Fairbairn House Project, Wakefield QC

 Here is an account, taken from an article by Gordon Roy Fairbairn, a great , great grandson of  William and Jean Fairbairn who now lives in British Columbia.  His story about the Fairbairn family appeared  in Volume 28 of  Up the Gatineau!, the 2002 annual journal of the Gatineau Valley Historical Society.

   "The four Fairbairn sons, Archibald, John, George and William, heard about the discovery of gold on the Fraser River in British Columbia, and decided to go.  John had left his wife and children with his family and gone alone in 1859. He came back in 1861 to talk the others into joining him.  They mortgaged the family farms and left on March 1, 1862. The men chartered a boat to the Isthmus of Panama and then headed north up the coast of the United States to Vancouver, following the Fraser River to Barkerville.  They were called the “Fairbairn Gang” in the gold fields and did very well, bringing home gold nuggets by the box in 1864.  

"Each of the brothers reacted differently to his new wealth.  Archibald bought and stocked a general store at River Desert (near Maniwaki), where he lived for several years before he returned to Masham to farm again.  John brought home $150,000 in gold sovereigns that he kept in a chest of drawers.  When the chest collapsed, he put the sovereigns in milk-skimming pans under his bed.  Family members could help themselves when needed. After his wife died and all his children left home, John returned to the gold fields of British Columbia in the 1870s, for his third and last time, to spend his remaining years.  "George had rings, tie pins and earrings made from nuggets.  He bought a second farm, stocked it, and built a new house. "The fourth brother, William, couldn’t spend his wealth fast enough. William was my great-grandfather. I remember my grandmother telling us about the shooting matches he held at his own expense, at which he gave away fabulous prizes.  When the money was gone, he was left with a mortgage on his farm and a family of nine children.  He had inherited the Fairbairn homestead just north of Wakefield Village and tried to maintain it. His son, James, stayed on and married his cousin, Ellen Lindsay, in 1884. William suffered the grief of his wife Martha’s death in 1894, followed by the death of his son James the next year.  James was only 35, and left his widow with a young family of two sons and three daughters.  William yearned to return to British Columbia.  He was a 69-year-old widower living with his daughter-in-law, Ellen, and her young family.  His brother John had returned to British Columbia and had been prospecting for eleven years. "William finally left for British Columbia about 1906, visited his brother John in a nursing home in Kamloops, and died in Victoria on March 4, 1907. Ellen could not make a go of the farm, so she took her daughters, Edith, Ethel and Pearl, to Regina, Saskatchewan, to stay with friends and relatives.  The two boys, my father William and his brother Jim, were turned loose to make a living as best they could.  Both of them were in their early teens and without a formal education.  After much adventure, both singly and together, they ended up in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, where I was born."

The Fairbairn Gang

Lyrics by Doug McArthur
based on North to Alaska
written by Johnny Horton

Built for the Beauty

Written by Ian Tamblyn

The Log Driver's Waltz

Written by Wade Hemsworth