Imagine raising a large family in a pioneer home along the Little Bonnechere without electric lights, central heating or the comforts of modern living. Dennis McGuey and his wife Margaret did just that on this homestead. Here they raised a family of nine, in a house of squared pine timbers and under a roof of scooped cedar logs. It included a kitchen, dining room and bedroom, and a large room where transient labourers stayed over. Men traveling this part of the Old Bonnechere Road would get a meal and a bed at the McGuey stopping place for twenty-five cents a night at a time when they might be earning a dollar a day. Mind you, the bedroom was shared with twenty-five other men and the simple bed was a mattress of balsam boughs topped with a heavy wool blanket.

Dennis McGuey trapped bears, hunted and maintained the two log dams upstream. Margaret McGuey took care of the house, ran the stopping place and made butter to sell to the lumber camps. Their sons helped at home until they were old enough to work in the lumber camps; their daughters assisted with the cooking and cleaning, and cared for the younger children. After the chores were done there was always a little time for some good old-fashioned play with homemade toys, for this was a time long before video games and other modern-day diversions.