Cliff Moffatt Looks Back on a Career in Construction

By Sarah Milke

Originally Published in the North Kawartha Times, circa 1985

Cliff Moffatt has been a house builder most of his life. Many of his structures stand in Fenelon Falls, Bobcaygeon and surrounding areas. Mr. Moffatt was born 3 miles west of Fenelon Falls on the 7^th Concession of Fenelon Township on February 27, 1903. His father, Robert Moffatt was from Cameron and his mother Elizabeth was born in England, arriving in Canada when she was 9 years old. Cliff was the only son in the family, and had five sisters. “That’s why I grew up tall and slim.”

The family ran a farm, mostly mixed farming. Cliff attended elementary school at Balsam Grove, S.S. number 13, and went to high school in what is now the old Masonic Hall. Mr. Moffatt became interested in the construction business when he was still a teenager. “I always had carpentry work on my mind,” he said. “I also worked for two years for Foster Kelly in the tin shop making such things as stove pipes.”

Cliff learned the building business from the ground up and in the early years was involved in every facet of the business, including plumbing and electrical work. “There weren’t specialties for every little thing,” Cliff said. “We started a house and finished it.”

“Around 1918, there was a cottage boom in this area and there was always work,” Mr. Moffatt said. “In the winter, when I wasn’t building, I would find work at one of the sawmills. There used to be one right across the road from where Bellwood’s is now.”

Mr. Moffatt also worked doing renovations in the winter. “I used to like the lumber camps. I worked for a fellow by the name of Simmons at Tory Hill. I’d take a team of Clydesdales, which belonged to my father, and drive them as far as Kinmount, where I’d stay overnight. The next morning I’d be off to Irondale, where Mr. Simmons lived. That’s where the sawmill was too. After resting there, I’d drive the team to the lumber camp at Tory Hill.”

The Moffatt family was a church going family and although Cliff attended the Anglican Church, which was his mother’s religion, he felt a bit rebellious during his teenager years, and decided to switch over to his father’s church, which was Presbyterian. Cliff was the first baby to be baptized in the new Anglican Church in 1903. The church had been completed in 1902. The first Anglican church had been a log structure.

Mr. Moffatt married in 1932, and lived on Bond Street. “We had no indoor plumbing or electricity,” he said. “There was only one house on the street with electricity and indoor facilities. That was Fred Warren’s house. They owned the 5 and 10 cent store.”

Around the early 1940s the construction business was changing somewhat and Cliff hired men from Foster Kelly’s to do the plumbing in his house. By then he was also jobbing out the electrical work. In 1950, Mr. Moffatt built the Anglican Church Rectory. “It cost exactly $10,025,” he said. “You couldn’t build a basement for that now. I had all the building I could handle right here and also in Bobcaygeon. I was always on the building site. I never believed in sitting off in an office someplace giving orders.”

In the early 1940s, Mr. Moffatt found time to be on the village council. “Dr. J.B. MacKay was the reeve then, he was a good reeve.” For six years, Mr. Moffatt was the chairman of the cemetery board. That was during the 1970s. Cliff and a man by the name of Moysie Graham constructed the vault at the cemetery, and early in the mid 1960s, Mr. Moffatt built the new chapel at the funeral home.

“Mrs. Moffatt (Marjorie) passed away in June 1975. Cliff had retired from the building business in 1973. Not satisfied in retirement, he went on to become a funeral assistant during the time of Platten and Wagg and more recently, worked with Paul Illman, who is presently funeral director in Fenelon Falls.

In 1983, the year he was 80 years old, Mr. Moffatt retired again and lives in a house he built in 1952 at 36 Elgin Street. But he’s certainly not idle. He has a car and is dependent on no one. Every Wednesday, he’s out for the evening, playing euchre. “Sometimes we get up to 21 tables of Euchre and maybe six tables of Bridge,” Cliff said. “I enjoy it, it’s a good crowd.”