Kinburn seeking Helping Hands for Clem

KINBURN – It was a fire that shocked and saddened the community.

Thankfully, there was no loss of life but there was still a profound loss to be sure, and that was hundreds of years of local history lost, stored in Clem Smith’s Kinburn area barn which burned to the ground Oct. 28 after a devastating fire.

Smith, a life-long horseman and former Arnprior funeral home owner, had a unique and rare collection of antiques including roughly 29 homemade and antique sleighs and buggies (including a horse-drawn hearse built in 1850), some dating back more than 170 years, in the barn at the time of the fire.

In the summer of 2023, Smith opened his collection to the community in a fundraising event for the Fitzroy Township Historical Society and you can read about that event here.

But everything in the barn is now in a pile of burnt-out rubble behind Smith’s house, and Kinburn’s Jayne Coady is seeking volunteers for this Saturday (Nov. 23) to help clean up the mess.

Calling the event Helping Hands for Clem, Coady is looking for volunteers to gather at his house Saturday morning and help start the clean-up.

Smith, 86, can’t do it on his own.

“I’ve been speaking with family members,” Coady told West Carleton Online this morning (Nov. 18). “We’re going to do a clean-up this weekend. We’ve got some tractors, some chainsaws, Metro Scrap Metal has given us a bin. We’re going to get started at 9 a.m. and we could use some help.”

Coady says she hopes to have more bins on site the day of to help get rid of trash that isn’t scrap metal.

“We need some more volunteers,” Coady said. “With all due respect, we’ll have the gentlemen do the heavy work and the ladies help feed them.”

While everyone is thankful no people or horses were hurt during the fire, Smith is still dealing with the loss of all that family history.

“Down the road we’ll have an event to celebrate Clem,” Coady said.

But job Number 1 is getting his property cleaned up from the wreckage. Coady says the work will be done in two stages, with Saturday being the first stage.

“We want to do it quick and easy and painless for Clem, and get him back up and moving forward,” Coady said.

If you are interested in supporting Helping Hands for Clem in any way at all, you can contact Coady by email at jcoady@xplornet.com.