Union Hill

It’s one of those things we often slide by in our comings and goings; places that spark a hard-to-define reminisce. As in you know the place, but don’t, sorta thing? Like the beacon up ahead along the highway?

I’m headed south out of Rossmore on highway 62, cresting the rise of the hill by Victoria Road. Over there in the distance, beyond the taillights of cars ahead, before the steep rise of cliff where the pavement vanishes into a wall of trees there awaits a landmark on the horizon; A marker along the travel-way where the bordering forest-roof of maple and beech and pine is punctured by my mind’s invention of a pair of ears belonging to a fable-land tin-donkey, giant of surrounding hills. Like a catcher’s mitt, the spires poke from under cover of forest to field the sundowns of the years. The twin foil-like spires of the old Methodist, now Wesley United Church, Mountain View, tell me I’m but a few miles from home—that certain feeling of recognition after havin’ bin away—gone off-island so to speak.

The pace of the highway falls quiet as I move behind a curtain of time—the corner of Cannery and Union Roads anchored in the light of evening. The sun drops below cliff side; long shadows; I climb the steep and humble now back-water road, the rattle of my boots on broken pavement; I wander the grounds of the old church—proud twin towers holding north and south ends. Windows, like exclamation marks, offer light to the stairwell of the bell towers; roof ridge over a space of worship ties in both rise of peaks. Bricks of tangerine and mud, a trilogy of tall, lanky windows each capped with Italianate brows of carved and heavy stone. And above that, a large rose window—I count them; eight panes in all, small bull’s eye at the centre—take in the light of dusk. The 1878 structure is shouldered into the bank of limestone escarpment of the once called ‘Union Hill’—the Belleville Road and the cut-off to the road to Roblin’s Mills, now Ameliasburgh.

I discover later with a circa 1913 photo that Mountain View was anywhere along the old Belleville Road where you had a, well, a view of the escarpment. The earlyday photographer stood on the mountain, camera focused below to a straight, gravelled road pointed north with a row of new posts for electricity and level farmed fields gathered at its borders. I now begin to see the picture. Back along the highway toward Belleville, still standing today, is James A. Mitchell’s cheese factory of 1873. The artisan producer set the standard for County cheeses gathering international awards.

And here, where I am, a cluster of buildings set around the church—general store and school now converted to homes—is what came to be known as Union Hill. In a long frame factory behind the church began the canning business of J.G. Sprague in 1925. Fast-forward to today and you’ll find the Sprague Brand label on our grocery shelves. Now operating in a modern facility in Belleville, the family business carries on the tradition of preserving locally grown foods, an industry that began in the County’s cannery heyday. My guess is that their label thrived by adapting to a changing marketplace. Sample the Southern India inspired Sabut dahl. I love the Mediterranean and Tuscany flavours of their prepared bean salad.

Rural New York inspired clapboard and bargeboard clad steep-roofed houses remain among the buildings of Union Hill, tucked among trees, down laneways, in shadows and cliff-side. Oliver Young who lived here, was a noted builder in his day, putting up amongst other structures, the former Belleville Agricultural Hall and three Methodist churches in the area, including the one in my midst. By legend, he never made drawings nor drew calculations, he “just scratched and planned in his head as the work proceeded.” A descendent of Young’s built the now restored Claramount in Picton.

I cross the lean and steep slope of road where a fence of hoop-wire design, woven like a billowing sea; newly painted in old-shutter green supports a string of foundrycast tiny iron maple leafs, fencing material once purchased through mail-order catalogue. The fine platoon of leafs silently guards the borders of the burial grounds where a raised arch, high over filigree twists of steel gate reads: ‘Mountain ViewCemetery’.

The clank of metal-on-metal latch rings in the twilight. I wander in search of nothing in particular. Family names maybe? The stories of Doxsee, Delong, Cross and Munroe; Of Parliament, and Sprung and Huff and Hickerson. Family stories, stories of descendents, stories of who married whom; of where and when; legends in stone of a place; family names now in the phone books and on the road signs of the region.

And so here in the eventide by the mountain ridge, I take a seat on the marble bench that notes in the same engraved font of the surrounding tombstones, a tribute to the keepers of the grounds—the Women’s Institute Of Mountain View since 1919. I take a seat and wait in the sweet scent of dew and sounds of approaching night: crickets call and bullfrogs too; bats busy; mosquitoes reign.

Nightfall now, here in the shadow of the mountain; I glance across the road. Tips of spires grab at the last of the last of after-glow of day. And you know? Here in the dark, still hard to figure? Things we slide by in our comings and goings? Places that call with a hard-to-define reminisce.