Fred W. Cummer -- the Gentle Patriarch

          In the 1970s, Cummer family members worked with Don Cummer to compile a history of the Cummer family.  The following is the biography written by Carl B. Cummer of his father, Frederick William Cummer – commonly known to family and his friends, including his wife, as Fred. W. 

 My father Frederick William Cummer (Fred W, as he was known in the family) was born in Florence, Canada West (now Ontario) in May of 1861 and at various times lived in Wallaceburg and Tilsonburg.  He learned two trades, plumbing and tinsmithing.  He excelled at both but preferred the sheet metal work and later adopted it as his chief occupation.  He was a perfectionist, not only in that line of work but everything he undertook.  His perfectionism was likely inherited from one of his ancestors whose motto was, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well.” 

Fred w;’s tinsmith desk

He had considerable ingenuity and there was practically no limit to the things he could create out of sheet metal:  fancy wastepaper baskets, tool boxes, imitation hats, canes, etc – some items of which were still in use decades later.  Because of his skill and his quest for perfection, he was often assigned to intricate jobs that called for the use of expensive metals.  After the family moved to Calgary in 1910, he worked for two or three metal shops before joining the Canadian Pacific Railway at the Ogden shops where he continued to be employed until his retirement.

          As a young man in Southwestern Ontario, he learned to play the cornet.  He mastered the art of ripple-tonguing and was adept at combining that technique with variations, which was a common and popular practice with the type of music in vogue at that time.  He became the leader of the town band and entertained with concerts in adjacent communities as well.

          One aspect of his life which none of his children had previously been aware of he divulged to his youngest daughter-in-law when he was in his sixties.  He remarked that he had always hoped that none of his boys would ever become as near to being addicted to alcohol as he had been in his early twenties.  He said that he had reached the stage where he would rather drink than eat.  Then he met the girl of his dreams, Margaret Robertson.   She was a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and consequently abhorred alcohol.  When he proposed marriage, she told him she would not marry him unless he promised to lay off liquor.  He took the pledge and from that day on never touched liquor for the rest of his life.  In turn each of their children signed the Temperance Pledge in the family Bible.

          Margaret’s father was Scottish, her mother of Dutch extraction.  Her dad spoke with a Scottish accent so broad, the grandchildren were at a loss to understand what he was saying.  When Fred met Margaret, she was working in a bakery.  She had an artistic touch which, in addition to her other duties, resulted in her getting assigned to putting the fancy decorations on cakes for special occasions.  She could play the organ but played mostly hymns.  It was all part of the bringing up of young ladies of that era to become skilled in handicrafts such as knitting, crocheting, sewing and mending, as well as housekeeping and the culinary arts.  She was also skilled in making life-like flowers from chicken feathers which had been dyed various colours.  She created a feather wreath of artificial flowers of various kinds and had a large wooden from with a glass cover made for it.  This was prominently displayed in the family home for many years and was eventually donated by the family to Calgary’s Heritage Park where for many years it was displayed in the park’s Wainwright Hotel.

          On May 12, 1886, in Alvinston, Ontario, F.W. Cummer of Wallaceburg, County Kent, married M.E. Robertson of Alvinston, County Lambton, and another branch of the Cummer family tree sprouted.  Children arrived at approximately two-year intervals until a total of seven was reached:  Charles (1887), Ada (1888), John (1890), Royden (1892), Wilda (1894), Harold (1897), and Carl (1903).

          During their bringing up, the children were taught to have the same devotion to moral and religious principles as their parents.  Every Sunday, rain or shine, decked out in their Sunday best, the entire family would attend both morning and evening church services.  Sunday afternoons, the youngsters regularly attended Sunday School.  Before retiring each night, the family assembled for Bible reading and prayers.  In addition, each knelt beside the bed before climbing in, asking that God’s blessing be bestowed on each of the other family members and requesting guidance with respect to any particular problem which they might have.

          Fred was a quiet, unassuming, even-tempered man but, like all parents, he could become exasperated at times when any of the children were disobedient or guilty of a misdemeanor.  At such times he would give vent to his annoyance with a favorite expression, “oh fiddlesticks.”  It was as strong an expletive as he was ever known to use.

          Whether or not white hair is one of the hereditary Cummer traits, his hair started turning white at an early age and by middle age it was snow white.  Many people admired and remarked on his beautiful hair which remained luxurious throughout his lifetime. Except for a moustache he was clean-shaven but he did let his beard grow in for a short period of time in his later years, until the members of his family pleaded with him to hack it off.

          In 1909 his two eldest sons, Charlie and Jack, took the harvest train out west to find work in Alberta.  Charlie built a career as a pharmacist in Edmonton, while Jack tried his hand at homesteading in the dry prairie near Youngstown, near Drumheller.  The boys urged Fred and Margaret to bring the family out to build a new life in the West and in March 1910 the parents and five siblings packed up their belongings and boarded the train.  They were given a tearful well-wishing send-off by friends and neighbours. 

There would be no opportunity to do any cooking on the way, so they had to make provision for enough food to sustain them for the entire trip.  This consisted of pre-buttered bread, jam, hard-boiled eggs and a large cooked ham which one of the neighbours had provided as a parting gift.   It was a monotonous journey in a colonist car of the Canadian Pacific Railway and took the better part of four days, arriving in Calgary on April 1, 1910. 

          The move had been motivated by stories about Calgary’s golden opportunities, its proximity to the beautiful Rocky Mountains, and the Chinook winds that could change a winter temperature from minus- to plus-25 degrees in a few hours.  The city was booming and growing by leaps and bounds.  In 1906 the Dominion census listed the population as 11,967; by 2011 it had grown to 43,704; so a rough estimate would put the population at 37,000 when the train deposited seven Cummers to add to the mix.  The eldest – the patriarch Fred W. – was 48 years old; the youngest child – Carl – was seven.

          At first, the family boarded with their cousins – the Fred B. Cummers who lived in a tenement on 4th Street, SW, just south of the CPR tracks.  Shortly afterwards, they rented a house at 731- 6th Avenue West.  On the corner across the street was a livery barn and a corral surrounded by a five-foot plank fence where cowboys broke-in wild horses.  It was a thrill for the younger members of the family to climb up on the fence and watch what was to become, two years later, the bucking bronco competition of the Calgary Stampede.

          A contractor was hired to build a seven-room, two-storey home for the family at 1221 – 13th Avenue S.W. which was near the fringe of town.  A prairie trail ran across the south half of the block and the people of the Sarcee First Nation used this trail to travel between Calgary and their Reserve to the southwest. The women and children would huddle in the back of their democrat wagons.  When they saw the Indigenous people coming, the younger Cummer would run into the house and peek out the windows until they passed by,

          In the back yard of the family home, Fred erected a swing for the use of the two younger boys.  The swing itself could be set aside and an exercise bar inserted through two holes in the posts about six feet above the ground.  Well into his fifties, Fred was very much in demand by the youngsters of the neighborhood to demonstrate his prowess chinning the bar, doing pinwheels and hanging by his heels.

          Fred was poetically gifted and would write his letters to family and friends in rhyme.  He could cover all the family news in this manner and those with whom he kept up regular correspondence treasured his letters. 

          But just two years after the family’s arrival in Calgary, the news in those letters was filled with grief.  On June 7, 1912, Mother, Margaret Robertson Cummer, died at the age of 48.  The two daughters Ada (23) and Wilda (17) maintained the house.  Ada managed the business end of running the household and shared the never-ending load of darning and mending, while Wilda assumed most of the housekeeping responsibilities.  Between the two of them, they were the surrogate mothers to the younger brothers Harold (15) and Carl (9).  In 1929 their brother Jack’s wife Laurine died of pneumonia and Jack and his three sons Bill (6), Allenby (4) and Fred (3) moved to the house on 13th Avenue from their home in Drumheller.  Auntie Ada and Auntie Wilda became surrogate mothers for a next generation of Cummers.

In his later years, Fred W. who used to entertain the neighbourhood kids with his athletic prowess, suffered ill health and he was lovingly cared for in the old family home by his faithful daughters, Ada and Wilda.  At the age of 78, he died in August 1939, on the eve of the Second World War. 

The house on 13th Avenue continued to be the family home and Ada resided there until the early 1970s when it was sold, along with four adjacent residences to make way for a high-rise apartment.