Wool business to reopen as legacy to Inverhuron couple

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The wishes of Ann and Eugene Bourgeois to have their Inverhuron farm make a lasting contribution for public good are coming to fruition just three years after they both passed away in 2020.

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On Aug. 5, the couple’s business the Philosopher’s Wool Co., will reopen, where it will be supervised by a board with a community vision in mind.

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Marti McFadzean, longtime neighbour and friend of the Bourgeois’, said Saturday that she has been in the area as a cottager for many, many years and knew the couple as they built their business, and she feels they would be very happy to see what they built over many years continuing on.

“I got to know Ann and Eugene over the years and had a great respect for the principles they believed in. Their values were sturdy and never wavering and they were somebody you could really admire,” said McFadzean.

“Tessa (Gerling), who had a close relationship with them, and me as a longtime community member, we both wanted to do something that would protect what they built, and we are seeing that happen now.”

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Eugene Bourgeois was a local environmentalist and sheep farmer who built the local woolen ware business with Ann. Eugene passed away on Sept. 16, 2020 at 73, just four months after Ann’s death on May 11, 2020. They were married for 49 years.

“Originally the farm had sheep and Ann and Eugene sheared the sheep, spun the wool, died the wool and sold the wool,” said McFadzean. “It was a real love of theirs.”

They travelled throughout North America selling their wool and woolen products for many years, McFadzean said.

For about the final five years, they had sold the sheep, and purchased wool from other farmers, hiring knitters who knitted the items sold in their store.

Their business was “fair trade,” paying Ontario farmers a fair price for their wool, keeping their products made of wool yarn as natural and organic as possible, including sweaters, socks, blankets and knitting kits, which Ann designed.

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Knitters and buyers from the past have been notified of the relaunch of the business in the warehouse. But it is actually just one of three parts of the farm.

Included in the property is 10 acres of farmland that the small group involved in the work are co-ordinating with the Ontario Farmland Trust out of the University of Guelph to have protected from any future development or use for commercial purposes. In the future the land could be used for environmental education projects, but that is something to look at long-term.

“It would have been very easy to sell the property and, who knows, somebody could have developed it into housing,” McFadzean said, adding that its location right next to the Bruce nuclear development, could have led to it being purchased by a nuclear industry

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Eugene was an outspoken critic of the nuclear plant and a log-term storage plan to put low- and mid-level nuclear waste in a deep vault beside Lake Huron.

“Now the legacy is protected and the business will carry on in their name,” she said.

There is also a farmhouse that Eugene built in the 1960s that the group are looking at having turned into a business, featuring market gardening and other environmental initiatives.

“All of it really fits into what Eugene and Ann wanted for this property,” McFadzean said.

Working alongside McFadzean are Gerling, someone who Eugene and Ann “took under their wing” and Jim and Lynn Young. Eugene’s brother Don is overseeing the project as the trustee of his will.

The Youngs, who live in the apartment above the warehouse, are the ones who will reopen and run the wool business.

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“The business was never a huge profit-centred business and right now it isn’t profitable,” said McFadzean. “But the idea is, if it should become a little bit profitable, we will have a small board that will oversee that business and we will then turn that back into the community.”

McFadzean said it has been a lot of work already, and it has taken a while, but they are happy with what they have accomplished so far.

“We wanted to make sure it all fit in their desires,” said McFadzean, adding that it takes time to work with the various organizations, groups and individuals involved. “It is a little bit one step at a time.”

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