We’re back into the original Timmins tax assessment rolls this week, with local historian Karen Bachmann. This time, we find some names.
Being from 1912, they are the first people to live in the incorporated town.
“So there was a man by the name of O. Bélanger,” Bachmann notes. “He was 50 years old and he operated a farm right up on Spruce St. He must have had a pretty large farm, because his buildings were assessed at $3,800. And he had 20 people living on that lot, which would have been, I assume, his family, then some of the farmhands.”
Bachmann says there were only two women listed as owning property.
“And one was Mme Aurore Dubois, who was a widow, and the other was Mrs. Emma Poitras and both of them had a number of people living with them. One had nine, one had six, but they were not family members, which leads you to believe that these were boarding houses the miners used to stay at.”
Next week: More about some of the early businesses listed in the tax rolls, saloons among them.
