You think I would have learned by now not to assume. Last week, when I suggested you contact Heather Bentley about participating in the Glengarry Pioneer Museum’s “Friends of the Museum” membership program, I assumed she was still handling memberships. She isn’t. Heather, who has been doing a great job with the membership portfolio for many years, decided to take a well-earned break, and I must have missed the memo. She felt that someone else might bring new energy to the task.
It appears Heather was right. Her leaving has been the catalyst for some exciting changes that have been proposed for the membership program, including its transition to a digital platform and flexibility in renewal dates. Instead of the cumbersome approach of tying renewal dates to the calendar year, the new computer-based system will allow annual renewals to be based on whatever date the membership was purchased. The program will track the memberships and send custom renewal reminders out a few weeks before the anniversary date.
Until such time as the new system is up and running, curator Jennifer Black suggests that, if you wish to inquire about membership (they make a great gift), call the museum at 613-527-5320 or email info@glengarrrypioneermuseum.ca.
PS: Thank you Heather and Jim Bentley for doing such a great job for so many years.
Canvas tents and Harley hogs
For those of you who passed by the museum last weekend and wondered what the heck was going on, I have the inside scoop from curator Jennifer Black.
Let’s begin with the tent city that sprung up on the museum grounds. It was not a troop of time-travelling boy scouts from the 1950s or a band of Occupy Bay Street protestors that had been blown off course. It was a small contingent of the Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles. Ten ‘living history’ re-enactors setup a small camp to practice military life skills from the early 1800s, such as foot drills and cooking over an open fire. The private gathering was a faint shadow of what should have been taking place last weekend. Without the pandemic, this year would have been the 10th annual War of 1812 historical re-enactment event in Dunvegan. The two-day trip back in time would have featured everything from swordsmanship demos and an axe throwing competition to the SD&G Highlanders pipe band and a thrilling battle re-enactment daily. With any luck things will return to some semblance of normal, and they’ll be back in full force next year. The thought of historical re-enactors fighting a pitched battle with flintlock muskets – while wearing surgical masks – is just plain wrong.
Then there was the assemblage of motorcyclists that filled the museum’s parking lot on Saturday. Jennifer tells me it was a group tour of our little museum that had been booked over a month ago. The group consisted of around twenty-five members of the Scottish Society of Ottawa. The open-air run was the perfect way to combine their love of history and a burning need to get out of the house.
Sleigh trail map
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the sleigh trail shortcut that generations of families from Dunvegan and Skye used to transport their milk to the Borden plant in Maxville. I described the route in words, but promised to include a map of the trail when I posted the column on my blog. It took me a week longer than I had hoped, but it’s now online if you want to check it out: www.dungean-times.ca (see below). As you’ll note, I’ve superimposed a rough approximation of the route on a portion of the 1879 Belden Atlas map of Kenyon. It’s interesting to note that, on this map, there is a small cluster of buildings where Maxville would be established in 1891, but the village-to-be doesn’t yet rate a name.
One ringy-dingy…
While researching another story, I came across a reference to Roxborough Telephone Company, a small telephone firm with its headquarters in Moose Creek. Recently rebranded as OntarioEast, Roxborough Telephone is one of twenty-one independent Canadian telecommunication Davids facing Goliaths like Bell and Telus. It was a surprise to me to discover that seventeen of these independents are located in rural Ontario communities like Beachburg, Woodstock and Moose Creek. I’m still awaiting a response from Roxborough Telephone, but I gather they’ve been able to fend off the big boys by being innovative and agile. For example, just over the western border of Kenyon, their subscribers have access to fibre optic-based Internet and telephone service. Big city download and upload speeds, in the middle of the country. I suspect this is because their rural customers are their prime customers, not just sweepings on the switchboard floor like we are to the big boys.
How on earth does the Roxborough Telephone Company relate to Dunvegan? As I discovered while tiptoeing through the Glengarry Archives, from the early 1900s to the late 1940s, Roxborough Telephone provided telephone services to Kenyon farms, businesses and residents. Dunvegan included. However, instead of billing individual subscribers as is done today, they invoiced the Township of Kenyon once a year… and the township, in turn, included the telephone charges on the annual tax bills. On a sample of a 1942 tax bill, the services are clearly itemized: Roxborough Telephone Subscriber’s Levy, Renter’s Levy and L.D. Messages (which I presume is “long distance”).
I didn’t have time to go into the records in detail, but I did notice that one of their Dunvegan subscribers was the Rev. William Morrison. Born in Nova Scotia and ordained in Dalhousie Mills, Rev. Morrison served in Dunvegan’s Kenyon Presbyterian Church from 1912 to 1921. I’m not sure what his Subscriber’s Levy or L.D. Charges were, but from 1919 to 1921 he paid an average of $13.35 for his annual Renter’s Levy. That’s about $180 in today’s dollars… or $15 a month. Even though he left Dunvegan in 1921 for 32 years, he must have had a strong attachment to our hamlet and its church for he was buried here in 1953.
Obviously Terry and I never knew Rev. Morrison. However, we did know his son Russell. He too loved Dunvegan and returned here when he retired. He built the little Pan-Abode log house just to the south of the brick hotel across from the museum. He took great pride in his home. It and the lot around it were as neat as a pin. Russell was the very first Dunveganite we met when we moved here in September of 1980. He drove into our yard, opened his trunk and offered us the bounty of his garden… “since you obviously don’t have time to put one in before winter comes.” It was Russell who got us involved the community and the Dunvegan Recreation Association. It was a loss to the community when Russell died on February 16, 1984. He, like his father before him, is buried in Dunvegan.
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