If pestilence had not been visited upon our fair land, Sunday past would have been the Glengarry Pioneer Museum’s 21st Harvest Fall Festival. Not readily adaptable to the current precautionary public health regulations, it and the museum’s other larger events – the Smith-In, the Stitch-in-Time fibre festival and the 1812 Living History Weekend – were cancelled this year. As was the much-anticipated, even bigger Christmas market. In the end, only two out of the ten events scheduled for this season were held: the Historical Driving Tour and the Glengarry Artists’ Collective’s art show.
Obviously, even in the best of years, the window that the museum has to raise money to help offset its operating costs is a narrow one. In 2020, though, it was no wider that a rifle slit in a palisade wall. Thankfully, there were the rental fees generated when Hallmark’s take on Hollywood came to town, plus the proceeds the museum’s very first online auction. However, I suspect they will still come up short.
So I urge you to make sure your GPM membership is up to date. If you don’t have one, contact Heather Bentley at 613-525-5268. She’ll explain the “Friends of the Museum” program and its three levels of partnership: Individual, Family and Individual Lifetime. She’ll also tell you about the exclusive benefits you’ll enjoy as a member including: free access to all Museum exhibits and events; a discount on most Museum merchandise and souvenirs in the Gift Shop; a discount on rental of the Williams Pavilion; a personal invitation to the Museum’s Annual General Meeting; advance notice of special events: and the GPM’s information-packed Timelines newsletter.
Archives: Home at last!
As members of North Glengarry’s municipal council know, I am not shy to speak my mind and to call them to task when I think they are wanting. However, when it comes to the new home of the Glengarry Archives on Kenyon Street East in Alexandria, our Council (and its counterpart in South Glengarry) got it 100% right. Well done, ladies and gentlemen. You could have insisted, in a pointless show of political correctness, that a purpose-built building be erected smack dab in the centre of Glengarry… somewhere silly like at the end of Chapel Road. So far off the beaten path, no one would ever visit. Instead, you chose to tangibly prove your commitment to Glengarry’s history by rescuing Alexandria’s oldest building and bringing it back from the brink of terminal remuddling. The trust you’ve placed in Archivist Allan MacDonald’s vision has wrought a facility in which every resident of Glengarry, North and South, can take extreme pride.
While not fully operational – some details like the access ramp have yet to be completed – it is open to the public by appointment. That’s how I happened to be there last week, to research an item for an upcoming column. The change since my last visit was astounding. The cavernous public space now boasts a truly magnificent table for researchers to spread out. Custom built from my favourite native species of wood and donated to the Archives by a patron, the tabletop measures an impressive 48” wide by 168” long. At the other end of the room, a massive desk that reeks of gravitas was being wired for computer access. A gift from Mr. MacDonald’s wife, Rosemary, it is the perfect place for our volunteer archivist to hang his hat.
It should be noted that the Glengarry County Archives was a family affair. While Allan did yeoman service managing the project… drawing up plans, dealing with suppliers and the trades, obtaining permits and the thousand and one other details… Rosemary also left a strong mark on the project. Unique touches like the cool window into the storage room and incorporating the old door from the MacDonald’s cellar were her ideas. She also lobbied hard to retain the main entrance facing Kenyon Street. It’s a finishing touch that, in my opinion, is key in that it respects the building’s heritage as a home. In the words of a close friend and neighbour with whom I spoke, “Without Rosemary, the archives would look very stark and boring indeed. She has put finesse into that place… and her heart.”
Before the big move, it was obvious that, thanks to Mr. MacDonald’s outreach, the archive had begun to earn the public’s trust. Private individuals, businesses big and small and community organizations from all four corners of Glengarry were depositing their historical records for safekeeping and use by future generations of researchers. Now that the Archives has a permanent home with over 8,000 square feet of climate controlled storage, I predict that this nascent flow will soon become an outpouring of acceptance. There was even a hint of this sentiment the short time I was there the other day. One kind soul dropped in to donate a panoramic photo from 1918 of patients and staff stiffly posed in front of a military hospital on Salisbury Plain, England.
With the new building in his rear view mirror, Mr. MacDonald tells me he now wants to turn his attention to records acquisition. The doors to the past are closing and he hopes to gather as much of the County’s history as possible, before they do. Another project he’s very excited about is the creation of “historical snapshots” of the commercial life of Glengarry’s towns, villages and hamlets from the 1950s to present day. Which brings me back to Dunvegan. If you lived here in the early 50s and have memories of the businesses in our little hamlet that, over time, withered and eventually died, please contact Allan MacDonald at 613-209-0202.
Co-op helped when Amazon failed
Last week, I expressed an interest in acquiring a copy of The Schools of the Glens to add to my library of Glengarry history. I’d checked Amazon’s Abebooks, and it was a wash. To be frank, I fully expected my appeal to fall upon deaf ears. But nothing ventured… etc. Within days, Phyllis Noble from the Dalkeith Plus co-operative library (and more) called to say they had a copy of the book for sale and to drop by on Saturday if I was interested in purchasing it. So, on my way to Gaetan’s for my weekly steamie, I headed east at Laggan and headed to Dalkeith. It had been a while since I was last on the road to Dalkeith and I was struck by the contrast with Dunvegan Road. Both thoroughfares have been freshly resurfaced, so road condition played no part in the comparison. I was struck by how much Laggan Glenelg Road reminded me of Dunvegan Road… thirty-plus years ago. The unsettling blemishes that spoil County Road 24 today… derelict buildings, abandoned construction sites, ugly transport trailers, multiple scrap metal yards, and the list of eyesores goes on… are refreshingly absent on the cruise to Dalkeith.
Phyllis Noble was on duty at the former public school, community hall, SD&G Library branch and now home of Dalkeith Plus, a co-operative library initiative and more. She gave me an eye-opening tour of the little library that in some ways has put the County library to shame. Mrs. Noble’s daughter, Brenda, is one of the prime organizers of the initiative, in addition to serving on North Glengarry’s Council and working in the travel industry. Brenda is rightly proud of what this community-based effort has accomplished. “We have 8,000 books, almost double what we had when we belonged to the SD&G library system,” Brenda emailed me. I should add that there appeared to be a pretty substantial collection of works en français. “The library is staffed by dedicated volunteers who work the shifts,” Brenda continued, “and we just added our 137th member last weekend.” While I have yet to try it out, I’m told one can even access their catalogue online.
Another thing that caught my eye while on the tour was their ‘Red Cupboard’… code for their reference collection. As befitting a library with strong Glengarry County roots, there is an emphasis on local lore and history. I was flabbergasted to find a reference work by Royce MacGillivray that I had long been looking for: Sandy Fraser: A Bibliography of the writings of John E. McIntosh, 1876-1948. The nearest copy I’d been able to find to date was in Toronto. With the inter-library loan system still inoperable (don’t want yet another vector for the virus to sneak in), it was beyond my reach. I’m hoping the Bibliography will help me narrow down when Sandy was writing about the birthday celebration he had planned for his wife Jean.
If you’re wondering about the “plus” part in their Dalkeith Plus name, the little co-op is involved in much more than books and, by the way, an impressive collection of DVDs. For example, on October 3rd, they’re holding a small farm show. “It’s free for everyone, vendors and attendees,” Brenda told me. “It will focus on the different types of farming, with exhibits and displays.” The co-op also has a Card Night for Men on Thursdays and Sewing on Wednesdays. “We’re always open to new ideas and events,” Brenda wrote.
Because of the pandemic, the co-op is operating on a reduced schedule. It’s open Wednesday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. If you’d like to know more, visit their Facebook page.
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