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Wednesday, 26 February 2020 12:44

Bedford History remembered at Glendower Hall

There was a lot of reminiscing going on Saturday at Glendower Hall as the Bedford Historical Research Centre’s annual open house.

“All people are interested in things, it’s just what are they interested in,” said Paul Younge, who was back for another year with his vast collection of farm-related publications.

“All that old stuff is really interesting,” said Coun. Pat Barr. “Like Gramma Barr’s bread and butter pickles recipe.

“If you just read it, you’d think you sliced the onions before you peeled them.”

She said they have a lot of people wanting to donate things, which they appreciate, but “you really need to put it in something.

“We did have a lady organizing the death notices but she died.”

And, she thinks the area was a lot more colourful in the ’50s.

“We had a lot of bootleggers in the area then,” she said.

Perhaps one of the more interesting people for visitors to reminisce with on this day was Gord Sly, president of the Frontenac County Schools Museum and author of Good Old School Days.

“There were more than 100 one-room schools in the County at one time,” he said. “And the museum probably has something from just about all of them.”

He said that legally, kids couldn’t walk more than three miles to school — which accounts for why there were so many of them.

“Most of them were in farm country and there were no buses back then,” he said.

He said that in the ’70s, most of the old schools started closing down and a “bunch of teachers got together” to create the museum and preserve the memories and memorabilia.

Sly had photos from Salem School (Bedford #1) and the Oak Flats school from 1904.

One of the more interesting items on display was an old honey pail.

“That’s what the kids used for lunchboxes,” he said. “They also used old lard pails.”

Published in SOUTH FRONTENAC
Wednesday, 12 February 2020 12:41

Bringing Our History, Art and Culture to Life

South Frontenac Museum Society’s AGM at the museum in Hartington was well attended last Tuesday.

Chair John McDougall began by drawing attention to pictures of two life members, Barb Stewart and Ken Brown and spoke in remembrance of Ron Paul, a member who passed away recently, saying that the bright, attractive museum hall owed a great deal to Paul’s painstaking restoration work.

Highlight of the meeting was guest speaker Rob Wood’s review of the new Strategic Plan he coordinated with help from museum members and community representatives. This plan will guide the organization’s focus and activities over the next three years, as it becomes a place that is fascinating to visitors and local residents, both children and adults.

When it opens for the season in April, the museum will continue to feature Doug Lovegrove’s detailed WW1 display about the 146th battalion and the men and women who served at home and overseas from this area. (Have you ever heard of the Farmerettes? Your grandmother may even have been one: perhaps you can add to their story. Come and find out more!) There will also be sections on farming and tools, an overview of local history (indigenous peoples, settlement, mining, forestry, growth of villages, etc), a kitchen feature, and a children’s exhibit. They’re currently looking for children’s toys from the 1900-1940 era, either as loans or donations. For further information, check the museum website at southfrontenacmuseum.ca.

Also, watch for a Treasures from the Attic event being planned for this spring, sponsored by the SFMS.

Published in SOUTH FRONTENAC

Last Monday marked a milestone of sorts for the South Frontenac Museum in Hartington. It was the first time the museum hosted a visiting historical society for a talk on two of the museum’s most prominent collections and displays — the 146th “Overseas” Battalion and First World War Nurses.

The visitors on this day were the Cloyne and District Historical Society and about a dozen of them made the trek south to hear what former Canadian Army Sgt. Doug Lovegrove and his wife Debbie had to say.

“We like to support other historical societies,” said Red Skipper of the Cloyne group. “We go to a lot of museums.”

“We’ve even been to the NORAD mountain,” said Gordon McCulloch. “It covers two football fields.”

The visitors weren’t disappointed as the Lovegroves laid out the history of WWI soldiers in Frontenac County.

“One thousand and two men joined the 146th,” Doug said. “Of that 561 men went overseas and 127 were killed in action.

“There were 39 officers of which 26 went overseas and two were killed in action.”

He said that of the 55 battles Canadians were involved in, the 146th was in 41 of them.

He then went on to detail the recruiting process in the area.

“The recruiters came up from Kingston to Harrowsmith and took the stage to Sydenham,” he said. “They recruited five men there.

“They did a lot better in Verona where they recruited 53.”

He said a lot of the recruits were farmers, who made about 50 cents a day. Since the army paid $1 a day plus 10 cents in overseas allowance and provided $20 a month for families, it was a fairly easy sell.

“A recruit had to be taller than 5 feet, 3 inches tall and be between 18 and 38, (although he could not be sent overseas until age 19),” he said. “In August of 1918, the Military Service Act changed enlistment ages to between the ages of 20 and 45.”

Lovegrove said that in his researching the 146th, he came across some rather interesting information about Canadian nurses in WWI but since there was so much to be researched with the 146th, he couldn’t do it justice. So, he turned the nurses section over to his wife Debbie, herself a M/Cpl CD1 (ret).

“There were 2,845 nurses enlisted in the Canadian Army Medical Corps,” she said. “A nurse was commissioned as a lieutenant and a matron as a captain.

“And they received the same pay as their male counterparts.”

She said 1,886 of those served overseas and 62 were killed in action.

She said the work in field hospitals and convalescent homes was traumatic, with lice and rats everywhere.

“But it also gave the nurses who went overseas a deep sense of satisfaction and accomplishment at a time when women’s roles were firmly planted in the domestic sphere,” she said. “They made significant and very public contributions to the war effort.”

One of the most interesting statistics she presented was the stature of some of these nurses.

“The smallest was 4 feet tall, 120 pounds,” she said. “The lightest was 5’4”, 89 pounds; the tallest was 5’11’’ and 130 pounds and the heaviest was 5’5 ½ ” and 220 pounds.”

Published in SOUTH FRONTENAC

“For 34 years, the Legion was responsible for ceremonies on Nov. 11,” Land O’Lakes Lions Past President and Zone Chair Red Emond said Sunday night in Northbrook. “This year, we’re just assisting them.”

The Northbrook observances were a little different than what one normally expects. First of all, it was held on the night of Nov. 10. Yes, there was the traditional moment of silence, laying of wreaths, playing of The Last Post and Reveille as well as a reading of In Flanders Fields, but a couple of other things set these ceremonies apart.

What made this remembrance unique were the memories of three women, two who spent the Second World War in Kaladar and Flinton, and one who was in the thick of it in Yugoslavia and Austria.

Rose Merkler has lived in Canada for 60 years, in Toronto, Skoottamatta Lake and now Northbrook.

But when she was eight years old, she was in Yugoslavia, of German descent. (Rose’s older sister, Mitzi Mangold, was scheduled to be there as well but was unable to attend).

In 1941, Rose’s family lived in Zemun, which is now a suburb of Belgrade. Her family had been in the area for 600 years, however they still spoke German. It was at that time the Germans invaded and took over the area.

While her family wasn’t a target of the Germans, many families, particularly Jewish and Romani, were.

“I remember the concentration camp (Sajmiste) and the trucks taking people over the river,” she said. “They never returned.”

In 1944, the Russians came and took over.

“The Russian were taking revenge on all Germans,” she said. “My grandfather had an oil factory and my mother’s sister had gotten engaged to an Austrian.

“My father said we had to get out.”

She remembers a neighbour who decided to stay.

“The Russians came and killed him shortly after we left.”

Once in Wels, Austria, they thought they’d be OK but things changed quickly.

“In 1944, when we got there, Austria was still under Hilter, but soon the Russians came there too,” she said.

“The Russians were like animals,” she said. “I remember one woman standing on a bridge, who cheered and put flowers on the Russian vehicles saying ‘our saviours.’

“That night, eight Russians raped her.

“I’ll never forget the screams. They (the Russians) came in, took whatever they wanted.

“There was no food.”

She said she moved to Canada when she could because “Canada is known as the peacemakers of the world.

“The horror in the world doesn’t seem to stop and it was horror. You were not safe to go anywhere but here you are safe.

“It’s great to be in Canada.”

One-hundred-and-one-year-old Meritta Parks also has memories of the War Years, albeit not as horrendous as the ones Merkler carries.

Still, they were trying times.

“In 1939, food was rationed,” Parks, who was originally from Flinton but living in Kaladar at the time. “You got so much butter, so much sugar for each child.

“If you had a big family, you got more.”

Parks shared a story of coupon booklets and rationing.

“You had a coupon booklet and I never used my butter coupons,” she said. “We had a cow and made our own butter.

“The storekeeper in Kaladar (Arnold York) asked if he could have my butter coupons.

“I bootlegged butter.”

Parks’ younger sister, Verna Andrews remembers things a bit differently.

“Before the war, nobody had money,” she said. “When I first started school, I thought we were hard up but there were kids at school who only had a single slice of bread for there lunch and maybe they had a pair of rubber boots if they were lucky.

“I had clothes because of hand-me-downs but I remember my mother made our underclothes from flour bags — and sometimes, the flour wasn’t all gone.”

She remembers when the war ended quite vividly.

“In 1945, we had a big party in Northbrook,” she said. “Everybody was dancing in on the street, and it wasn’t paved at that time.

“We had a big square dance on the gravel road.”

Published in ADDINGTON HIGHLANDS

The Cloyne Pioneer Museum and Archives opened its doors for the 2019 summer season Saturday and it was an occasion, in part, to say good-bye to the one person many credit with its success.

Margaret Axford, has stepped down after 10 years as curator.

“It’s an opportunity to toast and roast a lady who’s been a wealth of information for this organization,” said historical society president Shirley Sedore.

“She’s (Axford) been very gracious, welcoming and cordial, also a great stabilizer,” said Wendy Hodgkin.

“This museum is one of the best in the country for its size,” said Katherine Grant. “And we know who we have to thank for that.

“Her passion, her vision, her taste have left us with such a good platform.”

Emma Veley, who’s worked at the museum for seven years, takes over as curator for the summer.

“Everything I’ve learned and my knowledge of the area comes from Marg,” Veley said.

“She’s never been an insider, just an observer,” said Gord McCulloch. “Marg comes on very softly but she’s a little like the sting of a bee and she gets things done.

“She’s shown us what it should be.”

The museum is located on Hwy 41 across from the Post Office.

It’s open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in July and August.

It’s partially funded by Trillium Foundation grants and the sales of its historical calendars and books, available at the museum and its online store.

Published in ADDINGTON HIGHLANDS

When she learned that nothing was being planned to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Normandy invasion in South Frontenac, Harrowsmith’s Brenda Crawford knew just the place that a ceremony should take place.

She started working the phone. Soon she had arranged for the Mayor and some other local politicians, legion and community members, and several classes from nearby Harrowsmith Public School.

On the afternoon of June 5, a gathering was arranged at the new Harrowsmith junction, where there is a public square and a sculptured-metal poppies as a permanent feature. The former site of the Harrowsmith train station is just metres away, and Crawford remembers her own father walking to the station with other men from Harrowsmith and vicinity, to board the train that started their journey to World War II.

“Right there,” she said, pointing northeast to the corner of road 38 and the Harrowsmith-Sydenham Road, “my mother stood, leaning on the only gas pump in town at the time, watching my father walk to the train station to go off to war.”

Mayor Vandewal said a few words, some wreaths were laid to mark the occasion and a few people were wearing poppies, which they pinned to one of the wreaths. After a few moments, one of the Harrowsmith PS teachers, said “the students would like to sing ‘Oh Canada’”.

The students sang ‘Oh Canada’, and everyone else joined in. The students slowly walked away, back to school, and the assembly slowly broke apart as people went back to their daily routines.

“I feel that it is important,” Crawford said as people were leaving, “for us to acknowledge these events that shaped who we are, so the next generation will have some memory of what my parents’ entire generation endured in those years.”

Published in SOUTH FRONTENAC

Bill Campsall never thought he’d survive the war.

Sitting in his room in a retirement home in Amherstview, the gentle 95-year-old’s eyes glisten with tears as he talks for the first time about his service, 78 years earlier, as a paratrooper in WWII.

“I hadn’t got my notice yet,” he says about his voluntary enlistment in October, 1941.

Born and raised on a farm in Sydenham, Bill went to Fort Henry in Kingston at the tender age of 17 to join the Canadian Armed Forces. After a routine medical review, he was offered a medical certificate to discharge him from infantry service, or hernia surgery. He chose surgery, and by the next March, he was in basic training in Cornwall.

“When that finished, I went to CFB Borden for advance training, where I was one of a handful of soldiers hand-picked for special services,” says Bill, proudly. “We were sent to Manitoba for tower jumping and classwork to prepare us for parachute jumping in Germany.”

Bill remembers his first night-jump, when 60 soldiers refused to jump out of the airplane. That left Bill and 14 others to complete the program, which included three weeks of explosives training.

“We had to carry a one-ounce bottle of nitroglycerine in training,” he explains. “Six soldiers wouldn’t do it which left eight of us, besides myself. They taught us to land on our heels because we carried the nitroglycerin on our chests and a timer in our back pockets. We jumped out of a Halifax bomber or glider, depending on the mission.”

Bill and his special services unit landed in Scotland in January, 1942.

“They took us off the train in Yorkshire and sent us to an estate for lodging,” he notes.

According to Bill, a lieutenant at the time of his service, the military had Europe marked off in zones and had effective communication through an underground network.

“We boarded a plane in Yorkshire and dropped into the continent between midnight and 2am,” he explains. “Through contact with underground, we were brought back by fishing boats.”

Bills eyes fill with tears, remembering a break from the fighting on the third week of July to visit a wax museum of the Royal Family. Over four hours, a tour guide named Lizzy gave them a detailed account of the wax figures located in an underground cavern. When Bill learned Lizzy’s last name was Windsor, he soon realized his tour guide was Princess Elizabeth of the British Royal Family.

“It was quite an experience,” he said.

The next month, it was almost daylight and Bill was returning from a mission with three of his men when they were hit with a detonated hand grenade.

“My three-men were killed, and I was pretty banged up,” he says quietly.

When Bill awoke in a field hospital, he discovered the near fatal damage to his lung, heart, stomach and bowel. He lost almost 50 pounds in one month as he fought for his life.

By January, he was stretchered aboard a boat to Halifax with 600 other wounded soldiers. He was transported from the East Coast to a hospital in Kingston where he was discharged on March 31, 1945. Bill was only 21 years old.

Awarded a medical disability pension, Bill reunited with his girlfriend Marg, whom he quickly married that fall. The first of the couple’s three children arrived a year later.

Over his lifetime, Bill held many jobs, such as a turnkey at the county jail, manufacturer at Alcan, bus driver in Kingston and operator at a water sewage treatment plant.

Published in SOUTH FRONTENAC

The Clar-Miller Community Archives is “well on its way to becoming a historical society,” Brenda Miller told a large audience on a rainy Saturday morning last week.

“We’re here to preserve local history for future generations.”

To that end, they’ve been busily working on their current project, Unravelling History: One Tombstone at a Time.

“We’re cataloguing our cemeteries,” Martin said. “It’s a multi-year project, including drone maps of our cemeteries and a list of those in them with tombstone photos and genealogical information.”

Martin acknowledged the help North Frontenac Township has given them in their endeavours.

She said the entire project will cost around $14,660, with much of that being in-kind work from the CMCA.

Special guests for the event included Joe Wilson, chair of the Ontario Cemetery Board and Steve Fulton, president of the Ontario Genealogical Society. They conducted a demonstration of dousing to determine if a grave is occupied following the proceedings.

Wilson also spoke on the importance of preserving tombstones and, in particular, methods of cleaning and preserving tombstones, which although made of rock in most cases, can be quite fragile.

“Water is number 1,” he said. “You don’t want to use anything acidic or alkaline.

“And a soft bristle brush is important, especially with old shale and/or limestone tombstones.

“Don’t use power tools or metal brushes and the rule is ‘if it won’t scratch your car, it won’t scratch the stone.’”

He also said “it’s not the stone that’s important, it’s the little dash that’s between the numbers; that was the person’s life.”

He said it’s important to note that when you buy a plot, be it in the ground, in a mausoleum, or any other area set aside for the interment of human remains, it doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want to there.

“When you ‘buy’ a plot in a cemetery, you don’t own the property,” he said. “You’ve only bought the right to put something in there.”

He said it’s also important to make sure the cemetery is registered under the funeral, burial and Cremation Services Act.

“If it’s not registered, it can be bulldozed over tomorrow if a developer so decides,” he said.

Published in NORTH FRONTENAC

If South Frontenac Museum Society secretary Al Boyce had his way, there would be museum buildings all over the Township, and the County, each focusing on a different aspect of Frontenac history.

“But that’s just me dreaming and rambling,” he said Saturday as the South Frontenac Museum in Hartington opened its doors Saturday for the summer season, which runs through Labour Day Saturdays, Sundays and Wednesdays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Group visits can also be arranged email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Boyce said its been a “busy and dynamic year” for the society focusing on making the Hartington site more accessible.

“We’ve been working on the displays to reduce the crowded feeling,” he said. “So, we picked a theme and topic and you can get a wheelchair around it now.”

The theme, he said, is South Frontenac 1900-1930.

“We chose Doug Lovegrove’s work on the 146th regiment (a First World War unit recruited from the area) as an anchor, including the displays on nursing sisters and women on the homefront,” Boyce said. “It’s kind of a before, during and after the war, with at home and on the farm.

“It’s like this is what Ma was doing while the boys were away, and this is what Pa was doing on the farm, including the tools he used without electricity.”

Boyce said this is only the beginning. They’d like to have more space to display items as well as storage space so they can accept some of the donations they’ve been offered.

“We’re no what we’re going to be in five years,” he said. “We’re hugely indebted to the Township and all they’ve done for us (but) we’re not going to turn somebody away just because their stuff comes from North of Hwy 7.”

Boyce said there’s no way to know just what the museum system will turn into but he sees a great opportunity to preserve parts of history that the Royal Ontario Museum or the seven national museums in Ottawa can’t do.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love the ROM, but I think museums like this one provide a local service you don’t get at the ROM,” he said. “Saws for example.

“I we don’t preserve these things . . .”

He said their mission is to share and catalogue the history of the area, whatever that might be.

“Who knows, in five to 10 years, we might have the world’s best collection of fishing rods,” he said.

Boyce said their biggest challenge is finding people with the skills they think they need.

“The people we’ve got are really keen but we need computer people, graphic arts people and carpenters,” he said. “If you let it go away to the dump, it will be gone.

“But if you take the providence of it, it can be shared.”

Published in SOUTH FRONTENAC

There was a time, not so very long ago, when horses and hand saws were the tools of the trade in the logging industry. Arden’s Matson family was very involved in all that.

So it probably comes as no surprise that they decided to do some demonstrations and displays as part of the Frontenac Heritage Festival this year.

“I worked in the bush and I’m the fourth or fifth generation,” said Glen Matson, current patriarch of the clan. “We’re all interested in the history and we’ve all worked with horses in the bush.”

And, it almost seems there’s more than nostalgia at work here. Matson makes a case for horse-power actually doing a better job than modern machinery.

“Dad did a lot of forestry work for the Ministry,” he said. “They gave you a lot of small plots to clear.

“The horses did it a lot quicker as it was easier to hitch a log to a chain and lift it up to make it easier on the horses.

“And, they didn’t make such a mess, tearing up the forest and all.”

Matson said this year’s new addition to the Heritage Festival was actually the brainchild of son Duane, said the elder Matson.

“We did wagon rides last year,” said Duane. “But being part of the historical society, we all like the old stuff and we wanted to show people how to attach chain to stuff.

“We wanted to show some of the logging history and even with the sleigh rides, the top parts where people sit are all new but the bottom parts (the skis and struts) are all old.”

And so they did, with all sorts of demonstrations of log cutting and hauling and axe throwing.

Published in CENTRAL FRONTENAC
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With the participation of the Government of Canada