Dipping Into the Past

125 YEARS AGO Thursday, November 27, 1884

• The supper given by Warden Gillespie to the members of Dufferin County Council and friends in Shelburne on Wednesday evening of last week was one of the greatest social events of the season. The company that sat down to partake of the good things provided by the popular host and hostesses of the Mansion House was a large one.

• The patrons of the Shelburne cheese factory have held their annual meeting. The following gratifying results of the season's work are shown: The amount of cheese manufactured during the season was 52,886 pounds, for which the sum of $5,282 was received. The average quantity of milk used in the manufacture of a pound of cheese was 10 1/4 pounds. The enterprising proprietors, Messrs. Rice & Scott, have made some commendable improvements in the factory and hope to do a much larger business next year.

• Writes editor W. J. Smith in the ECONOMIST: We would like to see some action taken in regard to the cow nuisance in Shelburne. On Sunday last there were several specimens of the bovine tribe promenading our streets and decorating the sidewalks with cowslips. The yards and gardens of residents who were so unfortunate as to have open gates were also visited in turn. Some time ago Constable Canning asked us to speak to this matter. We think he should arrest all stray cows and run them in.

100 YEARS AGO Thursday, November 25, 1909

• Great indeed was the shock to the community when word was flashed over the wires at 3:30 p.m. last Friday that Dr. John Barr, M.P. for Dufferin, had been found dead in his hotel room at Ottawa. He was apparently in his usual good health on Thursday, was in his seat in the House of Commons, and asked a question in the course of the proceedings. He had supper with fellow members and spent the evening with them, remarking in the conversation that took place on the continued good health that had been his. But during the night he was heard coughing and this is supposed to have caused a rupture in a blood vessel in his brain. When found at about 2 p.m. he was lying in his bed and had evidently been dead since early morning. The public funeral, which followed a Masonic service, took place Tuesday in Shelburne Methodist Church, with burial in Shelburne cemetery. Dr. Barr was born in Elizabethtown, near Brockville, on March 4, 1843. It is pointed out as a strange coincidence that Dr. Fred Lewis, of Orangeville, who in 1905 succeeded Dr. Barr in the Ontario Legislature, was found dead in his bed in the Queen's Hotel, Toronto, on May 25, 1907.

• Sunday next, November 28th, will be Temperance Sunday in practically all the churches in Ontario. In Toronto, "Banish the Bar-room, Destroy the Treating System," will be sounded forth in six Congregational, 12 Salvation Army, 22 Baptist, 28 Anglican, 31 Presbyterian, 34 Methodist and 13 other churches. However, in Shelburne, the Methodist church has found it necessary to postpone Temperance Sunday one week, to December 5.

75 YEARS AGO Wednesday, November 29, 1934

• A cloudburst visited the Orangeville area the middle of last week during as severe lightning and thunderstorm. For a time it was feared the new sewage disposal plant in the east ward would be carried away with the onrush of surface water, only the work of Superintendent William Marshall and a crew having saved the structure. On East Broadway, large catchbasins were shooting water five to 10 feet in the air. The Credit River went on a rampage and for a time water was running over the bridge on Highway No. 10.

• In the only civil case at the Dufferin Fall Assizes, a jury has awarded damages of $500 to plaintiff Mary Matthews of Dundalk, who with her husband John sued George Carr of Carr Transport System, Owen Sound after Mrs. Matthews was injured in a collision on Highway 10 two miles south of Orangeville last Jan. 27. The jurors found the plaintiffs 25 per cent negligent.

50 YEARS AGO Wednesday, November 25, 1959

• The board of Orangeville District Secondary School is proposing to add a $350,000 four-room addition to the high school building.

• A delegation from Shelburne has asked Dufferin County Council for assistance in financing a new building for Shelburne District Hospital, cost of which is estimated at $120,000.

25 YEARS AGO Wednesday, November 28, 1984

• Judge Kechin Wang has decided against closing the Young Offenders' Court trial of the Orangeville boy charged with two counts of firstdegree murder of Daniel and Monique Babineau.

• Perrin Beatty, MP for Wellington Dufferin-Simcoe, is Canada's new Revenue Minister.