McKay House (76 Talbot St.)

This house at 76 Talbot St. is a designated heritage building and the oldest brick residence in St. Thomas. Built in 1842 by Scottish brothers John (1806-1876) and William McKay (1812-1882), the building originally housed their general store after the original wooden frame building was destroyed by a fire.   

At this time, St. Thomas was a small settlement concentrated almost entirely west of Metcalfe St. Goods were mostly shipped via boat and often hard to come by. In fact, William writes John about the shortage of moleskin fabric, noting that the only local merchant with a supply drove up the price to make a profit off the scarcity. He also notes that sugar kettles, used to boil down maple syrup into sugar, sold very well during the winter of 1836. 

During the late 1840s they brothers were part of a movement that saw the creation of Elgin County in 1852. Both were appointed to offices in the administration, after which they wound up their business activities and converted the general store into a home for John and his family.    

The Mulligan family used this building as a tourist home in the 1950s, which would be referred to as a bed and breakfast today. Look for a painted sign that reads “cafeteria”, which is still visible on the west side of the building and is likely a reference to this function. 

The Bear Story

The entire McKay family features in a popular, likely embellished tale that was handed down over the years concerning a bear running through St. Thomas in spring 1843. It’s hard to imagine that during the McKay brother’s lifetimes this area had been recently covered by forest and was the native habitat of many wild animals we now associate with areas further north, including bears, wolves, lynx, and cougars. This story has many versions, which have been combined into the following story.

The story goes that a bear found its way to St. Thomas, surprising a carpenter named Farham by coming up through a trap door in the floor of his shop. Farham ran away in fear, and the bear ambled after him down Talbot St. It made its way to the Mansion House hotel near the corner of Talbot and Church streets, where the landlord, John Beaupre, was standing at the entrance. Shockingly, the bear followed John Beaupre as he retreated into his business; it pushed open the door and scared patrons inside, including Dr. Elijah Duncombe.

The patrons rushed into the kitchen to hide, while the bear roamed around the now-empty bar. It stopped to have a drink of water from the basin used to wash glasses, knocked over some glasses, and startled itself. Now in a panic, the bear crashed through the window in a bid to escape, taking the curtain sash with him.

By this point, the bear—still with the curtain around his neck—was hotly pursued by various townspeople. It cut between Walnut and Centre St., scaling a fence between the two, and ended up in front of the Old St. Thomas Church. The mob in pursuit was waiting there for the bear, which turned and ran down Walnut St., past VanBuskirk’s brewery at the corner of Walnut and King, and into Mrs. Helen McKay’s house.

The bear burst through Mrs. McKay’s front door, frightening her daughter Jean to the point that she fainted. While Daniel Mcfie, an employee of the McKays, stayed behind to help Jean, her brother William joined in the hunt.

The bear continued running down the hill towards what is now Sunset Dr., where it came upon a work crew building a bridge over Kettle Creek, overseen by engineer Casimir Gzowski. One of the workmen tried to strike the bear with his pick, but instead only made the bear angry. It rose on his hind legs while the workman retreated to the surrounding forest to hide.

Still being pursued, the bear led the hunting party up the other side of the hill. At the very top of the hill, the townspeople tired from the ascent, one of the men managed to shoot and kill the bear. Its carcass was bought on the spot, and the people of St. Thomas enjoyed bear meat for dinner that night. It’s unknown whether the bear had been a known nuisance, or whether it was shot and killed rather unprovoked. Either way, the bear lives on only through the story that was repeated to successive generations of St. Thomas residents. 

City of St. Thomas (2014). By-law 185-2014 - 76 Talbot Street.

Crerar, Adam. (2007). Letters of Adam Hope 1834-1845. The Champlain Society.

Ermatinger, C.O. (1999). The Talbot Regime. Global Heritage Press. (Original work published 1904).

Langley, D., Cosens, D., Atkin, J., Topping, C. & Martindale, S. (Eds.). (2000). Memories of St.Thomas and Elgin. Friends of the St. Thomas Library.

McKay, K.W. (1937). MacKay [family history booklet].

Player, Diana. (2000). Down the Street to Yesterday.

Sims, H.J. (1988). Sims' History of Elgin County Volume III. The Aylmer Express.