1910s

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February 12, 2009

Dancing in the Sky

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1910s, events, military training, veterans, World War I
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Plans are well under way for the launch of C.W. (Bill) Hunt’s new book, Dancing in the Sky. The book was originally started by Al Smith, who began to write about the World War I training airfields around Deseronto. Al collected stories from people who had worked at (or had otherwise been involved with) the two camps (Camp Mohawk and Camp Rathbun) and amassed a number of photographs. Bill took over the project in 1998 and broadened the research to include the other Royal Flying Corps Canada locations in Ontario. The photographs collected by Al Smith are now available for research in Deseronto Archives (under the name J. Allan Smith Collection). The book is being published by Dundurn Press this month.

The Deseronto Public Library will be the venue for this launch on the 7 March 2009 at 2.00pm. We’ll be mounting a display of photographs and other historic materials relating to the Deseronto camps, and refreshments will be served. Bill Hunt will then talk about his book. Greenley’s Book Store will be there with copies of the book to buy (which I’m sure Bill will be happy to sign!) and there will also be a raffle draw with a chance to win a copy of the book and a selection of other goodies.

It is shaping up to be a great event, so if you have a chance to, please come along that afternoon! The invitation (a PDF file) has more details.

CAMPM-06-05
 

December 17, 2008

A Nose Dive

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1910s, military training, World War I
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The statistics on the Archives’ Flickr account show that the most popular image that we’ve put on the site is this picture of an aircraft crash, c.1917:

 

August 14, 2008

"Old Time Concert", 1915

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1910s, churches, Flickr, leisure, people
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One of the clever things about putting the Deseronto picture collection online with Flickr is the ability to annotate the photographs. If you go to Flickr by clicking on the image below you will see that each of the cast members of this Methodist Church concert has their name attached to their face in a note.

Anyone with a Flickr account can add to photos in this way (signing up for an account is free), so anybody with additional information about the photographs can annotate them or comment on them within Flickr. You can see an example of this on a photo of a crashed aircraft in the Deseronto Archives collection (although I’m not sure how useful this particular annotation is!). It would be good to get fuller names for some of the married women in this photograph, who are mainly identified by their husbands’ names (e.g. Mrs Walter Scott).

The Methodist Church in Canada merged with the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches in 1925 to form the United Church of Canada. The church hall of Deseronto’s United Church was named Stover Hall in honour of Percy Stover and his wife, Gertie (née Snider), who are two of the individuals in this photograph.

 

April 30, 2008

Fancy a drink? See your doctor!

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1910s, 1920s, featured item, health
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This was what you would have had to do in Ontario in 1925, anyway. Deseronto Archives holds a ‘Register of Liquor Sales’ which records sales of alcohol made by local druggist T. L. McCullough between October 16, 1925 and May 31, 1927. Under the terms of the Ontario Temperance Act of 1916, a customer was only allowed to buy alcohol if he or she had obtained a prescription from a doctor who had deemed “intoxicating liquor necessary for the health of his patient”.

The volume has columns for the name of the patient and the prescribing doctor, the quantity of alcohol purchased and its cost. The majority of the sales were for ‘alcohol’ or for spirits: brandy, gin, rum or whiskey. There is also a column for wine, but only four purchases of wine are recorded in the volume; all for communion wine for local churches. Every month, the druggist would return a copy of each page to the Board of License Commissioners for Ontario (the predecessor body to today’s Liquor Control Board of Ontario).

This volume was presented to the Town of Deseronto by Dorothy McCullough.

 

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