It looks like Dunvegan’s Glengarry Pioneer Museum will shortly awake from its Rip Van Winkle state to once again welcome the public. Under Ontario’s recently announced Stage 2 guidelines, “establishments primarily engaged in preserving and exhibiting objects, sites and natural wonders of historical, cultural and educational value are permitted to reopen with restrictions.” Happily, this list includes museums.
Curator Jennifer Black isn’t willing to commit to a firm date at this point. (She would love to aim for Canada Day.) However, she admits that it’s more realistic to look for the doors to open in early July. Which isn’t surprising, given the amount of work she and the three summer students have to do to get things ready. On the plus side, her merry band of helpers has worked at the museum in the past and is familiar with the ropes.
While in-person gatherings of any size continue to be strongly discouraged, the Stage 2 guidelines do make provision for “small outdoor events… with gathering-size restrictions, subject to local public health requirements.” Jennifer sees this as a glimmer of hope that not all of the Museum’s calendar of events for 2020 will be lost. Yes, the Harvest Fall Festival is definitely cancelled. However, the GPM may still be able to go ahead with its Classical Music Under the Stars concert, the Glengarry Artists’ Collective show, the annual 1812 Re-enactment and a pared-down Historical Driving Tour featuring favourite stops from past excursions.
Dates of these and other possible events are still being discussed. I will pass along more complete information as soon as I have it in my hot, normal-sized hands. Jennifer did tell me that, given the uncertainty of whether the usual retail outlets will be open, tickets for events requiring them would be available for purchase online.
To everything (churn, churn, churn)
I apologize to the late Pete Seeger for co-opting the lyrics from his adaptation of the “to everything there is a season” text from the Book of Ecclesiastes. It’s not always easy to find an appropriate headline for these items… especially one devoted to butter. Of late, I’ve become interested in the history of commercial butter making in Glengarry in the late 19thand early 20th centuries. This was sparked by an email from loyal reader Ken McEwen who wrote to say he “enjoyed the ‘old stuff’ about cheese factories” in my April 15th column. Ken’s father used to tell him that cheese and butter factories were ubiquitous throughout Glengarry “located the distance apart that farmers could access by a half-hour milk rig ride.” As the walking speed of a horse averages about four mph, this would translate into about every two miles or so. While this estimate may be a little optimistic, Rosemary Rutley in her book Of Curds and Whey documents at least thirteen cheese factories that operated in Kenyon Township, back in the day. “In my Dad’s youth on the farm,” Ken told me, “factory patrons took turns hauling a wagon load of cheese from the factory to Lancaster, where the cheeses were loaded on a barge bound for Montreal and probably overseas.”
Traditionally, the cheese-making season only ran from May to November. But in my initial research, I’ve seen references to factories in some regions of Ontario switching to butter production in the winter. Farmers would use hand-operated separators to collect the cream in five gallons pails for shipping to the creamery. This may have also been the case here in Glengarry.
According to Mr. McEwen, the 8th of Kenyon once had three cheese factories, one of which was at the gate of the family farm located on Lot 35, 7th of Kenyon. When I asked Ken if he knew of any turn-of-the-century creameries, he replied, “The only example I know of was the one across from the Franklin farm in the 8th Concession. It was there in my Dad’s time… but only a pile of red brick in the corner by the lane existed when I lived in the 7th.” It is Ken’s understanding the factory only produced butter and was run by a family with a name that sounds like Calloran. “There was also a big oval-topped building in Maxville, on the western extension of Catherine Street, which had been a butter factory,” added Ken. “It was used by old Bill MacEwen for storage, of among other things: dynamite.” But that’s a story for another week.
If you know of any early Glengarry creameries, or of books or articles that cover this topic, I would love to hear from you. In the meantime, if you’d like to get a glimpse of how butter was produced one hundred years ago in New Liskeard, Ontario, TVO has a wonderful six-minute film clip made when the factory first opened. Just search for “tvo.org” and “butter-making-in-new-liskeard,” and it should pop up. It covers everything from cream separation to churning it into butter and cutting the butter into one-pound blocks and putting them on a delivery wagon.
A rose by any other name…
I’ve started collecting colloquialisms. They take up a whole lot less space than antiques and are easy to take with us when, and if, we ever have to move. Granted they’re not worth a whole lot from a monetary perspective, but neither are antiques these days. As collections go, mine is an embryonic one. But, what the heck? It’s a start.
The first category I’m focusing on is regional variations on the theme of not being a local, i.e., a resident who is born and bred. In these parts, this unenviable condition is referred to as from away. As in, “what do you expect, they’re from away.” A similar colloquialism is come from away or the spiffy acronym: CFA. However, when you move from Canada to Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton and Vancouver Islander, the derogatory term used by these island folk is mainlander.
My most recent addition to the collection came courtesy of Steve ‘Spider’ Merritt. Steve’s parents were instrumental in the founding of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, an international craft school located on the Atlantic Ocean in Deer Isle, Maine. I asked Steve what Deer Islanders called CFAs and, without hesitation, he replied “summer complaints.” According to Steve, these summer residents came by their nickname honestly: by complaining about everything, including the fog. Who would’ve thought there would be fog on an island off the Atlantic coast? If you have any contributions you’d like to see in my collection, please send them my way.
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