Category Archives: Riordon Family

Information relating to various Riordon family members.

C.C. Riordon – Obituary in the Montreal Star 1958

Leave a reply

Stephen Leacock was the first to go. Now “Carl” Riordon. And so it may be a long time before the corner where they held forth daily in the University club sparkles again with quite the same wit, probing conversation and not quite such orthodox views as the uninitiated might expect to hear.  Where Mr. Leacock’s roots were academic, Mr. Riordon’s were industrial. But between them were the firm bonds of a feeling for history, a love for all that is, and was, Canada, and a sense of humour.

Charles Christopher Riordon was one of a pioneering family in the developement of Canada’s great pulp and paper industry. The first family mill in 1862 produced 25 tons of paper monthly. When he sold the Riordon Pulp and Paper Company to Canadian International Paper in 1925, it had large mills at Hawkesbury and Timiskaming. Family properties at one time or another also included both The Mail and The Globe in Toronto. Mr. Riordon was one of the organizers of the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association and its first president and, despite his age—he was 92 when he died during the weekend—was still a director of several financial and industrial enterprises.

Montreal Star – June 17th 1958

Cache – written in 1939 while at Amherst House

Leave a reply
Cache island, Amherst house

Blackberry falls on Cache Island, in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains

When you are tired of the city’s din,
And you are sick of the traffic’s boom,
Come out with me, where the life if free
To live where there is room
For a man to sun and stretch himself,
To roam through the forest wide,
To explore alone, through tracks unknown,
To learn where the beavers hide.

We left the city’s noise behind
The monotonous roar that kills,
We left the strife, and the shut-in life,
Set out for the distant hills.
To a little isle on a lake we knew,
To a life both free and gay,
Where the air is clean and the spirits keen,
And there’s peace from day to day.

Continue reading →

Charles Christopher (Carl) Riordon

1 Reply

Montreal “Star” June 17 1958

C. C. Riordon

Stephen Leacock was the first to go. Now “Carl” Riordon. And so it may be a long time before the corner where they held forth daily in the University Club sparkles again with quite the same wit, probing conversation and not quite such orthodox views as the uninitiated might expect to hear. Where Mr. Leacock’s roots were academic, Mr. Riordon’s were industrual. But between them were the firm bonds of a feeling for history, a love for all that is, and was, Canada, and a sense of humor.

Charles Christopher Riordon was one of a pioneering family in the development of Canada’s great pulp and paper industry. The first family mill in 1862 produced 25 tons of paper monthly. When he sold the Riordon Pulp and Paper Company to Canadian International Paper in 1925, it had large mills at Hawkesbury and Timiskaming. Family properties at one time or another also included both The Mail and The Globe in Toronto. Mr. Riordon was on of the organizers of the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association and its first president and, despite his age–he was 82 when he died during the weekend–was still a director of several financial and industrial enterprises.

(The above is written verbatim from a clipping in the belongings of the late Patsy Bennett)

Ameherst House, Montreal

2 Replies

THE EARLY SCOTS AT MONTREAL By Col. Paul Phelps Hutchison

This articles homepage is can be found here: http://www.scotsgenealogy.com/online/early_scots_at_montreal.htm

During the French regime there were a few of Scottish descent here but they were exiled Scots who had become soldiers of the French monarchy. One recalls a French soldier like the Comte de Fraser or the eleventh governor of Montreal, Claude de Ramezay, whose Chateau still stands opposite Montreal City Hall, perhaps partly because it was kept in such good condition by another Scot, William Grant, who purchased it in 1763. When, however, the Scots really descended upon Montreal was soon after the conquest. Montreal capitulated on September 8th 1760. Some of you may remember the story: how the plan was for three British armies to march against the city for a simultaneous attack, even if in those days there was no telegraph or wireless to co-ordinate the troop movements. One force under Sir Jeffery Amherst came in from the west; another under a Lowland Scot, General James Murray, came from Quebec City; and the third moved north from Lake Champlain. Amherst arrived first and settled his troops for the night in a field which is now the Cote des Neiges Reservoir. He planned to move the next morning down the gully between the two hills to attack the little city on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. But that night the French plenipotentiaries came out to negotiate for the surrender at the farmhouse, which later became known as ”Capitulation Cottage”. It was in the reservoir field and not, as many have thought, the bigger freestone house known as ”Amherst House” further along Cote des Neiges The latter at the end of the Victorian Era was owned by Lieut. Colonel J.A.L. Strathy, who commanded our local regiment of Highlanders from 1893 to 1897; he knew the history of the district and gave his home the Amherst name.
Continue reading →

Charles Riordon: Pioneer Manufacturer and Philosopher

2 Replies

He had great faith in human nature.
He fully believed that most persons were honest and dutiful and capable of many sorts of work.
He urged emancipation from superstitions and appetites.
His strength and solidity were based on a strong sense of humour and a comprehensive philosophy of life.
He had no strong desire for external possessions, but he possessed his own soul and had no demons.
He had great faith in his own convictions, and while not given to dispute, he was not inclined to conciliate opinion.
He was rich in friends and enjoyed life with them as he went, so that when he lost, a friend by death he did not seem to have any vain regret for neglect to give all he could while they were alive.

Charles Riordon was born on November 28th, 1847, in the Village of Bally Bunion, County Kerry, Ireland, the seventh child of Jeremiah Riordon, who had been a medical offiver in the Navy from 1807 to 1821 serving on ships of the frigate class, including the “Bellerophon” during and after the Napoleonic Wars. The family came to Canada in 1850, lived at Weston Ontario for some seven years, and then moved to Rochester, N.Y., where Charles Riordon received his education.

Continue reading →

Tea

3 Replies

A small poem which my grandfather enjoyed. It originally came from the “Silva” magazine.

Tea

From the faucets of the fountain, from the bottles of the bar,
I have sampled many gargles, ‘most as many as there are,
But the one that’s first and foremost, if you put it up to me,
Is a steaming cup of ashes, swamp-juice, soot and tea.

At the take-off of the portage, when a man is damp with toil,
Heat and deer flies are forgotten when the tea comes to a boil.
In the silent winter’s muskeg, when the snow has blocked the trail,
Hope and faith and courage await the bubbling of the pail.

Propped with rocks beside the rapids, jabbed into the forest mould,
Ten thousand blackened tea sticks mark the campsites of the bold.
Fancy drinks may please the townsman, do to flirt with now and then,
But the silent places witness, tea’s the drink that’s drunk by men.

Anonymous