Stephen Thorning

The agricultural history of Wellington County is a fascinating subject. 

We often hear the complaint that Canadian history is dull.

Long-disappeared Bosworth was once a place of importance. 

Last Sunday, Charlotte Broome very generously passed on to me a bag of old newspapers, clippings and other fascinating historical items that had been accumulated by her mother, the late Edith Broome, who served as Elora’s librarian in the 1960s to the early 1980s.

Maryborough council held its opening session for 1856 on Jan. 21. 

As an illustration for a recent column on Hustonville I used an 1870 letter sent from the post office in that vanished hamlet. This week, I want to take a closer look at that document.

Occupying a prominent place at the high point on Geddes Street, St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church has been one of the most prominent Elora landmarks since it was built in 1870. 

The Ontario Temperance Act (OTA), introduced in 1916 as a war measure and made permanent in 1919, encountered difficulties in the early 1920s. 

A few weeks ago a regular reader of this column stopped by with a bundle of old documents. I found one item of particular interest.

The promoters of the Arthur Junction Railway – a proposed line to run from near Goldstone to Arthur village and into West Luther Township – made a fresh effort to secure municipal aid in the fall of 1880. 

Generally, the mid-1950s was a time of optimism, as most people finally came to believe that the postwar prosperity was here to stay.

Guelph’s Winter Fair had reached the height of its importance as an agricultural show by 1904. 

For several generations, residents of southern Ontario marked the waning of summer with a trip to the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto.

Guelph police and the jail officials took no chances when they had Frenchie Bedard back in their custody. 

Back in the summer of 1921 three young men got to know one another as inmates at the Ontario Reformatory on the east end of Guelph.