by North Shore Beacon | Mar 1, 2021 | History, Michael Baker
Grace Methodist and Balaclava Public School, Malakoff and Balaclava Streets, c. 1915 (above). Quarantine card, c. 1920 (below). Graphics courtesy Elgin County Archives By Mike Baker The war may have been over, but the flu epidemic wasn’t. It returned to Elgin...
by North Shore Beacon | Feb 4, 2021 | Michael Baker
Image from the Times-Journal of 20,000 people, celebrating the end of the war in front of St. Thomas City Hall, November 11, 1918 (above); Dr. D. A. McKillop, Medical Officer of Health (below, left); Amasa Wood Hospital, Pearl and Scott streets, c. 1915, Moore Post...
by North Shore Beacon | Jan 11, 2021 | History, Michael Baker
Two American lines run through Iona Station, c. 1912. In the foreground, the Pere Marquette station, and, behind it, the Michigan Central station on the original Canada Southern line. (Photo from the Iona Station Tweedsmuir History in the Elgin County Archives.)...
by North Shore Beacon | Oct 15, 2020 | History, Michael Baker
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...
by North Shore Beacon | Jul 20, 2020 | Michael Baker
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...