37 The Village Blacksmith

In the period before farm tractors, snow plows, winterized automobiles and truck transports, the village blacksmith fulfilled the role of an essential tradesman in the community.

Mt. Brydges supported two blacksmith shops. In the period of the '20s and '30s horses still needed shoeing, farm wagons required tyres to be set on occasion and farm implements had to be repaired.

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. The museums of today display many articles designed by blacksmiths to meet the need of a period. It took skill and innovation to adapt iron, wood and steel to ease the daily chores of the pioneer families.

Ontario had many famous blacksmiths in its history: the Massey family built farm equipment in their blacksmith shop and became one of the mega industries of the province; the McLaughlin carriage works of Oshawa became General Motors of Canada; the McDonald family of Delaware travelled to most of the racetracks of U.S. and Canada to fit special shoes to race horses.

Occasionally a Williams wagon is still seen in a pioneer museum. Dave Williams, a son of this family, was a village United Church minister.

The blacksmith shops of Mt. Brydges had a long history. Blacksmiths named Lipsit, West, Hyatt and Rush by kept the anvils ringing during the first half of the century.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem immortalizing the Village Blacksmith. One of the lines of this poem always brings back memories of the blacksmith shops of the village: "And children coming home from school look in at the open door". We passed the blacksmith shop going to school or on our way home after the end of the school day, and frequently would stop to see the smithy fitting new shoes on a large team of work horses or a skittish, high stepping driver.

The smells of a blacksmith shop were indigenous to the trade, the smell of scorched wood when a hot iron tyre was being fitted, or the acrid smell coming from the horse's hoof when the hot shoe was applied. The burning coal in the forge had a distinctive smell, as did the steam coming from the water tank when red hot iron was dipped during the hardening process.

Like many other artisans, the need for the forge, the bellows, the anvil and the smithy have been replaced by the technical age. Those who shoe horses are now known as a farrier, with a diploma, a college degree no less.

The need for setting the bands on a wash tub, making a foot scraper for the doorstep or a weather vane for the roof are gone. But for some, many memories still prevail when something is mentioned about the village blacksmith.
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