A fateful journey

Chris Braney speaks about his life passions

The Friends of Wellington Library “Passion” series concluded last Saturday with a talk by Chris Braney about the journey that has led him to become a resident in the County, a grower of wine grapes, a cider maker and the councillor for Hillier. About two dozen people attended the presentation in the basement meeting room at the Wellington library, where Mr. Braney began by describing himself as an “old soul” and going over some of his family history that had a direct bearing on the person that he is today. On his maternal side, his ancestors came from Ireland in the late 1840s to escape the potato famine. They settled in the Perth area, and in the 1870s his great-grandfather and his brothers formed what was the most famous vaudeville troupe in Canadian history, the Marks Brothers Dramatic Company. They toured all across North America, and even performed in Picton. His grandfather was invited by film mogul Jack Warner to perform in the newly established cinema industry, but declined. However, he maintained Hollywood contacts and was friends with luminaries such as Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, who would occasionally vacation in the Perth area. His maternal grandfather

eventually entered politics, becoming the mayor of Oshawa and then the Member of Parliament for the Durham riding in the early 1930s. His paternal grandfather was known as the “Eliot Ness of the North.” Bert Braney was an OPP Constable in Timmins and the founder of the High Grade Gold Squad, combating bootleg gold in the north. Chris Braney said the biggest buyers of bootleg gold were Nazi Germany and organized crime in the US. He related a story of his grandfather walking away from a $5,000 bribe offered by a messenger from Al Capone.

The thread of public service that wove through his maternal and paternal lineages came together in Mr. Braney at an early age. He was a Grade 11 student when he became aware of a residential development project on the site of a former asbestos processing plant in his neighbourhood. He had heard stories from his friends and neighbours of workers who had died from asbestos exposure, and his school project raised troubling questions about community safety during the residential development. He brought his concerns to the Community Association, and through his actions the Ontario Municipal Board put stringent conditions on the construction process. Mr. Braney became vice-chair of the Community Association at age 18, turning down the invitation to become chair because he thought he lacked the relevant experience. This was the start of his life of community service.

At age 22 he was elected as a school board trustee in Scarborough, and his first order of business was to rescind the 64 per cent salary increase the previous trustees had bestowed upon themselves. “That felt good,” he said. “My grandfather taught me it was a privilege and an honour to serve your community. Even now, when I take a vote in here in the County, I remember my grandfather saying to remind yourself what would your residents want you to do, and number two, saying when it comes to spending money, would you spend it if it was your own? That’s something that’s stayed with me, and every time I vote on something I always think of those two principles.” Mr. Braney’s career took him to a position on the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal in his early thirties, and then he was elected to the Durham District School board, a position that he held for 20 years. He stayed in that role because he said he could see the tangible evidence of the decisions he was making, and see how it was directly helping children in the schools. “You don’t really see that so much at higher levels [of government], but you really do with the school board,” he said.

Mr. Braney grew up in the small town neighbourhood of Highland Creek, and the community spirit there left a lasting imprint on him. Everyone looked out for each other. Later in his life he was looking for the same sort of community, and that search led him to Prince Edward County. He had actually never heard of the County until a friend introduced him to the wines produced here. One day, on a whim, he drove out here. He had developed quite an interest in wine and had been told the best type of land for growing grapes was a rolling landscape that sloped down from north to south. He drove past a property for sale on Danforth Road that had a crumbling barn, but the ideal landscape. He returned home to his wife, Silvia, and announced that he’s found the perfect property. “Just trust me,” he said. “I’m going to buy it tomorrow.” He said he is blessed with an extraordinarily understanding wife, but when she first saw the property, she burst out laughing. “It’s just land covered with a bunch of rocks,” she said. However, she trusted his vision, and two months after they bought the property, they planted a pinot noir vineyard. It yielded superb quality grapes that are now being used by Closson Chase.

A trip to his ancestral roots in County Mayo, Ireland served to bring Mr. Braney’s interest full circle. He said he’d been fascinated with apples from an early age, and his first job as an eight-year-old was working in an orchard owned by his mentor, Cameron Watson. He continued to work in the orchard through high school, learning about which apples were best suited to the climate on the north shore of Lake Ontario. On the trip to Ireland, his eyes were opened to the variety and quality of locally produced apple cider. During the flight home, Silvia noticed that he was preoccupied. “I want to grow apples and make cider,” said Mr. Braney. Returning home, they planted an apple orchard of Empire, Cortland and Northern Spy apples, the varieties that grow best in this terroir. Five years later, in 2020, they opened their tasting room in the restored barn. As fate would have it, one of the visitors to the tasting room that opening year was the president of the Cider Association of Canada. Their cider was nominated as the top cider in Canada by The Cider Crate, an award they’ve won three times in the past six years. Another offshoot of his trip to Ireland was an interest in stone walls. There were piles of stones on his farm, and Mr. Braney decided to use them to build a dry stone wall. He thinks that there is some remnant memory in his DNA of his ancestors’ skills in building stone walls, because he said it all seemed to come naturally to him. “It was like putting a puzzle together. It was so therapeutic and I felt like I’d been doing this forever,” he said.

Mr. Braney wanted to have some animals on the farm, in a Charlotte’s Web fashion. He purchased four Kunekune pigs, a New Zealand breed that grazes rather than roots, for orchard management, followed by several sheep. It turned out that the sheep were pregnant, and in late February Mr. Braney returned to the farm to discover that one of the lambs had been abandoned by its mother. A few phone calls to friends and neighbours and Mr. Braney had all the information he needed to foster the lamb himself. He said that his wife actually became angry with him. She was still teaching in the city and would come to the farm on weekends, while he was there full-time. “I asked her why she was so upset, and she replied, ‘You’ve changed more diapers on that little sheep than you’ve changed on our two daughters!’,” he said.

Mr. Braney said he came to the County because the community here resonated with him. “I came to Prince Edward County not to change it, but to embrace it. I loved what was here already, and it was exactly what I needed. Everything that I’m about has led me here, but everything that I’ve become here is because of the people here,” he said. Cold Creek Vineyards & Cider is located at 1521 Danforth Road in Hillier. It is open for cider tasting on Saturdays from approximately April to Halloween. For more information, please visit coldcreekvineyards.ca