Downeyville – A record of traditional music and oral stories of the Irish

Submitted by Beverly Jeeves | Kawartha Lakes Culture and Heritage Network (CAHN) | ckl.heritage.network@gmail.com

I am often asked why “culture” and “heritage” are combined in telling history.  A short five-minute drive west of Lindsay to Downeyville, answers this question completely. 

Downeyville was settled in 1825, through the Peter Robinson settlement. Peter Robinson in the 1820s was responsible for helping to settle over 2,000 Irish immigrants from Peterborough to Lindsay, to Port Hope and to the Ottawa valley.

St. Luke’s Catholic Church is the centre of the community. The Church and manse has important architectural and historical significance for Kawartha Lakes.  The pioneer graveyard displays names of founding members of the mainly agricultural town from 1826 to 1907.

In the 1826 Newcastle District census, Downeyville is listed as “Shinig”.  By 1839, the census refers to Downeyville as “Fox.”  The Anglicized version of the Gaelic word Shinig (also Shenock, Sheniq and Sennick) translates as Fox.  The culture and origins of the Gaelic language helps when you are finding your ancestors.

There was once a hotel in Downeyville known as “The Cross.”  Located at a crossroad where the Downey Farm and school met, I had assumed “The Cross” referred to the strong Catholic faith; but it was simply a crossroad. After further research into the hotel, I uncovered poems, stories and songs in the “oral tradition” of the Irish, that told of life in Ireland; and later in the 19th century the history of the Irish settlements in Ontario and of the Ontario lumber camps.

In 1957, a well-known Folk song collector and broadcaster Edith Fowke travelled to Downeyville to record the traditional music and oral stories of the Irish.   Fowke understood from friends that the Irish descendants of Downeyville had maintained the traditions and musical styles of their ancestors. Within her research is a song that tells of a Leahy who meets Annie from Downeyville.  The Leahy family is well known in Canada for continuing the tradition through song,  fiddle-playing and oral stories; using “culture” to explain the Gaelic “heritage.”

As Mary Milloy’s words on the Memorial Stone at St. Luke Evangelist Roman Catholic Pioneer Cemetery state, “With grateful hearts may we salute them – pioneers of that distant age.  They have left to us who followed a rich and priceless heritage.”