It began sometime around 3:30am on the morning of 6 July 1921 in or near the planing mill of the Robert Stewart Lumber Co., situated on the west side of Upper Wyndham street, across from the Wellington Hotel. Of course, a lumber mill is just about the last place you would want a fire to break out and, very soon, the whole structure was an inferno and its neighbours had ingnited. ("Great fire, Guelph," postcards; courtesy of Wellington County Museum and Archives: A2011.105, ph. 36218. In the background is the west side of Wyndham street just north of St. George's Square.) Describing the sights ..read more

One of the significant industrial leaders of 19th century Guelph still somewhat familiar to current Guelphites would be Charles Raymond. Following a fire in 2015, Tom Lammer, owner of Raymond's old brick factory on Yarmouth Street, had the original, building-length sign restored, so that "Raymond's Sewing Machines" once again proclaims the existence of Raymond and his business to passers-by. (The old Raymond Sewing Machines factory on Yarmouth street, Guelph. Courtesy of Google Street View.) But, who was Charles Raymond and what was his role in Guelph's industrialization? The whole story is q ..read more

The Christmas card has been a staple of the western, Yuletide celebration since at least 1843, when Sir Henry Cole commmissioned a set of 1,000 engraved holiday cards. As 1843 was also the year that Dickens published "A Christmas Carol," it's fair to say that this was a big year for the origins of contempoary Christmas celebrations. Naturally, postcard makers got into the act during the medium's heyday in the Edwardian era. Although the foldable Christmas card continued on strong, the postcard version faded from the scene. Still, it is not unusual to find Xmas postcards in the 1920s, one of w ..read more

Yours truly recently gave a talk at a meeting of the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge-Regional-Post-Card Club (KWCRPCC). This was the Club's first meeting since the arrival of the COVID pandemic, so it was an honour to help the group resume operations after a long hiatus. The venue was the historic First Church of Christ, Scientist in Kitchener. As it happens, the church itself features in some old postcards, such as the following: ("Christian Scientist Church, Berlin, Canada," ca. 1909. Courtesy of Leigh Hogg.) (First Church Christ, Scientist; courtesy of Google Maps.) The subject of the talk w ..read more

As noted in the post about Guelph's Old Home Week 1908, special attention was drawn to Joseph "Long Joe" Lawrence. As part of the burlesque parade, the townsfolk had prevailed on Johnson to dress up in a fine white dress and parasol and stroll the streets of Guelph to the amusement of all. (Real photo postcard of "Long Joe" Lawrence in a white dress with parasol, parading through St. George's Square. Courtesy of Guelph Civic Musuems 2009.3.1. The message on the back states, "This is the only one I have got left of Guelph Old Home week procession[.] it is a man standing seven feet in a lady dr ..read more

In his dispatch to The Globe newspaper, a reporter from the Big Smoke summarized the scene in Guelph on August 3, 1908, as follows: Every point in Canada and the United States where the old girls and boys have settled has been deflated of ex-Guelphites, and they may be found here, for this was the first day of the celebration in honor of former residents. How many thousands of visitors there are here it would not be possible to compute, but Mayor John Newstead said this was the biggest day in Guelph that he could remember. The visitors and citizens ranged at will all over the city and through ..read more

The blog has recently surpassed the quarter-million mark in unique views (and that's not counting mine)! It's very gratifying to know that people have taken an interest in Guelph in postcards. Thanks for watching—more is on the way soon. While yours truly prepares the next post, the blog and its author appear in the following Guelph history & art series, based on the art of Allison Norlen currently on exhibition at the Art Gallery of Guelph. Check out the gallery and the posts below. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Art Gallery of Guelph (AGG) (@agguelph) -- View this pos ..read more

We tend to think of bridges as keeping people dry when they cross over rivers. For the most part, this is true but not always. At its inception, what Guelphites call Gow's bridge today reminded its makers of this fact (Mercury, 1 Sep 1897): Got a ducking. City Engineer Hutcheon was inspecting the new stone bridge at Gow’s dam yesterday. Mr. D. Keleher, the contractor, and Mr. J.K. Weeks were along with him. They got on to a rather rickety scaffold. It gave way, and the three men were plunged into six feet of water. Then there was a scramble for the shore. Keleher, it is said, floated on one o ..read more

Time, like fire, is one of the chief consumers of old structures. Fire was never likely to consume the Ontario Agricultural College's (OAC) reservoir but time has always brought new things to campus and taken old things away. So it was that the the old water reservoir, often called the "Rose Bowl," would soon "be history" (Sands 1956). The campus was being updated and, as it no longer served its original protective purpose, the reservoir was being filled in. The history of the reservoir begins in the spring of 1896, when the OAC's Chemical Laboratory burned to the ground. Fire was ever a hazar ..read more

They gathered furtively at the residence of Albert Fred Farley in Guelph, to discuss the foundation of a Communist Party of Canada (Easterbrook 1995). Discussion was held in Farley's barn in order to allow space for the number of people involved. Of course, the barn already had several residents, whose presence sometimes intruded on the proceedings: “They brought food to us from the house in pails, so people would think they were feeding the cows,” said Dolgoy,” There were cows alright; I remember that whenever a cow urinated, the speaker had to stop for a minute.” Besides the cattle's disrega ..read more