The Middlemarch Giant

  By Michael Baker On Talbot Street where it comes up the hill from Sunset Drive could once be found St. Thomas’s earliest stores. One of them, located about where Jumbo’s statue is today, was owned by Adam Hope and his partner Thomas Hodge. If it were still here...
The Spanish Influenza in Elgin County, 1918-19: Part Two

Elgin’s Kaoak Craze

By Michael BakerI first heard about Kaoka, a coffee substitute concocted from bran and molasses and briefly made in St. Thomas around 1880, from Eric Little, a researcher working on official weights and measures. He had come to the museum to examine our newly acquired...