Spring 2008 Newsletter
With the Spring comes a lot of activity at Trafalgar Township Historical Society! We really are in need of your financial support (time to renew those memberships) and your time to pitch in wherever you can. We are going to have many jobs for people to help with.
Sunday March 30 Artful Afternoon
From 2pm to 5pm at the Old Palermo Schoolhouse, 2431 Dundas Street West, Oakville (west of Third Line).
We invite you and your friends to enjoy wine and cheese and light refreshments in this cozy historical school house. View the original artwork of Thelma Ledgerwood’s "Palette Pals" and Enter our free draw to win an original work by Thelma Ledgerwood. Please see the flyer and feel free to pass along.
The Lease
Well- we did it! The lease is signed for the Palermo Schoolhouse and not a moment too soon. We needed the lease finalized to proceed with the Trillium grant for costs to cover the renovations at the schoolhouse.
Grants
We can not tell you officially about the Trillium grant until April 9th- so look for a really, really great announcement on that day! and a call for volunteers to start helping with renovations, desk cleaning, desk fixing, developing archive policies, organizing archives etc.
The town has given us permission to accept the donations from Mattamy homes and BOT Construction.
Annual General Meeting
Our annual General meeting went well. We had a great presentation by Julika Winkler who is the author of "Seven Sundays". For those of you would like to purchase a copy of Julika Winkler's book 'Seven Sundays: The Legacy of the Pioneers of Oakville and Burlington along Dundas Street' you can contact her at jwinkler@cogeco.ca. The new board consists of Gordon Kaitting, Stuart Mcculloch, Mario Testa, Michelle Knoll, Jane Watt, Irene Maiurro and Clayton McDuffee. We would like to thank Elise Cole and Hank Ford for their devotion to the board over the last few years. Elise will be continueing to assist us as an advisor on archival matters and we will be working with her on the scanning days at the library. Hank has had knee surgery and needs to slow down a bit this year but he continues to assist as a volunteer of the society. We still have a board opening available and also need a Heritage fair and archives committee. Let us know if you may be interested.
Furniture and Artifacts Needed
We need 23 old wooden school desks for the schoolhouse. If you have one kicking around we would be happy to take it off your hands! We also need a long table suitable for board meetings and research. Need a picture of the Queen- or would it be King- need to look into that. An old flag and anything else that would be suitable for a one room schoolhouse- like a wasps nest & bird house. We will not have room for a piano or organ. Could use lunch pails; need 23 old hooks for coats.
Research
We have been busy with heritage research at the Halton Regional Museum and will be planning another trip there shortly. The Regional museum has a new donation of Biggar family information and we would like to see what's there. Please email me if you would like to join us and I will narrow down a date based on everyone's availability.
Website
Dave Hook has been busy working on the website and there are some new photos of Palermo and also some photos taken of homes on Ninth Line.
McCurdy School Reunion
The reunion will be held April 5th at the Country Heritage Park in Milton from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Please contact Ron Break if you are interested in attending or if you have any information or photos of the school. rbreak@globalserve.net If any of our members are attending the reunion we would like to make sure people at the reunion know about our activities- especially the scanning, recording of one room schoolhouse memories and our need for old school desks.
Scanning & Social Day
We are in the process of planning an afternoon scanning day in late April or May at the Central Oakville Public Library. Just trying to work out all the volunteers schedules to come up with the best day. Will let you know as soon as we know- but please start looking around the house for photos you would like scanned. If you don't have anything to scan please still come join us for a fun afternoon of reminiscing!
Heritage Fair
Mark you calanders!! Our third annual fair will be held on Saturday September 20th at the Palermo schoolhouse from 10-2pm. We need volunteers to help coordinate this event and form a committee. We also need volunteers to make sandwiches & cookies to be sold on the day.
Featherstone House at 185 Burnhamthorpe Rd. built circa 1870
This home is currently designated as a Heritage Home. The owners are asking to have the designation removed. If you have any information on this home and feelings on whether it should be undesignated, please let me know and I will take present your comments at the meeting or alternatively attend the Oakville Heritage meeting this Tuesday March 25 at 9:30am at Oakville Townhall when a decision will be made regarding the future of this home. I have included a photo below.
Other Bits & Pieces
We now have our insurance coverage in place
We participated in the Oakville Beaver Heritage Supplement and you can find the articles on our website.
We have completed research for a number of people over the Winter.
We will be included in the Oakville Tourist Guide
Judith Bourke has done some new research on the Triller Mill and the updated information can be found at www.jeffknoll.org under History
The Town will complete some work on the front foundation of the school in the next few weeks.
We submitted heritage names for the "Name the School" contest for the new West Oak Trails public school.
We took some more photos of trafalgar homes.
Started our research on trafalgar Schools and have begun to plot out their boundaries on a map
Started to sort our archives into subjects for easier retrieval
Have a commitment from the Town of Oakville that they will build a gazebo and install a plaque in Palermo Park commemorating the early settlers as promised iwhen when the Palermo Hall was demolished and the Hall committee donated money to the Town to build a gazebo with plaques.
