Rare Ottawa antique collection burns in sudden daytime fire

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Clem Smith has spent almost a lifetime restoring and refurbishing horse-drawn conveyances.

On Monday, Smith, 86, watched in horror as his Kinburn barn was engulfed in flames, creating a plume of smoke visible for miles around.

The barn held dozens of historical treasures, including a hearse that dated back to the 1850s, a landau that reportedly once belonged to the reviled Montreal business tycoon Sir Herbert Holt and a two-wheeled gig that belonged to lumber baron J.R. Booth.

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In total, some 30 horse-drawn vehicles and four tractors, some painstakingly refurbished, others built from scratch, were destroyed in the blaze. So were the harnesses, some more than a hundred years old.

The only thing that was saved was the manure wagon, said Smith.

His three horses were unharmed. “I had just let them out in the morning. I just pushed them through the gate,” he said.

Smith’s equipage was not merely for his own enjoyment. The landau, an elegant four-wheeled carriage with a roof that can be let down, was used for weddings. The hearse, which was unusual because it had curved glass in front and back, was used for funerals.

Smith still has — or had — the cutter he drove to school in Woodlawn. He bought conveyances from the Mennonites in St. Jacob’s, Ont., and the Amish near Ogdensburg, N.Y.

He had a talent for ferreting out an old wreck he could work with. He would catch a glimpse of something intriguing through the crack of a barn door or a board. He would go and knock on the door and ask about it.

Smith found the hearse, which had belonged to a funeral home in Quyon, Que, in a shed. He found the landau in the Laurentians.

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“My dad wanted to know what they paid me to take it away. There was no top, no door. The wheels were busted, the springs. I completely rebuilt it.”

He got his carriage lamps, which he used on the hearse as well the laundau, from a funeral home in Shawville. “They’re as old as the hearse. Maybe older,” he said.

The Smith family has a long history in West Carleton, arriving from Ireland in 1830. Smith grew up in a family of eight boys and three girls. At one time, there were 400 horses in the family.

Smith was a funeral director in Arnprior and moved to Kinburn after he retired, converting the barn into a place to store his carriages and sleighs, with a workshop. His wife, Doris, died six years ago.

“Grandpa built so much with his own hands. It was his passion,” said his granddaughter Kaitlin Dupuis, who rode in the landau on her wedding day.

“He didn’t like the throw anything away. He repurposed everything. His heart was in everything here.”

Smith was working on a car in the barn with a friend when the fire broke out, using a torch to repair a brake line.

“It all happened so quickly,” said Smith.

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Ottawa Fire Services received a 911 call shortly after 1:15 p.m. on Monday. When firefighters arrived, they found smoke and flames coming from all four sides of the barn.

An aerial ladder was set up to attack the fire from above. There are no fire hydrants in the area, so firefighters used tanker trunks to shuttle water from other water sources, including the nearby Carp River.

The barn began to collapse at 2:12 p.m. The fire was declared under control at 4:08 p.m. Monday, but the wreckage of the barn was still smoking in spots on Tuesday morning.

Dupuis, who lives in Arnprior, was making soup for her grandfather’s lunch when she heard about the fire and rushed to the scene.

“He would be in for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then he would be outside, tinkering. He would hook up his horses every day and go out. In the winter, he would draw the manure out with his manure sled. He built that as well.”

On Tuesday morning, there was still some smoke rising from the wreckage of the barn. There is nothing that is salvageable, said Smith.

He’s still coming to grips with the shock.

“I used to go out there, and I knew the story of every one of them, because I redid every one of them. I could tell you where it came from, how I got it.”

The only thing that was saved was a pair of pliers in his friend’s pocket, said Smith.

“And they were the worst pair we had.”

Clem Smith walks through his burnt out barn on his property on Kinburn Side Road Tuesday.

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