Wheelwright helps couple’s wagon roll on

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/10/2018 (2014 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A humble horse-drawn wagon that ferried an earnest young couple from Montreal to Manitoba is getting a new lease on life courtesy of a local wheelwright, bringing full circle a journey that stretches back four decades and many miles.

Three months ago, Alan and Donna Kelly of East Braintree embarked on a special restoration with the help of Hadashville wheelwright Dave McCallum. The trio is building a new set of wheels for the Kellys’ beloved democrat, a small flatbed wagon popular with farmers and travellers alike in the days before automobiles.

For the past 40 years, the wagon has stood idle on the Kellys’ property, but at one time it was their primary mode of transportation.

On July 17, 1974, the couple, then dating, set off on horseback from Montreal. The motorcycle Alan desired proved too expensive, but the pace of a horseback journey appealed to a couple wanting to escape the bustle of city life.

They averaged 40 kilometres per day until Ottawa, when they swapped their horses for a covered wagon and one horse. They later questioned the wisdom of the trade, but the wagon proved better shelter at night.

“We’d put all our gear underneath, and we’d sleep on top,” Donna recalled.

The adventurers married in Thunder Bay on July 4, 1975, and by the following summer had made it as far west as Portage la Prairie before backtracking to East Braintree. Donna was pregnant, and Alan needed to find work and land.

All told, they had journeyed 2,400 kilometres.

They’ve lived on the 80 acres they purchased ever since, though no longer in a converted chicken barn with no water or electricity.

The trip was foundational for the couple (their SUV’s licence place reads WGNMSTR). So, when their 43rd wedding anniversary rolled around this summer, they decided to refurbish the weathered wagon’s dilapidated wheels.

Donna said a flood of memories have followed as they’ve worked alongside McCallum in his shop. On Saturday, they made progress on the fourth and final wheel, currently at the “spider stage” with a hub and spokes but no fellows, or wooden hoop.

McCallum said $600 bought the hickory needed to build four new wheels.

“It’s tough as oak, but it’s springy,” he explained.

Hickory trees don’t grow in Manitoba, so he sources it from Amish and Old Order Mennonite communities in southern Ontario.

The wagon’s original steel tires are being reused. Each is fired red-hot and carefully lowered onto its new fellows. Once the steel cools, Hercules himself couldn’t pry it from the wooden frame.

Alan, an RM of Reynolds councillor, explained steel’s low rolling resistance made the wheels ideal for travelling along the shoulder of the Trans-Canada Highway.

“We were never uncomfortable with the steel,” Donna agreed.

Aside from eight bolts in each hub, no fasteners or adhesives are used in the wheelbuilding process. A coating of linseed oil will seal the new wood.

Each wheel’s 16 spokes appear to be simple round dowels, but viewed from the end they’re actually tear-drop shaped. A special tool called a spoke shave is used to achieve the unusual shape.

Finished wheels are also slightly “dished” to ensure the wagon’s rolling weight always pushes outward to prevent wobbling.

“Wobbling means wearing with wood,” McCallum explained. Steel casing keeps the hickory hub from splitting.

After sawing each spoke to the proper length, McCallum and the Kellys mounted each wheel on a special spoke machine to mill the spoke tips using a special auger bit McCallum said he sourced from a blacksmith in Idaho.

Wheelwrighting is a labour of love for McCallum, a retired farmer and teacher who moved with his wife, Janet, to Hadashville from Sundown in 2010.

In 2003, he completed an introductory wheelwrighting course through the Western Canadian Wheelwright’s Association, a non-profit society dedicated to preserving the old craft.

Since then he’s embarked on many restoration projects, including one for the Midwinter School Heritage Site.

“No two pieces of wood are the same,” McCallum said.

McCallum has a knack for the work, achieving precision down to a sixteenth of an inch without using a measuring tape.

“We’re on our fourth wheel and I still can’t measure like him,” Donna said.

McCallum estimated there are a couple dozen wheelwrights scattered across Manitoba, all using tools “that can’t be bought at Canadian Tire.”

He said he enjoys the work as it connects him to people and history. It was a black and white photograph of a wheelwright in Pilot Mound that first kindled his interest.

“I never forgot that picture,” he said.

Later, he discovered his great-grandfather had been a wheelwright.

“It was in my blood, and I didn’t know it.”

When the project is finished, the wagon will return to its place of prominence in the Kellys’ yard. It will remain a decorative piece, they said, as they no longer have a horse trained to pull it.

Though it’s now an artifact of times past, Alan said the wagon remains a good example of engineering simplicity, and an enduring reminder of two memorable years spent on the road.