Poems #265048

Allan Ross was born at Currie, five miles from Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 21st, 1833, and came with his parents to Galt, in the province of Ontario, in July 1835. Being a baker by trade, his father set up in business at Preston and prospered, until the Mackenzie Rebellion broke out during the winter of 1837- 38, when he was one of the volunteers who took up arms as a watch guard in anticipation of night attacks from the rebels.<br><br>The close of the rebellion was followed by severe stagnation in all lines of trade, and dull times were keenly felt during the years '38 and '39. In the spring of '38 the family moved to a farm of two hundred acres two miles east of Preston, where they remained till the spring of 1844. Then a second move was made into the wild bush lands on the shores of Georgian Bay, a journey of over one hundred miles being made mostly through a comparative wilderness. The city of Owen Sound was then the village of Sydenham, a rude hamlet of about half a score of log-built dwellings, situated on the Sydenham River a mile south of the entrance to the bay.<br><br>Five miles from the village, on the rising slopes east of the bay the new home was set up. There on the tenth day of May, 1844, the first tree was felled in a dense forest on the prospective homestead. This act was the starting point of years of hard toil, selfdenial, privations and luxuries largely in the anticipatory stages.<br><br>During the year 1848 the first secular school in the neighborhood was opened - the first that had ever been within a reasonable distance of the author during his years of "school age."<br><br>At the age of fifteen he was brought face to face with the problem that confronts every young man.