Author: Jody Robinson
It’s perhaps not the first thing we think of when reflecting on the World Wars of the 20th century but love and marriage were ever-present even during this tumultuous period. In particular, love (or, at times, enthusiastic pen pals) played an integral role in the war effort as it helped boost morale. Sometimes this looked like a couple quickly getting married before a soldier was shipped overseas. Other times, this looked like dedicated letter-writing by family, friends, and love interests to those serving overseas.
Romantic relationships also bloomed as servicemen intermingled with the local population while stationed overseas, and, in some cases, resulted in marriages. Once the war was over, many of these new brides followed their men to Canada, becoming known as the “war brides.” It is estimated that approximately 54,000 relatives and dependents returned with Canadian servicemen following WWI and approximately 65,000 wives and children of servicemen were transported to Canada after WWII. It is worth noting that there were some husbands of Canadian servicewomen who also immigrated following the war, and were dubbed with the unfortunate moniker “male war brides” in some of the press.
Most of the war brides were British, though some were from other European countries, and met their husbands while the servicemen were on leave, convalescing, or training in England. Although there were official military policies to discourage the marriage of servicemen and servicewomen to local civilians, it was an inevitable occurrence during the wars. Once peace was declared and the servicemen returned to Canada, the process of bringing their new brides and, often, children, was begun. The war brides and children coming to Canada after WWII, in particular, were transported overseas on converted luxury liners and troop ships, landing at Pier 21 in Halifax and then boarded trains to take them to their destinations across Canada.
For some women, the move to Canada was an exciting adventure while others regarded the departure from their family and homeland with sadness and trepidation. After arriving in their new communities, the war brides were often invited to special welcoming events hosted by local groups such as the Women’s Institute and the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire. At one event, which took place in Ayer’s Cliff, the local ladies shared tips on gardening, dressing for the climate, and recipes for dishes “much loved by all Canadian men” with the new-comers. Many war brides adjusted to and embraced their new community and country over the months and years but for some it proved to be too much to overcome, and they separated or divorced their husbands and returned to England.
Interested in learning more about the experiences of war brides? Joyce Hibbert’s The War Brides (published in 1978), consisting of excerpts from interviews with war brides of Canadian servicemen, is a fascinating account of this group of women.
This month the ETRC would like to enlist the help of readers to identify a few of our numerous unidentified photographs. All of these photographs come from a collection of documents that are primarily from the Lake Massawippi and Hatley areas and, so, it is likely that these photographs picture people and places from those areas. In one, which comes from a group of three images, we see the construction of what appears to be a dam. Is it possibly the Eustis dam on the Coaticook River, near Route 143?
The studio portrait photograph shows a family from around the 1920s. Unfortunately there is no photographer’s stamp to help us narrow down a location but perhaps a reader might recognize one of these smartly-dressed people.
The final images we have today are a jovial-looking group, gathered at a clubhouse perhaps, and what seems to be a school photograph, both from around the late 1940s or 1950s. Do you recognize any of those pictured or have thoughts on their location?
Please get in touch if you can help us solve some of the unknowns of these people and places and help us preserve history!
Crisp air, leaves beginning to change, and getting back into the routines of school are part of how we’re ushered out of summer and into autumn. With the start of school also come the sights of children travelling to class, some by bus, some on foot and others by parent drop-off. With this in mind, a browse in the archives led me through some of the changes in how children and teachers travelled to school over the decades.
An early diary from a teacher, written in 1836, recounts her experiences as she taught for 12 weeks in the “wilderness.” The teacher, known only as “Mabel,” was 17 at the time and she describes herself as having been “tenderly reared” so her foray into the backwoods is recounted with some dramatic flair. While she does not give her specific location, she was probably teaching in the area of either Brome or Shefford County. In 1836, the walk she and the school-aged children of the family she boarded with took to the schoolhouse involved removing and replacing fences, crossing clearings, and much bending and weaving as they navigated the dense woods.
Walking would continue to be the primary mode of travel to school into the 20th century but, as reliable roads were established and the population increased, other methods emerged. One of these was the “horse bus,” pictured here, likely from the East Clifton area, which could transport a number of children to school during the cold winter months.
In the 20th century, the Townships began to see a shift away from local, one-room schoolhouses towards consolidated schools, which partly emerged from the notion that this would result in a better education for the area’s youth but also stemmed from a gradually declining rural population. With schools farther away, it became necessary to find ways to transport students who were no longer able to walk there. One new method was the motorized school bus. By the 1930s, bus technology had advanced enough that school boards were making use of them in increasing number and, in 1939, the iconic ‘school bus yellow’ was adopted as the standard colour for the buses.
As a quintessentially Canadian way to get to school, the Bombardier B12 snow bus made its way onto the scene in the late 1940s as a way to reliably transport children to school over snow-covered roads when the early school buses were not able to.
Looking for an interesting conversation starter with family this Thanksgiving? Ask your grandparents or great-grandparents how they travelled to school!
This article was written by our summer archives technician, Jazmine Aldrich.
“It all began way back on December 21st 1935,” wrote Henrietta Kathleen Warren – or as many knew her, Kay – in her travel journal. The young Montrealer was eager to be on her way. “I had spent the day before in a feverish rush – as is usual. I’d left too much until the end – consequently it was 1:00am when I got to sleep.” Kay’s last-minute preparations nearly eighty-four years ago are a timeless echo of many travelers’ experiences today; her travels, however, were far from ordinary for the period.
In this account, Kay recalls her experiences travelling in Algeria. She departed from the Lycée des Jeunes Filles de Nîmes in France where she had begun work in the autumn of 1935; she was acting as a teaching assistant in English conversation in exchange for room and board. A graduate of McGill’s Royal Victoria College in Classical Studies and Education, she found the perfect opportunity to teach in Nîmes while simultaneously exploring the traces of Antiquity tucked away in the former Roman world.
From her locus in the South of France, she seized any opportunity to explore the country on day-trips and holidays. She travelled through Paris and watched “La Corrida” – Spanish-style bull fighting – in Nîmes. She also travelled through Cannes, Nice, Carcassonne, Gard, Grenoble, Versailles, and elsewhere in France. Based on her photographs and souvenirs, it seems as though her love of antiquity drew her to every ruin of the Classical world that she could reach, in France and abroad.
In Italy, she visited Rome, Venice, Pisa, Naples, Genoa, Milan, and Capri. She made a trip through Algeria, and visited Monaco, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Austria, and what was formerly Czechoslovakia. Little did she know that in a few short years, one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history would decimate many of the beautiful cities and marvelous old-world countryside that she was discovering.
Kay’s wanderlust in her twenties prepared her for a remarkable life as a wife, mother, and dedicated community member. In 1936, she returned to Canada to teach at Miss Edgar and Miss Cramp’s School in Westmount. She married Harry Milne in 1941 and following the Second World War, they settled in Magog to raise their two daughters, Catherine and Jean. Though the rest of her life is typically associated with her extensive community involvement, the travel bug would stay with Kay for the rest of her life: she visited Denmark in 1970 and England in 1977, among other trips within Canada and abroad. She preserved the memories of her travels in the postcards, journals, letters, brochures, and photographs, which now make up part of the Henrietta Kathleen Warren Milne collection at the Eastern Townships Resource Centre.
For a short period in the early 1900s, Captain B.V. Naylor made his mark on the tourist and shipping industry along the Richelieu River near the Quebec/Vermont border. Born in Noyan in 1858, Benjamin Naylor’s mother died while he was still a baby and so he went to live with his maternal uncle and aunt: Reuben and Rebecca Vaughan. With this upbringing, Benjamin learned the ferry and shipping business from his uncle Reuben, who had worked on the Richelieu for much of his life.
To accompany Capt. Ben Naylor’s lumber and coal shipping business, which he operated out of an office at the docks at the Richelieu Bridge near Noyan, he also endeavored to take advantage of the emerging tourism industry with a passenger ferry that offered day trips to popular recreation spots along the Richelieu River. He began this enterprise with a steamer named the Richelieu, a small, single deck boat, and then upgraded to the Majestic, which could carry up to 400 passengers and featured a bar and staterooms.
Naylor’s next steamer, the Nirvana, sank when some mischievous stowaway muskrats, which had been loaded onto the ship along with some hay, chewed a hole in the hull. Although the Nirvana was never refloated, its engines went to the Missisquoi, which was among Capt. Naylor’s most well-recognized steamers.
Among the popular summer destinations along the Richelieu was Fort Lennox, on Île-aux-Noix in the Richelieu River. The island served a military purpose during the American War of Independence when fortifications were built and in the War of 1812 when dry docks were added. Fort Lennox continued to be occupied until 1873, first by British troops and then by convicts awaiting the completion of the St-Vincent-de-Paul penitentiary.
After this, Fort Lennox was essentially abandoned and became a favourite picnic destination, which Benjamin Naylor was able to benefit from when he rented it in 1899 and offered ferry excursions over to the island. In 1921, however, Fort Lennox was transferred to Parks Canada and became a National Historic Site.
It appears that Capt. Naylor left the shipping and ferry business by about 1910, having sold his last large steamer, the Ojibway in 1908, and later his yacht the Windsor. He spent the rest of his life as a farmer, writing to his sister in 1918 that “it will be a pleasure to pass my few remaining years in a little rest and comfort.” Likely to Capt. Naylor’s surprise, his “few remaining” years turned into almost 20 when he died in 1935.
Horse-drawn carriages, dirt roads, and covered bridges. They all seem to just go together when we think of the past. CanadaPost’s recent issuing of a new stamp series showing Canada’s historic covered bridges speaks to the continued admiration our society has for these picturesque structures. However, perhaps surprisingly to some, Quebec and New Brunswick were somewhat unusual in Canada for the proliferation of covered bridges across the landscape, while neighbouring Ontario, for example, had very few. The Eastern Townships alone can count 222 covered bridges in its past!
By the mid-1900s, the region’s covered bridges were disappearing at an alarming rate as the demands placed on these structures changed with truck transport and widespread use of the automobile. In addition to demolition for ‘modernization,’ covered bridges also faced the threats of spring thaws and flooding, fires, and even the occasional theft of their wooden boards for campfires or personal construction projects.
By 1964, the number in the Townships had dropped to a mere 45 covered bridges and a number of those would have to fight to see 1974. By then, the number had dropped again by almost half. One particular campaign, launched by the Richmond County Historical Society, was to save the last covered bridge in the county. Known as the Gibson or Salmon Creek Bridge, it was located in Upper Melbourne and crossed the Salmon River. Their diligent efforts over six years were rewarded in 1971 with the repairing and raising of the bridge courtesy of grant from the Canadian Heritage Society.
While the Historical Society’s hard work was enough to save the Salmon Creek Bridge from demolition, it couldn’t save the bridge from other forces and was destroyed by fire in May 1988. Sadly, of the 23 bridges that survived the demolitions of 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, three others would also be lost by fire: the Rexford Bridge in Saint-Catherine-de-Hatley in 1985, the St-Camille Bridge in 1996, and the Capelton Bridge in 2002.
Today, 18 covered bridges still stand in the Townships. The oldest is the John-Cook Bridge in Cookshire; built in 1868, it once crossed the Eaton River but following the re-routing of the river, it now spans a creek. At 206 feet, the McVetty-McKenzie Bridge near Gould is the longest bridge still standing. Scattered throughout the Townships, show-casing different construction styles, some still open to automobile traffic and some now accessible only to pedestrians; these gems are important reminders of a past era and are charming destinations for a summer drive.
In 1930, most Canadian women had had the right to vote in federal elections for nine years but it would still be another ten years before they would achieve that right in Quebec provincial elections. This was a period of changing experiences, expectations, and aspirations for many women. A part of this shifting landscape was the entry of more women into the spheres of business, often in the sectors of secretarial work, teaching, and nursing, but also as small business owners.
Locally, in response to the growing growing number of business and professional women, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in Sherbrooke started a business and professional women’s supper club in 1930, with its chief purpose being to give the women a place to socialize with others who had similar pursuits and challenges when it came to gainful employment.
By July 1934, a Business and Professional Women’s Club of Sherbrooke was founded with slightly different goals than the club established by the YWCA. With ties to the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, the Sherbrooke Club incorporated broader political questions regarding women’s rights and their place in business in addition to the aim of promoting closer relationships among professional women.
To accomplish their objectives, their meetings were sometimes largely social times, with a meal and entertainment, but other times they hosted special speakers, among which included Nellie McClung in 1939. They also hosted and participated in rallies with clubs from across the province and the country and, in 1945, the Club established a public speaking contest for girls from the Sherbrooke and Lennoxville High Schools.
In researching the history of the Business and Professional Women’s Club, I couldn’t help but start to wonder about the individual women who were members, listed year after year among the reports on their activities; who were they, what did they do for a living, what were their stories?
Unsurprisingly given the general expectation that married women and mothers should be in the home, many of the members were single but there were some married women among their ranks as well. Jean (née Mills) Kinkead, for example, helped operate the tobacco store established by her husband’s family. Eva (née Dupuis) Renihan ran a business making fine hats.
Among the unmarried members was Geraldine Hebert, a prominent Sherbrooke portrait photographer (owner of the Sears Studio) who studied photography in Chicago and New York City. Somewhat ironically, Alice Milford and her sister, Bessie, worked in the family’s florist business, called James Milford & Son. Eventually the business became known simply as “Milford’s”, where Alice continued to work as a florist in Sherbrooke until she retired. In 1937, Leslie Fales was working as the “special lady representative” at an insurance company. And still many others operated shops of various sorts, including ladies fashion, children’s clothing, and hair salons.
After over 30 years of activity, providing support and fostering relationships among the business women of Sherbrooke, the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Sherbrooke likely disbanded in the late 1960s. While a clear reason for the disbandment was not apparent among the documents, it may have been that the principal objectives of the club were no longer tangible to a new generation of women encountering the working sphere in a much different way than those before them.
It’s cold outside. All plant life is covered in centimetres of the white stuff and our hopes of fresh garden vegetables are months away. In this cold-weather season, don’t you just crave a good, fresh mushroom? No? Well, if you lived in the Townships during the first part of the 20th century, the mushroom, along with leaf lettuce and rhubarb, was among the limited locally-grown produce available from Slack’s greenhouses in Waterloo through the winter months.
In the 1890s, Thomas Slack built the first of the company’s greenhouses in Waterloo on the family’s property. At the time, his aim was to grow a variety of vegetables and flowers for the local market. Later on, in 1912, the business was taken over and expanded by his sons Charles W. Slack and Fred A. Slack. As part of their expansion of the business, they purchased land near to the Canadian Pacific Railway line for the construction of new greenhouses, which facilitated the delivery of the large amounts of coal and fertilizer needed to keep vegetables growing in the cold winter months. More specifically, the coal was used to create steam that was then pumped into the greenhouses to maintain the temperatures needed to grow their produce.
Into the 1910s, the brothers had built nine greenhouses and were growing flowers, plants, and vegetables for the garden market. A newspaper advertisement appearing in February 1929 listed lilies, sweet peas, lettuce, rhubarb, mushrooms, tomatoes, and cucumbers among their products, with lettuce, rhubarb, and mushrooms being the items available at that time of year. In addition to lilies, Slack’s also grew chrysanthemums and carnations for market.
Over time, however, the Slack Brothers focused increasingly on mushroom production. In a 1946 Maclean’s Magazine profile of Slack’s mushroom business, it was highlighted that, with 16 miles (26 kilometres) of mushrooms, Slack’s was the 5th largest producer of mushrooms in the world. Why mushrooms, you may ask? Unsurprisingly, profitability is the short answer. The longer answer is that in the 1920s, the demand for leaf lettuce – one of Slack’s key crops – was overtaken by demand for iceberg lettuce, which caused the prices to plunge.
Seeing the possibility in mushrooms, Charles and Fred Slack began to shift their production to mushrooms, gradually phasing out or scaling down their other products. In 1936, Charles bought out Fred’s interests in Slack Brothers (one article notes it was so that Fred could pursue the mushroom business in Europe) and eventually the company would become known as Slack’s Waterloo Mushrooms. Similar to other food producers of the time, Slack’s published their own collections of recipes which focused on the mushroom, featuring titles such as “Le gourmet touch » and included recipes for dishes that included mushroom and asparagus parfait and hot mushroom sandwiches.
The risk the Slack Brothers took when they first set out to expand their mushroom business paid off but was not without its hurdles. In 1938, a hail storm in Waterloo shattered upwards of 4,000 panes of glass on their greenhouses. In the 1940s, a fire in their heating system threatened the whole crop and one year, for reasons no one ever figured out, not a single mushroom came up.
At its height, Slack’s was producing eight million pounds of mushrooms annually and employed around 300 people. In 1983, however, Slack’s was forced to close its doors and lay off their employees when the Bank of Montreal withdrew the company’s credit privileges. This was followed by a few ventures to bring the mushroom business back to Waterloo over the years but it was essentially the end for the King of the Mushroom.
Hills covered with snow, a sled carrying logs pulled by a team of horses. These are among the most-remembered subjects of Townships painter Frederick S. Coburn (1871-1960), who spent much of his life in Melbourne. With the piles of snow blanketing all of our scenic views, it is an image that is well-suited to this season.
However iconic his landscape paintings were, Coburn was well-recognized as an illustrator during his lifetime, particularly in his early career. His illustrations were featured in the original publications of W.H. Drummond’s The Habitant and Louis-H. Fréchette’s Christmas in French Canada but he also contributed illustrations for special editions of works by Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, and Robert Browning.
Coburn secured his first major commission with William H. Drummond after a pressure-test specified by the author: he had one hour to sketch Drummond’s portrait. Drummond, pleased with the outcome, hired Coburn in 1896 as illustrator for his first published collection of poems: The Habitant and other French-Canadian Poems. This collaboration was the catalyst for much of Coburn’s future illustration work. A friend of Drummond, Louis Fréchette was impressed with the work Coburn had done and, in 1898, commissioned him to complete the illustrations for a collection of short stories, Christmas in French Canada, which was published in French (La Noël au Canada) a year later.
Louis Fréchette was an author, poet, and Quebec political figure at the turn of the 20th century. Through his literary work, Fréchette endeavored to honour and give value to French culture in Quebec. Similarly passionate about the people of his homeland and the opportunity to be part of the recording of its history and culture, Coburn immersed himself in the work of preparing the illustrations. Among his frequent letters to Fréchette, Coburn often expressed his enthusiasm for the project: “In fact, each story is so full of suggestive pictures & recalls at times so vividly parallel incidents I myself have witnessed that I find considerable difficulty in making a judicious selection rather than having to hunt for something to make.”
The final outcome was a poignantly illustrated work that chronicles Quebec folk tales and traditions of Christmas past.
“A photograph is worth a thousand words.” This idiom certainly rings true when it comes to some photographs. And while other photographs might not hold the weight of a thousand words, many are still able to make us catch our breath, arouse curiosity, or engage with us in a unique way. Working with historical records means that I have the privilege of getting to see eye-catching and intriguing photographs on a regular basis. The photographs may be eye-catching but they hold a particular challenge when they arrive with little-to-no identifying information.
One recently acquired example of this is a collection of photographs we received from the Wilkinson Brothers Studio, run by John Wilkinson and his brother, Alfred, that operated in Cookshire from 1892 to about the 1940s. Out of the 117 photographs in the collection, only 18 bear any sort of identification. So while the crisp, rich images with the period clothing are captivating, their use is limited if we don’t know the names of the people pictured.
This is where we are asking for the public’s help! Have you lived in the Cookshire area for many decades and have great memory for names and faces? If so, you might be able to lend us a hand. We have made copies of all of the unidentified photographs and added them to our online website to browse through in the comfort of your home (visit https://www.townshipsarchives.ca/unidentified-adults to take a look). If the online version is not convenient for you, please get in touch with us for other options.
Another mystery comes from the Danville area and a portrait of a young man with the inscription E.G. Warren in the lower right corner. Aside from the signature, there is no other information on the photograph, which leads to the questions: was E.G. Warren (a minister at the Danville Congregational Church) also a photographer, or is he the individual pictured in the photograph? Perhaps your family has a photograph of Rev. Warren that would help us identify this photograph.
Every picture tells a story… Help us tell more stories through the identification of these unknown photographs.