“Making HIstory: The Economics of Heritage” at Quinte Living Centre Auditorium, 370 Front St., Belleville on Tuesday, May 17 at 7:30 PM.
Come along and bring a friend to find out more about how we can learn, enjoy and promote the of history of our area.
Peter Lockyer speaks to Kingston Rotary Club
Hello and welcome. My name is Peter Lockyer and I have a company named History Lives Here Inc.
History Lives Here provides a wide range of communication and multimedia services to its clients – businesses, industry associations and communities celebrating significant anniversaries. Simply put, we’re storytellers. We tell old stories to new audiences using today’s technologies.
We’re here today to launch the 2010 edition of the History Moments series. These are short video vignettes on local history themes that play before movies at The Regent, are broadcast on Cogeco Cablevision, have been distributed into area schools, libraries, archives and museums, are part of the interpretative program to the over 550,000 annual visitors to the Sandbanks Provincial Park, and are available online through the company’s website www.historyliveshere.ca
We launched the vignettes last year as part of the 225th anniversary of the Loyalist settlement of Prince Edward County – a settlement that was a defining moment in our history and the story of Canada. The History Moments series is actually part of a trio of activities by the partnering organizations – History Lives Here, the Glenwood Cemetery, the museums of Prince Edward County and the Regent Theatre – to showcase local history, to enhance public awareness of the need to preserve our heritage and heritage organizations.
So we have also developed our Gallows and Graveyards walking tours of Picton on summer weekends. There’s one tonight at 6:30 that starts in the parking lot of Macaulay Museum on Church St. in Picton where a costumed guide takes you over to the old courthouse and gallows to hear the story of two men hanged in 1884 for a botched robbery in Bloomfield.
Saturday night’s tour at 6:30 begins in the restored Chapel at the Glenwood Cemetery in downtown Picton and takes you on a tour of this historic Victorian cemetery that remains a “timepiece” just as it was when it opened in 1873.
We also launched an historical lecture series this year in March with a lecture by Picton native Judge Robert Sharpe of the Ontario Court of Appeal who is completing a book on the 1884 double hanging. Judge Sharpe reviewed the case and the key question – did we hang two innocent men 126 years ago? We are now planning the next lectures in our series scheduled for the fall.
We haven’t charged any admission for this presentation today. My community partners in this history project felt pretty strongly that nobody was ever going to pay any money to hear me speak.
But I thought you might be interested to know just how this project came about and how the group of us got into the history business. I used to work with CBC Radio and Television and I liked to ask that question of people I interviewed. Why are you doing what you’re doing? It led to some pretty interesting conversations – which was good because I really wasn’t prepared to ask them anything else.
In 2000, I came home to Picton after over 30 years away. The people here seemed willing to forgive and forget.
I got involved with the Glenwood cemetery, a beautiful 62-acre cemetery in the heart of Picton. That was a rough time for Glenwood. It has suffered 50 years of neglect and everything needed to be fixed. The place gave new meaning to the word “non-profit.”
I might not have gotten involved if I actually had realized how much work was going to be involved. In that way, it was a little bit like my first marriage. But a small group of us persevered, and we decided we needed to tell the community about the history of Glenwood, our vision for it, and how they could help.
So we wrote a little brochure,and I wrote the words History Lives Here in it. I don’t know where that came from, but I thought those three words described Glenwood so simply. I liked the phrase so much I started a company called History Lives Here to work with community heritage groups to market their history.
A decade later, Glenwood is a different place – although the restoration work is still continuing. And we here today talking about some of the historical services we have developed in partnership with other community groups like the Regent and the museums of Prince Edward County.
The 2010 History Moments series
The centerpiece of our history initiatives is the History Moments series. This year we have 12 vignettes sponsored by local businesses and community organizations.
I’d like to thank our sponsors – not just for their sponsorship dollars (although we do appreciate that) but also for their belief in what we’re doing. It’s very encouraging.
Our 2010 sponsors are:
Elizabeth Crombie of Royal LePage Realty and Shelagh Mathers of Mathers Law Office, The Friends of the Maritime Museum, The Sandbanks Provincial Park and the Friends of the Sandbanks Park, The Waring House Inn, Claramount Inn and Spa, The Prince Edward Stewardship Council, Reynolds and Murray Chartered Accountants, Lloyd’s Heating and Cooling, The Black Prince Winery (who will be providing complimentary History Lives Here wine following our presentation), The Boulter Orange Lodge, Essroc Cement, the Inrig Family, and The Glenwood Cemetery.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER?
Why bother will all this old stuff from a long time ago? I’m sometimes asked that – and here’s what I say:
The Aging of Canadian Volunteer Agencies
IT MATTERS BECAUSE THE FUTURE OF THE PAST IN MOST COMMUNITIES IS VERY UNCERTAIN.
Community and heritage organizations in small towns and big cities all across Canada are aging.
It’s just demographics really. All these organizations count heavily on volunteers to raise funds and to carry on the work they do. Their volunteer base is getting older; and they are tired -fatigued from years of fundraising and the struggle to stay open.
It’s a great folly to think that these organizations will always be here as they are today.
I could name you a dozen local organizations on the verge of folding unless there is a means of recruiting new volunteers within the next decade and finding new revenue streams to sustain them. This challenge to the volunteer sector won’t result in the loss of just one organization in one community. It’s going to be an unprecedented failure in communities all across Canada. And since these organizations raise millions of dollars collectively each year – at no cost to us for a wide range of worthy community causes – there will be a domino effect; a collapse of community.
We need to renew these organizations with a new and shared vision, forge new partnerships in our communities so groups compliment rather than compete for limited funds and volunteers, and to develop new revenue streams beyond municipal funding and grant programs. That’s why it matters.
Reaching A Future Generation of Volunteers
IT MATTERS because there is a future generation of volunteers now in schools who learn about history – but it’s apparently history that happened a long time ago someplace else. I would argue that history is all around us…and it’s unfolding everyday. We’re making history today. We need to develop professional products and services that engage and excite this next generation to get involved in their communities.
A Loss of Heritage
IT MATTERS because there is a pitched battle taking place in every community in Canada at the moment. It’s the one you hardly ever read about. But it’s a battle communities are losing badly. It’s the battle over our disappearing heritage.
In Picton this year, we lost an entire block of the downtown. We’re going to have a new mall sitting next door to the shopping mall we built in the late 1970s that knocked down some heritage houses. I used to live in one of these gracious old homes that lined our Main Street.
One block from our new shopping site is a 175 – year old former Methodist Church that is being demolished as we speak. This iconic structure is a landmark – a fixture of Main Street that will soon be gone.
It’s across from the Bank of Montreal, which sits on the front lawn of one of Prince Edward County’s most historic houses – the residence of Captain John Pepper Downes built in the 1850s. You’ll get to see that house today in one of our vignettes. The building is surrounded by a shopping mall and other more modern developments. It’s needs a lot of work and it’s up for sale. Most likely, it will be decked for more parking spaces soon.
There are more demolitions scheduled. There have been many in the past. The old law office of Sir John A. Macdonald, our most famous resident, was demolished back in the late 1950s or early 1960s. It sat on the top of the town hill. John A. is the subject of our first vignette. It’s too bad his old office is no longer here since his 200th birthday will be celebrated nationally in 2015.
It’s true we have had some restoration successes – the Glenwood Chapel, the Crystal Palace and the grandstand were saved by some dedicated volunteers when we wanted to tear those down for parking spaces; Macaulay house and church were purchased by the municipality in 1974 and continues to be restored as a museum; some enlightened development has taken place along our Main Street to build condos and trendy shops in other buildings threatened with demolition.
It’s just that we can’t restore buildings as fast as we are destroying them.
So this matters because we are losing the battle to maintain our heritage in Prince Edward County. In the great rush for “sameness” to pave over farmland and rural landscapes, to make the entranceways to our county a bland blur of pavement, box stores and shopping malls. We have to ask ourselves if we tear down all the special places in our community, then what’s so special about our community?
On the worst of days, I’m always cheered by the fact that the pyramids are safe as long as they stay in Egypt -because in Prince Edward County we would have decked them a long time ago.
You might think I am anti-development. I’m actually not. I grew up here many years ago when this was a poor place. I think we can welcome box stores, shopping malls, and fast food places – just not at any cost.
I believe that we need to put heritage first – and not last – on our list of priorities. If heritage guided our planning and development decisions, we could have progress while saving our heritage and maintaining “this special place.”
A LOST ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
FINALLY IT MATTERS because the loss of our heritage is also a lost economic opportunity.
We talk a lot here about our creative economy. And indeed there are many creative people who now live here. But what if we were even more creative?
What might have happened if we had encouraged the box stores, fast food places and shopping malls to redevelop Camp Picton – our old army camp. It’s minutes from the downtown core; it has a wonderful view of the harbour; it’s not on prime farmland, and it needs development. What a shopping experience that could have been for visitors to say they shopped in stores on an old restored army camp.
What would happen if we helped the agricultural society renew the Picton Fair, one of our featured vignettes today and an organization celebrating its 175th anniversary this year? What if we helped to transform the current fair into an 1880s period fair with displays of old farm equipment and tractors, antique shows, period meals cooked by county chefs, classes in quilt making and food preservation, exhibits drawn from our museums on The Barley Days, the canning era, a film festival of old films about Prince Edward County – there are a least 5 of them we have uncovered at the National Archives; the photographs of the County by two period photographers from the 1880s, and ‘90s, William James Topley (1845 – 1930) and Marsden Kemp, an amateur photographer who lived in Kingston and Picton up until the 1940s. This could be.
Every month there are 68 million around the world who google the word “history”. They’re looking for history. We have it.
The History Channel in the U.S. and Canada were formed to match advertisers with a consumer demographic – baby boomers and their parents who are now in the midst of the greatest wealth transfer in the history of the world. (This seems to be news to my Mom…but it’s actually happening).
Gettysburg in the United States is best known for three days of history – for a battle that took place there in the 1860s during the American Civil War. It’s worth over $90 million dollars a year to them from the 1.5 million visitors they receive annually. It’s created almost 3000 jobs.
We have a little more than three days of history. We have 226 years of Loyalist settlement.
We need to take this “hidden history” lying dormant in our archives, libraries, museums and cemeteries and transform it into “popular history” that meets the market –based demand for professionally produced products and services on heritage themes. This is the hidden wealth within our community….a renewable and sustainable resource because we will never, ever run out of history. I believe we should market it; place it on our municipal books as an asset rather than an afterthought. We should forge a new vision for our community that places history and heritage first as defining principles for our development.
Prince Edward County has around 700,000 visitors every year. What if we sold them $10 worth of heritage each year by telling them these old stories? What if the money went into a heritage fund that sustained our historic properties, helped the museums add to their collections of local materials, helped us work with property owners and developers to retain our heritage buildings because we had the money to do it?
This is why history and heritage matter – why these History Moments, our walking tours, our lecture series and a whole host of other heritage activities here matter.
I began today by saying that my company tells old stories to new audiences. Let us now tell you 12 wonderful stories about Prince Edward County.
I don’t do this work alone. I have 14 wonderfully talented associates living in Ottawa, Toronto, Kingston, Picton and places in between. When you watch these, know that this work is also their work. And they are very, very good at what they do.
And afterwards, I hope you will join us for a reception and a glass of History Lives Here wine by our sponsor The Black Prince Winery. Thanks for coming.
Remarks by Peter Lockyer
History Lives Here Inc.
August 6, 2010
George Lowder, aged 23, died first. But his fellow prisoner, Joseph Thomset, a 35-year old fisherman, struggled for a full fourteen minutes on the hangman’s noose on the early morning of June 10,1884.
Sentenced to hang at the Picton gaol for a botched robbery outside of Bloomfield that left one man murdered in December 1883, Lowder and Thomset maintained their innocence to the end. But were they innocent? Many local residents thought so and unsuccessfully petitioned the courts and Prime Minister John A. Macdonald for clemency. It remains the most celebrated court case in the history of Prince Edward County.
The fate of Lowder and Thompset hinged on the evidence of the boots they wore and the tracks in the snow that led a posse of local men to their homes.
“Well the tracks are very important because that’s how they think they got the two men who committed the crime.” says Judge Robert Sharpe, a Picton native who now serves on the Ontario Court of Appeal in Toronto. Sharpe is writing a book on the 1884 trial.
“There were clearly tracks leading from the house going in the direction of West Lake and certainly tracks found around the homes of these two men. No one was actually able to trace the tracks all the way from the farmhouse to the two different homes, but they could find tracks along the way.
There was one pair of boots that had a somewhat distinctive bottom called a “patch bottom” and the people that did the tracking thought that they could tell if it was this particular pair of boots that left the tracks and that pair of boots was found in the home of one of the two men.”
And yet, there were many inconsistencies in the trial testimony that might have saved the men in another age. A local boot maker testified that the “patch bottom” boot was very popular in The County and the size – 8 1/2 -was also the most common size. Key witnesses such as Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Quaker farmers who defended their home against the robbers, were uncertain about identifying Lowder and Thompset as the men who had entered their house. Farmer Jones thought one of the men was older and had a limping gait.
“For some reason,” says Judge Sharpe, “nothing much was made of this but it occurred to me that this might support the local feeling at the time that maybe it was the father John Lowder and not his son George who was involved in the crime because as Mr. Jones described the man running off, he said he had a kind of ungainly gait; he was running with a bit of difficulty. Now you’d think that would suggest perhaps an older man who was having a little bit of difficulty running. But somehow that issue didn’t get exploited at the trial, and there were some very fine lawyers at this trial so it’s hard to second-guess them at this distance. But it occurred to me that that was something that was potentially quite important.”
Judge Sharpe is skeptical of the conviction of George Lowder.
“We know that Joseph Thompset was in his early thirties,” he says. “He was a fisherman and he fished in partnership with George Lowder’s father, John Lowder. He lived near West Lake with his wife and one child. In the case of George Lowder, it was a family of several children. He was the second youngest and he was a mason by trade. He was much younger. He was in his early twenties. Thompset had had encounters with authorities before, and had been charged with minor offences before. Lowder had a completely clean record.”
In the charged atmosphere that swept through the County during the months following the crime, it was difficult for the two accused men to receive a fair trial. They weren’t allowed to testify in their own defence. And in the court of public opinion, they were guilty as hell.
“The atmosphere was quite amazing,” states Judge Sharpe,” because this was a huge event in the life of the town. There was a large crowd of people. The hotels were full. It was very difficult to get into the courtroom. The courtroom holds a lot of people, but there was a lineup of people who could not get in. The people in the courtroom were we know from the trial records, and from a letter from a prominent lawyer written after the trial, extremely unruly. And they would applaud every time the prosecution made a point and jeer every time the defence tried to score a point. And at a couple of points the trial judge had to clear the courtroom as he felt the crowd was so unruly and so disrespectful of the process. Clearly there were strong feelings at the time and I would say that a substantial part of this community were out for blood. They were convinced that these were the two men who had committed this crime, it was a horrific crime and they wanted blood. The mood started to shift after the verdict when some other people who were very concerned about what had happened, who had grave doubts about their guilt, tried to mobilize and they did mobilize a very long petition that was sent to cabinet, to Prime Minister Macdonald and Justice Minister Campbell to try to persuade them to commute this sentence. But they were a little too late in the case of Mr. Thompset and Mr. Lowder because they were hanged about a month after the trial.”
And so did they hang the right men back in 1884?
“There was a great deal of legal talent assembled for this trial,” Judge Sharpe says. “Judge Christopher Patterson practiced law in Picton early in his career with Philip Low and was later appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. The crown and defence attorneys were outstanding lawyers. But in the end, it’s a very human process.”
Judge Sharpe, a member of the Ontario Court of Appeal, is the author of several books on law and legal history. Raised in Picton, he is currently completing a book on the Thomset -Lowder trial due for release in 2011.
Sharpe’s lecture reviewed the case – the crime scene and investigation of the trail of footprints in the snow that led to the two men’s houses; the evidence presented; the personalities that dominated the courtroom drama from the unruly mob who attended to the witnesses, judge, jury and lawyers; the verdict that condemned the two men to death, and the desperate effort to save the prisoners’ lives following their sentencing.
My first car was a green 1954 Chevrolet. My Dad bought it for $75.00 largely I think to save his own vehicle from further damage by a teenager with uncertain driving skills. It was solid, occasionally temperamental and gave me a new found independence. Most of all, it had an engine that emitted a deep throaty sound that I have never forgotten.
Much later in life, I purchased another old Chev, a 1952 standard model. It too was green. You didn’t get a big choice in colours in the 1950 models. They seemed to be green, blue or black. Take it or leave it.
But these old cars of my youth were long gone as I started out in October 2009 for the West. I drove. Sandy did the navigation as we crossed into the U.S. and drove along the underbelly of the Great Lakes towards our destination – Whitemouth, Manitoba, a tiny hamlet in the sourtheast region of Manitoba close to the Ontario border about an hour and a half from Winnipeg.
There’s not a lot in Whitemouth except Sandy’s cousin Ken Barnard and his wife Marie, who are certainly worth visiting. But we had driven there to pick up a 1952 3/4 ton truck Ken had picked up for me from a local farmer whose father had bought the truck new at Carter Motors Sales in Winnipeg decades ago.
The truck was big, long, dented from its years of service… and green. Within a few minutes of arrival, I had turned the key, pulled out the trombone choke and pressed the starter on the floor to start her up so Ken and I could go for a ride. Once again, I heard that deep, throaty rumbling of the motor made all the more rumbling by a muffler that would need to be replaced. Ken and I were perched high up on the bench seat of the truck as I shifted gears and we bounced down a dirt road. It was magic…. magic because it started up immediately, I didn’t strip the gears and most of all, we were able to stop as we approached Ken’s house again – my first indication that the brakes needed repair.
We didn’t stay long in Whitemouth. Just enough for a visit, a trip to Winnipeg to pick up a trailer and a half day of loading and securing the old truck onto the U-Haul. I wasn’t certain how long it would take to drive back home dragging a car trailer. What I didn’t know is just how dangerous it can be.
A few hours later we were cresting a hill east of Kenora. As we started the descent down the hill, we began to pick up speed and the trailer was swerving, whipping my truck all across the road. The force was amazing… and scary. But we were lucky. It was a three-lane highway with no oncoming cars and the truckers behind me slowed at the first signs of trouble. Somehow, I managed to get the truck and trailer going forward in the same direction again and we drove silently into Dryden.
The staff at the Dryden Holiday Express was exceptionally helpful. They helped us track down the local U-Haul dealer on a Sunday. He helped us locate a local trucking firm who could transport the old truck to Toronto, and coordinate a pick up with a Picton trucking firm. We got back on Thursday after a safe and leisurely trip home. The old truck was delivered to the farm on Friday morning. Now it sits stored for the winter waiting for the spring. To be continued…
Prince Edward County, Ontario clings tenaciously to its early history as a Loyalist community settled in the mid – 1780s by colonists loyal to the British crown who were driven from their homeland during the American Rebellion.
These colonists were re-settled by the British government on tracts of land along the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario. Kingstown, now Kingston, was one of the first major settlement areas with townships established by British surveyors. The first settled area in Prince Edward County was at its southeastern end and called Fifth Town as the fifth township from Kingstown.
The Rose Family was part of this early settlement. Somehow, they managed with others to survive the hardships of the first years clearing the land, growing crops and building shelter. Many families didn’t. During the years 1787 – 1789, a period know as The Hungry Years, families ate bark to survive the winters when the game was scarce, and annual supplies from the British government failed to arrive. Evidence of the grim fate of many earlier settlers can still be seen in the Rose Cemetery that nestles the Lake Ontario shoreline.
The Rose House is now a local museum – one of five in Prince Edward County – stocked with period furniture, cooking utensils and farming tools typical of the Loyalist era. In September 2009 it became alive with this rich history when soldiers and their families dressed in period costumes camped on the property as part of a re-enactment for the 225th anniversary of the Loyalist settlement.
The 70 actors and their families were from across Ontario and the United States. But their authentic costumes, canvas tents, and traditional cooking over wood fires to make period fare, reached across time. It was probably also cold and uncomfortable, but these men, women, and children are very dedicated. Their encampment and mock battle re-lived Loyalist history with all its rigours.
We were there to capture the event as part of our History Moments series to be launched the following week at The Regent Theatre in Picton. In fact, our lead feature celebrated the Loyalist anniversary. The September re-enactment was timely, colourful, and a unique glimpse into the past – a way of witnessing history.
Like so many inventions, the preservation of food was actually developed to meet a military need.
It was the age of Napoleon. Conquering countries was hard work that left Napoleon’s armies hungry. Napoleon also wanted to overcome the bad habits of people who were being conquered. They often burned their crops as French troops advanced. To be victorious, he realized his army would win as long as their stomachs could be filled.
In 1795, Napoleon sponsored a contest in France to develop a way of preserving food. A Paris food merchant, Nicholas Appert, claimed the 12,000-franc prize by cooking food, and placing it in large, glass apothecary jars sealed with a mixture of cheese and powdered lime. It was a huge advancement at a time when famine was widespread.
Within a few decades, the industry had swept across Europe and to the seaboard of the United States. In the late 1870s, a nursery salesman from Prince Edward County, Ontario attended a food exhibition in Philadelphia. George Dunning brought the idea back home and teamed up with a wealthy and influential entrepreneur, Wellington Boulter. Together, they build a small experimental factory on Boulter’s farm. The experiment worked and in 1882, they built the first successful fruit and vegetable-canning factory in Canada on the corner of West Mary and Spring Streets in Picton, the area’s major centre. Dunning faded from view in the new industry, but Boulter went on to be a canning pioneer still remembered today as the father of the canning industry in Canada.
Boulter also made a great fortune. And soon there were others who rushed to join in the canning game. Small factories dotted the landscape in Prince Edward County and from the 1890s through until the late 1950s, the industry became the lifeblood of the area. Farmers grew crops for the factories; their wives and daughters took seasonal jobs in them. Local canners processed such a large volume of produce, the area became known as ” Garden County of Canada.”
In the first days of the industry, canning was an imperfect science. Lead poisoning from tin cans, and botulism from spoiled canned food were common. The early canners liked to keep the colour of their canned tomatoes bright red so they used cochineal, a dye used in the textile industry. It’s made from bugs and proved to be a source of stomach cancer in later decades. Still, people ate it and during the war years, the canning factories of Prince Edward County ran day and night to meet the demand for food.
But after the Second World War, the small factories of the area were old and obsolete.
They couldn’t compete with newer factories built elsewhere, imported canned goods, and changes in government regulations that demanded better sanitary conditions and worker benefits. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, the canning factories closed their doors one by one, and the industry that had once meant everything to Prince Edward County, was gone for good.
Experiences | Product Development | Multimedia
History Lives Here Inc. provides archival research and editorial services, web content and design, creates heritage products such as tours, re-enactments, events, and experiences, and provides full-service communications and video production services.
