Many are pledged to the golf club upon its advent in the late springtime. Especially so on a glorious day such as today when at four o’clock this morning I recall having seen sunlight already appearing from behind the bedroom roller shades. Today May 25th marks the celebratory opening and clubhouse luncheon. My partner, I and my erstwhile physician chose instead to start the day with breakfast at 8:30 am overlooking the first tee.

Established in 1915 on the former Patterson Farm in Appleton, just five kilometres east of Carleton Place, Mississippi Golf Club is one of the oldest clubs in Ontario. Mississippi began as a nine-hole course, with a second nine – designed by the renowned golf course architect Graham Cooke – added in 1987.

The indisputable attraction to us of the Mississippi Golf Club in the Village of Appleton is its proximity.  Within a matter of minutes from home we are able to land upon the clubhouse patio.

As the old clubhouse (and upright piano) mark my initiation in 1976 to Lanark County and Ramsay Township (of which the Town of Mississippi Mills is a part), I have always been partial to the place.  It subsequently became the venue for annual familial luncheons to mark birthdays and anniversaries in addition to a convenient spot for casual breakfasts or luncheons with friends and acquaintances.

By unwitting coincidence Jim Collie of Collie Woollen Mills fame in the Village of Appleton was one of the first people whom I met in Almonte when I was invited to dine with Mr. Justice  C. J. Newton and his wife Betty.

In 1937, the woollen mills of Appleton got a fresh start under the ownership of William Collie. The Collie family owned and operated the Woollen Mills for fifty years from 1937 until 1987. In 1947 the Collie family created Collie Woollen Mills Limited.

William Collie was born in Scotland. He lived in Everdeen and worked in the textile industry. The Scottish Textile industry was hard work, low pay and there were no opportunities for advancements for the common worker. So in 1912 William Collie immigrated to Canada where he continued in the textile industry, this time with much more success. Arriving in Canada, William Collie was hired as a manager at the Pembroke Woollen Mills and worked there until 1917. During the Depression he worked a variety of jobs including operating a gas station but eventually he returned to the woollen industry and in 1933 purchased Ways Mill in Quebec. In 1936 William heard of the empty woollen mill in Appleton and travelled there to see it. With the money he had saved while operating the mill in Quebec, Mr. Collie was able to purchase the mill from the Caldwell’s and production began shortly afterwards.

North Lanark Regional Museum

As remote as the Village of Appleton was from the nearest urban centre (City of Ottawa) it nonetheless shared celebrity.  Many of the photos taken of houses built by the Collie family in 1945 for mill workers were taken by Malak Karsh whose wife I subsequently met by fortuity at the Château Laurier Hotel (where she and her husband then resided) while I played the grand piano in the ballroom during a lunchtime break from my articling job at Macdonald, Affleck, Barrs. &c., 100 Sparks Street.

The woollen industry was famously part of the growth of the Town of Almonte spirited by Thoburn and Rosamond among others. Once again I count it serendipitous that over a hundred years later I lunched at the Mississippi Golf Club in the Village of Appleton with Mr. Justice James Knatchbull Hugessen and his late wife Mary Rosamond Hugessen.

James Rosamond of Carleton Place, a shareholder of the short lived Ramsay corporation, then moved his woollen mill operations, the first in Eastern Ontario, from Carleton Place to Almonte as the founding of Almonte’s leading manufacturing enterprise.  He bought the site of the Ramsay Company’s mill and built a four storey stone building, later known as No. 2 Mill, which he opened in 1857.  Before its erection Samuel Reid and John McIntosh opened a small woollen factory in 1854 on the former site of the Boyce fulling mill.  James Rosamond, who lived until 1894, gave the management of his growing business in 1862 to his sons Bennett and William, who doubled its plant capacity and in 1866 admitted George Stephen, Montreal woollen manufacturer, as a partner.  He became Baron Mount Stephen, president of the Bank of Montreal and first president of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company.

The new Rosamond firm of 1866 began operations by buying the Island property of some sixteen acres and building its No. 1 Mill, then one of the finest in Canada.  Bennett Rosamond (1833-1910) was elected president of the Canadian Manufacturers  Association in 1890 and was Conservative Member of Parliament for North Lanark from 1892-1904.  He was president of the Almonte Knitting Company and in 1909 donated the Rosamond Memorial Hospital to the town.  He continued as head of the Rosamond Woollen Company until his death, when he was succeeded by Lieutenant Alex Rosamond (1873-1916).

A number of other woollen mills opened soon after the original Rosamond mill in Almonte.  Among the first were those of John McIntosh (1832-1904), a large frame building on the upper falls, and of John Baird (1820-1894) and Gilbert Cannon, all on Mill Street.  Sawmills, machine shops and iron foundries followed, including among the latter the foundry operated for a few years by John Flett (1836-1900).  A local real estate boom and flurry of inflated land speculation developed, only to collapse in a severe depression of the mid-seventies.  A fire loss of over $20,000 in 1877 destroyed the Cannon mill and the machinery of its lessee William H. Wylie, who moved to Carleton Place where he leased the McArthur (now Bates) woollen mill and later bought the Hawthorne woollen mill.  William Thoburn (1847-1928) began to manufacture flannels at Almonte in 1880 and became the head of the Almonte Knitting Company and Member of Parliament from 1908 to 1917.  Five textile mills in Almonte in 1904 were those of the Rosamond Woollen Company, William Thoburn, James H. Wylie Co. Limited, Almonte Knitting Company, and the Anchor Knitting Co. Limited.

Almonte, Ontario by Brent Eades