Dora & Harry Vorvis, ca.1960
Description
- Media Type
- Image
- Item Type
- Photographs
- Description
- A colour photograph of Dora and Harry Vorvis standing in front of their pool hall, Maple Leaf Billiards, at 124 Brock Street South. They owned Maple Leaf Billiards for 48 years.
- Notes
- A few words about Dora Ann Vorvis (a.k.a. Dorris or Doris) of her Flinton, Ontario pre-marriage years before meeting Harry Vorvis, by her eldest child and son Eonis Vorvis.
My mother's family background is quite interesting, She was born one of 12 children and was raised on a farm near Flinton, fairly close to Madoc, Ontario where her family roots go back to the late 1700's according to old weathered gravestones in the local cemetery there. However she passed away in Whitby, Ontario not Flinton, in her 96th year on February 26th, 1999.
Her family used the surname Johnson, which appears to have been self-assumed by her father since his parents were a Janson (being mother's grandfather, whose roots traced back to Anjou, France) and a Doyle (being mother's grandmother, who came from Ireland under unusual circumstances of which I shall speak about later). In any case my mother was baptised in the name Dora Ann Janson not Johnson, but she assumed the name Johnson without question.
The farm she grew up on was typical for one of that time, one with among other attributes a barn housing the usual animals, a chicken coop, a drive shed with a carriage and possibly a wagon, a sunken cool room with a milk separator, and of course an appropriately placed water well and out-house.
The house itself was and still is a large two-story structure with hand hewn beams (as I recall) by someone from a time well before my mother. One summer years ago when my wife Mary and I were visiting Whitby my mother asked if we could drive up to the farm to see who lived still there. As it turned out, the farm was still occupied by the current generation of people in her family. (And as for those beams, I remember them as a kid having been mounted with rifles of various make and age. I wonder who has them today and whether they are still in the family somewhere.)
The menfolk were farmers in the summer and loggers in winter. There was a strong sense of community spirit because of close family ties. Whole families visited farm by farm to help with harvesting, where lunchtime tables were comprised of doors laid over saw horses and the typical menu was roast beef with huge quantities of mashed potatoes and gravy.
Finally, getting back to speaking about my great-grandmother Doyle, the story is that there were very few unattached women around at that time for the loggers to marry. So the parish priest got in touch with some clergy contacts in Ireland, where a potato famine was apparently being experienced, and arranged for eight women to emigrate to Canada. Whereupon the women paired up with eight loggers when they arrived at Flinton and were promptly married to them. So that's how it happens that there's a female in my mother's French ancestry whose maiden name was Doyle. An unusual story for sure, but perhaps not such an uncommon thing to have taken place in the wilds of a young Canada back then. And in Australia as well apparently, where there was a scarcity of women around that time also. A much longer trip however for the Irish women who apparently went there as came to Canada.
Thank you all who have read the foregoing for your kind interest. - Date of Publication
- 1960
- Date Of Event
- ca. 1960
- Donor
- Eonis Vorvis
- Creative Commons licence
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