For Everything There is a Season – Tales from Fenham Farm

Captain William Byers, Master Mariner, dreamed of regaining Fenham, his grand ancestral home along the river Tyne, but time was marching on. Disheartened with the seafaring life, he decided to bring his family to Canada to engage in the lucrative timber trade. There he and his dear Mary would build a new Fenham. In 1833 they sailed out of London on board the Success, bound for Canada. Two years later the captain was dead, stranding his widow and their children in the bush of the Laurentians.

Travel with Mary and her family over the next 130 years, as they carve Fenham out of the wilderness of eastern Ontario. As the pioneer period grows into the age of specialized farming only to be replaced by the era of scientific agriculture, you will encounter tragedy and triumph, pathos and comedy, strong-minded characters and comical creatures like Herman, the “pothead” Holstein, and Teddy and Betty, the neighbours’ mischievous pet bears. It’s a fascinating journey, one not to be missed.

“When the family left Fenham in 1976, I became the custodian of a very large collection of family letters and documents. It is a treasure trove of family history that I am just now, in my retirement years, beginning to transform into a resource that can be shared.

“As the years have passed and I have had the privilege of getting to know my grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents through these documents, I have come to appreciate their depth of character, their commitment to their dreams and to their families, and their ability to make wise decisions that would have a positive influence on the generations to follow.” – William Byers.

For Everything There is a Season draws its inspiration from the opening words of Ecclesiastes 3:1-13.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. . .I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds. . .”