Introduction / Families / Stevenson / George Stevenson and Charlotte Corrigal / Charlotte Stevenson and Robert Reid

John Flaws Reid and Ida Estella Rae Rendall

John Flaws Reid (b. 30th June 1860) was a son of Robert Reid and Charlotte Stevenson.

John went to Edinburgh and was for a couple of years an apprentice cabinetmaker. He wasn’t with his widowed mother and brothers at Windywa, Eday in 1881 but a lodger at 128 Nicolson St. in the capital. It was here that he read about homesteading in the North West Territories of Canada.

Subsequently leaving Eday and his mother and brothers in April 1882 on the Orcadia for Kirkwall, he then made his way to Glasgow and booked on the “Manitoban”. It was a slow rough crossing and the ship was held up for some days in the St Lawrence due to icebergs before docking in Quebec. He got the train to Winnipeg by which time he had just two sovereigns left. He made his way to Brandon and on to Whitewood, walking or catching rides with settlers. The last part of the trip from Whitewood to York Colony, Assiniboia in the North West Territories was all on foot.

He arrived in May 1882 and explored the area, looking for an area to homestead. He marked the area and returned to Winnipeg where he wrote to his mother and brothers advising them to come out. John obtained work for the rest of the summer and winter.

He returned to York Colony in Spring 1883 with a yoke of oxen, a plough and a cow, the first in the area. A cabin was built and a few acres of land broken out. The rest of the family arrived in June 1883.

James Armstrong of the York Farmer’s Colonization Company employed John to build a grist mill in York Colony, which wasn’t finished until 1886. John became the first miller.

A fair was held in the fall of 1883, which was encouraged by James Armstrong as a means of getting the settlers to meet and exchange ideas. John helped to organise this event, which became the forerunner of the annual fall fairs and subsequent Yorkton Fair and Exhibition. John was one of the directors of the first official fair in 1886 under the auspices of the Yorkton Agricultural Society.

John’s mother and brothers Robert and William stayed at the homestead over the winter of 1883 and looked after the livestock while John and his brother James went to Winnipeg to get jobs needed to earn money.

Little was done in the Spring of 1885 due to the Riel Rebellion. John was one of the first homesteaders to join the home guard. His younger brother, William Reid, also joined and was one of the youngest members. John, together with Sergeant Wilbury entered the camp of Chief Little Bones on Cussed Creek and managed to convince the chief to go back to the reservation.

He married Ida Estella Rae Rendall in 1886.

Ida was born in Kirkwall on 18th April 1862 and the daughter of William Rendall and Margaret Foubister. She was the widow of William Fergus, one of the Fergus brothers who accompanied John’s mother and other brothers to York Colony in 1883. William’s mother, Mary Traill Rendall was a sister of Ida’s father, William Rendall. She’d specifically gone out to marry her cousin, which she’d done on 8th October 1884, three days after her arrival in Whitewood, NWT. William died there of tuberculosis in August 1885. William and Ida had no children.

John and Ida had eight:

• Mary (Maimie) Alice Rendall Reid, born November 1886. She was the first girl to be born in the Orkney settlement. She didn’t marry but helped to raise her sister Susie’s children. She kept house for her father after her mother died and subsequently for her brother Robert. She died in 1964.

• Robert (Bob) Louttit Reid, born 16th April 1888. He took an agricultural course at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon over two winters and took over the home farm. In the late 1940s, the farm was rented to nephews. He died in 1965

• Margaret (Peggy) Foubister Reid, born 23rd February 1890 who went to Winnipeg and did a dressmaker’s course. She married Herbert E Thomas in 1917. They lived in Yorkton and had family. Herb died in 1960 and Peggy in 1965.

• Susannah (Susie) Fergus Reid, born 17th June 1892 who married Frederick Stafford Norman (b. 1st June 1884, Bridgeton, Nova Scotia) in 1912 at Saltcoats, Saskatchewan. Frederick was the son of Charles Norman and Josephine Paterson. Susie and Frederick had family. She died in 1920 of tuberculosis and is buried in the Orkney Cemetery.

• John Munro Reid, born 16th July 1894. He worked on the farm with his father and brothers Bob and Bill. He was in the army during WWI but not sent oveseas due to a leg injury. He bought some land from his brother, Bob, on his return and farmed there. He didn’t marry and retired to Yorkton where he lived with his widowed sister, Ida. He died in 1960.

• William (Bill) Rendall Reid, born April 1897. He lived in Detroit and worked with the Chrysler company. He was paid off at the time of the stock market crash of 1929 and made his way back. He subsequently got a job repairing cars in a Ford garage. He died in 1961. He never married.

• Ida Estella Rendall Reid, born 25th November 1899 who married Walter (Wally) Markham. Wally ran a service station. He died in 1950

• James (Jimmy) Fergus Stevenson Reid, born 29th December 1900 who married Maud (Marjorie) Lettitia Cockayne from Winnipeg in 1926. They moved to Detroit where James worked in the Ford plant but like his brother Bill was paid off at the time of the stock market crash in 1929. They returned to Yorkton and subsequently moved to Calgary. Jimmy died there in December 1969 and Marjory in 1976 in Winnipeg.

John was a founder of the Orkney Presbyterian Church and on the first church board. He was a director of Orkney Grain Growers, which was founded in 1902. This later joined with the Saskatchewan Grain Growers and was to become United Grain Growers of which John was finally to become second vice president.

John was elected as the Union Government candidate for the MacKenzie Consituency in 1917 and served until defeated in the 1921 election. He was a member of the Canadian Council of Agriculture in 1924 and gave lectures at the Wembley Exhibition, London and in Scotland promoting settling in the North West.

He was one of the first contract signers of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool following the creation of the Wheat Pool Association on 10th June 1924. He had become a member of the United Grain Growers Association in 1912 and in 1930 was elected as second vice president.

Ida died in 1925 and John in July 1943. Both are buried in the Orkney Cemetery.