Winding Trail Press - John Wesley Bradley

John Wesley Bradley

Who is that handsome guy in the top right corner of the website? That’s John Wesley Bradley (1866-1933) the publisher’s great-grandfather. His branch of the Bradley family emigrated from Wexford County, Ireland, in 1815 and bought 1000 acres near Landsdowne, Ontario (just north of Gananoque). He was not only literate, but an avid reader, squirreling many books away in his attic.

John Wesley had a dairy farm in Eden Grove, just west of Landsdowne. He was also the president of the Farmers Protective Society (FPS), a group of more than 30 local farmers, who undertook a decades-long legal battle with the Gananoque Water Power Company (GWPC) over the damming of the Gananoque River at the Marble Rock narrows. The dam flooded farms upstream, much to the outrage of the farmers, who considered this encroachment on their land to be piracy.

On the morning of August 18, 1903, after all legal avenues and appeals had failed, a suitcase bomb was dropped onto the dam by a lone, never identified, saboteur. Knowing he would be a prime suspect, John Wesley, ran to the hired girl as soon as he heard the blast to make sure that she knew he was at home at the time. Such an act carried a penalty of 14 years to life in prison, if convicted. Apparently everyone in the FPS knew who had launched the bomb at the dam that day, but no-one ever said, despite the offer of a $500 reward for information.

Lest you suspect John Wesley of being a no-good trouble-maker, all who knew him had only good things to say about him. He was “a pillar of the church” and got along so well with the FPS lawyer, Richard T. Walkem, that he named one of his sons Arthur Walkem Bradley. His grandson and namesake (John Wesley Bradley, 1925-2004) spoke of visiting the neighbours with him when he was six years old: “Every place we went he was greeted gladly, the chores of the moment were put aside for a visit with him. It was the first time I understood what respect was. They all had plenty of it for my grandfather.”

The “drowned lands,” as they were called, were eventually left to return to nature. The last haying was in 1937. The farm was eventually sold out of the Bradley family and is now partly a wetlands conservation area.