The McDonald Ranch and Lumber
Company in Grasmere, British Columbia, is a family affair that
presently involves two generations in its complex operations.
The ranch and sawmill are run by brothers, Andy and Doug McDonald,
and their sons, Cam and Glen. The ranch now consists of 2200 acres
in total with three hundred acres in hay and grain. Most of the
rest of it is in pasture. The McDonalds have access to 775 AUMs
of crown grazing land to help support their 190 Hereford cow/calf
pairs.
The history of the family in the
East Kootenay began with the arrival of John Alexander McDonald
nearly one hundred years ago. John, whose great-grandfather came
from Scotland in the 1830s, was born in Garden of Eden, Nova Scotia
in 1887. A carpenter by trade, John came west to Vancouver Island
because he had cousins there. He arrived in Fernie in 1908 to
help rebuild after the great fire of August 1 which killed ten
people and destroyed over one thousand buildings. Within one year,
much of Fernie was rebuilt—of brick.
John married Isabella Jane Letcher
in 1914. Isabella was born in 1890 and her family had come west
in 1898 when the railroad was completed to Fernie. Miners from
Springhill, Nova Scotia, some of the family went to Nordegg, Alberta
and others went to Hillcrest.
McDonald Ranch is thought to be
originally part of the 1910 land boom in which developers divided
up lots throughout the Newgate, Roosville, Grasmere and Baynes
Lake area and promoted them in Great Britain as prime orchard
land. They were following in the footsteps of the similar and
very successful land development schemes in the Okanagan. Land
speculators built an irrigation ditch and planted hundreds of
acres of apple trees. The McDonald apple orchard was the largest,
longest-lived and most productive. People from the area claim
that this "south country" is the breadbasket of this
corner of the province, saying that the Grasmere Valley is warmer
than elsewhere—although it cannot compete with the Okanagan. Fruit
trees were planted on benches above the valley bottom and thereby
escaped the earlier frosts.
