This was in the year 1814; soon afterwards the peace with America put an end to our midshipman's prospects of advancement in the navy, to his great and life-long regret. He obtained a commission in the Scots Greys, and exchanged into the 58th Regiment, then under orders for service in the West Indies, where his health failed him, and he was compelled to retire on half-pay. But his love for the sea soon induced him to enter the merchant service, in which he made many voyages to the East. This also, a severe illness obliged him to resign, and to abandon the sea for ever. He then came to Canada, to seek his fortune in the backwoods, where I found him in 1833.
Mr. O'Brien's relations with his neighbours in the backwoods were always kindly, and gratifying to both parties. One evening, some friends of his heard voices on the water, as a boat rowed past his grounds. One man asked "Who lives here?" "Mr. O'Brien," was the reply. "What is he like?" "He's a regular old tory." "Oh then, I suppose he's very proud and distant?" But that he was either proud or distant, his neighbour would not allow, and other voices joined in describing him as the freest and kindest of men—still they all agreed that he was a "regular old tory." The colonel was the last man in the world to object to such an epithet, but those who used it meant probably to describe his sturdy, uncompromising principles, and manly independence. A more utterly guileless, single-hearted man never breathed. Warm and tender-hearted, humble-minded and forgiving, he deplored his hastiness of temper, which was, indeed, due to nervous irritability, the result of severe illness coupled with heavy mental strain when young, from the effects of which he never entirely recovered. He was incapable of a mean thought or dishonourable deed, and never fully realized that there could be others who were unlike him in this respect. Hence, during the long course of his happy and useful, but not wholly prosperous life, he met each such lapse from his own high standard of honour with the same indignant surprise and pain. His habitual reverent-mindedness led him to respect men of all shades of thought and feeling, while to sympathize with sorrow and suffering was as natural to him as the air he breathed.
A neighbour who had had a sudden, sharp attack of illness, meeting one of the colonel's family, said very simply, "I knew you had not heard that I was ill, for Mr. O'Brien has not been to see me; but please tell him I shall not be about for some time." The man looked upon it as a matter of course that his old friend the colonel would have gone to see him if informed of his illness.
And if Mr. O'Brien's friends and neighbours have kindly recollections of him and of his family, these latter on their part are never tired of recalling unvarying friendliness and countless acts of kindness from all their neighbours.
Before leaving this subject, it may be appropriately added that Mrs. O'Brien (his wife) was his guardian angel—a mother in Israel—the nurse of the sick, the comforter of the miserable; wise, discreet, loving, patient, adored by children, the embodiment of unselfishness. To her Toronto was indebted for its first ragged school.
A few years before the colonel's death, his foreman on the farm, living at the lodge, had five children, of whom three died there of diphtheria. Mrs. O'Brien brought the remainder to her own house—"The Woods,"—to try and save them, the parents being broken-hearted and helpless. It is said to have been a touching spectacle to see the old Colonel carrying about one poor dying child to soothe it, while Mrs. O'Brien nursed the other. Of these two, one died and the other recovered.
The selfish are—happily—forgotten. The unselfish, never. Their memory lives in Shanty Bay as a sweet odour that never seems to pass away. It is still a frequent suggestion, "what would Mrs. O'Brien or the Colonel have done under the circumstances."
In his declining years, failing health, and disease contracted in India, dimmed the cheerfulness of Mr. O'Brien's nature. But none so chivalrously anxious to repair an unintentional injury or a hasty word.
He and his wife lie side by side in the burial ground of the church he was mainly instrumental in building. Over them is a simple monument in shape of an Irish cross—on it these words:—
"In loving remembrance of Edward George O'Brien, who died September 8, 1875, age 76: and of Mary Sophia his wife, who died October 14, 1876, age 78: This stone is raised by their children. He, having served his country by sea and land, became A.D. 1830 the founder of the settlement and mission of Shanty Bay. She was a true wife and zealous in all good works. Faithful servants, they rest in hope."