancy footwork:

I was too busy looking around to focus my attention on the task at hand. It sure was pretty:

But there was a feeling. I had a feeling of disquiet.

This used to be someone’s home.

There were gnarled old apple trees everywhere, evidence perhaps of someone’s farming effort of long ago. Maybe homesteads had fruit trees – especially apple – to help get them through long fruitless Canadian winters.

I stumbled upon a flock of robins gorging themselves in preparation for the cold months ahead. It was a spectacle of colour; red-breasted robins in the brown and grey trees, the orange and yellows of fall, and that red red fruit. I was only able to photograph that mealy fruit rotting on the branches. The colour was remarkable and I found it hard to tear myself away:

Much of the fruit was scattered on the ground:

There was one particular tree which had very long needle-like thorns, which I didn’t notice those right away. All I could see was the apples. Someone else (was it you Mark?) noticed that the apples had all been deliberately speared to the tree and were not there naturally. Each fruit was impaled on a long thorn. All these stabbed apples were mildly creepy, but perhaps it was an offering to the birds?

After about 20 minutes of poking around we gave up the search. The iPhone GPS isn’t very precise. It only gives the general vicinity of a cache which then leaves us to our own devices. We weren’t able to locate the cache, even with a huge hint that instructed us to “look inside a tree stump.”

On the way back to the main path we passed a big stump and I peeked inside. There it was! It was at the very bottom. Mark and Emma had to work together to coax it out. (I was worried about getting a hand full of spiderweb.)

We signed the book and left everything else intact.

The sun was starting to set and it was starting to cool down. We had a quiet, quick walk back to the car. And that’s when I started to *really* figure out where we had just been. More tomorrow.

Edited to add: Ottawa police are patrolling and ticketing at the Nepean Quarry. It is considered private property and I don’t recommend anyone go there.

After a good long stretch of yard work on Sunday we decided to explore a hitherto unknown (unknown to us anyway!) part of Barrhaven. I heard about an abandoned quarry so I wanted to check it out before all the leaves had fallen.

The trail was very easy, and quite pretty in parts:

… but it was noisy. (That’s what happens when you build a hiking trail alongside a highway!).

There were things to see and do along the way:

And this was the scene when we got there:

Not pictured:

• The many dogs we met along the way, including a very cute fluffy white dog and a terrifying pitbull that raced across the length of a field to “greet” us. This seems to be where all the locals go to walk their dogs.
• The garbage. Wow. Once we got to the quarry it was everywhere. I get that this is a teen hangout in the summertime (in fact Mark has been swimming here) but can’t they clean up after themselves?

The quarry itself was pretty, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as a great destination unless you had a dog who loved the water.

It wasn’t until I did a bit of googling that I discovered that this quarry was called the Nepean Quarry and it was where sandstone blocks were mined, but not just any old sandstone. These became the principle building material in the construction of the parliament buildings.

Otherwise I couldn’t find a single other thing about the quarry. Weird. Maybe my google-fu is off?

To get to the Barrhaven Quarry (a.k.a. the Nepean Quarry):

• Park your car at Lytle Park off Fallowfield Road
• Cross the soccer field
• Follow the path into the woods (it runs parallel to the highway) for about 1.5 (?) kilometers until you see a semi-destroyed/spraypainted no trespassing sign on your left
• Follow that path to the quarry. The location is easy to find.

On the walk back to the car I fired up our iPhone geocaching app to see what kind of treasure hunting was nearby.

But more about that tomorrow.