Author: ETRC Archivist
In 1930, most Canadian women had had the right to vote in federal elections for nine years but it would still be another ten years before they would achieve that right in Quebec provincial elections. This was a period of changing experiences, expectations, and aspirations for many women. A part of this shifting landscape was the entry of more women into the spheres of business, often in the sectors of secretarial work, teaching, and nursing, but also as small business owners.
Locally, in response to the growing growing number of business and professional women, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in Sherbrooke started a business and professional women’s supper club in 1930, with its chief purpose being to give the women a place to socialize with others who had similar pursuits and challenges when it came to gainful employment.
By July 1934, a Business and Professional Women’s Club of Sherbrooke was founded with slightly different goals than the club established by the YWCA. With ties to the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, the Sherbrooke Club incorporated broader political questions regarding women’s rights and their place in business in addition to the aim of promoting closer relationships among professional women.
To accomplish their objectives, their meetings were sometimes largely social times, with a meal and entertainment, but other times they hosted special speakers, among which included Nellie McClung in 1939. They also hosted and participated in rallies with clubs from across the province and the country and, in 1945, the Club established a public speaking contest for girls from the Sherbrooke and Lennoxville High Schools.
In researching the history of the Business and Professional Women’s Club, I couldn’t help but start to wonder about the individual women who were members, listed year after year among the reports on their activities; who were they, what did they do for a living, what were their stories?
Unsurprisingly given the general expectation that married women and mothers should be in the home, many of the members were single but there were some married women among their ranks as well. Jean (née Mills) Kinkead, for example, helped operate the tobacco store established by her husband’s family. Eva (née Dupuis) Renihan ran a business making fine hats.
Among the unmarried members was Geraldine Hebert, a prominent Sherbrooke portrait photographer (owner of the Sears Studio) who studied photography in Chicago and New York City. Somewhat ironically, Alice Milford and her sister, Bessie, worked in the family’s florist business, called James Milford & Son. Eventually the business became known simply as “Milford’s”, where Alice continued to work as a florist in Sherbrooke until she retired. In 1937, Leslie Fales was working as the “special lady representative” at an insurance company. And still many others operated shops of various sorts, including ladies fashion, children’s clothing, and hair salons.
After over 30 years of activity, providing support and fostering relationships among the business women of Sherbrooke, the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Sherbrooke likely disbanded in the late 1960s. While a clear reason for the disbandment was not apparent among the documents, it may have been that the principal objectives of the club were no longer tangible to a new generation of women encountering the working sphere in a much different way than those before them.
It’s cold outside. All plant life is covered in centimetres of the white stuff and our hopes of fresh garden vegetables are months away. In this cold-weather season, don’t you just crave a good, fresh mushroom? No? Well, if you lived in the Townships during the first part of the 20th century, the mushroom, along with leaf lettuce and rhubarb, was among the limited locally-grown produce available from Slack’s greenhouses in Waterloo through the winter months.
In the 1890s, Thomas Slack built the first of the company’s greenhouses in Waterloo on the family’s property. At the time, his aim was to grow a variety of vegetables and flowers for the local market. Later on, in 1912, the business was taken over and expanded by his sons Charles W. Slack and Fred A. Slack. As part of their expansion of the business, they purchased land near to the Canadian Pacific Railway line for the construction of new greenhouses, which facilitated the delivery of the large amounts of coal and fertilizer needed to keep vegetables growing in the cold winter months. More specifically, the coal was used to create steam that was then pumped into the greenhouses to maintain the temperatures needed to grow their produce.
Into the 1910s, the brothers had built nine greenhouses and were growing flowers, plants, and vegetables for the garden market. A newspaper advertisement appearing in February 1929 listed lilies, sweet peas, lettuce, rhubarb, mushrooms, tomatoes, and cucumbers among their products, with lettuce, rhubarb, and mushrooms being the items available at that time of year. In addition to lilies, Slack’s also grew chrysanthemums and carnations for market.
Over time, however, the Slack Brothers focused increasingly on mushroom production. In a 1946 Maclean’s Magazine profile of Slack’s mushroom business, it was highlighted that, with 16 miles (26 kilometres) of mushrooms, Slack’s was the 5th largest producer of mushrooms in the world. Why mushrooms, you may ask? Unsurprisingly, profitability is the short answer. The longer answer is that in the 1920s, the demand for leaf lettuce – one of Slack’s key crops – was overtaken by demand for iceberg lettuce, which caused the prices to plunge.
Seeing the possibility in mushrooms, Charles and Fred Slack began to shift their production to mushrooms, gradually phasing out or scaling down their other products. In 1936, Charles bought out Fred’s interests in Slack Brothers (one article notes it was so that Fred could pursue the mushroom business in Europe) and eventually the company would become known as Slack’s Waterloo Mushrooms. Similar to other food producers of the time, Slack’s published their own collections of recipes which focused on the mushroom, featuring titles such as “Le gourmet touch » and included recipes for dishes that included mushroom and asparagus parfait and hot mushroom sandwiches.
The risk the Slack Brothers took when they first set out to expand their mushroom business paid off but was not without its hurdles. In 1938, a hail storm in Waterloo shattered upwards of 4,000 panes of glass on their greenhouses. In the 1940s, a fire in their heating system threatened the whole crop and one year, for reasons no one ever figured out, not a single mushroom came up.
At its height, Slack’s was producing eight million pounds of mushrooms annually and employed around 300 people. In 1983, however, Slack’s was forced to close its doors and lay off their employees when the Bank of Montreal withdrew the company’s credit privileges. This was followed by a few ventures to bring the mushroom business back to Waterloo over the years but it was essentially the end for the King of the Mushroom.
Hills covered with snow, a sled carrying logs pulled by a team of horses. These are among the most-remembered subjects of Townships painter Frederick S. Coburn (1871-1960), who spent much of his life in Melbourne. With the piles of snow blanketing all of our scenic views, it is an image that is well-suited to this season.
However iconic his landscape paintings were, Coburn was well-recognized as an illustrator during his lifetime, particularly in his early career. His illustrations were featured in the original publications of W.H. Drummond’s The Habitant and Louis-H. Fréchette’s Christmas in French Canada but he also contributed illustrations for special editions of works by Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, and Robert Browning.
Coburn secured his first major commission with William H. Drummond after a pressure-test specified by the author: he had one hour to sketch Drummond’s portrait. Drummond, pleased with the outcome, hired Coburn in 1896 as illustrator for his first published collection of poems: The Habitant and other French-Canadian Poems. This collaboration was the catalyst for much of Coburn’s future illustration work. A friend of Drummond, Louis Fréchette was impressed with the work Coburn had done and, in 1898, commissioned him to complete the illustrations for a collection of short stories, Christmas in French Canada, which was published in French (La Noël au Canada) a year later.
Louis Fréchette was an author, poet, and Quebec political figure at the turn of the 20th century. Through his literary work, Fréchette endeavored to honour and give value to French culture in Quebec. Similarly passionate about the people of his homeland and the opportunity to be part of the recording of its history and culture, Coburn immersed himself in the work of preparing the illustrations. Among his frequent letters to Fréchette, Coburn often expressed his enthusiasm for the project: “In fact, each story is so full of suggestive pictures & recalls at times so vividly parallel incidents I myself have witnessed that I find considerable difficulty in making a judicious selection rather than having to hunt for something to make.”
The final outcome was a poignantly illustrated work that chronicles Quebec folk tales and traditions of Christmas past.
“A photograph is worth a thousand words.” This idiom certainly rings true when it comes to some photographs. And while other photographs might not hold the weight of a thousand words, many are still able to make us catch our breath, arouse curiosity, or engage with us in a unique way. Working with historical records means that I have the privilege of getting to see eye-catching and intriguing photographs on a regular basis. The photographs may be eye-catching but they hold a particular challenge when they arrive with little-to-no identifying information.
One recently acquired example of this is a collection of photographs we received from the Wilkinson Brothers Studio, run by John Wilkinson and his brother, Alfred, that operated in Cookshire from 1892 to about the 1940s. Out of the 117 photographs in the collection, only 18 bear any sort of identification. So while the crisp, rich images with the period clothing are captivating, their use is limited if we don’t know the names of the people pictured.
This is where we are asking for the public’s help! Have you lived in the Cookshire area for many decades and have great memory for names and faces? If so, you might be able to lend us a hand. We have made copies of all of the unidentified photographs and added them to our online website to browse through in the comfort of your home (visit https://www.townshipsarchives.ca/unidentified-adults to take a look). If the online version is not convenient for you, please get in touch with us for other options.
Another mystery comes from the Danville area and a portrait of a young man with the inscription E.G. Warren in the lower right corner. Aside from the signature, there is no other information on the photograph, which leads to the questions: was E.G. Warren (a minister at the Danville Congregational Church) also a photographer, or is he the individual pictured in the photograph? Perhaps your family has a photograph of Rev. Warren that would help us identify this photograph.
Every picture tells a story… Help us tell more stories through the identification of these unknown photographs.
Old diaries can be delightful windows onto the past, with descriptions of the day-to-day activities of a bygone era. They can also be useful tools for researchers, providing key data needed for their analyses, such as weather information or social interactions. The historical value of these records becomes limited, however, when we don’t have information on their authors. It can be disappointing when lovely old records, such as diaries, photographs, etc., are missing key information about who created them.
One curious case of a group of diaries with no author found their way to the ETRC some years ago. They were a splendid (and legible!) set of diaries spanning from 1920 to 1948, filled with daily entries on a variety of subjects and lists of household expenses. The one thing missing from these diaries: an identification of their author. No convenient “this book belongs to…” The silver lining? Instances such as this one are when the archivist gets to turn into super sleuth.
After making lists of the people mentioned with full names and of all the places named, along with some creative searching of the Canadian census returns, came the satisfactory and sweet feeling of success. The author of these diaries was Delbert R. Holsapple. Delbert, son of David E. Holsapple and Elizabeth Russell, was born and raised in the St. Armand West area. He married Lizzie Adams in 1891 and together they had a daughter, Elfrida. Delbert spent most of his life farming near Morse’s Line, selling produce and was active in the local community.
Even though Delbert’s diaries do not include his feelings about his life events, reading them begins to form a story that lifts from the yellowing pages. They are a record of the rhythms of farming but also the relationships with neighbours and community events, such as the Catholic chicken pie supper (which, for those curious, cost 35 cents for two people in 1933). In particular, these diaries span the Great Depression and the Second World War and are an interesting perspective on what it was like in the Townships during this time.
Perhaps you have some old family diaries and journals hanging around in the recesses of your closets or drawers. If so, this could be the perfect time to dig them out and peruse them. You never know what might be held within their pages.
On a cold and wet September morning in 1990, 60 runners gathered at Bishop’s University for a five and 12 kilometer race to raise funds for a feasibility study on the possible conversion of the recently abandoned Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) line stretching from Lennoxville to Beebe. Although the event raised a nominal amount, it was part of the beginning of Sentiers Massawippi’s years-long mission to see the establishment of a recreational trail along this stretch of railbed.
Following Canadian Pacific Railway’s official abandonment of what was known as the Beebe Subdivision line early in 1990, a group of local citizens mobilized to form the Sentier Massawippi Trail (later becoming Les Sentiers Massawippi) organization. Initially, the abandoned line was eyed for two entirely different potential ventures. In addition to the “rail to trail” project, another group (Nostalgie de la Vapeur) had their eye on the line to establish a tourist steam train to run from Lennoxville to Beebe. It was not long, however, before Sentiers Massawippi’s lobbying efforts gained traction with the Town of Lennoxville and by June 1991, CPR announced that the first 13-km section from Lennoxville to North Hatley had been sold to the Town to convert to a walking and cycling trail.
From the beginning, the second section of the line (12 km) between North Hatley and Ayer’s Cliff, which lay along the edge of Lake Massawippi, was on more contentious ground. Property owners along the lake were wary of a public trail running through their yards and were keen to obtain the direct water access through the acquisition of what was once CPR’s right-of-way. By the summer of 1991, an association of Lake Massawippi homeowners had struck an agreement with CPR to act as an intermediary to sell the nearly 115 acres along the lake to the adjacent owners.
In September 1991, Sentiers Massawippi voted to start buying the land that made up the remaining 19-km section, from Ayer’s Cliff to Beebe. In 1992, the rails and ties were removed from the section but it would be a number of years before all the municipalities involved accepted the proposed nature trail and rehabilitation work was completed. The first 6 km from Ayer’s Cliff were opened in 1996 and with the group’s perseverance in face of repeated hurdles, the 19-km Tomifobia Nature Trail reached completion in 2002.
Sentiers Massawippi’s mission was not unique for the time period; as the kilometers of abandoned railway lines increased from the 1960s on, there was a growing impetus for this conversion from “rail to trail” with the desire to increase Canadians’ access to outdoor recreational space. Locally, however, Sentiers Massawippi was vital in the projects to establish the nature trails along this stretch of the countryside. The group was key in fostering political will to act on the creation of the trails and in highlighting the public interest in such a conversion. Thanks to their initiative, local residents and tourists have access to this scenic way to experience nature and native wildlife. Still, the road was not always easy-going following their momentous achievement and the group has faced major reparations following significant washouts in 2008, amounting to $26,000 in repairs, and restorations arising from acts of vandalism. Despite it all, Sentiers Massawippi remains dedicated to the maintenance of the Tomifobia Nature Trail for all to be able to take advantage of this beautiful greenway.
To explore what documents the ETRC preserves for Sentiers Massawippi or a number of the nature-related organizations, visit our online datebase: https://www.townshipsarchives.ca/sentiers-massawippi-fonds.