With many thanks to Linda Addison Turner and her grandmother Myrtle R. Fisher (Mrs. Wilfred L. Addison) for providing this interesting history of their relative Rev. Peter Addison. Rev. Addison served the pastoral charge of the Wesleyan Methodist Church at Kettleby, Lloydtown Circuit, from 1871-1874.

(from a copy of an article by G.F. Griffin (?) in the Toronto Star Weekly, Saturday, March 15, 192?.)

By Flickering Fire Light, the Oldest Circuit Rider in Canada Ministered Unto the First Pioneers in Depths of Forest.

At 93, grand old man of Canadian Methodism can still show his skill with the axe – pioneer of pioneers was Rev. Peter Addison; incredible poverty and hardship of settlers in the primeval forest.

The real history of Canada lies hidden behind the acts of the administrators and the deed of the legislatures. It is the story of the brave pioneer; people who endured hardship, poverty, hard work and incredible loneliness that they might open up this dominion from the forest which hid it. The lives of the frontier seeking folk, the hardy, silent, uncounted, forgotten folk who devoted their careers to wringing from the forest the soil that lay hidden beneath so that in the course of the subsequent years when they were gone, buried in the earth which they had won, towns and cities might spring up there, and railroads run, and the people who come after them might use electric light, listen to radio and drive in automobiles without number along roads that come in the wake of the narrow forest trails.

Perhaps we are too close to the forest and the soil yet to have produced a literature that sings of their conquest. Louis Hemon in his “Marris Chapdelaine” is almost the only writer who has painted with an appreciation of its true drama, its real atmosphere, its proper Spirituality a picture of Canadian pioneering. His is, it is true, a story of Quebec. But in Ontario, the same stories are there for the telling. They ought to be captured quickly if they are captured at all. For the pioneering phase is passing. Some day, it will be gone beyond recall and instead of being an agricultural, we will be in the main an urban people who lack the sentiment that gives understanding.

Fifty Mile Ride a Visit

A mere generation or so, the span of one man’s life, is all that separates us from these pioneer people. The man whose life bridges two epochs—is Rev. Peter Addison of Toronto, the Grand Old Man indeed of Canadian Methodism.

In 1859 he was a young colonist busy in the act of winning a farm from the bush of south Middlesex. Even then eight years before Confederation, he was 28 years of age, for he was born in 1831, six years before Victoria ascended the throne of Great Britain and before William Lyon Mackenzie stages his rebellion in Upper Canada. He would probably have turned to the preaching of the gospel as his life work sooner or later, for he had the urge within, but it so happened that the young man who was the missionary in the district fell ill, and young Peter Addison was called on to supply in his place temporarily. He waited to complete his harvesting. Then in the fall, he moved to the middle of the circuit and for the season served an apprenticeship of circuit riding and preaching that was to be the foundation of nearly sixty years of active ministry.

Next year, in 1860, Peter Addison went to a mission circuit of which Durham uses the centre. His task was to carry the gospel throughout the length and breadth of the four adjacent townships, traveling into the heart of the bush and seeking out the tiny farms that lay hidden there in the little clearings, and carrying the name of God to the lonely homesteads. There were eight or nine appointments on the circuit, outposts, which he had t visit. One of them involved a ride of fifty miles. For this work, he was to receive $25.00 a year. And he had to provide his own horse. Of the matter of payment, more presently.

The first time he started for the appointment 50 miles away, a terrific thunder storm came on and he had to turn back. On the second occasion he rode seventy miles without reaching hi destination. It was fall. The early evening was already closing in. He was alone in the bush, not quite sure where he was. Around him was no sign of habitation. He rode on and finally he came to a log cabin, buried in the trees, where a family of Scots settlers; three boys and a sister, were beginning to pioneer. He asked if they knew of the settlement he sought. They did, but he could not get there that night. But he had to. He had failed once before. He must arrive that night if the people were to have any faith in him at all.

So one of the men set out to guide him in the night through the bush to the settlement. Soon they lost their way. They had turned into one of the side trails. Slowly by feeling out the path with his feet, the guide led the way back to his home.

There is the silent heart of the encircling forest, in the darkness of the little room, lighted only the fitful gleams of the pine knots that blared on the hearth, Peter Addison read from the Bible. Then he and these Scottish exiles knelt on the rough floor of the simple home, and prayed together to God.

Afterwards they insisted on his sleeping in the bed they had in their one room, while they climbed a ladder to the garret above. In the night, young Addison, tired out by the day’s long ride and walking, slept heavily. He was awakened in the morning by the stir of the household. To his horror, the young woman of the place was busy at the fire busy cooking the breakfast. He could not get up! So he feigned to sleep on wondering if he would be kept a prisoner in bed all day, but fortunately the cooking done, the woman went outside the cabin. The young missionary hopped out of bed and jumped into his clothes in double quick time. Such were the incidents of his early routine.

Late in the fall, Mr Addison went to a settlement where they had neither Sabbath nor service. He decided to give them both. He found there people who had not clothes enough to keep warm. He developed a cold, which developed into inflammation of the lungs, and nearly ended his career then and there. Then his blood (?) horse ran away with him weak as he was and upset him in the snow. This further set him back.

His next mission was St. Vincent, in Grey county. There he had the only quarrel of his life with a quarterly board. They were very poor men. He was to get a hundred dollars a year. They told the young missionary that he would have to board three months at one place, three months at another, and so on. “If those are your orders, I will submit”, declared Rev. Addison, “but I can’t let my horse suffer. If you don’t make provision for my horse, I will have to walk.” He got accommodation for his horse.

When you read Mr. Addison was paid sums which seem absurdly small these days, it is necessary to remember the circumstances of the people and the period. They were poor people, those pioneers, poor as we consider wealth, though rich in the finest qualities of courage and endurance. They were in most cases fighting for the barest existences. They were waging a constant war against the forest that encircled them. There was nothing in their struggle of the joy of life. It was ceaseless, dour fighting to wrest the barest living from the soil , and they won. Most of them lived in log homes of only one room with an attic upstairs. Few of these people had horses. They drove oxen. A great many of them were Irish people driven from their famine stricken homeland. They would share their homes with you. They would give you freely of what they had to eat, but it was very plain. Corn was the mainstay of their lives; it could be planted among the stumps. Sometimes there was daily bread. But, meat seldom. They had little social life; those were the days before the husking bees. Their only recreation were logging bees, and for those who liked it—whiskey.

Open Air Temple and Pews

Among such people on the early mission circuits Mr. Addison lived and worked. He preached sometimes three times on a Sunday, riding or driving thirty or forty miles to the different appointments. He held meetings in the middle of the week, He visited here and there in the scattered settlements. Sometimes at one of the places, there would be a great revival. He would stay there for periods as long as six weeks, speaking every night. People would come for miles, to hear the Gospel preached.

The camp meetings were a big feature of those early bush circuits of sixty or seventy years ago. They were the conventions of pioneers of the bush, their fall fair, their religious pilgrimage, their holiday. They were usually held in the Fall after the harvest was gathered……

The strong voice of Peter Addison—it was a rugged voice indeed in those days—would plead powerfully in prayer beneath the trees or would ring out in exhortation. Hymns like “There’s a land, that is fairer than day” would be raised. Gradually would come the climax when the congregation was invited to turn to God. Then it was no unusual thing for a whole mass of the worshippers to crowd forward and kneel in the semi darkness at the rough hewn rail that stood as the symbol seat of penitence and mercy, pleading their sins and giving their hearts to God. While the quiet night would throb with the “Amens and Thank God”, of the fervent worshippers. Then the people, sometimes late, would retire to the rude shacks that were their temporary homes, and sing hymns there in the darkness, till nearly morning.

Champion at Axe Work

Peter Addison was a pioneer of the pioneers. He was a powerful man in those days, six feet tall, with a strong body. No one could beat him at axe work. Even yet in his ninety third year, he can go out and cut wood with the skill of his youth even if he has somewhat lost the stamina. Even now he has the chest measurement of 46 inches. It is said that when he cut loose with his voice you could hear him a mile away. And he could cradle ten acres of wheat in two days and earn his two dollars a day with any man.

Some idea of the clerical apprenticeship he served, may be gathered from the fact that although he had a fair education, he took his first real lesson in English grammar when he was 27 years old, his first lesson in Latin when he was 28, and his first lesson in Greek when he was 29. During his first mission work in the hardship of those early circuits, he found time to study, reading far into the night by the light of the home made tallow candles which were all the light the pioneer homes boasted. So that he was able to go to college in Coburg in 1862 and 1863, graduate and receive ordination. And when he retired from the ministry a few years ago he had a library of theological and religious books second to none in the dominion.

After serving on circuits at Bradford, and Cookstown, Mr Addision was appointed to Horning Mills. He had married Miss Mary Campbell of Georgetown, a refined gentle well educated girl, while at Cookstown, She went with him to the hardships and the isolation of Horning Mills. The parsonage was a miserable hovel……His stipend was to be $500 a year. But all he got from the quarterly board was $5….

After his marriage, he was not so much in the saddle. He became the possessor of a buggy, in which he did most of his circuit riding….When he went to Lloydtown, from 1871-1873, his first regular circuit was distinct from the mission circuits in which he served, he was going to civilization at $600 a year. At Newcastle, which followed, paid him $800….

Son Occupied Old Pulpit

During his stay at Horning’s Mills circuit, Mr. Addison was the means of having four churches built. He was the pioneer indeed. Alliston affords a good instance of the difference between those days of the sixties and the present day. Mr. Addison preached there in 1865. His son, Rev. A. P. Addison, occupied the same pulpit in 1912, fifty-three years later.

Peter Addison worthily carried on the tradition of his family, He was born in England of the Addison family of Westmoreland, that same family of which Joseph Addison of the Spectator was a member, and of which Dr. Christopher Addison, former minister of munitions and minister of other things in the Lloyd George cabinet, was also a member….

When Peter Addison was seventeen, he sailed for Canada. His choice of Canada was influenced by the fact that his uncle, Rev. Robert Addison was an English clergyman of note in Upper Canada, chaplain of the forces in the War of 1812, conductor of the burial services over Sir Isaac Brock, and chaplain of the legislature of 1828.

So Peter Addison sailed for Canada on the old Constitution, the fastest ship afloat, which made the trip in seventeen days. He became a pioneer farmer in the bush. He cleared land, and built a house and a barn, he worked from sunrise to sunset…. He is a wonderful old man. On his ninety-second birthday, last December, he spoke in Parkdale Methodist Church, the church of his son, Rev. A. P. Addison. Probably this summer he will be out again in the garden laughing because he can still swing an axe with the skill, if not the strength, of seventy years ago. A wonderful old man, with his mind, his humour, his spirituality unimpaired, and his strength only relatively less.