The History of the Wakefield Spring
The present day Wakefield
spring was originally part of the Jack Brown Farm that was sold in 1925 to
James Marshall Brown (P. Cohen). No one really knows when people started drinking the
spring water, but Irma McGarry
Nesbitt remembers “cattle regularly coming down from the McClinton farm to
drink from water bubbling out from the hill” (1920s).
In the early 1940’s this bubbling water was embedded
into a simple wooden box that served to water Marshall Brown’s cattle. When Marshall began
working at the Farm Point Alcan plant after the war, he met George Walsh who was the Mechanical Superintendent at the “Wakefield
Works” plant. Seems the workers were not happy with the chlorinated taste of the drinking
water and staged a protest when someone discovered a dead animal in the grates of
the water intake line to the plant.
Marshall and George hatched a brilliant plan to use the Wakefield spring
for the plant. According to his son, Bob
Walsh, George had plant employees install a 40 foot long Galvanised 3 inch
diameter pipe with a steel brace at the end. The pipes were welded and initialed
by Lyle Doherty and the wooden bucket was upgraded to a hose for easier
filling.
George was assigned to collect water for its 70+ employees and an Alcan
truck would often be seen stopped at the spring collecting water. When Hans
Geggie’s popular hand crank well became in-door plumbing, the community came to
rely more on the Marshall Brown “spring-in-a-box”. Wakefield Councillor Ray
Daly and Jack McGarry even proposed that the spring be piped to nearby houses but
were promptly turned down by Council.
Some said it was lucky the spring was not covered up and diverted by the
first improvement of the narrow “Side street” dirt trail in 1944 or when it was
paved between 1945 and 1952. According to his wife Shirley Shoudice, “Lorne raised
proper hell” when he discovered that the paving of Valley Drive in 1986 would result
in the loss of the Wakefield Spring. “There is no way we are going to let this
happen,” she remembers Lorne saying.
Highway workers were supplied with materials needed to divert the water
and install the pipes at the spring’s current location. The water flow even became
stronger afterwards.
When Anita Rutledge suggested a plaque be erected to honour Lorne in 2004, an extensive renovation of the site was championed by Bill Gonzales. On September 9, 2005, a plaque was placed at the spring in Lorne’s honour and promptly stolen and appropriately, replaced soon after. This echoes the resolve of Lorne that for any threat to the Wakefield spring “There is no way we are going to let this happen”.
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