History Meme #14

 

Have a Hand In the Tyrconnell Heritage Society Board of Directors

Tyrconnell Heritage Society, operators of Backus-Page House Museum, are seeking volunteers to serve on the Board of Directors for 3 year, 2 year and 1 year terms commencing March 3, 2021. 

Please read the role of a Board Director and the role of the Cultural Manager below so you understand in advance how we operate.  The board meets the third Wednesday of each month.

Interested individuals are required to be minimum of 18 years of age; pay your annual Tyrconnell Heritage Society membership for 2021; complete and submit a Recruitment Form to the nominating committee; and encouraged to attend the Annual General Meeting on March 3, 2021, 7pm at Backus-Page House Museum or virtually if required by public health guidelines.

Documents are available by emailing info@backuspagehouse.ca or by calling 519-762-3072.  

The Board of Directors will post the approved candidacy list online, 40 days prior to the Annual General Meeting.  

Submission deadline to be considered for nomination and election is December 31, 2020.

Attn: Nominating Committee

Tyrconnell Heritage Society

Box 26, 29424 Lakeview Line

Wallacetown, ON, N0L 2M0

The Nomination Committee consists of Brian Elliott (West Elgin Genealogical & Historical Committee and current Board Member), Marcus Frazer (current Board Member), Angela Bobier (staff representative) and Lin McCann (current society member).

We are currently seeking individuals with carpentry skills, agricultural knowledge, fundraising, demonstrable heritage skills, exhibit building, document digitization, writing, museum work, and environment or nature interests.

The Distinction Between the Roles of the Board and Cultural Manager Is Part of Good Governance

The broad explanation of duties is that the board and its President are largely responsible for oversight, risk management and strategic planning.

The Cultural Manager and staff are largely responsible for implementing the board’s strategic plan and managing the daily activities of the organization.

How Does the Role of the Board Differ From That of the Cultural Manager?

It’s important to remember that the board is responsible for all OVERSIGHT, governance activities, including overseeing legal issues, financial issues (budgets), and issues related to people (staff and volunteers) and programs.

A board of directors has many legal and fiduciary responsibilities. They must know and understand all applicable provincial, federal and local laws that pertain to the organization. The board also provides legal oversight in all areas and relays pertinent legal information to the Cultural Manager and staff as needed.

The board makes sure that the operations of the organization stay aligned with the mission, vision and values of the organization. This is important for organizations that have tax-exempt status because they must continue to operate under the same purpose for which the government granted them non profit status.

What Are the Duties and Responsibilities of the Cultural Manager?

The President typically serves as the liaison between the board and management. The Cultural Manager attends board meetings to stay in the loop of board business.  The Cultural Manager keeps the board informed about what the staff and volunteers are doing. It’s important for the Cultural Manager to provide the board with feedback on progress toward achieving goals for the strategic plan and any budget needed to fulfill the expected duties.

The Cultural Manager accepts direct responsibility for executing the organization’s policies, programs and initiatives.   Cultural Managers manage all of the day-to-day responsibilities of the organization, including managing staff and volunteers, as they work toward fulfilling the organization’s charitable purpose.  Another important duty of the Cultural Manager is to serve as the face and public spokesperson for the organization.

History Meme #13

 

Fall Meme

 

Ontario Agriculture Week: 1900s Primary Source

 Wow, can you believe Ontario Agriculture Week is almost over already? Nothing like a couple of blog posts to make the time fly by. Now that we have finished our summary of farming in southwestern Ontario during the 1800s, writing about farming in Ontario gets a lot more personal. From 1900 onwards, we can find a lot of written accounts of family histories, which are a lot more interesting than technical farm jargon. To show just a small example of the kinds of records that exist from the early-mid 1900s, we wanted to show our readers some scans of a book the Bobier family was kind enough to let us use from that period.

Speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Maybe your family might have a similar account book, or perhaps a photo from a hundred years ago. Whatever the case, I hope you end up doing some research on your own family’s agricultural history, and I hope you have enjoyed our blog posts for the week! I’ve been Stephen from the Backus-Page House Museum, take care!

Ontario Agriculture Week: Wheat Mining

 Hey again history buffs, I’m Stephen here with the Backus-Page house museum, and today I wanted to take a brief detour from our chronological dive into farming in the Talbot Settlement to talk about a farming practice called “wheat mining”. 

I came across wheat mining in my research while writing the second blog post and thought a single sentence just would not do it justice. 

Though our series as a whole focuses on the Talbot Settlement, I would like to clarify that I have not found any concrete evidence that any Talbot settlers were wheat miners. This post is not pointing fingers at any farmers in particular, it is instead only to highlight one of many potential dangers facing farmers in Ontario. 

So, what is wheat mining? Well, as you might already know, managing the nutrients in soil by cycling out different kinds of crops was and is essential to maintaining a farm over a long-term period of time. For example, buckwheat was grown by settlers to prepare the soil for future wheat crops, as wheat yields would be greater after that particular plant was grown. 

Wheat mining completely ignores this aspect of farming, planting exclusively wheat for many years in a row. A farmer would plant wheat consecutively until the soil was exhausted, reaping the short-term benefits of a large wheat yield at the expense of long-term longevity.  

At first glance, wheat mining seems pretty standard, just a risky practice with the potential to capitalize off of rapidly fluctuating wheat prices. But a particularly opportunistic farmer could reap the rewards without the risk if they were willing to do it at someone else’s expense. 

To an untrained farmer, like many who would have been given land in Ontario, a field that had been used to wheat mined would be indistinguishable from regular farmland. Because of this, a farmer could wheat mine until their soil was exhausted, then sell off their land to an unsuspecting settler and repeat the process. 

Of course, wheat mining was looked down upon in the farming community, since it was a fairly low effort practice and usually came at someone else’s expense. In the 19th century, many British farmers looking for work would have moved to Ontario, especially during the northern expansion that required extra workers. 

 

Kind of sneaky eh? Tomorrow will be our last stretch of time leading into the 20th century, I just wanted to give one last example to illustrate how many difficulties farmers had to manage if they wanted to be successful in 19th century Ontario.  

References 

Guillet, Edwin C. The Pioneer Farmer and Backwoodsman: Volume Two. University of Toronto Press, 1963. 

Jones, Robert Leslie. History of agriculture in Ontario 1613-1880. University of Toronto Press, 1946. 

 

Ontario Agriculture Week: The Late 1800s

 Welcome back to our daily Agriculture Week blog post! Have you been wondering how our hardworking Talbot Settlers would manage to pull through? Well don’t worry, your good friend Stephen is here from the Backus-Page House Museum to tell you about farming from the 1850s-1880s. 

The industrial revolution sweeping across the continent had a significant impact on the settlers living in rural areas such as the Talbot Settlement. Before the 1850s, the only farming machines most Canadians had access to were discarded or outdated American reapers such as the McCormick reaper mass produced in the late 1840s.  

Elgin County’s close proximity to the American border gave farmers early exposure to the rapid advancement of farm equipment in the United States. By the 1870s and 80s, farmers had specialized tools to help them overcome the unique challenges outlined in the first blog post of this series. 

 

The “stumping machines” of the 1880s offered a much easier alternative to removing tree stumps than waiting for the roots to decompose then digging them up. Some settlers specialized in going from farm to farm and uprooting tree stumps, a necessary service in the densely forested southern Ontario.  

A variety of ploughs were developed, each with their own specialty, and every southern Ontario farmer would have several. Mechanized seeders and cultivators appeared in the 1870s, further streamlining the farming process. 

The spread of technology to rural communities can in part be accredited to the provincial government’s subsidizing of county agricultural societies in 1851. Soon every county in Ontario had their own society which would host discussions about farmers’ experience with their new farm equipment.  

Coming off of the economic depression in 1850, southern Ontario developed an extreme fixation with agricultural fairs. Across the province, competitions took place comparing crops, clothes, and livestock among others. Being a farmer in Elgin county (which separated from Middlesex county in 1851) would have been more exciting in this time period than before. Sure, most workdays were filled with back breaking labor, but with the upcoming events and emerging technology, there was at least a little more to look forward to. 

The enthusiasm for fairs sweeping southern Ontario is best exemplified by the plough races that would be held between farms (or in some cases, even counties). Two teams of farmers would each get an ox and plough, then try to plough a portion of land before the other team.  

Gradually from the 1850s to the end of the 19th century, agricultural fairs slowly grew larger in spectacle, introducing pipe organ music and spectator’s sports such as “steeple chasing”, otherwise known as horse racing, which was seen as a more gentlemanly sport to bet on than plough racing. 

Quite frankly I’m a little sad plough races aren’t in style anymore, but one thing I am glad is not as prominent anymore is the practice of wheat mining, which we’ll talk about next week. 

References 

Guillet, Edwin C. The Pioneer Farmer and Backwoodsman: Volume Two. University of Toronto Press, 1963. 

Jones, Robert Leslie. History of agriculture in Ontario 1613-1880. University of Toronto Press, 1946. 

 

Ontario Agriculture Week: The Honey House

 Hey there pioneer pundits! It’s me, Stephen McLachlin back with another post for Agriculture Week, but this time things are going to be a bit different. Instead of continuing our series on farming in the Talbot Settlement over the years, I wanted to dedicate a post to our very own honey house here at the Backus-Page house museum.  

So far, our description of a Talbot settler’s diet must sound quite bland, but even in the 19th century a settler could still indulge their sweet tooth. There were two main kinds of sweeteners at the time, maple syrup and honey. Maple trees were common enough that settlers had access to maple syrup, though their process of acquiring it was much less refined than modern techniques.  

To collect the sap, settlers would use an axe to cut into the tree and insert a basic spout which would drain sap into a pot or trough. The sap would then be boiled over a fire and either milk or the white of an egg would be added to thicken it into maple syrup.  

Honey was also available for those who were willing to work hard enough to get it. By melting honey and wax on a hot stone, settlers could attract honeybees, which they would then follow back to their hives. After finding these hives, settlers could either smoke the bees out and take the honey, or if they were up for the undertaking, they could cut down the tree and hollow a portion of the trunk to make into a hive.  

Our very own Honey House, which would have been built between 1828 and 1831, used a similar method to attract bees, but its personal history makes it so much more to us than just a place to lure bees. 

The Honey House was originally built around 1830 on the William Pearce Farm in Wallacetown by a travelling carpenter, who crafted tiny slits in the “windows” of the house so that bees could get in.  

After the death of Steward Pearce, William Pearce’s grandson, the Honey House was willed to the Elgin County Pioneer Museum, where it stayed for ten years (1968-78). 

In 1978, vandals burned the Honey House to the ground, but students at the Parkside Collegiate Institute built an exact replica which was gifted to the Backus-Page House Museum in December 2006.  

And that’s how the Honey House made its way to us, pretty cool stuff eh? There’s a book with more information in our gift shop, and if you’re interested in learning more, call us at 519-762-3072 or email us at info@backuspagehouse.ca. 

 

References 

Clutterbuck, Mary. The Honey House. Backus-Page House Museum, 2007.  

Guillet, Edwin C. The Pioneer Farmer and Backwoodsman: Volume Two. University of Toronto Press, 1963. 

Jones, Robert Leslie. History of agriculture in Ontario 1613-1880. University of Toronto Press, 1946. 

Winson, Anthony. The industrial diet: The degradation of food and the struggle for healthy eating. NYU Press, 2014.