To be frank, there was a moment back during the seemingly endless chain of Covid lockdowns when I wondered if things would ever get back to something resembling normal for our little museum in Dunvegan. Well, this coming Victoria Day weekend it does… just in time for the Glengarry Pioneer Museum’s 60th anniversary. There won’t be any hoopla; there’s only so far the museum’s Board wants to go in tempting fate. Nevertheless, the GPM’s very active ‘Stewards of the Pioneer Garden’ group has planned a modest plant sale for Saturday, May 21st. Some occupants of the heritage garden were in need of dividing. So these offspring are being combined with other perennial favourites to create a plant sale. All proceeds from the sale will be ploughed back into the museum gardens.
The good news is that the restricted access rules and apocalyptic dress code of the past few years is gone. You and your family are welcome to take a peek at Glengarry’s past by exploring the ten heritage buildings to your heart’s content. “We’ve also put together two new seasonal exhibits,” curator Jennifer Black told me, “one showcasing the museum’s six decades of service and another that looks at Glengarry’s proud past (and exciting future) as a major contributor to Ontario’s dairy industry.” Even if dusty old history isn’t your thing, the museum’s lush green setting is a wonderful place for a picnic.
In addition, Jennifer tells me that they have a pretty ambitious program of events planned for their 60th season. These include: the weekend-long ‘Smith-In’ blacksmithing festival; the ‘Stitch In Time’ fibre arts celebration; a ‘Music Under the Stars’ classical concert; and an art show by the Glengarry Artists’ Collective. There will even be a sweet new event: the Glengarry Honey Fair. And, of course, the popular Harvest Fall Festival and 1812 Living History weekend will close out the season in September.
If you’ve never been to the museum before, just plug ‘Dunvegan’ into Google Maps. Take care to choose the right one or you could end up in Scotland. For more details, contact Jennifer Black at 613-527-5230 or visit their web site: GlengarryPioneerMuseum.ca.
The one-way border
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a construction project north of Dunvegan at the north end of Leslie Clark’s old farm. While it’s impossible to monitor progress from the road — the site is a good ways back, hidden by a berm — one small development last week, visible to all passers-by, was the erection of a large sign at the side of County Road 30 announcing the identity of the construction firm: Bähler. I’d never heard of the company before, so I went to their web site and learned that the firm specializes in concrete framework, livestock buildings, biogas and turnkey agricultural projects. The only catch is that the company is located in Sherbrooke, Quebec.
I fully support the right of an owner to engage whomsoever he or she wants to build their barn. However, my understanding was that the Ontario/Quebec trades reciprocity agreement was still unsigned. So I checked with a friend of mine who is a fully licensed electrician in this province. He confirmed that it is still illegal for Ontario tradespeople to work in Quebec without meeting a whole list of onerous conditions, including having a bricks & mortar office that operates in French. However, as he finds on job sites in Ottawa all the time, there is nothing to prevent Quebec tradespeople from working in Ontario, with no oversight from Skilled Trades Ontario, the Crown agency that has replaced the Ontario College of Trades. I think that what’s good for the rooster, should also apply to the hen.
Of course, Bähler could have every intention of sourcing its materials and work force from Ontario for its Dunvegan project, but I am wee bit sceptical. Ontario is a very popular place with tradesmen and women from our neighbour to the east for one reason; we accept workers who are uncertified by Quebec’s equivalent of Skilled Trades Ontario and allow them to ply their trade with no College oversight. “Quebec workers flood across the border every day taking jobs from Ontarians,” my Ontario electrician friend lamented. “And yet we can be arrested if we drive our work truck and tools into La Belle Province.”
Think today’s are bad?
While you wouldn’t know it given last week’s mercury-busting temperatures, it’s still spring in Dunvegan. A time for more shades of vibrant green than one would ever think were possible. A time when the sound of cold wind through naked trees and the caw of an occasional crow is replaced with the unexplained honks of migrating geese, the joyful chorus of mating songbirds and the buzz of insects hard at work. A time when it seems like every motorcycle from western Quebec (some with mufflers, most without, but with the added insult of a blaring radio) drive up and down Dunvegan Road. Especially now that it’s been recently resurfaced.
But springtime in Dunvegan wasn’t always so easy. Okay, the foliage, birds and insects most likely still did their thing. But Dunvegan Road, before it was paved at the beginning of the 1960s, was a far cry from today’s ribbon of asphalt that’s as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Reader Jim Fletcher, who grew up in the 1940s and 50s about a mile east of the crossroads, remembers the sorry state of the roads in his day. “They were terrible,” he told me in an email, “especially in the spring when the frost was coming out.” He went on to say that Dunvegan Road was gravel, with many ruts, potholes and brush right up to the edge… all the way to Highway 34. “The first hill east of your place would require you take a run at it in order to get your car through,” Jim recalled.
The “hill” Jim is referring to is the slight rise in the road that occurs in front of Marisol Lopez and Robert Gauthier’s place, right across from where the Griers used to live. With the type of roads Jim describes, it’s no big surprise that people shopped close to home. Even in the 1960s, Dunvegan had two general stores a few hundred feet apart. One even sold Supertest gasoline. I asked Jim which one his family used. We did most of our shopping at Ferguson’s store,” he replied. Martin Ferguson was apparently well-stocked for the needs of the local farmers. He had harness parts, logging chains, saws, axes, bridles, feed for your animals, clothing, shoes, boots, even ice cream and candy. “I was telling my granddaughter that ice cream was 5¢ a cone,” Jim wrote. “Now, it’s $4 for just one cone. I could’ve bought 80 cones for that.”
School gets facelift
In 1970, Jack Finney wrote what, for want of a better label, is classified as a science fiction novel. Its title is “Time and Again,” but it has nothing to do with outer space or little green humanoids. Reading it, though, does require a suspension of disbelief. To make a long story short, the protagonist is recruited for a secret project designed to travel back in time. The theory is that people can be sent back into the past through a form of self-hypnosis. So participants are immersed in settings that replicate their target period down to the smallest detail. As one of the characters remarks when examining her new wardrobe of clothes from 1882, everything is so unlike what she has seen in museums; dull, faded and moth-eaten. Her new ‘old’ clothes are vibrant, colourful, and full of life. Something that women back in 1882 would have wanted to wear.
It’s this book that jumped to mind as I passed by the museum last Friday. The ‘Big Beaver’ schoolhouse grabbed my eyeballs and wouldn’t let go. The elegant, antique tin roofing tiles had been given a coat of aluminum paint. And the white siding and green trim had been scrapped and repainted too. For a fraction of time, I could imagine what this wonderful example of a one-room schoolhouse looked like the day the original workmen packed up their tools at the turn of last century and moved on to their next project.
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