Lynnwood Project: Origins

Any place people have made their home is sure to have some kind of founding myth. Lynnwood is no different.

If you ask around in this small mobile home community, in Ottawa’s rural East-end, you are almost certain to hear the name Ronnie Prophet. People say the country music star from Hawkesbury founded the park with money from his 1970s television program, The Ronnie Prophet Show. That was he before decamping for the United States.

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You can see why people might believe it too. Betty Prophet still lives in a farmhouse that borders on the property and the trailer park itself is built on the 66 acres of farmland from which that house was originally subdivided.

But the story isn’t quite right. Ask around a bit more and you’re likely to hear about Ronnie’s second cousin Orval Prophet, a country music star in his own right. Orval recorded on Decca Records in the 50s and was, apparently, the second Canadian (after Hank Snow) to record in Nashville.  He stayed in Canada.

Longtime residents of Lynnwood describe him as the hands-on owner who would often be seen mowing lawns or tending flowerbeds. A few can even point out the dilapidated, baby-blue trailer where Orval once lived.

That story is much closer to the truth. Betty Prophet explains that her husband, Lynn Prophet, and two colleagues founded the park in 1969. She says it grew out of her husband’s business, Henry Armstrong Construction.

“There used to be an office near where the mobile home park is. My husband ran that,” Betty Prophet explains. “Orval (his brother) lived in the park. He lived in the park and he worked in the park, but he wasn’t actually part of the park.”

At Library and Archives Canada, I had stumbled across an aerial photograph of a place called "Lynnwood Village." It was taken by the photographer Ted Grant. Betty says that photograph used to hang in the park office.

After her husband died, in 1980, Betty and her son took over the park and ran it for seven or eight years. It was sold and became Lynnwood Mobile Homes LTD. Then it became Lynnwood Gardens, when it was sold again some years later.

Today, Lynnwood is known mostly as a place with undrinkable tap water. That’s thanks, at least partly, to the fact that E.coli bacteria was discovered in the park’s wells in May 2000, around the same time as the
Walkerton tragedy. Although, since then the park has also received media attention from time to time sin thanks to heavy mineral contamination.

Betty Prophet hates the attention.

“It’s terrible. They always say that they've had problems like this forever,” Betty says, pointing out that there was never E.coli contamination when she and her son ran the park.


She has a point. Nearly everyone describes it as a place that has struggled with tainted water for more than 30 years. 

This is the first of a series of notebook entries I hope to post on my Lynnwood research. Up next: how I stumbled upon the park and a day in court.