Heritage

The Stanton Hotel is the only stage coach hotel remaining in Mulmur, and one of a tiny few still standing in the Headwaters region.

There were new markets, an expansion in available goods, new opportunities and, above all, a new lifestyle: people here had become connected to the outside world.

Of the worshippers in Mono Mills he com­plained, “When they should rise, they sit; when they should sit, they continue standing.”

When baseball fever swept North America in the late nineteenth century, the good people of these hills signed on, but they embraced the game with a unique, local flair.

From Market Hill (Mono Mills) to reach what became Horning’s Mills, they built primitive pathways through forty kilometres of virgin forest, slogged around swamps and across streams, and forced their way up almost insurmountable hills.

By the 1880s, poor sanitation had been identified as a major cause of disease and governments were taking action. Here in the hills, newly established health boards had a lot of catching up to do.

Christmas was once a simple season of carolling and school concerts, of neighbourly greetings and family visits, of tinkling bells and sleigh rides in gently falling snow, all blessedly free of commercial pressure. Well, maybe.

Before there were boards and commissions and tribunals and official plans, and before there were consultants and mission statements and surveys and regulations and codes, the local municipal council handled almost everything. And fast.

In the 1880s, prohibitionists took the fight for liquor control to the voting booths of the nation. In the hills, choosing “wet” or “dry” became such a hot button that neighbours and whole communities were pulled in different directions.

When it came into service in 1867, built on land donated by the Village of Brampton, Peel County jail was a grim edifice modelled on England’s notorious Newgate Prison.

The Women’s Institute has been called the most effective women’s organization ever – with good reason. For over a century, the WI has been welcoming, educating, challenging, improving, supporting and “getting things done.”

In the early spring of 1967, the Stanley Cup playoffs…held the attention of hockey fans everywhere in these hills. Except in Bolton.