Heritage

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.

Mono’s Sheldon Creek was the site of one of Ontario’s two longest-serving waterpowered mills.

The settlers of these hills had fled wars and tyranny and repressive class system to seek a new life in a new world, but they were unable to escape the dreaded shadow of contagious disease, especially its grip on their children.

It’s been 50 years since Black Friday, the day the Avro Arrow was cancelled – and economic disaster spread like wildfire through the hills.

A Modest pioneer, Clara Brett Martin, the daughter of a Mono Township pioneer family, became a pioneer of a different sort when she challenged the Law Society of Upper Canada to become the first woman lawyer in the British Empire.

Shelburne’s first-ever bank robbery began as a pretty scary affair, but in the hands of a bumbling stickup man it ended more like a gong show.

William Perkins Bull was so filled with energy, intelligence and initiative that he not only recorded history, he made it!