We have moved!

The Deseronto Archives blog is now available in a new location at deserontoarchives.wordpress.com.

We've made this move because the blogging platform at Wordpress offers some features that aren't available to us with Blogger. Hope to see you at our new address.

New help for ancestor-hunters

As part of an investment of $15 million by the Ontario Ministry of Culture, all users of public libraries in Ontario now have access to Ancestry Library Edition within the libraries for the next two years. Ancestry is a tremendous resource for anyone researching people, holding, as it does, an enormous range of databases.

For family historians, the ability to search across census information and immigration details can be of immense assistance in tracing the whereabouts of family members in the past.

Ancestry Library Edition can only be accessed from within Ontario's public libraries. As Deseronto Archives is situated within Deseronto Public Library, we are very pleased to be able to make use of this service, which is already proving extremely useful in answering family history enquiries from our users. If you are in Ontario, are having trouble with your family tree and haven't got a personal subscription to Ancestry, we highly recommend hot-footing it down to your local library!

Summer: extended opening

Deseronto Archives will be open on Saturdays in June, July and August, between 10am and 2pm.

Dealing with photographs

The Lennox and Addington Museum and Archives hosted a workshop on "Identification, Preservation and Description of Photographs and Documentary Art". The morning session was run by Jennifer Bunting, historian and archive consultant. This focused on the different types of photographic materials that archives and museum staff might come across in the course of their work. It was wonderful to be able to handle (with cotton gloves on, of course!) the early photographs that Jennifer brought along - it was the first time that I had had a chance to see a daguerreotype, ambrotype and tintype up close, for example.

There are a number of online resources which might help in dating nineteenth century photographs, although most seem to be based in the UK. Roger Vaughan's picture library is one example.

In the afternoon we heard from Iona McCraith, preservation consultant, about how best to store photographic materials. Iona had some sad examples of photographic negatives that were deteriorating due to 'vinegar syndrome'. These materials are best protected by being stored at low temperature and humidity levels. Given the warm and often fairly humid summer conditions that we get in this area, it seems likely that decay of photographic negatives that have been stored in the average family home will be fairly rapid. In these conditions, the Image Permanence Institute suggests that negatives will begin to break down in under 50 years: a significant preservation problem.

A boy named Florence

The earliest minutes for the town council of Deseronto (in the days when it was known as Mill Point) show the names of the Reeve and four town councillors. One of the names is that of Florence Donoghue, which was intriguing, as it seemed highly unlikely that a woman could have been a councillor in 1872. The mystery was soon cleared up, as later minutes in the same volume referred to this councillor as "Mr. Donoghue".

A check on the 1901 census shows Florence Donoghue as a male who was born on 28 January 1832. Directories of the time show Donoghue and Bro. as dry goods merchants on the south side of Main Street, at its junction with Prince Street. Donoghue and his partner, James Oliver, were still in business in 1911, when Donoghue was 79 years of age. The shop would have been one of those in the picture below:


Florence, it transpires, was fairly common as a boy's name in Ireland in the late nineteenth century. In the 1881 census of Canada there were 64 Florences whose place of birth was Ireland. 24 of those were men. Florence Donoghue was born in Ontario, but (as his name suggests) he is listed as being of Irish descent.

Deseronto ♥ hockey

Deseronto Storm (usually known locally as 'The Storm') is the junior hockey team that many people in Deseronto and surrounding areas follow with keen interest nowadays. Back in the 1920s the town had another successful team, this one made up of young men from the Deseronto High School. They were the Central Ontario Inter-Scholastic League Champions in 1926 and 1927.

Mary Hird, the daughter of Charlie Cole, the left defence player, has lent images of the two Deseronto High School teams to the Archives so that we could copy them and share them with others.

1925-1926 team:


FRONT ROW (left to right) - L. Bruyea, left wing; F. Whitton, centre; M. Detlor, right wing.; C. McVicker, goal.
BACK ROW (left to right) - J. Whitton, Manager; J. McVicker, Mascot; L. McVicker, sub.; M. Perry, right defence; C. Cole, left defence; F. Butzer, sub.; E. I. Gale, Principal of Deseronto High School.

James McVicker (1909-1974), the team's mascot, is already familiar to us as the drummer in the 'Circle Six Orchestra', whose photograph has featured on the blog before. That photograph was clearly taken in the same photographer's studio as these two.

1926-1927 team:



FRONT ROW (left to right) - M. Detlor, right wing; F. Whitton, centre; J. Whitton, Manager; L. Bruyea, left wing; C. McVicker, goal.
BACK ROW (left to right) - B. Brant, coach; G. Green, sub; L. McVicker, right defence; B. Campbell, sub; C. Cole, left defence; A. D. Campbell, Principal.

Daniel Clarence McVicker (1907-1985), the goaltender for both teams was later to become a physician and worked as a doctor in Deseronto for many years. If you have further information about the other members of the team, please share them in the comments.

To modern eyes, the difference in the levels of equipment between these players and those of today's is quite striking. As is the complete lack of logos on the 1920s teams' kit!

Brief encounter

"Look out for two grey-haired, not-very-tall people in green anoraks".

This was how Mrs Devos described herself and her husband. We had arranged to meet at London City Airport, although we had only known each other through the Internet, and for a mere five weeks.

Mr Devos had put 'Deseronto' into Google in February and had come across this blog. He got in touch by email on February 18, to tell me about his father's photograph album, which I've described in an earlier post. We were delighted to get copies of the photographs, but as Mr Devos lives in Worcestershire, England, our interaction has been purely through email.

Last Friday I posted a 'Thank you' letter to Worcestershire from Manchester, where I was attending the Archives 2.0 conference and talking about the work we're doing in Deseronto using online resources such as Blogger and Flickr (including, I might add, the story behind the Devos photo album). Noticing that the letter was posted in England, Mr Devos emailed to say that he would be in London this week and to see if there was any chance of meeting up. As it happened, I would be on my way from Edinburgh to Kent via London today.

So we arranged our rendezvous (despite misgivings of friends of both parties, who were automatically suspicious of meetings arranged with strangers over the Internet!). We found each other without mishap (the green anoraks were instantly recognisable) and had a lovely chat over a cup of coffee in the airport café. We've gone from a chance international online encounter to a face-to-face meeting in London in just over a month!


When I talked about our accession of the Devos photo album in Manchester last week, as one of the consequences of putting materials online, I didn't know that I would actually be getting to meet Mr Devos and his wife. It is another example of the fact that you never know quite where these online initiatives are going to take you, if you are willing to let them.