Coyne Water Tower

We mentioned Thomas Phineas, Patrick and other Coyne's before on this blog. It seemed Phineas had went to Toronto to get married in 1896. While there he picked up an hydraulic pump for his sawmill. So says the local Chelmsford St Joseph parish book. The same book has a picture of the Coyne's standing in front of their tower which looks similar to this Coyne Water Tower sketch. The date in the book is given as 1895 so I can only guess that the hydraulic saw had nothing to do with the windmill on top of the Coyne water tower.

I took a photo of a similar windmill in 2012. It had been built by a guy who had been living in the area for some 80 years. Where he got the design for his windmill is beyond me but it seems obvious that this type of machine was implanted in his memories from his experiences as a child. He'd probably seen Coyne's water tower or probably his family had a similar one on their farm in Lumsden township where Morgan is.

What was the function of Coyne's water tower and windmill ?

It is funny how things work in this world of progress...

In the same parish book there is a story about how several families living in the area depended partially on log cutting as a means of survival. The story goes that as the pioneers cut through the forest they became associated with and befriended the Chippewa who had been living along the rivers, streams and lakes long before their arrival.


Those Chippewa were the Ojibwa first nation people and the second most populace group of natives in Canada. The Cree are the first.

How ironic is it that on a recent trip to Manitoulin Island in Ojibwa country along Lake Huron, Georgian Bay and the North Channel, I took a picture of these wind mills or wind turbines. This is only one of the many windmills that are being erected atop McClean's mountain. The business behind these wind turbines is said to be a partnership Northland Power and the United Council of Chiefs of the Mnidoo Mnising, aka UCCMM first nations.

I really want to get into the politics of that but I won't. This post is more about getting to the nitty gritty behind Coyne's Water Tower.

Coyne's water tower was built sometime before 1895 by a local logger/sawmill operator and farmer. The purpose of the water tower was to supply Phineas and his family with a clean source of drinking water and maybe as a means of draining his property of the waters that often rose above the banks of the Whitson river. The windmill served as a water pump. Wind mills and water wheels were the means of pumping water or powering saw mills before the age of steam engines came along.

How Phineas Coyne made use of his wind mill and hydraulic sawmill pump, or why he didn't use steam engines is beyond me but I know that he understood how having such tools could greatly magnify his odds of succeeding in a pioneering community. Consider that by 1890 over 50 million telegraph messages had been sent over wires. Chelmsford was in the minds of some as a little jewel that would become the next big town that would rise from the neighbouring gold and coal mines ( that petered out sooner than later ). Maybe he had a telegraph machine which used battery power which required charging by a wind mill. Or maybe not....as a fantasy I always think that the Stobie and his associates working the Whitson and Vermillion river were never out of contact with another Stobie located at the end of a rail line near the Pacific ocean and another Gordon and another Bradley in Dakota and Nevada

The wind turbines on Manitoulin Island meanwhile are an issue hotly contested.

Again it is interesting to note that many people in the Chelmsford and Larchwood area were and are  named O'bumsawin and they were native descendants by my understanding. An Ojibwa nation member of the Wikwemikong tribe named Osawabine recently gave his opinion of the McClean Mountain wind turbine project to the editor of the Expositor. He called his letter, " Wind turbine money is a deal with the devil ".

Again it is politics but it is also reality and it is a topic that moves the spirit of humans; zeitgeist. So it is important. I wonder how Chippewa really felt about the presence of Coyne and others when they first settled the patches of land around the Chelmsford CPR station.

As for this blog the curiosity then becomes the Osawabine and O'bumsawin names. Is the latter just a bastard form of the first ? Both seem to be well rooted in Chippewa bloodlines.

Or maybe not....so we went looking for info on the O'bumsawin origin...

.......and we leave it at that............for now......