Margaret Eaton, a distant relative of Cyrus Eaton researched his childhood in the second chapter of her unpublished biography. She has been an archivist at Thinkers Lodge and was invaluable resource in identifying the people in the photographs hung on the walls before the renovation.
CHAPTER TWO The story of the enigmatic Eaton began, not in the industrial heartland of Ohio, nor near the international stages of Washington, D.C. or Moscow, but on a farm on the Pugwash River in Nova Scotia, Canada, where he was born on December 27, 1883 to Mary Adelia (MacPherson) and Joseph Howe Eaton.
Mary was descended from Scottish-born, United Empire Loyalists who, following the American Revolution, left land now occupied by Broadway and Wall Street, to settle in Shelbourne on the south shore of Nova Scotia, later moving to Pugwash. A relative was Donald McKay, who returned to the United States and in Massachussetts built some of the swiftest clipper ships ever launched, including the celebrated Flying Cloud, a painting of which Eaton cherished.
Joseph Eaton traced his ancestry to John Eaton of Wiltshire, England, where according to the Domesday Book, Eatons were living in 1086. In 1640 John and Anne Eaton left their home near Salisbury to emigrate to New England with the Puritans. The town records of Salisbury, Massachusetts show they were granted “2 acres more or less for his house lott”1 on June 26, 1640, and a further six acres in September of that year for a “planting lott lying uppon ye great neck”2 on the beach road. It was here that he built Brookside, the farm which remained in the family until the 1890’s. In 1646 he and his wife moved to nearby Haverhill, where he was chosen grand juror and also named one of the “Prudential men” whose job it was to manage town affairs.
Fast-forwarding one hundred and twenty years finds great-great-grandson David, his wife Deborah (White) and their six children sailing to Cornwallis in Nova Scotia in 1760, with a group of six to eight thousand New Englanders known as the Planters, who came in response to an appeal from the Governor of Massachussetts and Captain General of British Forces in America, William Shirley, for settlers whose loyalty to England would be undoubted. What they found was the fertile farmland of the Annapolis Valley, which had previously been dyked and farmed by the now deported Acadians. It was cooled in the summer by the high tides of the Bay of Fundy and protected in winter by the North and South Mountains: ranges of spruce and fir covered hills enveloped by filmy mists at sunrise. Since the name “Eaton” is derived from the old English word, “ea”, meaning river or water and “ton” a common suffix referring to an enclosed piece of land, the Eatons must have felt very much at home in this beautiful area. David and Deborah received a “full share” of land, meaning 666 2/3 acres, including dykeland, excellent for hay; rich farmland and some forested mountain land from which lumber could be harvested. Called a “man of property” in local history books, David Eaton continued to buy and sell land until his death in 1803. At that time eleven of his fifteen children survived him.
Fast-forwarding again to 1810 finds grandson Amos, a colonel in the militia, and his wife Sarah (Harris) moving to Pugwash (Mi’kmaq for “shallow water) on Northumberland Strait They, like the other settlers, were attracted by the opportunities the area offered: an excellent harbour, rich fishing grounds, extensive forests for lumbering and shipbuilding. As the town grew and prospered, so did the Eaton family: six sons and four daughters were born on their twenty-five acre farm. James Smith writing in The History of Pugwash describes Amos Eaton as “a prosperous and highly respected man.”4
Levi, the oldest son, was a successful merchant and shipbuilder. The busy harbour was filled, at times, with as many as eighteen ships, anchored so closely together that a man could walk across their decks to the shops which lined the wharves along the main street. Throughout the 1840’s and ‘50’s, he built ships: brigantines, barques and schooners. In 1860, though, realizing that the age of the wooden ships was coming to an end, “one of Pugwash’s more distinguished residents”5 sailed away on his last ship, the George Hamilton, to New Zealand, where he settled with his wife and son, George.
Levi’s younger brother, Stephen, remained in Pugwash where he married Mary Parker, daughter of the local Baptist pastor of the same church where Amos was trustee. The fourth of their ten children, born in 1849, was named Joseph Howe in honour of Nova Scotia’s famed journalist and politician. At age twenty-two, he married nineteen-year-old Mary Adelia MacPherson.
The young couple settled five miles from Pugwash, at Pugwash River, where Joseph farmed several dozen acres on a hillside overlooking the river. Although he later owned “wide timber areas in the province”6 and was described as “an able businessman”7, there were hardships to be faced as an economic depression settled over the Maritimes. The glorious age of sail, the mainstay of Pugwash, had ended, just as Levi Eaton had forseen. It was now also obvious that Nova Scotia was not going to benefit from Confederation of 1867, just as Joseph Howe had predicted. When Joseph Eaton began farming, he was barely able to pay for a “hired man” and a “hired girl” to help with the work.
There was also a young family to care and provide for. Parker was born in 1871, Gertrude May two years later. Mary was looking forward to the birth of a third child in April 1877, when a diptheria epidemic swept through the area in February with devastating results. First five-year-old Parker was stricken, then three-year-old Gertie: within two weeks both were dead. Physically exhausted and emotionally drained from nursing her children and watching helplessly as they died, Mary anxiously awaited the arrival of new life, praying that this child would be spared a similar fate. Little Frank was a healthy baby, but sadly, once again, he was claimed by a childhood illness, shortly before his third birthday. In 1881 another son was born; he was named John in memory of Joseph’s young brother who had also died in the diphtheria outbreak.
A fifth child was born two days after Christmas in 1883. The blue-eyed, fair-haired boy was named Cyrus, for his uncle now living in Colorado, and Stephen for his grandfather, who died the following day at age sixty-four. This was an unusually young age for an adult Eaton to die: those who survived the perils of infancy tended to live well into their eighties and nineties.
Over the course of the next few years, John and Cyrus were joined by sisters Eva and Florence. As soon as they were old enough, the girls helped their mother in the house, while the boys were kept busy helping their father on the farm. Tall, study boys at ages four and six, they helped milk the cows and could ride horseback. In winter they drove the cattle from the barn down to the river to drink. Believing that even very young children should learn responsibility, Joseph assigned the care of one cow to each son. Cyrus’ cow was Bess, an easy milker, of whom he was quite fond. Always an early riser, he was the first to discover one spring morning that Bess was missing. Running back to the house from the barn, he met his father and John who joined in the search for Bess. As the day wore on, neighbours searched as well, but when night fell, Bess was still missing. Up early after a sleepless night, Cyrus set off in the dawn in a different direction through the woods and finally found the cow, with new-born twin calves, resting beside a bed of mayflowers.
Some months later, at harvest, Mary was preparing to make biscuits to feed the threshing crew, when she ran out of flour. Joseph was too busy to take the grain to nearby Conns Mills to have it ground and John was now in school, so the horse and wagon were hitched up for four year old Cyrus, while his mother stood by protesting that he was much to young.
“Now, think about it,” Joseph argued, “the road is straight. Even if Cy doesn’t know the way, the horse does.” So with the encouragement of his father, Cy set out, holding tightly to the reins, and returned triumphantly with the flour ready for biscuits. He maintained it was one of the proudest moments of his childhood. A less proud moment came some years later, when he accidentally upset his mother into a snow bank as he was attempting a complicated turn in the driveway of a cousin’s home.
Shortly after Cyrus began school in September, 1889, John, now eight and a half, became seriously ill while at school. When the teacher realized he was running a fever, she sent him home in the early afternoon, with Cyrus accompanying him. Mary, recognized the symptoms of diptheria only too well, put him to bed immediately and sent Cyrus outside. Waiting until he was sure that she was safely back inside, he crept up to the house, where standing on tiptoe, his nose resting on the window ledge, he watched as his mother, now expecting her eighth child, bent anxiously over John as he lay on a couch in the kitchen. She bathed his burning face with cool water and placed a bread poultice on his throat and chest. On the evening of the fourth day, when his father came to tell him that John had died, Cyrus ran away into the woods with his dog, where he remained for hours, trying to make sense of what had happened. It seemed that his playmate John had “gone to bed and he never got up again.” It was a confusing and bewildering time for a child not yet six.
While his parents now had to face the deaths of four children, they also had to continue to face the disastrous weather conditions of the 1880’s, which played havoc with their farm. Articles in the Chignecto Post during those years refer to late springs and early winters, with snow reported as early as September 11 and poor crops year after year. “The potato crop is a pronounced failure” and “grain potatoes will not exceed half an average crop in this section of the country,” the editor feared. The farm at Pugwash River seemed to have received even more than its share of the cold, wet weather. Early in 1890 Joseph decided to give up farming and moved his family, which now included infant Alice, five miles away to Pugwash Junction, where he entered the lumbering business and opened a general store in a wood frame building which stood at the crossroads and served the neighbouring farmers and lumberman.
Just a very short distance away stood the one room school where Margaret King taught. She was a teacher who genuinely sought to bring out the best in her pupils and in later life Cyrus considered himself fortunate to have received his early education from her. Under her gentle guidance, he came to love reading, making it a life-long pleasure. A new student in a rural school was something of a novelty. A classmate, Dr. G. W. O’Brien, later of Amherst, NS, recalled, “I’ll never forget the first day he came into the schoolroom in Pugwash Junction. He had the bluest eyes, the fairest hair and the pinkest cheeks you ever saw, and he was the envy of all the ladies and a perfect little gentleman. He still is one of the best looking men Canada ever produced.”8
Following John’s death, Cyrus was now the oldest living Eaton child and only boy and took this position of responsibility seriously. Customers in Joseph Eaton’s general store were often waited upon by the extraordinarily mature six-year-old son of the proprietor, who weighed out flour, sugar and raisins, and counted change with solemnity. His father used to say proudly, “When Cyrus was six, I could leave him in the store for hours alone and he never failed my confidence. His qualifications for big business are brains and absolute trustworthiness.”9
Cyrus’ interest in the store waned in the spring of 1890 with the excitement of watching dozens of rail-road workers laying track right through the Eaton property. They were building a spur line from the main line into Pugwash, which it was hoped would return prosperity to the town. “When the railway decided to put tracks through our place, somebody had to be hired to carry water from a spring to where the men were working with their picks and shovels. I wanted the job and I got it! I was paid fifty cents for a ten hour day,”10 he re-called. When the railroad opened officially on July 2, 1890 and the first steam engine rattled over the newly laid track, Cyrus stood watching with his father, proud that he had had a part in it.
It wasn’t long before he was to get further enjoyment from the railroad. Each summer Joseph closed the store for one day and the entire family went on an excursion to Halifax for the round trip fare of one dollar. There they attended exhibitions where Cyrus was interested in looking at the newest examples of agricultural and industrial production.
A bright curious child, he loved to learn. At home, his mother, a friend of Margaret King, reinforced her teaching, encouraging Cyrus to read and study the Bible. His father, later the postmaster, also provided him with reading material, perhaps unintentionally, for as Cyrus was sorting the newspapers form Boston, Providence and Halifax, he was also reading them. “By the time I was ten, I was pretty well experienced in business and world affairs – my father was postmaster and I used to read all the newspapers that came in to subscribers.”11
That was in 1893, and part of Cyrus’ interest in the American papers was spurred by his father’s consideration of moving his family to Colorado. “He was doing quite well in the farming, lumbering and general merchandising business, but was about to move down to the States and join his brother Cyrus in the tin-plate business. Then the panic hit. Suddenly the American dollar was worth only fifty cents in Canada. My prudent father decided not to take a chance on a country in that kind of shape”12
Shortly after Cyrus’ thirteenth birthday another brother, Joseph, was born, bringing to five the total of living children. Cyrus, as the oldest surviving one, continued to help in the store, on the three farms Joseph had acquired now that conditions had improved, and with the lumbering business in the surrounding forests. “My father would send me out to measure the logs his lumbermen were felling. That was important, because they got paid by the foot.”13 A contemporary, Charles Teed, recalled, “I remember his ‘Pa’ saying there was nobody as trustworthy as Cy.”14 He also acted as Sunday School librarian at the local Baptist church, an important source of reading material, since there was not a public library at that time in Pugwash.
There was time for “fun” in Cyrus’ life as well. He enjoyed the outdoors: fishing, hiking, riding, canoeing, and skating; activities he continued to enjoy throughout his life. He also had a healthy measure of boyish mischievousness. With his sister Eva, he once entered his neighbour’s kitchen without knocking, planning to raid her cookie jar. He was surprised in the act by Mrs. Murdock, but instead of being outraged, she was delighted that Cyrus and Eva liked her baking so much, and rewarded the would-be thieves with extra cookies. Cyrus didn’t get away with annoying his mother quite so easily. On one occasion, he re-called, when she was entertaining at afternoon tea, he exasperated her by teasing Eva, pulling her braids and making her cry. Cyrus knew he was safe as long as the company remained, but as soon as they left by the front door, he left by the back, running through the field and down to the stream where he took the cows to drink. He may have been quick, but his mother was quicker, catching him before he reached the gate.
What Cyrus considered to be the most exciting event of his childhood was the celebration, on June 20, 1897, of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. While his parents remained at home, he was allowed to take the Democrat and drive Eva and a visiting cousin into Pugwash for the festivities. In all of the shop windows were posters emblazoned with a map of the globe, showing the British possessions coloured in pinkish-red, triumphantly proclaiming, “We hold an Empire on which the sun never sets.” The streets were crowded, everyone was in a holiday mood. Caught up in the patriotic excitement, Cyrus and his companions joined the noisy, flag-waving crowds.
Recalling the entertainment he saw later that summer in Halifax, he noted,
“There were some splendid re-enactments of the Crimean War – I particularly enjoyed the Charge of the Light Brigade - and rowing races among crews of ships in port from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Holland.” Still later in July in Pugwash, “There was a baseball game between a local team and some visiting railroad men. I was only thirteen in 1897 and too young to play.”15
He may have been too young to play baseball with adults in 1897, but by 1899, he had progressed as far as he could at the one-room school, where under Miss King’s tutelage he had studied Latin, some trigonometry and even navigation. A family conference, which included his parents; his uncle, Rev. Charles Aubrey Eaton, an Acadia University graduate and Baptist minister; and another uncle, Frederick Eaton from Amherst, N.S., resulted in an invitation for Cyrus to live with Frederick’s family and attend Amherst Academy for the year 1899-1900. In the spring, he wrote the provincial junior matriculation examination, achieving high marks in all subjects. At the closing ceremonies in June, he was called to the stage to be presented with sets of the complete works of Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley, along with framed photographs of the authors, for leading his class in science, now in Thinker’s Lodge. Possibly Darwin’s theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest influenced his later business life and decisions; certainly it, and Huxley’s theory of agnosticism forced him to reconsider his orthodox, fundamentalist Christian beliefs, as he spent part of the summer reading the volumes and pondering these new and radical ideas. Sensing that he was moving away from traditional religious beliefs, his mother told him that after she died, she would contact him from Heaven to prove that an afterlife existed.
That same summer of 1900 a fire broke out in Pugwash, then a community of 3,000, destroying over two hundred homes, five churches, twenty stores and several mills. When it was over, a blackened, charred heap of rubble was all that remained. The townspeople attempted to rebuild, but many became discouraged and moved away; the population shrank to approximately 700, where it has since remained.
Realizing that the exciting prospects Pugwash had offered their forefathers eighty years earlier no longer existed, the Eatons encouraged their children to continue with education to assure success in the world beyond the little town. In an era when less that fifty percent of youth remained in school past the eighth grade and very few ever went on to university, the family was well ahead of the times in their emphasis on education for their daughters as well as their sons. Eva was the only child who did not go on to university, despite a high standing in provincial matriculation exams, choosing a more traditional route of marriage and family. Florence went to Acadia University, later studying political science at Oxford and the Sorbonne; Alice also graduated from Acadia and the University of Alberta, while Joseph received his degree from Harvard in 1920.
Cyrus briefly considered a military career, as he followed the campaigns of the Boer War. “Had I been a little bit older, I’d have enlisted like some of my relatives,” he said. “Lord Strathcona, then the Canadian High Commissioner in London, organized and equipped his own cavalry, and when the Strathcona Horse came through from the west en route to embarkation from Halifax, our school went down to the railway station to salute them, and I wore a shoulder sash with the unit’s colours on it.”16
That was a short-lived idea, for Cyrus, encouraged by his mother and Uncle Charles, now minister at the Bloor Street Baptist Church in Toronto, was giving serious consideration to studying for the ministry, although he was intrigued by the new field of electrical engineering. After another family conference with Uncle Charles, it was decided that both Cyrus and his cousin, George Johnson (his father’s sister Caroline’s son from Truro), would attend Woodstock College, a Baptist affiliated preparatory school in Toronto, for one year, to complete high school.
While most of the students at Woodstock had been there for three years and therefore knew each other, they soon opened their ranks to the new arrivals. “Cy”, as his classmates called him, and George tried out for the rugby team, were accepted, and played to a victorious finish, while Cy played baseball as well. He was invited to join the senior literary and debating society, where his talents as a public speaker, “his easy manner and musical voice”17 soon dispelled any doubts which the Ontarians may have had about the tall young man from Nova Scotia. He continued to do well academically and was described as a “bright and painstaking student”18, now thinking about a law career, instead of the church.
In September 1901, Cyrus and George enrolled at McMaster University, situated on an acre of land on Bloor Street. This Baptist institution had been founded in 1887 by Senator William McMaster, merchant and founder of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. The Chancellor, Alexander McKay, son of a carpenter from Nova Scotia, was a brilliant mathematics and physics professor. Charles had recently earned a Master’s degree in theology from this university, and inspired by his example, Cyrus turned his attention to theology, literature and philosophy, with the goal, once again, of entering the ministry. His philosophy professor, Douglas MacIntosh considered him to be “the most brilliant philosophical mind" in any of his classes, where he once achieved the almost unheard-of mark of 99.
Meanwhile, some professors at McMaster were among the pioneers in the newer fields of the social gospel and higher Biblical criticism and accused by some leading Toronto Baptists of outright heresy, by freely interpreting the Bible and rejecting its “literal truth”. A compromise was reached after a three year controversy, which undoubtedly had an effect on Cyrus, for he found himself again questioning the simple, unwavering faith his mother had found to be so comforting and which she had tried her best to instill in him.
The love of reading, which she had also encouraged, did remain with him, however. When he was ninety, he was re-reading Spinoza, as he claimed it made him “feel young again”. He also continued to enjoy poetry and kept the Oxford Book of English Verse beside his bed. “Everyday I read some poetry. I read a little every night before I turn off my light,” he said in later years, citing as favourites Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Arnold Bennett, Thomas Grey, and particularly Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ and Milton’s sonnet on his blindness. “You know, nothing contributes more to one’s happiness in life than reading the great poetry that very often expresses the happiest and best moments in the life of the poet who wrote it.”19
While Cyrus was studying, he was paying for his tuition, room and board and books, by clerking in a Toronto department store, as well as keeping accounts for a physician and collecting fees from patients “reluctant to pay”. Although his father had offered to cover his expenses, Cyrus wanted to do it on his own. “My reason was that there were others in the family to educate, and I could see no assurance that my father would get a return on his investment in me in time to help the others.”20
But it wasn’t all work and no play. Cyrus played rugby and hockey, was voted class president, edited Athletics (a sports newsletter), was secretary for the Fyfe Missionary Society and member of the evangelistic band. At least one member played a guitar and the group was popular as they visited area churches.
The activity Cyrus most enjoyed was debating. At McMaster, students took intercollegiate debates seriously and a debate against rival Osgood Hall was thought to afford a prime evening’s entertainment. “In my spare time, I occasionally took advantage of the proximity of Queen’s Park to sit in on sessions of the legislature. Local celebrities included George Ross who rose to be premier of Ontario. The skill with which Ross embellished his speeches with quotations from Shakespeare earned my admiration. I tried some speaking on my own and considered that I had reached a pinnacle in being asked to address a crowded Massey Hall audience one Sunday afternoon.”21
McMaster was co-educational and the young women there were certainly not immune to Cyrus’ charm. Fifty years later at a class reunion when he kissed class vice-president Annie Ross Hamilton, she asked, “Why didn’t you do this then?” Possibly he didn’t because at that time both he and his cousin George were rivals for the affection of another classmate, Lillian Senior, who finally accepted George’s marriage proposal. Even so, Lillian retained fond memories of Cyrus. Seventy-one years after their graduation in 1905, she wrote to the CBC after viewing their documentary about him and said: “Cyrus Eaton was a person of infinite gentleness, of quiet self-effacement and of perfect manners.”
The McMaster University Monthly summarized his academic career by calling him “versatile” and “one of the prominent lights of the class, having many talents and good qualities”22 not the least of which was the pride he took in working hard to achieve his goals. Whether it was milking a cow in the years before he went to school, making high marks, paying his own way though university or sharpening his wits in a heated formal debate, he tackled the job with a purposeful, whole-hearted determination. That characteristic was just born in him, he once commented, as he always wanted to be doing some work that was useful and constructive.
In May, 1905, Cyrus was awarded his Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in philosophy and was still talking about entering the ministry, but a chance meeting which had occurred in the summer of 1901 had really already determined the course of his future.
Mary was descended from Scottish-born, United Empire Loyalists who, following the American Revolution, left land now occupied by Broadway and Wall Street, to settle in Shelbourne on the south shore of Nova Scotia, later moving to Pugwash. A relative was Donald McKay, who returned to the United States and in Massachussetts built some of the swiftest clipper ships ever launched, including the celebrated Flying Cloud, a painting of which Eaton cherished.
Joseph Eaton traced his ancestry to John Eaton of Wiltshire, England, where according to the Domesday Book, Eatons were living in 1086. In 1640 John and Anne Eaton left their home near Salisbury to emigrate to New England with the Puritans. The town records of Salisbury, Massachusetts show they were granted “2 acres more or less for his house lott”1 on June 26, 1640, and a further six acres in September of that year for a “planting lott lying uppon ye great neck”2 on the beach road. It was here that he built Brookside, the farm which remained in the family until the 1890’s. In 1646 he and his wife moved to nearby Haverhill, where he was chosen grand juror and also named one of the “Prudential men” whose job it was to manage town affairs.
Fast-forwarding one hundred and twenty years finds great-great-grandson David, his wife Deborah (White) and their six children sailing to Cornwallis in Nova Scotia in 1760, with a group of six to eight thousand New Englanders known as the Planters, who came in response to an appeal from the Governor of Massachussetts and Captain General of British Forces in America, William Shirley, for settlers whose loyalty to England would be undoubted. What they found was the fertile farmland of the Annapolis Valley, which had previously been dyked and farmed by the now deported Acadians. It was cooled in the summer by the high tides of the Bay of Fundy and protected in winter by the North and South Mountains: ranges of spruce and fir covered hills enveloped by filmy mists at sunrise. Since the name “Eaton” is derived from the old English word, “ea”, meaning river or water and “ton” a common suffix referring to an enclosed piece of land, the Eatons must have felt very much at home in this beautiful area. David and Deborah received a “full share” of land, meaning 666 2/3 acres, including dykeland, excellent for hay; rich farmland and some forested mountain land from which lumber could be harvested. Called a “man of property” in local history books, David Eaton continued to buy and sell land until his death in 1803. At that time eleven of his fifteen children survived him.
Fast-forwarding again to 1810 finds grandson Amos, a colonel in the militia, and his wife Sarah (Harris) moving to Pugwash (Mi’kmaq for “shallow water) on Northumberland Strait They, like the other settlers, were attracted by the opportunities the area offered: an excellent harbour, rich fishing grounds, extensive forests for lumbering and shipbuilding. As the town grew and prospered, so did the Eaton family: six sons and four daughters were born on their twenty-five acre farm. James Smith writing in The History of Pugwash describes Amos Eaton as “a prosperous and highly respected man.”4
Levi, the oldest son, was a successful merchant and shipbuilder. The busy harbour was filled, at times, with as many as eighteen ships, anchored so closely together that a man could walk across their decks to the shops which lined the wharves along the main street. Throughout the 1840’s and ‘50’s, he built ships: brigantines, barques and schooners. In 1860, though, realizing that the age of the wooden ships was coming to an end, “one of Pugwash’s more distinguished residents”5 sailed away on his last ship, the George Hamilton, to New Zealand, where he settled with his wife and son, George.
Levi’s younger brother, Stephen, remained in Pugwash where he married Mary Parker, daughter of the local Baptist pastor of the same church where Amos was trustee. The fourth of their ten children, born in 1849, was named Joseph Howe in honour of Nova Scotia’s famed journalist and politician. At age twenty-two, he married nineteen-year-old Mary Adelia MacPherson.
The young couple settled five miles from Pugwash, at Pugwash River, where Joseph farmed several dozen acres on a hillside overlooking the river. Although he later owned “wide timber areas in the province”6 and was described as “an able businessman”7, there were hardships to be faced as an economic depression settled over the Maritimes. The glorious age of sail, the mainstay of Pugwash, had ended, just as Levi Eaton had forseen. It was now also obvious that Nova Scotia was not going to benefit from Confederation of 1867, just as Joseph Howe had predicted. When Joseph Eaton began farming, he was barely able to pay for a “hired man” and a “hired girl” to help with the work.
There was also a young family to care and provide for. Parker was born in 1871, Gertrude May two years later. Mary was looking forward to the birth of a third child in April 1877, when a diptheria epidemic swept through the area in February with devastating results. First five-year-old Parker was stricken, then three-year-old Gertie: within two weeks both were dead. Physically exhausted and emotionally drained from nursing her children and watching helplessly as they died, Mary anxiously awaited the arrival of new life, praying that this child would be spared a similar fate. Little Frank was a healthy baby, but sadly, once again, he was claimed by a childhood illness, shortly before his third birthday. In 1881 another son was born; he was named John in memory of Joseph’s young brother who had also died in the diphtheria outbreak.
A fifth child was born two days after Christmas in 1883. The blue-eyed, fair-haired boy was named Cyrus, for his uncle now living in Colorado, and Stephen for his grandfather, who died the following day at age sixty-four. This was an unusually young age for an adult Eaton to die: those who survived the perils of infancy tended to live well into their eighties and nineties.
Over the course of the next few years, John and Cyrus were joined by sisters Eva and Florence. As soon as they were old enough, the girls helped their mother in the house, while the boys were kept busy helping their father on the farm. Tall, study boys at ages four and six, they helped milk the cows and could ride horseback. In winter they drove the cattle from the barn down to the river to drink. Believing that even very young children should learn responsibility, Joseph assigned the care of one cow to each son. Cyrus’ cow was Bess, an easy milker, of whom he was quite fond. Always an early riser, he was the first to discover one spring morning that Bess was missing. Running back to the house from the barn, he met his father and John who joined in the search for Bess. As the day wore on, neighbours searched as well, but when night fell, Bess was still missing. Up early after a sleepless night, Cyrus set off in the dawn in a different direction through the woods and finally found the cow, with new-born twin calves, resting beside a bed of mayflowers.
Some months later, at harvest, Mary was preparing to make biscuits to feed the threshing crew, when she ran out of flour. Joseph was too busy to take the grain to nearby Conns Mills to have it ground and John was now in school, so the horse and wagon were hitched up for four year old Cyrus, while his mother stood by protesting that he was much to young.
“Now, think about it,” Joseph argued, “the road is straight. Even if Cy doesn’t know the way, the horse does.” So with the encouragement of his father, Cy set out, holding tightly to the reins, and returned triumphantly with the flour ready for biscuits. He maintained it was one of the proudest moments of his childhood. A less proud moment came some years later, when he accidentally upset his mother into a snow bank as he was attempting a complicated turn in the driveway of a cousin’s home.
Shortly after Cyrus began school in September, 1889, John, now eight and a half, became seriously ill while at school. When the teacher realized he was running a fever, she sent him home in the early afternoon, with Cyrus accompanying him. Mary, recognized the symptoms of diptheria only too well, put him to bed immediately and sent Cyrus outside. Waiting until he was sure that she was safely back inside, he crept up to the house, where standing on tiptoe, his nose resting on the window ledge, he watched as his mother, now expecting her eighth child, bent anxiously over John as he lay on a couch in the kitchen. She bathed his burning face with cool water and placed a bread poultice on his throat and chest. On the evening of the fourth day, when his father came to tell him that John had died, Cyrus ran away into the woods with his dog, where he remained for hours, trying to make sense of what had happened. It seemed that his playmate John had “gone to bed and he never got up again.” It was a confusing and bewildering time for a child not yet six.
While his parents now had to face the deaths of four children, they also had to continue to face the disastrous weather conditions of the 1880’s, which played havoc with their farm. Articles in the Chignecto Post during those years refer to late springs and early winters, with snow reported as early as September 11 and poor crops year after year. “The potato crop is a pronounced failure” and “grain potatoes will not exceed half an average crop in this section of the country,” the editor feared. The farm at Pugwash River seemed to have received even more than its share of the cold, wet weather. Early in 1890 Joseph decided to give up farming and moved his family, which now included infant Alice, five miles away to Pugwash Junction, where he entered the lumbering business and opened a general store in a wood frame building which stood at the crossroads and served the neighbouring farmers and lumberman.
Just a very short distance away stood the one room school where Margaret King taught. She was a teacher who genuinely sought to bring out the best in her pupils and in later life Cyrus considered himself fortunate to have received his early education from her. Under her gentle guidance, he came to love reading, making it a life-long pleasure. A new student in a rural school was something of a novelty. A classmate, Dr. G. W. O’Brien, later of Amherst, NS, recalled, “I’ll never forget the first day he came into the schoolroom in Pugwash Junction. He had the bluest eyes, the fairest hair and the pinkest cheeks you ever saw, and he was the envy of all the ladies and a perfect little gentleman. He still is one of the best looking men Canada ever produced.”8
Following John’s death, Cyrus was now the oldest living Eaton child and only boy and took this position of responsibility seriously. Customers in Joseph Eaton’s general store were often waited upon by the extraordinarily mature six-year-old son of the proprietor, who weighed out flour, sugar and raisins, and counted change with solemnity. His father used to say proudly, “When Cyrus was six, I could leave him in the store for hours alone and he never failed my confidence. His qualifications for big business are brains and absolute trustworthiness.”9
Cyrus’ interest in the store waned in the spring of 1890 with the excitement of watching dozens of rail-road workers laying track right through the Eaton property. They were building a spur line from the main line into Pugwash, which it was hoped would return prosperity to the town. “When the railway decided to put tracks through our place, somebody had to be hired to carry water from a spring to where the men were working with their picks and shovels. I wanted the job and I got it! I was paid fifty cents for a ten hour day,”10 he re-called. When the railroad opened officially on July 2, 1890 and the first steam engine rattled over the newly laid track, Cyrus stood watching with his father, proud that he had had a part in it.
It wasn’t long before he was to get further enjoyment from the railroad. Each summer Joseph closed the store for one day and the entire family went on an excursion to Halifax for the round trip fare of one dollar. There they attended exhibitions where Cyrus was interested in looking at the newest examples of agricultural and industrial production.
A bright curious child, he loved to learn. At home, his mother, a friend of Margaret King, reinforced her teaching, encouraging Cyrus to read and study the Bible. His father, later the postmaster, also provided him with reading material, perhaps unintentionally, for as Cyrus was sorting the newspapers form Boston, Providence and Halifax, he was also reading them. “By the time I was ten, I was pretty well experienced in business and world affairs – my father was postmaster and I used to read all the newspapers that came in to subscribers.”11
That was in 1893, and part of Cyrus’ interest in the American papers was spurred by his father’s consideration of moving his family to Colorado. “He was doing quite well in the farming, lumbering and general merchandising business, but was about to move down to the States and join his brother Cyrus in the tin-plate business. Then the panic hit. Suddenly the American dollar was worth only fifty cents in Canada. My prudent father decided not to take a chance on a country in that kind of shape”12
Shortly after Cyrus’ thirteenth birthday another brother, Joseph, was born, bringing to five the total of living children. Cyrus, as the oldest surviving one, continued to help in the store, on the three farms Joseph had acquired now that conditions had improved, and with the lumbering business in the surrounding forests. “My father would send me out to measure the logs his lumbermen were felling. That was important, because they got paid by the foot.”13 A contemporary, Charles Teed, recalled, “I remember his ‘Pa’ saying there was nobody as trustworthy as Cy.”14 He also acted as Sunday School librarian at the local Baptist church, an important source of reading material, since there was not a public library at that time in Pugwash.
There was time for “fun” in Cyrus’ life as well. He enjoyed the outdoors: fishing, hiking, riding, canoeing, and skating; activities he continued to enjoy throughout his life. He also had a healthy measure of boyish mischievousness. With his sister Eva, he once entered his neighbour’s kitchen without knocking, planning to raid her cookie jar. He was surprised in the act by Mrs. Murdock, but instead of being outraged, she was delighted that Cyrus and Eva liked her baking so much, and rewarded the would-be thieves with extra cookies. Cyrus didn’t get away with annoying his mother quite so easily. On one occasion, he re-called, when she was entertaining at afternoon tea, he exasperated her by teasing Eva, pulling her braids and making her cry. Cyrus knew he was safe as long as the company remained, but as soon as they left by the front door, he left by the back, running through the field and down to the stream where he took the cows to drink. He may have been quick, but his mother was quicker, catching him before he reached the gate.
What Cyrus considered to be the most exciting event of his childhood was the celebration, on June 20, 1897, of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. While his parents remained at home, he was allowed to take the Democrat and drive Eva and a visiting cousin into Pugwash for the festivities. In all of the shop windows were posters emblazoned with a map of the globe, showing the British possessions coloured in pinkish-red, triumphantly proclaiming, “We hold an Empire on which the sun never sets.” The streets were crowded, everyone was in a holiday mood. Caught up in the patriotic excitement, Cyrus and his companions joined the noisy, flag-waving crowds.
Recalling the entertainment he saw later that summer in Halifax, he noted,
“There were some splendid re-enactments of the Crimean War – I particularly enjoyed the Charge of the Light Brigade - and rowing races among crews of ships in port from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Holland.” Still later in July in Pugwash, “There was a baseball game between a local team and some visiting railroad men. I was only thirteen in 1897 and too young to play.”15
He may have been too young to play baseball with adults in 1897, but by 1899, he had progressed as far as he could at the one-room school, where under Miss King’s tutelage he had studied Latin, some trigonometry and even navigation. A family conference, which included his parents; his uncle, Rev. Charles Aubrey Eaton, an Acadia University graduate and Baptist minister; and another uncle, Frederick Eaton from Amherst, N.S., resulted in an invitation for Cyrus to live with Frederick’s family and attend Amherst Academy for the year 1899-1900. In the spring, he wrote the provincial junior matriculation examination, achieving high marks in all subjects. At the closing ceremonies in June, he was called to the stage to be presented with sets of the complete works of Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley, along with framed photographs of the authors, for leading his class in science, now in Thinker’s Lodge. Possibly Darwin’s theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest influenced his later business life and decisions; certainly it, and Huxley’s theory of agnosticism forced him to reconsider his orthodox, fundamentalist Christian beliefs, as he spent part of the summer reading the volumes and pondering these new and radical ideas. Sensing that he was moving away from traditional religious beliefs, his mother told him that after she died, she would contact him from Heaven to prove that an afterlife existed.
That same summer of 1900 a fire broke out in Pugwash, then a community of 3,000, destroying over two hundred homes, five churches, twenty stores and several mills. When it was over, a blackened, charred heap of rubble was all that remained. The townspeople attempted to rebuild, but many became discouraged and moved away; the population shrank to approximately 700, where it has since remained.
Realizing that the exciting prospects Pugwash had offered their forefathers eighty years earlier no longer existed, the Eatons encouraged their children to continue with education to assure success in the world beyond the little town. In an era when less that fifty percent of youth remained in school past the eighth grade and very few ever went on to university, the family was well ahead of the times in their emphasis on education for their daughters as well as their sons. Eva was the only child who did not go on to university, despite a high standing in provincial matriculation exams, choosing a more traditional route of marriage and family. Florence went to Acadia University, later studying political science at Oxford and the Sorbonne; Alice also graduated from Acadia and the University of Alberta, while Joseph received his degree from Harvard in 1920.
Cyrus briefly considered a military career, as he followed the campaigns of the Boer War. “Had I been a little bit older, I’d have enlisted like some of my relatives,” he said. “Lord Strathcona, then the Canadian High Commissioner in London, organized and equipped his own cavalry, and when the Strathcona Horse came through from the west en route to embarkation from Halifax, our school went down to the railway station to salute them, and I wore a shoulder sash with the unit’s colours on it.”16
That was a short-lived idea, for Cyrus, encouraged by his mother and Uncle Charles, now minister at the Bloor Street Baptist Church in Toronto, was giving serious consideration to studying for the ministry, although he was intrigued by the new field of electrical engineering. After another family conference with Uncle Charles, it was decided that both Cyrus and his cousin, George Johnson (his father’s sister Caroline’s son from Truro), would attend Woodstock College, a Baptist affiliated preparatory school in Toronto, for one year, to complete high school.
While most of the students at Woodstock had been there for three years and therefore knew each other, they soon opened their ranks to the new arrivals. “Cy”, as his classmates called him, and George tried out for the rugby team, were accepted, and played to a victorious finish, while Cy played baseball as well. He was invited to join the senior literary and debating society, where his talents as a public speaker, “his easy manner and musical voice”17 soon dispelled any doubts which the Ontarians may have had about the tall young man from Nova Scotia. He continued to do well academically and was described as a “bright and painstaking student”18, now thinking about a law career, instead of the church.
In September 1901, Cyrus and George enrolled at McMaster University, situated on an acre of land on Bloor Street. This Baptist institution had been founded in 1887 by Senator William McMaster, merchant and founder of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. The Chancellor, Alexander McKay, son of a carpenter from Nova Scotia, was a brilliant mathematics and physics professor. Charles had recently earned a Master’s degree in theology from this university, and inspired by his example, Cyrus turned his attention to theology, literature and philosophy, with the goal, once again, of entering the ministry. His philosophy professor, Douglas MacIntosh considered him to be “the most brilliant philosophical mind" in any of his classes, where he once achieved the almost unheard-of mark of 99.
Meanwhile, some professors at McMaster were among the pioneers in the newer fields of the social gospel and higher Biblical criticism and accused by some leading Toronto Baptists of outright heresy, by freely interpreting the Bible and rejecting its “literal truth”. A compromise was reached after a three year controversy, which undoubtedly had an effect on Cyrus, for he found himself again questioning the simple, unwavering faith his mother had found to be so comforting and which she had tried her best to instill in him.
The love of reading, which she had also encouraged, did remain with him, however. When he was ninety, he was re-reading Spinoza, as he claimed it made him “feel young again”. He also continued to enjoy poetry and kept the Oxford Book of English Verse beside his bed. “Everyday I read some poetry. I read a little every night before I turn off my light,” he said in later years, citing as favourites Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Arnold Bennett, Thomas Grey, and particularly Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ and Milton’s sonnet on his blindness. “You know, nothing contributes more to one’s happiness in life than reading the great poetry that very often expresses the happiest and best moments in the life of the poet who wrote it.”19
While Cyrus was studying, he was paying for his tuition, room and board and books, by clerking in a Toronto department store, as well as keeping accounts for a physician and collecting fees from patients “reluctant to pay”. Although his father had offered to cover his expenses, Cyrus wanted to do it on his own. “My reason was that there were others in the family to educate, and I could see no assurance that my father would get a return on his investment in me in time to help the others.”20
But it wasn’t all work and no play. Cyrus played rugby and hockey, was voted class president, edited Athletics (a sports newsletter), was secretary for the Fyfe Missionary Society and member of the evangelistic band. At least one member played a guitar and the group was popular as they visited area churches.
The activity Cyrus most enjoyed was debating. At McMaster, students took intercollegiate debates seriously and a debate against rival Osgood Hall was thought to afford a prime evening’s entertainment. “In my spare time, I occasionally took advantage of the proximity of Queen’s Park to sit in on sessions of the legislature. Local celebrities included George Ross who rose to be premier of Ontario. The skill with which Ross embellished his speeches with quotations from Shakespeare earned my admiration. I tried some speaking on my own and considered that I had reached a pinnacle in being asked to address a crowded Massey Hall audience one Sunday afternoon.”21
McMaster was co-educational and the young women there were certainly not immune to Cyrus’ charm. Fifty years later at a class reunion when he kissed class vice-president Annie Ross Hamilton, she asked, “Why didn’t you do this then?” Possibly he didn’t because at that time both he and his cousin George were rivals for the affection of another classmate, Lillian Senior, who finally accepted George’s marriage proposal. Even so, Lillian retained fond memories of Cyrus. Seventy-one years after their graduation in 1905, she wrote to the CBC after viewing their documentary about him and said: “Cyrus Eaton was a person of infinite gentleness, of quiet self-effacement and of perfect manners.”
The McMaster University Monthly summarized his academic career by calling him “versatile” and “one of the prominent lights of the class, having many talents and good qualities”22 not the least of which was the pride he took in working hard to achieve his goals. Whether it was milking a cow in the years before he went to school, making high marks, paying his own way though university or sharpening his wits in a heated formal debate, he tackled the job with a purposeful, whole-hearted determination. That characteristic was just born in him, he once commented, as he always wanted to be doing some work that was useful and constructive.
In May, 1905, Cyrus was awarded his Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in philosophy and was still talking about entering the ministry, but a chance meeting which had occurred in the summer of 1901 had really already determined the course of his future.