Dipping into the past…

November 5, 2015 · 0 Comments

125 YEARS AGO
Thursday, November 6, 1890
• A serious collision occurred at Murray’s Cut on the CPR between Chatsworth and Owen Sound yesterday morning. An engine had been assisting a freight train to Flesherton and was on its way back to Owen Sound when it collided with the southbound passenger train. Engineer James Kyle, of the northbound engine, was killed and the fireman and a brakeman badly injured. No passengers were hurt. Conductor Harper was in charge of the passenger train. A special went up from Orangeville to bring down the passengers. Both engines are a total wreck. Engineer Kyle had gone up on Tuesday afternoon with a freight train and he must have been on duty nearly all night.
• On Saturday last, Joseph Elgie, who lives on Lot 28, 2nd Line EHS of Mono, brought to the Shelburne Free Press office a potato of the white elephant variety, weighing four pounds. It is certainly a very large one and some idea of its size may be formed when it is considered that it would take less than two dozen potatoes to fill a bag of 90 pounds. Mr. Elgie says he has lots of potatoes large enough for 40 of them to fill a bag.
• t a special meeting Monday night, Shelburne Council appointed a committee to receive tenders and make all arrangements for heating the Town Hall, including the Council Chamber and Fire Hall, by a furnace.
• The Orangeville Post reports that Mr. B. T. Haun, local manager of the Bank of Hamilton, has returned from a brief trip to Chicago, the great metropolis of the west. Says the Post: “The outing seems to have improved him, and he enters again on his duties with renewed vigour. His stay in that city was made particularly pleasant by the number of Canadians in business there, many of whom he met during his stay. Through their kindness he was enabled to obtain ready admission to the principal business circles, where the immense impetus to the almost boundless trade peculiar to that centre is kept constantly in motion. Among others he visited the Stock Exchange, Board of Trade and banking institutions. In every instant he was most courteously received and the information he sought was promptly furnished. The Chicago Evening Post made a courteous reference to Mr. Haun’s presence at the Stock Exchange. To one possessing the keen perceptive qualities of Mr. Haun, we can well understand that such a visit must prove a great advantage to him.”
• Orangeville’s High School Convocation took place last Friday and as usual was attended with pleasing success. The athletic games and sports, which took place on the lacrosse grounds on Second Street during the afternoon, were well attended and thoroughly enjoyed by all. In the evening, the capacious assembly room in the High School building, was well filled by the students and their friends, and speeches, songs and recitations were the order of the evening. A distribution of prizes also took place during the evening. The students are to be congratulated on the success which attended their convocation’s proceedings.

100 YEARS AGO
Thursday, November 4, 1915
• homas Duckworth murdered his brother-in-law, Harry Strutt, at Grand Valley, on Tuesday, harnessed a horse and drove four miles to the home of Joseph Turnbull, where he was arrested by County Constable Brown. He submitted peaceably, pleading ignorance when questioned regarding the crime. Angered through the action of Strutt in helping landlord Thomas Jordan to remove furniture from his house, Duckworth rushed upstairs armed with a .44-calibre rifle and discharged it within a few feet of Strutt. The bullet passed clean through the left arm and entered the heart, causing immediate death. Srutt’s sister, Mrs. Pell, hurried to help him and assisted him to the top of the stairs, when he sank, falling down to the feet of his wife, who had heard the shot and was hurrying toward the front door. The scene of the murder is a mile and half west of the village on the 4th Concession of East Luther. From evidence submitted at the inquest held Tuesday evening, it appears there has always been more or less strife between the two men. The prisoner is now in Orangeville jail.
• A Grand Jury in Toronto last week indicted three brothers, Gordon D., David S. and Clarence M. McCutcheon on all six counts they faced: conspiracy with J. H. McCutcheon, Marshall A. Cook and Samuel McCutcheon and others to defraud the public; a second count of conspiracy to defraud; conspiracy to affect the market price of land; conspiracy to defraud Council Crest; conspiracy to defraud Brockville investors, and conspiracy to defraud Mayfair Investments. There are 43 witnesses for the Crown cited in the indictment.
• Commencing soon in Ontario, by Provincial regulation students in every classroom will rise at 9 o’clock and sing the National Anthem. The regulation to be issued by the Department of Education provides that the singing of the first three verses of the anthem shall hereafter be a portion of the morning exercises of every school in the province.
• More than one-fifth of all municipalities in Ontario that remain under licence, are being attacked by temperance forces, and voting will take place in the next municipal elections. The present situation in the province is that 554 of the 747 municipalities are dry.
• Canada is to have an army of one-quarter of a million men. The government announced on October 29 that it has authorized the raising of 100,000 additional troops over and above the official authorization of 150,000 last July 6. In view of the large increase proposed, instructions have been sent out to militia all over the Dominion that every officer and non-commissioned officer who is qualified for overseas service should send his name to the commanding officer of his division to be classified and allotted to the new battalions.

75 YEARS AGO
Wednesday, November 6, 1940
• helburne Reeve T. J. O’Flynn has proclaimed Monday of next week as Remembrance Day in the village. The usual Community Remembrance Day Service, the 18th since the opening of the Memorial Park behind the Town Hall, will be held at 10: 45 a.m. If the weather is suitable the service will be held in the Memorial Grounds; otherwise, all but the final part of the service will take place in the Town Hall. At 10:30 a.m., area veterans, the Shelburne Platoon Lorne Scots Regiment, pupils of the public and high schools and members of other organizations will form up in parade order on Second Avenue and march to the Town Hall, headed by the Citizens’ Band.
• meeting was held in Orangeville last Thursday evening for the purpose of organizing a Citizens’ Committee for the County of Dufferin to work in co-operation with headquarters of Military District No. 2. The object of the Committee is to have an organization to deal with: (1) family welfare among soldiers’ families; (2) rehabilitation of soldiers after the war. The meeting elected Judge W.T. Robb as honourary president, J. M. Aiken as president; Dr. J.H. Zinn and Robert Lang as vice-presidents, and Beula Irwin as secretary-treasurer.

50 YEARS AGO
Wednesday, November 3, 1965
• our names will be listed on ballots to be used in Dufferin-Simcoe in next Monday’s federal election, but the name of the party represented by each candidate will not be listed. The four names will be in alphabetical order: Cumming, Lloyd G.; Hill, Dr. George; Madill, J. Ellwood; and Stewart, Harvey R. Mr. Cumming represents the Social Credit party, Dr. Hill the NDP, Mr. Madill the Progressive Conservatives and Mr. Stewart the Liberals.
• Hallowe’en pranksters in Shelburne, Saturday night pushed and pulled a tractor from the John A. Ewing premises two blocks away and parked it on the sidewalk in front of the Town Hall, behind a sign reserving space on Main Street for police parking.

10 YEARS AGO
Thursday, November 3, 2005
• high-speed chase on Highway 10 ended dramatically at Primrose early Monday when a stolen car crashed into the SuperBurger restaurant and a suspect fled on foot, following a long pursuit by police. The incident began at about 12:40 a.m. just north of Orangeville when Dufferin OPP officers at the corner of County Road 10 noticed a northbound vehicle slow down dramatically as it passed. The police turned and began to follow the car, observing it drifting into the southbound lane. When the officers activated the emergency lights the chase was on. At Primrose, the suspect fled the scene, running to a wooded area, but was located by the OPP Central Region canine team within an hour of their arriving. Michael Joseph Slaverda, 20, of Brampton, was charged with theft under $5,000, possession of stolen property, dangerous driving and failing to stop for police.
• Dufferin-Caledon MP David Tilson wants the “corrupt” Liberal federal government to depart quickly in the face of Justice John Gomery’s three volume report on the sponsorship scandal, but on the other hand he doesn’t want to have a Christmas-season election. “Nobody is in favour of a Christmas election,” he said in an interview from his Ottawa office. “But, yes, I would like to see the government gone. Yes, it’s corrupt.”