Archive

Celebrations abound for Historical Society

June 14, 2013   ·   0 Comments

Two events made the May meeting of the Tecumseth & W. Gwillimbury Historical Society a very special one indeed. First of all, the Society celebrated it’s 35th birthday and secondly, local historian and Alliston resident Carolyn Knowles was our guest speaker.

Carolyn’s family is intertwined with Alliston’s past; perhaps that explains  her dedication to search, on microfiche, through 4000 articles from Alliston’s newspapers between 1871 and 1991. Using that information she traced Alliston’s past beginning with the arrival in 1847 of the Fletcher family who built a grist mill and a saw mill on the Boyne river. Their first residence still stands on Fletcher Cres.  Subsequently another mill was built by Alexander Grant  in 1853; his daughter, Margaret,  was the mother of Alliston’s famous son, Sir Frederick Banting.  The Fletcher family also donated land for the building of St. Johns Church as well as  Union Cemetery. The arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway in1877 spurred growth and various hotels and businesses followed. One such industry was the Mercer Implement Factory, now the Gibson Cultural Centre.  A devastating fire, started somewhere behind the Windsor Hotel  in 1891, reduced much of the downtown to ashes but, undaunted, the town rallied and new buildings were constructed – a brick Town Hall with an Opera House was a highlight.

On a personal note, Carolyn’s grandfather built Alliston’s first electric light plant powered by steam on a site where the footbridge is today. Carolyn wryly noted that the ashes from that plant still rest in the soil around the house her grandfather built where Carolyn presently lives and shards of glass from an adjacent greenhouse heated by the power plant keep surfacing in her garden.

Many  less- known facts have emerged from Carolyn’s research.  For example. The Mormon religion had missionaries in the area in 1840s and they built a church in 1881. A Rollerskating Arena preceded the ice arena. Guy Lombardo played for a dance in the Agricultural Fair Building, now the Museum on the Boyne. That building boasts the chandelier from the old Town Hall and its bell is atop the Cultural Centre. But Carolyn laments the loss of so many original buildings and the history that they represented. Still, with keen researchers such as Carolyn, the past is not only being recovered and recorded but, best of all, celebrated.

Celebrations on 35 years of preserving and promoting local history rounded out the evening. June Chambers gave a charming review of the founding and the ongoing activities of our Society from plaquing historic sites, publishing books,  producing a major video to commissioning a drama based on a notable Beeton event. Scrapbooks and June’s posters from earlier meetings were highlights. And, of course, there was cake! Our final event is a picnic. We reconvene on Sept. 16. Happy Summer to all.

Readers Comments (0)